Reclining Nude

Around 1840 or 1841 Courbet was about 21, newly arrived in Paris from Ornans in eastern France, and still learning to paint the human figure. This is one of the earliest of his pictures to survive. Robert Fernier, who compiled the catalogue of Courbet's paintings in 1977, numbered it 17. It is painted in oil on paper, a large sheet almost a metre and a half wide that was later mounted on canvas, and it was most likely made in a studio from a hired model. She lies in the classical reclining pose that students were set, with the obligatory drapery across her. The body is laid out in big, simplified shapes. Before it reached the dealers the sheet belonged to a family named Lemercier in Le Havre, and the museum bought it from a London gallery in 1957.