Madame Auguste Cuoq (Mathilde Desportes, 1827–1910)

Gustave Courbet

ca. 1852–57 · Oil on canvas · European Paintings

Several artists ventured portraits of Mathilde Desportes, including the popular academician Jean-Jacques Henner (1829–1905), but her husband, Auguste Cuoq, found most of them unacceptable. This likeness was among those he rejected, reportedly because he felt that it did not adequately convey his wife’s beauty. Courbet appears to have finished the picture to his own satisfaction in 1857, the date he assigned it in the catalogue of the solo exhibition he mounted in Paris in 1867.

Artist

Gustave Courbet

Date

ca. 1852–57

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929