Tête de chèvre

Courbet painted this two years before he died, and not in France. After the Paris Commune fell in 1871, the new government held him responsible for the toppling of the Vendome Column, the giant bronze pillar to Napoleon's victories, and billed him for the cost of putting it back up. Unable to pay, he slipped across the border into Switzerland in 1873 and settled by Lake Geneva. There the painter who had made his name on French quarrymen and village funerals worked at whatever the Alps offered, trout, snow peaks, and mountain game like this chamois, a wild goat-antelope of the high slopes. He drank heavily and died in exile in 1877. The little head later reached an unlikely owner, Pablo Picasso, and came to France with his personal collection, which is why a Courbet hangs today in the Musee Picasso.