Portrait of M. Nicolle

Details

GUSTAVE COURBET (FRENCH, 1819-1877)
Portrait of M. Nicolle
signed and dated '..62/G. Courbet.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
24 x 19 5⁄8 in. (61 x 50 cm.)

Provenance

Pommier Collection, Vesoul.
Barbier Collection, Besançon.
with Richard Feigen, New York, where purchased by the present owner.

Literature

Bulletin des Amis de Gustave Courbet, 1947, pp. 15-17, no. 2, illustrated.
R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, catalogue raisonné, Paris and Lausanne, 1978, vol. I, p. 176-177, no. 298, illustrated (with dimensions 61 x 46 cm.).
P. Courthion, Tout l’œuvre peint de Courbet, Paris, 1987, no. 287.
A. Pennasilico, Gustave Courbet e il suo tempo, Milan, 2008, pp. 14-15, no. 6, illustrated.

Exhibited

Paris, Gallerie Royale, Salon des Artistes comtois, 1947, no. 31.
Nassau, County Museum of Art, Gustave Courbet: Later Paintings, 1998, no. 3.
Castiglioncello, Castello Pasquini, Da Courbet a Fattori: I principi del vero, 2005, no. 17.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

Mr Nicolle was the head of an industrial establishment on Amelot Street. He was a political prisoner in Sainte-Pélagie. He met the philosopher and political prisoner Pierre-Paul Prud'hon there. It was Prud'hon who introduced Courbet to Mr Nicolle.

It was ten years later that Courbet's commitment to politics would lead to his own period of imprisonment in Sainte-Pélagie. In June 1871 Courbet he was accused of having taken part in the Paris Commune, the last of the nineteenth-century revolutions in France.

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