Page 20 - Courbet

Fig. 14. Young woman holding a wide- Fig. 15. Young Mother, c. 1848, Charcoal,
brimmed hat, c. 1845, pencil on paper, pencil, and stump on paper, Musée des
sketchbook page, Musée du Louvre, Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie, Besançon.
Département des arts graphiques, Paris, (D. 3177).
RF 29234, p. 45.

A sketchbook dating from the 1840s contains a few drawings that confirm Courbet’s preoccupation with love.
One shows a female figure descending to a sleeping man as if in a dream (Fig. 12). In another, a man and a
woman hold one another (Fig. 13), possibly dancing as in the Happy Lovers. A third is a finely drawn image of a
young woman, seated, holding a wide-brimmed hat (Fig. 14).All three more or less share a profile that generally
resembles the mother in our painting. Could she beVirginie? As far as is known, there is only one other artwork
by the artist on the theme of motherhood, but it is far more ambiguous than our painting. It is a rapidly sketched
charcoal drawing from about 1848 showing a young mother with two children and behind them probably the
father (Fig. 15). Could this be an allusion to Courbet and his new family? One notes that in Mother and Child
on a Hammock there is a second child holding a rope used to swing the hammock to and fro. She is most likely
a neighbour, or maybe the helpful daughter of a servant.The charcoal sketch also has a second child. Its figures

20