A Burial at Ornans

A Burial at Ornans is Gustave Courbet’s monumental painting of the funeral of his great-uncle in the village of Ornans, attended by the townspeople painted with relentless, unsentimental honesty. The vast canvas — painted on a scale previously reserved for history painting — outraged the critics of 1850 and announced Realism as a movement. It remains one of the turning points of 19th-century art.