Detail of the Study of a Nude Man Attributed to Courbet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2023

Title: Study of a Nude Man

Artist: Attributed to Gustave Courbet (French, Ornans 1819–1877 La Tour-de-Peilz)

Date: early 1840s

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 29 × 33 1/8 in. (73.7 × 84.1 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Bequest of Nanette B. Kelekian, 2020

Accession Number: 2021.30


This training exercise is thought to have been painted by the young Courbet shortly after his arrival in Paris in 1839, when he studied for several months with baron Charles de Steuben (1788–1856) and then at the Académie Suisse. In an era when themes drawn from antiquity and the Bible stood at the head of an established hierarchy of subjects, the successful rendering of the unclothed male body was a benchmark of an artist’s formation. Few such works from Courbet’s earliest years survive, and the origins of this painting remain obscure.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/848137