Портрет Юрбена Кено

In 1847 the Salon jury in Paris refused everything Courbet sent it. He was 28, barely known outside the circle of friends he had grown up with in Ornans, and Urbain Cuenot was the closest of them. Cuenot came from the same small-town bourgeoisie in eastern France, founded a choral society in the place, and had gone with Courbet on his first trip to the Normandy coast in 1841. They stayed friends for the rest of Cuenot's life. This is the smaller of the portraits Courbet made of him, a canvas about 56 centimetres tall, painted around 1847. Cuenot died in January 1867 and Courbet came home for the funeral. The picture came home later: the Friends of Courbet bought it by public subscription in 1955 and gave it to the museum in Ornans in 1976.