Page 33 - Courbet

Fig. 30. Portrait of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and his Daughters, 1865, Musée du Petit
Palais, Paris.

T he presence of a woman in Courbet’s personal imagery disappeared after Virginie’s departure. Of his
subsequent encounters little is known. One was an attempt in 1865 by the wife of a friend to marry
him off to a flower painter named Céline from the Franche-Comté town of Pontarlier.44 Another
exception was his affair with JamesWhistler’s mistress, Jo Heffernan, in the mid-1860s.45 Although he alluded
to a few others in his letters, their true nature remains undetermined, except that they appear to have been
sexual rather than loving. He rarely mentioned any names.There was, for example, a Spanish woman of whom
he made a portrait and whom he claimed had waited for him in Lyon for 15 months.When he finally visited
her, he said she found the remedy for his illness.46 In Woman with a Cat, a girl in her nightclothes offers her pet
to the viewer, an unquestionably erotic gesture.47 If indeed these were mistresses, none of the relationships
lasted or came near to the point he attained withVirginie. Hence the primary evidence for Courbet’s attitudes
towards woman must come from his paintings. Parallel to his love affair of the 1840s, Courbet did make the
occasional female nude. But, voluptuous as she is, The Bacchante was justified both by her mythological guise
and the source for her pose in a well-known painting by Correggio from the Louvre.48

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