Details
- Object type
painting; portrait
- Title
Woman with a Parasol, Mademoiselle Aube de la Holde
- Artist/Maker
Jean Desiré Gustave Courbet artist
- Culture/School
French
- Place Associated
France, Normandy, Trouville or Deauville (place of manufacture)
- Date
1865
- Materials
oil on canvas
- Dimensions
framed: 1162 mm x 970 mm x 115 mm;unframed: 921 mm x 737 mm
- Description
-
In the summer of 1865 Courbet visited the fashionable seaside resort of Trouville. In a letter to a friend he wrote: ‘I am here in Trouville in delightful circumstances. The Casino has given me a splendid apartment overlooking the sea and there I paint the portraits of the prettiest women in Trouville. I have already painted the portrait of the comtesse Karoly of Hungary. That portrait has had an unparalleled success. More than four hundred ladies came to see it.’
He continued: ‘At the moment I am doing Mlle Aubé de la Holde’s, a young lady from Paris, who, in a different way, is as beautiful as Mlle Karoly. They pay me fifteen hundred francs apiece for these portraits... I am gaining a reputation as a matchless portrait painter. The ladies I won’t be able to do here will have themselves done this winter in Paris. That will give me an enormous clientele.’
Courbet was a great inspiration to the Impressionists, not least for the private exhibitions he organised of his own work. In 1855, annoyed at the rejection of some of his most important paintings from the Universal Exhibition, he organised an exhibition in a specially constructed building known as the Pavilion of Realism. Such unofficial exhibitions influenced the young Impressionists to organise their own independent shows, the first of which was held in 1874.
This portrait was exhibited, along with many of his Trouville seascapes, at Courbet’s one-man show which was held at the Rond-point du Pont de l’Alma in Paris in 1867. In this painting Courbet binds together sitter and sunset by continuous contrasts of blues and oranges
Courbet was a close friend of another artist who worked regularly in Trouville - Eugène Boudin. There are fourteen works by Boudin in the collection of Glasgow Museums and nine of these were painted in and around Trouville and its neighbouring town, Deauville. In The Jetty at Trouville and The Beach at Trouville – the Empress Eugénie, Boudin, like Courbet, juxtaposes the sea and the world of fashion.
Courbet and Boudin first met in Le Havre in 1859. Boudin watched Courbet at work and although he admired him, he noted that Courbet’s large brushstrokes ‘seem decidedly crude to me, with little attention to detail.’ For a short while – and certainly during his stay at Trouville when this portrait was painted – Courbet was also influenced by Boudin. Watching Boudin paint a view of sea and sky, Courbet exclaimed: ‘My dear fellow you must be a seraph; you are the only person to really know the sky.’
- Credit Line/Donor
Gifted by Sir William and Lady Burrell to the City of Glasgow, 1944
- Collection
Burrell Collection: Pictures [Oils, Pastels and Watercolours]
- ID Number
35.65
- Location
Burrell Collection
- Related People