COURBET, Gustave
(b. 1819, Ornans, d. 1877, La Tour-de-Peilz)

Portrait of Chenavard

1869
Oil on canvas, 54 x 46 cm
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon

Paul Chenavard (1807-1895) was a French painter, a pupil of Ingres and Delacroix. He was Courbet's companion during this last trip to Italy. In his portrait by Courbet gazing anxiously from the picture is a man who incarnated the nineteenth-century figure of the intellectual and philosophical painter, a man whose company was much appreciated by poets, writers, artists, and musicians such as Rossini and Berlioz.