Rêverie (Portrait of Gabrielle Borreau)

Gustave Courbet · 1862

Medium

Oil on paper, mounted on canvas

Original size

63.5 × 77 cm (25 × 30 5/16 in.); Framed: 98.5 × 112.4 cm (38 3/4 × 44 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Realism

Rêverie captures Gabrielle Borreau in a moment of quiet inwardness, her gaze turned away from the viewer in an attitude of soft contemplation that feels intimate rather than posed. Courbet was the driving force of French Realism, and this 1862 portrait shows the side of his work that is often overshadowed by his grander, more combative canvases. Where his landscapes and figure paintings could be forceful and declaratory, works like this one reveal a painter of genuine tenderness. The oil-on-paper support lends the surface a warmth and immediacy distinct from his larger studio pieces — the paint sits close to you, luminous and direct. Courbet painted several portraits of women associated with the Borreau family during the early 1860s, a period when he was producing some of his most psychologically sensitive work before the upheavals of the Paris Commune consumed the later years of his career. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made on canvas by a skilled artist working directly from the original, matching the tonal delicacy and the softly rendered light that makes Courbet's study so affecting — giving you a faithful version of a painting that seldom leaves Chicago.