Details
GUSTAVE COURBET (FRENCH, 1819-1877)
Portrait of Madame Sophie Loiseau
signed 'G. Courbet.' (lower right)
oil on canvas
2834 x 2358 in. (73 x 60 cm.)
Painted in 1869.
Provenance
Private collection, France.
Literature
R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, catalogue raisonné, Paris and Lausanne, 1978, vol II, p. 72, no. 662 (illustrated p. 73).
Exhibited
Besançon, Musée Besançon, Exposition Rétrospective des Oeuvres de Gustave Courbet, 11 May-10 June 1928, no. 21.
Ornans, Hotel de la Ville, Gustave Courbet, 23 July-1 October 1939, no. 13.
Fleurier, Gustave Courbet, 4-9 October, 1947, no. 14.
Special notice
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Lot Essay

Courbet painted the present portrait during an 1869 trip to visit the painter Charles Joliclerc in Pontarlier in eastern France. The sitter, Madame Sophie Loiseau, had requested that she be depicted by Courbet with her favourite Turkish Angora cat sat upon her knee. Fernier notes that Madame Loiseau’s son was less keen on the feline addition to the painting and as soon as Courbet had ‘turned on his heels’ he painted over the animal; traces of which can be seen on the sitters lap (R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, vol II, p. 72).

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