GUSTAVE COURBET, THE RETURN OF THE CONFERENCE: REDISCOVERY OF A TABLE
Disappeared
Attributed to GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877)
The return of the conference
Signed and dated 'Gustave Courbert 1854' (bottom left)
Oil on panel
40.5 x 51.5 cm.
Painted in 1854
PROVENANCE
Galerie Johann Naldi, Paris.
Private collection, Paris.
EXHIBITION
Ornans, Musée Gustave Courbet, Le retour de la conférence, un tableau disparu, December 2015-April 2016, p. 79 (this work illustrated in colour).
REPORT OF ANALYSIS
An analysis report by Laurence Baron-Callegari confirming the authenticity of the signature will be given to the buyer.
NOTICE
"At this moment I am making a painting that is crucial for the next exhibition. [...] It is the most grotesque painting we have ever seen in painting. " - Gustave Courbet
This important rediscovery anticipates one of Gustave Courbet's first scandals. The composition is a first unpublished version for 'Le Retour de la conférence', Courbet's scandal whose 1863 version, measuring 230 x 330 cm, was kept in the artist's studio until his death. The work was sold for the first time at Courbet's succession on 9 December 1881. According to the critic Charles Léger, in the Bulletin de la vie artistique published in 1920,
the painting reappeared at the beginning of the 20th century at the Georges Petit gallery where it was bought to be destroyed by a Catholic fundamentalist. The buyer, a "financier" who said he was happy to have bought this "filth" to destroy it, declared the painting "infamous, unholy and scandalous".
The version we present, unpublished and dated 1854, anticipates the final version by nine years,
and is offered for the first time at auction.
According to Thierry Savatier, a 19th century historian and expert on Gustave Courbet, the artist "produced two preparatory paintings in 1862 for the 'Retour de la conférence'. In the present wor
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