Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000235Mme L . . . (Laure Borreau)
Also known as: Madame Laure Borreau (La Dame au Chapeau noir)
About the Artwork
Gustave Courbet painted four portraits of Madame Laure Borreau; this is the last and most highly developed. As a realist, Courbet aimed to represent what he saw in the visible, tangible world. He represented Madame Borreau in a black silk dress embellished with lace and a matching hat. Gold and violet lights of sunset softly illuminate the background. However, the portrait is not idealized. Courbet’s inclusion of her shadowed eyes and full-fleshed neck prompted one critic to write, “I daresay in nature she may be very pretty, but in Courbet’s picture she is nothing less than offensive.”
Inscriptions
Signed lower right: Gustave Courbet / . . 63
Provenance
1881: (Drouot, Paris, France, Artist's estate sale, December 9, 1881, lot 11, stock number 2070, sold to Durand-Ruel) 1881: (Durand-Ruel, Paris France, December 10, 1881, sold to Max Flersheim) by 1934-1962: (Paul Rosenberg and Company, New York, NY by 1934, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1962) 1962-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Year in Review - 1962. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 24-November 25, 1962). Style, Truth and the Portrait. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (October 1-November 19, 1963). Gustave Courbet. Musée du Louvre, Paris, France (October 1, 1977-January 2, 1978). Courbet, Artist and Entrepeneur. Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (November 21, 1998-February 21, 1999). Faces of Impressionism: Portraits from American Collections. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (May 28-July 30, 2000). Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Beijing World Art Museum (May 26-August 27, 2006); Mori Art Center (September 16-November 26, 2006); Seoul Art Center, South Korea (December 22, 2006-March 28, 2007); Seoul Olympic Museum of Art, South Korea (April 7-May 20, 2007); Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (June 9-September 16, 2007); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008); Frist Art Museum, Nashville, TN (February 15-June 1, 2008); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT (June 22-September 21, 2008); The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (October 12, 2008-January 18, 2009). 1863 • PARIS • 1874: Revolution in Art - From the Salon to Impressionism. Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Köln, Germany (organizer) (March 15-July 28, 2024) https://www.wallraf.museum/ausstellungen/aktuell/2024-03-15-paris-1874/.
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
- Date
- 1863
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Dimensions
- Framed: 112.4 x 93 x 12.1 cm (44 1/4 x 36 5/8 x 4 3/4 in.); Unframed: 81 x 61.2 cm (31 7/8 x 24 1/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Accession no.
- 1962.2
More by Gustave Courbet in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00000235
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