“It is not often that one encounters so complete an expression of poverty and so, right then and there I got the idea for a painting. I told them to come to my studio the next morning.”

—  Gustave Courbet

Quote, 1850's explaining to Champfleury and the writer Francis Wey; as cited on Wikipedia; Masanès, Fabrice 2006, p. 31
Courbet explains in his quote the start of his painting 'Stone-Breakers' [painted in 1849-50 / destroyed in the Allied Bombing of Dresden in 1945]; this painting was inspired by a scene Courbet witnessed on the roadside.
1840s - 1850s

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Gustave Courbet 30
French painter 1819–1877

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