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Gustave Courbet 1819-77

French painter

Gustave Courbet was a leader of the Realist movement, rejecting imaginative idealisation in art in favour of detailed, unembellished depictions of objects.

Realism can be found in Greek sculpture and in many 17th-century paintings, including those of Caravaggio and Diego Velazquez; but it was not until Courbet's time that Realism became an aesthetic movement. Along with the poet Charles Baudelaire and the philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Courbet became the foremost exponent of the new artistic school.

Courbet was brought up in Franche-Comte, an area to which he would return, in reality and on canvas, repeatedly throughout his life. He moved to Paris in 1841, ostensibly to study law, but soon devoted himself to art. His work was acclaimed in the more liberal spirit following the 1848 revolution, but the French never warmed fully to Realism during Courbet's lifetime. By contrast, when he visited Germany, he was warmly welcomed, accepted as the undisputed model for a new generation of painters.

After a brief spell in the Paris Commune in 1871 Courbet was held responsible — quite arbitrarily — for the destruction of the column at Place Vendôme. His money, works of art and personal property were seized, and he fled, penniless, to Switzerland, where he died.

The Artchive: Courbet
www.artchive.com/artchive/C/courbet.html
Good links to Courbet's works, plus suggested reading, as well as an analysis of his contribution to the world of art.

Courbet by James Rubin (Phaidon Press, 1997) £12.99.
A look at the artist's work and a discussion of the personal, political, economic and social circumstances in which it was created.

Woody Guthrie (Woodrow Wilson Guthrie) 1912-67

American singer-songwriter

Indisputably the most important American folk singer of the first half of the 20th century, Woody Guthrie was brought up in Oklahoma, witnessing first hand the hardships of the Great Depression. By the age of 15, he was travelling around the United States, visiting hobo and migrant camps, singing songs about his own experiences and those of the dispossessed he had seen.

Guthrie wrote more than 1,000 songs chronicling the suffering of the common people and relating their struggles. Many of these — So Long, It's Been Good to Know You, Dust Bowl Blues, I Ain't Got No Home and Tom Joad, which was inspired by John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath — are still seen as folk classics. Guthrie's most famous song, This Land Is Your Land, was adopted by the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

By the 1950s Guthrie was suffering from Huntington's chorea, a hereditary neurological disorder. Throughout his long illness, however, he managed to influence a new generation of folk singers, fostering an atmosphere in which the likes of Bob Dylan <LINK TO A1> and his own son Arlo would thrive.

Woody Guthrie
www.woodyguthrie.org/
Site of the Guthrie Foundation, which owns the most comprehensive collection of the singer's works. Full life history, online pictures and educational projects.

Woody Guthrie: A life by Joe Klein (Faber, 1988) £9.99.
Respected biography of Guthrie, who lived a life on the edge of tragedy.

John Osborne 1929-94

British playwright and film producer

The first of the 'Angry Young Men', a group of British novelists and playwrights whose portraits of postwar Britain expressed their disdain for the established class system, John Osborne is best known for his second play, Look Back in Anger.

Like many of the angry young men, Osborne came from a lower-middle-class family. He dabbled briefly in journalism before becoming involved in the theatre. Look Back in Anger, first performed in 1956, was ground breaking. It showed, for the first time on the British stage, 20- to 30-year-old men who had not fought in World War II and who found the country of their birth shabby, inequitable and without promise.

Osborne wrote eight plays, all vigorous and realistic dramas, whose themes — aside from the character of 1950s Britain — included a celebration of the rebel or the non-conformist and the decline of empire.

John Osborne

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/parade/abj76/PG/pieces/john_osborne.shtml
Speech given by fellow playwright David Hare at Osborne’s1995 memorial service, plus a biography and comprehensive review of his work by the dramatist Peter Gill.

Looking Back by John Osborne (Faber, 1999) £14.99.
Single-volume edition of Osborne's two-volume autobiography: A Better Class of Person: 1929-1956 and Almost a Gentleman: 1955-1966.

Don McCullin 1935-

British photographer and war reporter

'Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see, is what my life as a war reporter is all about.'

Don McCullin was born to a working-class family in north London. At 18, he was called up for National Service and signed up for photo-reconaissance. Due to his dyslexia, he failed the exams, but learned how to use a camera. In the 1950s, he began taking pictures of London street life, and some of his work was published by the (London) Observer. Then, in 1964, the newspaper asked him to cover the civil war in Cyprus.

Thus began McCullin's extraordinary career, documenting some of the most brutal and horrific wars of the 20th century. As a correspondent for the Sunday Times, he witnessed the suffering of soldiers and civilians in the Congo, Biafra, south-east Asia, Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, the Middle East, El Salvador and Cambodia. Like many war correspondents, McCullin became addicted to the adrenaline rush of danger: he was wounded in Cambodia and imprisoned in Idi Amin's Uganda. In his own words he was committing 'a long, drawn-out suicide in the pursuit of heroism'. Ultimately he rejected this life, returning to Britain where he continues to photograph English life.

Don McCullin
www.hamiltonsgallery.com/Don%20McCullin/
The website of McCullin's gallery — Hamilton's — with information on his current projects and exhibitions, as well as a biography and examples of his work.

Unreasonable Behaviour by Don McCullin (Vintage, 1992) £12.99.
McCullin's autobiography and a personal portrait of the post-war world.