Hector Berlioz

In 1850 Hector Berlioz was in his mid-forties, a leading name in Paris music and a friend of Victor Hugo, whom Courbet admired. The writer Francis Wey, close to the composer, arranged a sitting in the studio. It went badly. The composer was private and quick to take offence, and his host, who fancied himself a singer, spent the sittings performing his own rough country tunes as models for popular music. By one early account, Berlioz first thought he was being mocked, then decided the painter was an idiot. Once the portrait was finished, he refused it. Nobody knows whether the singing was the reason. The picture is hardly flattering, a thin, tired face that looks older than its years, set against near-black. Courbet showed it at the Salon that winter anyway, then gave it to a friend, the painter Paul Chenavard.