Selbstbildnis mit Pfeife

Courbet painted himself like this around 1848 and 1849, the months when revolution swept the French king from his throne and a new republic took shape in the streets of Paris. You would not guess the turmoil from the picture. He shows himself heavy-lidded and dreamy, a clay pipe drooping from his lips, half in shadow, looking more like a young bohemian lost in reverie than a political firebrand. Within a few years he would become the loud public face of Realism, painting ordinary labourers on a scale once reserved for saints and kings. The self-portrait later went to the Montpellier collector Alfred Bruyas, an early champion who bought Courbet while the critics were still hostile, and it hangs in his old city at the Musee Fabre.