L'Espagnole

Paris spent 1855 showing the world its machines and its art at the Exposition Universelle. The jury took 11 paintings by Courbet and refused the two he cared about most, so he put up a wooden shed of his own nearby, charged admission, and hung 40 works there under the word Realism. Of the 11 that hung in the official exhibition, this portrait drew the most comment, and nearly all of it was hostile. Critics went after her blotchy skin and her heavy features, which is close to what Courbet was after. The sitter has traditionally been identified as a Spanish woman who nursed him the previous autumn in Montpellier, where he caught cholera while staying with his patron Alfred Bruyas.