Der Verzweifelte

Courbet painted this staring, wild-eyed self-portrait as a young man in Paris in the mid-1840s, years before he became the loud champion of Realism. Here he is still working in a Romantic key, hands buried in his own hair, eyes wide and pushed right up to the surface of the canvas so he seems to lunge at you. He kept it. It stayed in his studio through his whole restless career, a private image he never let go of, and it only reached a wide public long after his death. The year stored in this record predates the usually accepted date of 1843 to 1845 and should be confirmed before publishing.