La Voyante

Courbet signed this in 1855, the year he fell out with the official Salon in Paris and put up his own shed nearby to show his work on his own terms. This small head belongs to a quieter register than those big statements. It goes by two names, The Fortune-Teller and The Sleepwalker, and the young woman's face surfaces out of near-darkness with eyes that seem fixed on you at first and then to look through you at nothing. Who she was is uncertain. She may be his youngest sister, Juliette, who kept the painting until she sold off the studio's contents decades later. Courbet lets the shadow do most of the work, leaving only the lit planes of the face and a suggestion of trance.