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Your galleryMère Grégoire
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Look from the flower in the woman’s raised hand to the coins and ledger on the counter. How do those objects change the apparent portrait?
Courbet began with a head study in 1855, then enlarged the canvas and developed the scene in 1857–59. Its character comes from a song by Pierre-Jean de Béranger about a brothel proprietor. The counter, money, ledger, and small bell turn a seemingly formal likeness into a scene of business and implied exchange.
Oil on canvas · 129 × 97.5 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Realism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Mère Grégoire
- Artist
- Gustave Courbet (French, 1819–1877)
- Date
- 1855, reworked 1857–59
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 129 × 97.5 cm (50 3/4 × 38 3/8 in.); Framed: 168 × 137.2 × 16.2 cm (66 1/8 × 54 × 6 3/8 in.)
- Credit line
- Wilson L. Mead Fund
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.