Portrait of Madame Jolicler, nee Lydie Chenoz

The woman in this portrait lived in Pontarlier, a town in eastern France a short ride from the Swiss border. Her name was Lydie Jolicler, and in the summer of 1873 that nearness to the frontier mattered a great deal to Gustave Courbet. He was facing ruin at home, held liable for the cost of rebuilding a Paris monument that had come down while he sat on the arts commission of the Commune, the short-lived revolutionary government of 1871. Rather than watch his paintings be seized to pay it, he chose to leave France. It was Lydie's family who knew the mountain paths and guided him across in about an hour, clear of the customs posts, and Lydie herself pressed a roll of silver coins on him for the road, some of it Swiss money she had put aside.

Courbet painted her more than once, and the year of this canvas is not settled. Sources place it anywhere from the mid-1860s to the painter's last years in exile, so it may date from long before that summer or from close to it. The friendship behind it, though, is not in doubt. The picture stayed with Lydie in Pontarlier before it moved through later collections and came to the Kröller-Müller in the Netherlands.