The Tinker

A tinker in France was a rétameur, and in the 1840s the countryside still needed one. Copper pans oxidise into verdigris, which is poisonous, so the tin lining inside them had to be laid on again every year or two. The man came through in the warm months with a small portable forge, called out in the street, and the households brought their pots down to him. Courbet was about 22 when this was painted, still moving between Ornans, his home town in the Franche-Comté, and Paris, where he had dropped law for painting and was being refused by the Salon. The dating is loose. Specialists place the canvas somewhere between 1841 and 1844 and treat it as early work. It hangs in Ornans on permanent loan from the Institut Courbet, the association that carries his name there.