Drei Schulmädchen

Courbet made this small canvas in 1860, at the height of his fame as the painter who insisted on showing ordinary life exactly as it was, at a scale usually reserved for history and myth. Here the subject is as plain as it gets: three schoolgirls crowded onto one bench in a dim classroom, close enough that you seem to be sitting across the desk from them. It was never a public showpiece. In the lower corner it carries a dedication to a friend, to my friend Mander, and it stayed in private hands until a Viennese gallery sold it to the Belvedere in 1931. It is still rarely on the walls there.