Portrait of a Young Woman

Around 1845 Courbet was in his mid-twenties, a few years in Paris from the Franche-Comté, earning his living as a portrait painter and teaching himself by copying the old masters in the Louvre. The painter he kept going back to was Rembrandt, and in 1846 he travelled to the Netherlands to see his paintings for himself. This small head, made shortly before that trip, already shows the pull. A pale face comes forward out of a dark, almost featureless ground, while the collar below is only roughly brushed in. The canvas is about 28 centimetres high, not much bigger than a sheet of writing paper. The sitter has traditionally been called one of Courbet's sisters, who often posed for their brother, although no document has been found to say which one, or to confirm it at all. The first recorded owner was Juliette, the youngest of the sisters, who inherited his estate after his death in 1877.