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Michael John Halse

The Desperate Man, Gustave Courbet


Hey eveyone! I know I'm a day late with this post, but yesterday was SUCH a long day. I started it off by filming by first video for YouTube, which will be released on Friday, but spent the entire morning fighting with EOS Utility, which wasn't working with my camera, until I realized I needed an updated version... Yup, a whole morning of frustration for a simple update. And then the rest of the day was filming and editing... it took a long time.

But I'm back today and tomorrow with the final two posts of this series. And today I'm talking about The Deperate Man by Gustave Courbet.

Courbet was a French painter who lived from 1819 to 1877 and was a leader of the Realist movement in art history. As a realist, he was very committing to painting only what his eyes could see, and rejected the work of Romanticism and artistic embellishments. Oddly enough, his work became the inspiration for many impressionists and cubists of the 18th century. He was known for his nudes, hunting scenes, landscapes and still lifes. One of his most famous works is The Origin of the World, a close-up of a nude woman's genitals and abdomen. While it was incredibly scandelous at the time for it's realistic portrayal, Courbet's crusade against romanticized interpretation and idealism slowly revolutionized art throughout Europe.

The Desperate Man is one of Courbet's lesser known works and is a self portrait of the artist. Painted in 1843 and finished in 1845, it depicts a troubled twenty-four year old Courbet. Today it's part of a private collection.

And here is my recreation of the original painting:

This was another really simple image. It wasn't a composite and the whole thing was shot in the studio one night. I threw in a couple simpler reinterpretations into the series, just because I had a HUGE workload and needed a couple of easier recreations. I also remembered seeing the original painting in an art history class when we were looking at artists self portraits and I really liked the lighting. Unfortunately, I couldn't quite figure out how to recreate the drastic lighting that's in the original. Whenever I moved the light's behind him, his front was too dark, and it was just a big mess.

However, my model for this, David Parry, was excellent! He answered an ad I put up for male models (because I have like, none) and he came down from Toronto one night to shoot. We actually did a lot more than this single photo, but after I put this series on hiatus because of a larger project I was working on at the same time, those other shots have silently waited to be completed. And I'm going to finish them up, hopefully this spring. I have about five or six more composite photos for this series that I'd like to finish.

Tomorrow, I'll be talking about the final image in this series (for the moment at least) called Vanitas.

As always, you can see all the photos in this series here.

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Be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

And you can check out my debut high fantasy novel, The Children of Gods and Monsters, now out on Amazon, here.

And also check out the prelude to The Children of Gods and Monsters, also available on Amazon, here.

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