https://www.parismuseescollections.paris.fr/fr/petit-palais/oeuvres/portrait-de-regis-courbet-pere-de-l-artiste · PD
Portrait de Régis Courbet, père de l'artiste
Détails
L'histoire
Courbet painted this in exile. In 1873 the French state made him personally liable for putting the Vendôme Column back up after it had been pulled down under the Commune, and rather than pay he crossed into Switzerland and settled at La Tour-de-Peilz on Lake Geneva.
His father came out to visit him there. Régis Courbet was 76, a landowner from Flagey in the Franche-Comté who had once sent his son to Paris to study law, and the portrait was finished in two sittings. The signature at lower left reads 74.
The bill for the column was eventually fixed at 323,000 francs, payable in yearly instalments. Courbet died at La Tour-de-Peilz on the last day of 1877, the day before the first payment fell due. His father outlived him by five years, and his sister Juliette gave this picture to the city of Paris in 1909.
