The Three Sisters of Courbet

This canvas goes by two titles. One calls the three young women the painter's sisters. The other, The Tales of Grandmother Salvan, points to the older woman on the right with her hands clasped, presumably the storyteller the girls have gathered around. Courbet painted it in 1846 or 1847, a few years before his large pictures of everyday life in his home town of Ornans made his name in Paris. Here the scale is small and domestic. One sister wears a wide straw hat, one stands with her back to us and a hand on her hip, and the third looks out from the shadow between them. The room around them is left bare and brown, and Courbet signed his name in red at the lower left. The painting has stayed in private hands. In April 2014 it was offered at Christie's in New York, with an estimate of 800,000 to 1.2 million dollars.