Madame L... (Laure Borreau)

In 1863 the Paris art world was arguing about who belonged on a wall. That spring the official Salon rejected so many painters that the emperor ordered a second show for the refused. Courbet, already the loud leader of the realists, sent this in the regular Salon instead, a portrait of Laure Borreau, who ran a cloth and confectionery shop in the town of Saintes in western France, where he was staying. He painted her in black silk and lace with a warm violet light behind her, giving a provincial shopkeeper the presence a painter would usually save for a countess. He was also, by his own account, rather taken with her, and this was the fourth and last time he painted her. On the wall it hung simply as Mme L, her full name kept private.