The Raft of the Medusa
While Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) could be described as an anti-Romantic painter, his major works like "A Burial at Ornans" (1849–50) and "The Artist's Studio" (1855) owe a debt to "The Raft of the Medusa". The influence is not only in Courbet's enormous scale, but in his willingness to portray ordinary people and current political events, and to record people, places and events in real, everyday surroundings. The 2004 exhibition at the Clark Art Institute, "Bonjour Monsieur Courbet: The Bruyas Collection from the Musee Fabre, Montpellier", sought to compare the 19th-century Realist painters Courbet, Honoré Daumier (1808–1879), and early Édouard Manet (1832–1883) with artists associated with Romanticism, including Géricault and Delacroix. Citing "The Raft of the Medusa" as an instrumental influence on Realism, the exhibition drew comparisons between all of the artists. The critic Michael Fried sees Manet directly borrowing the figure of the man cradling his son for the composition of "Angels at the Tomb of Christ".