Beatrice Bouvet (1864)

Courbet, Gustave (1819-1877)

Beatrice Bouvet (born c.1861)
1864
Oil on canvas, 91.9 x 73.2 cm
National Museum WalesCardiff

The Salins industrialist Alfred Bouvet purchased two Courbet landscapes and commisioned this portrait of his daughter, then aged three. She is holding a toy sheep on a wheeled base. Courbet seldom attempted portraits of children, and wrote, ‘It is the hardest thing you can imagine: a three-year-old girl, as fair as tow, as white as milk and, by Jove, extremely pretty.’ (NMW)