1943.787: Artist at his Easel

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1943.787

People

Gustave Courbet, French (Ornans, France 1819 - 1877 La Tour-de-Peilzy, near Vevey, Switzerland)

Title

Artist at his Easel

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

1847-1848(?)

Culture

French

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/297931

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Black chalk with traces of charcoal on cream antique laid paper; graphite outline on palette and lower edge of coat lapels (later addition?)

Dimensions

55.4 x 33.5 cm (21 13/16 x 13 3/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Juliette Courbet, sister of the artist; (Felix?) Gérard; Claude Roger-Marx, Paris; acquired from him through Martin Birnbaum by Grenville L. Winthrop, September 1938 (Fr 82,500 for cat. nos. 10 and 11); his bequest to the Fogg Art Museum, 1943.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

Accession Year

1943

Object Number

1943.787

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.

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Publication History

• Alexandre Estignard, Gustave Courbet, sa vie, ses oeuvres, Delagrange-Louys (Besançon, 1896), pp. 151-52
• Georges Riat, Gustave Courbet, peintre, Henri Floury (Paris, 1906), pp. 44, repro., 133, 386
• Andre Fontainas, Courbet, F. Alcan (Paris, 1921), p. 85
• Charles Léger, Courbet, Les Editions G. Crès & Cie. (Paris, France, 1929), p. 129
• Pierre Courthion, Courbet, Librairie Floury (Paris, 1931)
• Regina Shoolman Slatkin and Charles E. Slatkin, Six Centuries of French Master Drawings in America, Oxford University Press (NY) and Oxford University Press (UK) (New York, NY, 1950), p. 166, pl. 94
• Marie-Thérèse Lemoyne de Forges, "Autoportraits de Courbet.", La Revue du Louvre (Paris, 1972), 22, no. 6, p. 455, fig. 5
• Marie-Thérèse Lemoyne de Forges, Suzy Delbourgo, and Lola Faillant, Autoportraits de Courbet., Editions des Musées Nationaux (Paris, 1973), no. 42, repro.
• Bruno Foucart, G. Courbet, Flammarion and Crown Publishers Inc. (Paris, 1977), repro, pg. 87
• Margret Stuffmann, "Courbet Zeichnungen", Courbet und Deutschland, DuMont (Cologne (Köln), 1978), pg. 326, fig. 2
• Robert Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, La Bibliothèque des Arts (Lausanne, Switzerland, 1978), vol. 2, p. 286, no. 17, repr.
• Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, "Into the Modern Era: The Evolution of Realist and Naturalist Drawing.", The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawings, 1830-1900, Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, OH, 1980), pp. 25-27, fig. 39
• Vojtech Jirat-Wasiutynski and Thea Jirat-Wasiutynski, "The Uses of Charcoal in Drawing", Arts Magazine (October 1980), vol. 55, no. 2, pp. 128-135, p. 133, fig. 15
• Michael Fried, "Painter into Painting: On Courbet's 'After Dinner at Ornans' and 'Stonebreakers'", Critical Inquiry, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, Summer 1982), 8, p. 631, fig. 7
• "L'imagerie du visage de Courbet", Visages, Visages, Musée Maison Natale Gustave Courbet (Ornans, Summer 1984), dossier 1, fig.24
• Martha Tedeschi, Great Drawings from The Art Institute of Chicago: The Harold Joachim Years..., The Art Institute of Chicago/Hudson Hills Press (Chicago, IL and New York, NY, 1985), p. 138 (under no. 62)
• Pierre Courthion, L'Opera Completa di Courbet, Rizzoli Editore (Milan, Italy, 1985), repr. p. 134
• Thea Jirat-Wasiutynski, "Tonal Drawing and the Use of Charcoal in Nineteenth Century France.", Drawing, The Drawing Society (New York, March-April 1990), 11, no. 6, pg. 123, fig. 6
• Michael Fried, Courbet's Realism, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, 1990), pg. 95, repro. pg. 96
• Bruno Foucart, Courbet, Flammarion (Paris, France, 1995), repr. p. 39
• Sylvain Boyer, "Les autoportraits: Journal intime du peintre.", Dossier de l'art, SFBD/Archeologia S.A (Dijon, July 1997), 39, p. 34, repro.
• Vincent Pomarède, "La Collection Winthrop: A la recherche de la beauté pure", L'Estampille/L'Objet d'art (April 2003), no. 379, pp. 34-45, p. 44
• Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), cat. no. 10, repr. (color)
• Valérie Bajou, Courbet, Société Nouvelle Adam Biro (Paris, 2003), repr. p. 51
• Christopher Riopelle, Harvard's Winthrop Collection: Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, exh. cat., National Gallery Company Limited (London, 2003), p. 41, cat. 28, ill.
• Stephan Wolohojian, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, France, 2003), no. 10, repr.
• Fabrice Masanès, Gustave Courbet 1819-1877: The Last of the Romantics, Taschen (Cologne, 2006), repr. p. 7
• Ségolène Le Men, Courbet, Citadelles & Mazenod (Paris, 2007), p. 50, fig. 33
• Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, The Most Arrogant Man in France: Gustave Courbet and the Nineteenth-Century Media Culture, Princeton University Press (Princeton and Oxford, 2007), p. 37 and fig. 24
• Deanna Petherbridge, The Primacy of Drawing: Histories and Theories of Practice, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven and London, 2010), p. 137, pl. 86
• Heather McPherson, "The Artist in His Studio: Dress, Milieu and Masculine Identity", Interior Portraiture and Masculine Identity in France, 1789-1914, ed. Temma Balducci and Heather Belnap Jensen, Ashgate Publishing (Burlington, VT, 2011), pp. 83-99, pp. 85, 87, repr. p. 86 as fig. 5.1 (listed p. ix as fig. 5.1)
• Jeffrey Howe, ed., Courbet: Mapping Realism; Paintings from the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium and American Collections, exh. cat., McMullen Museum of Art (Boston, 2013), p. 41, fig. 9
• Lee Hendrix, ed., Noir: The Romance of Black in 19th-Century French Drawings and Prints, exh. cat., J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, 2016), p. 139, fig. 33
• Ewa Lajer-Burcharth and Elizabeth M. Rudy, ed., Drawing: The Invention of a Modern Medium, exh. cat., Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 89, 281, repr. p. 90 as fig. 2
• Niklaus Manuel Güdel, Anne-Sophie Poirot, and Philippe Clerc, Gustave Courbet: Les dessins, Les cahiers dessinés (Paris, 2019), no. 29, repr. p. 133, pp. 38, 39, 66, 71, 72, 73, 106, 132, 349, 350, 353, 360, also repr. as fig. 30, p. 40 (detail), and p. 63 (detail)

Exhibition History

• Salon de 1849, Palais des Tuileries, Paris, 06/15/1849 - 12/31/1849
• Exhibition et vente de 40 tableaux et 4 dessins de l'oeuvre de M. Gustave Courbet, Pavillon du Réalisme, Paris, 01/01/1855 - 12/31/1855
• Exposition des oeuvres de M. G. Courbet, Rond-Point du Pont de l'Alma, Paris, 01/01/1867 - 12/31/1867
• Exposition des oeuvres de Gustave Courbet, École Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 05/01/1882 - 05/31/1882
• Exposition Universelle de 1900, Exposition de Paris, Paris, 04/15/1900 - 11/12/1900
• A Century of French Drawings, from Prud'hon to Picasso, Matthiesen Gallery, London, 01/01/1938 - 12/31/1938
• A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, 03/15/2003 - 05/26/2003; National Gallery, London, 06/25/2003 - 09/14/2003; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10/23/2003 - 01/25/2004
• Modern Art and Modernity, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/31/2013 - 06/01/2013
• Drawing: The Invention of a Modern Medium, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/21/2017 - 05/07/2017

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