Mère Grégoire

Courbet began this in 1855 and reworked it over the next few years, a period when Napoleon the Third's government was cracking down hard on anything that smelled of dissent. The woman comes from a popular song by Béranger, a poet the regime had gone after for mocking authority. In his verses Madame Grégoire runs a brothel, and Courbet shows her mid-transaction, coins on the marble counter, a ledger under one hand, a little bell to summon her girls under the other. In her fingers she holds a flower, and its petals carry the blue, white and red of the tricolour, the French flag, tucked into a scene that on its surface is only a woman at a counter.