Portrait of Gustave Mathieu

When Courbet painted this in 1869, Napoleon III's empire had a little more than a year left to run, and the sitter had never made a secret of what he thought of it. Gustave Mathieu was a poet and songwriter from Nevers, a republican who had been on the barricades in February 1848 and who later wrote verses with double meanings to slip them past the censors. He was also Courbet's friend, and this portrait belongs to a group the painter made of the companions of his life. He flatters him not at all. The beard is going grey, the hair has retreated far up the forehead, and he is set against a dark background of the kind the old masters used. The only bright touch is the small bouquet pinned to his lapel. The two men died within weeks of each other, Mathieu in October 1877 near Fontainebleau, Courbet on the last day of that year in Swiss exile.