ABSTRACT
The influence of Romanticism has been so profound and pervasive that no account can encompass it. To some degree all subsequent Western art derives from it, just as all European history since 1789 has been to some extent a consequence of the French Revolution. Romantic ideas about artistic creativity, originality, individuality, authenticity and integrity, the Romantic conception of the meaning and purpose of works of art and the role of the artist continue to dominate aesthetic thought. So deeply are they embedded in our attitudes and ways of thinking that we are rarely aware of them. From the beginning, opposition had been directed more frequently to the trappings popularly associated with the Romantics than to their essential ideas. The Studio reveals that although Courbet had thrown off the trappings of Romanticism, he clung tenaciously to the more important Romantic beliefs.
