The Politician Émile Ollivier

Around 1860, when Courbet painted him, Émile Ollivier was about 35, a lawyer from Marseille and one of only five deputies who openly opposed Napoleon III in the imperial legislature. Paris knew the group simply as the Five. In 1857 he had married Blandine, a daughter of the composer Franz Liszt. The portrait is plain, head and shoulders against a grey ground, a dark coat and a loosely knotted white tie. Ten years on, Ollivier had come round to the empire. In January 1870 Napoleon III made him his chief minister, and that July Ollivier told the chamber that he accepted the war with Prussia with a light heart. Seven weeks later the empire had fallen after the defeat at Sedan, and he spent much of his remaining 43 years defending his record. Munich acquired the canvas in 1912, a gift from the Berlin collectors Eduard Arnhold and Robert von Mendelssohn.