Branche de pommier en fleurs

Next to the signature Courbet wrote 71, and in the opposite corner Ste Pélagie, the Paris prison where he was held in the autumn of 1871 for his part in the Commune. The Musée d'Orsay's catalogue puts it differently. The canvas was painted in 1872 and dated back to 1871. By then he had left Sainte-Pélagie. In the last days of 1871 he was moved to a clinic at Neuilly, and he was freed at the start of March 1872. A branch of apple blossom lies along a brown bank, white flowers opening among reddish buds, which may be why the picture has also gone by the title Cherry Blossoms. It was shown at a Courbet exhibition in Berlin in 1930, and in 1973 the Paris dealer Max Kaganovitch and his wife Rosy gave it to the French state.