Ritratto di Juliette Courbet

Courbet painted his youngest sister Juliette in 1844, the same year the Paris Salon accepted a work of his for the first time after several rejections. He was 25 and still finding his way. Juliette, about 13, sits in profile in a caned armchair, her gaze fixed and hard to read, the fabric and the potted plant behind her rendered with a care that owes something to Ingres, then the reigning master of French portraiture. Juliette outlived her brother by decades and never married. She spent that long life defending his reputation and gave this early portrait, with other studio works, to French museums.