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What happened to Gustave Courbet’s original painting The Stone Breakers during World War II?

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Painting by Gustave Courbet showing the artist at his easel in a crowded studio, surrounded by figures including a nude model, onlookers, and a child with a white dog. — Realism *The Painter's Studio*, showing Gustave Courbet at the easel, oil on canvas by Courbet, 1854–55; in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

The original painting The Stone Breakers (1849) by Gustave Courbet was destroyed during World War II.

The work was part of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden collection in Germany. Although museum holdings were dispersed for safety at the outbreak of the war, many works were nonetheless lost or destroyed during the conflict. Specifically, the painting was destroyed in 1945 during the Allied bombing of Dresden, which resulted in the near-total destruction of the city and its art treasures.12