Public collection via the Art Institute of Chicago
AT-00005902The Woodcutters
Inscriptions
Signed recto, lower right, in pen and brown ink: "G. Courbet"; inscribed recto, along bottom in graphite: "Aus Sammlung / Dr. Hermann Eißler, Wien / Hugo Helbing, München 18.II.930 / durch Otto Nathan [?] 18. II. 930 / Ludwigs Galerie / Gustave Courbet (1819–77) / Die Holzfäller / Kohle / voll bez.; lower right, in graphite: 4 / 1500. / +20%"
Provenance
Dr. Hermann Eißler, Vienna. Sold, Hugo Helbing, Munich, Feb. 18, 1930, lot 28. Ludwigs Galerie (Dr. Otto Nathan), Munich. Dr. Heinrich Stinnes (1867-1932), Cologne [stamp (Lugt 1376a) recto, lower left, in red (twice) and stamp (Lugt 1376d) recto, lower left and lower right, in red]. Sold, Stuttgarter Kunstkabinet, May 5, 1962, lot 639, as Holzarbeiter im Walde. Sold, Sotheby’s, London, Dec. 5, 1984, lot 304, to Dorothy Braude Edinburg, Brookline, MA; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2012.
Exhibition history
Ornans, Musée Gustave Courbet, "Dessins, destins: Gustave Courbet," July-Aug. 1982, cat. 23. Art Institute of Chicago, "Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection," June 3–July 30, 2006, pp. 110-111, cat. 74 (ill.).
Publications
Georges Riat, Gustave Courbet: Peintre (Paris: H. Floury, 1906), p. 168. Theodore Duret, “Courbet: Graveur et illustrateur,” Gazette des Beaux Arts 3, 40 (1908), pp. 428–29. Linda Nochlin, Gustave Courbet: A Study of Style and Society (Garland, 1976), p. 148, fig. 83. Robert Fernier, La Vie et oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, vol. 2 (Bibliothèque des arts, 1978), p. 300, no. 47. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, “Gustave Courbet: Illustrator,” Drawing 2, 4 (Nov.–Dec., 1980), p. 81. Heather McPherson, “Une ‘Allégorie Reelle’: Courbet’s 1859 Frontispiece for Champfleury’s Les Amis de la nature,” Nineteenth Century Studies 9 (1995), p. 38. Suzanne Folds McCullagh (ed.), Drawings in Dialogue: Old Master Through Modern, The Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection, exh. cat. (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2006), pp. 110-111, cat. 74 (ill.).
Data retrieved from the Art Institute of Chicago on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Gustave Courbet / French, 1819–1877
- Date
- 1860
- Medium
- Charcoal and black chalk, with stumping, scraping, and erasing, on buff wove paper, altered to tan
- Dimensions
- 57.7 × 46.1 cm (22 3/4 × 18 3/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- prints and drawing
- Place
- France
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Accession no.
- 2012.76
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