Woman with a Parrot
When this painting was shown in the Salon of 1866, some critics censured Courbet's "lack of taste" as well as his model's "ungainly" pose and "disheveled hair." Yet they were not unanimous, and the French state briefly considered purchasing it. Courbet himself wrote: "After twenty-five years of struggle, I am still fighting; and today I am still doing exactly the same kind of painting that in the beginning unleashed the entire official world against me . . . . " The provocative picture found favor with a younger generation of artists. Manet began his version of the subject (89.21.3) the same year; and Cézanne apparently carried a small photograph of the present work in his wallet.
Artwork Details
- Title: Woman with a Parrot
- Artist: Gustave Courbet (French, Ornans 1819–1877 La Tour-de-Peilz)
- Date: 1866
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 51 x 77 in. (129.5 x 195.6 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929
- Object Number: 29.100.57
- Curatorial Department: European Paintings
Audio
6122. Woman with a Parrot
Gallery 811
KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: Gustave Courbet had already shocked the art world with his depictions of such trivial subjects as a rural funeral and stonemasons. So when he exhibited a nude woman playing with a parrot at the Salon of 1866, many critics found it to be more tasteful and elegant than they had actually expected. It fit within an established genre. Still, it was hardly a run-of-the-mill salon nude. Alison Hokanson.
ALISON HOKANSON: He takes us out of this noble realm of the idealized female nude into the realm of a specific, ordinary individual—the way that we get a glimpse of the woman's teeth; the way her hair snakes onto the sheets, and we can see these little strands sticking to her forehead; and then in the right corner, where we can see her skirt with the white waistband. And then also how he's used these very delicate flesh tones over her thighs and over her stomach to really give a sense of this fully rounded, living, breathing body.
KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: It was this sort of realism—not to mention the implied eroticism—that marked Courbet as one of the most controversial artists in nineteenth-century France. Even after thirty years, when the painting was brought to New York, it retained the power to provoke and to astonish.
ALISON HOKANSON: The donor, Louisine Havemeyer, who bought the work in 1898, recalled, "I begged Mr. Havemeyer to buy the picture—not to hang it in our gallery lest the anti-nudists should declare a revolution and revise our Constitution—but just to keep it in America. Just that such a work should not be lost to the future generations."
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