Portrait of Paul Chenavard

Courbet probably painted this in Munich in 1869, where both men had traveled for an art exhibition. The sitter, Paul Chenavard, was a Lyon painter in his early sixties and an old friend, best known for a project that broke his heart: a vast philosophical decoration for the Pantheon in Paris, which the state commissioned after the 1848 revolution and then cancelled when the building was handed back to the Church. Courbet gives him no grand setting, just a sharp, ruddy face turned in thought, painted wet and thick the way Courbet liked. The two shared politics as well as friendship, and within two years Courbet would be jailed for his part in the Paris Commune. Lyon, Chenavard's home city, owns the portrait.