‘Thought-provoking, full of insight and original ideas … a mind-opening book’ – Burlington Magazine

‘The best study of Courbet to date’ — Connoisseur

‘Pervaded by a deep historical as well as aesthetic sense’ — Historical Journal

‘Adventurous, unexpected, excitingly conjectural ... startlingly acute’ — New Statesman

‘Throws into new perspective not just the work of Courbet but also a crucial period in nineteenth-century French history’ — The Guardian

A hugely influential book that transformed the way art historians view art, Image of the People is a noteworthy discussion of the work of Gustave Courbet in the years directly after the 1848 revolution. Showing how complex Courbet’s intuition of the social and political issues of the time really was, the book also reveals how exactly appropriate were the pictures he painted for the Salon of 1851 — the Burial at Ornans, the Stonebreakers and the Peasants of Flagey.