黒い犬と自画像

Courbet was in his early twenties and almost unknown when he set himself down like this, in front of a wide stretch of the Franche-Comté countryside he had grown up in, with a sketchbook at his side and a black spaniel leaning against him. He submitted it to the Paris Salon of 1844, the enormous official exhibition that could make or unmake a young painter. He sent three canvases. The jury rejected two and let this one through, listing it plainly as Portrait of the Author. So the first time the Paris public met Courbet, this confident young man in a striped coat was the face they saw. He kept tinkering with it afterwards, and the date he signed in the corner, 1842, was added later than the painting itself. The dog was real. Courbet mentioned in a letter that he had picked up an English spaniel he was very fond of.