Portrait of Gustave Courbet
Medium
Drypoint
Dimensions
Sheet: 17 3/8 × 13 7/8 in. (44.2 × 35.2 cm) Plate: 6 1/8 × 4 5/8 in. (15.6 × 11.7 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1922
Accession Number
22.63.165
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
Art Historical Context
This 1878 drypoint print offers an intimate portrait of Gustave Courbet, the influential French painter, rendered through the collaborative efforts of Courbet and Marcellin Desboutin. The small plate size—roughly 6 by 4 inches—contrasts with the larger sheet, emphasizing the focused, personal nature of the image. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Drawings and Prints department, the work entered the collection in 1922 via the Rogers Fund and remains a striking example of 19th-century printmaking devoted to artists depicting one another. Drypoint, an intaglio technique in which the art...
About the Artist
Gustave Courbet|Marcellin Desboutin · 1819–1877
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) was a French painter who revolutionized 19th-century art as the founding figure of the Realism movement. Born in Ornans, a small town in the Doubs region of France, Courbet came from a prosperous farming family with anti-monarchical roots—his maternal grandfather had participated in the French Revolution. This background shaped his lifelong commitment to dep...