The Painter's Studio

1854–55

Oil on canvas, 361 × 598 cm. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Courbet paints a landscape at the center of a crowded studio.

Its full title calls it a "real allegory" of seven years of his artistic life.
On the right are friends and backers, among them Baudelaire reading; a hunter on the left may have Napoleon III's features.
From 1899 to 1919 it hung as the backdrop of a private amateur theater in Paris.
He turns his own studio and career into the subject of a monumental picture.

Themes

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain