Portrait of Hippolyte (Pradelles?)

In May 1862 Courbet went down to Saintonge, the country inland from the Atlantic around Saintes, for a fortnight at the house of Etienne Baudry, a rich young republican who collected his work. He stayed about a year. Corot came for ten days in August and the two of them painted outdoors together, and through that autumn Courbet worked on the bank of the Charente at Port-Berteau with two local painters, Auguin and Pradelles, who treated him as their master. He turned out something like 80 pictures in that stretch, flowers among them, which he had hardly touched before. This portrait carries a dedication in red paint by the sitter's shoulder, to my friend Hippolyte, in memory of our friendship. The museum in The Hague still prints a question mark after the name Pradelles, because nobody has established which Hippolyte he was.