Yan Pei-Ming was a youth in China when he first stumbled upon the work of Gustave Courbet, whose imagery he found in a black-and-white propaganda book. When Yan settled in France in 1980, he was finally able to study the work of Courbet, the pioneering realist who had fascinated him from the get-go. On the 200th anniversary of Courbet’s birth, the Petit Palais exhibits the two painters “face to face,” with 15 monumental works by Yan speaking to 10 Courbets. —E.C.