Cigana pensativa

Courbet painted this in 1869, at the height of his fame and not yet in the political ruin that was coming — two years before the Paris Commune, after which he was jailed and driven into exile for the toppling of a monument. Here there is none of that. A young woman, called a gypsy in the old title, stands with her hair loose about her shoulders, looking down, one hand drifting up to it, caught as if she does not know she is watched. It is a quieter, more private Courbet than the huge public canvases he is known for. The picture travelled a long way from him: it was bought in Paris in 1921 by the Japanese collector Kojiro Matsukata, and it hangs today in Tokyo.