In between the lifetimes of Rembrandt and van Gogh, many artists created self-portraits in the same manner focusing intently on their facial features and expressions with very little else in the frame. There were some however, like Gustave Courbet who embellished their self-portraits into fantasy. Courbet and others continued the tradition of painting their own likeness but went further to stage a scene, add artifacts and/or people to symbolize their social status or mental state. In this way, the artist's face was no longer the central image.

In Courbet's Interior of My Studio, A Real Allegory Summing Up Seven Years of My Life as an Artist, (1854-1855) he "created a new model of an artistic and social universe of which he is the center and soul creator." The painting is a stage, Courbet is the central character deftly painting a landscape on a large canvas, flanked by a small child gazing up at him and a nude female model who looks over his shoulder. The boy represents innocence, the nude model perhaps nature. To his left is a group of people likely symbolic of his home town life, hunters, peasants, a priest, a mother and a child. To his right are individuals such as critics, clients and intellectuals (the man reading is Baudelaire.) He may be torn between these two lifestyles or perhaps just showing us different sides of his life.

During his lifetime, Courbet created at least seven other "fantasy" self-portraits, portraying a wide range of characters from a handsome wooer to a noble prisoner. His paintings were the first to break away from "the neck-up self-portrait" and instead, reveal himself through his surroundings.