Portrait of Juliette Courbet

This is early Courbet, years before the huge realist canvases and the political storms. He painted it in 1842, around 23 years old and newly arrived in Paris from Ornans, his home town in the Franche-Comté. The sitter is his youngest sister, Juliette, then a girl of about 11, posed neatly with clear light on her face and careful attention to the fabric of her dress. The smooth line and soft finish show how much the young Courbet still looked to Ingres, the reigning master of French portraiture, whose polish he would later throw over for something rougher and more physical. Juliette outlived her famous brother by decades and became a guardian of his memory. Portraits like this one lived in the family's world long before they reached a museum.