The Wounded Man | |
Artist: | Gustave Courbet |
Medium: | Oil on canvas |
Height Metric: | 81.5 |
Width Metric: | 97.5 |
Metric Unit: | cm |
Imperial Unit: | in |
City: | Paris |
Museum: | Musée d'Orsay |
The Wounded Man (French: L'Homme blessé) is an oil-on-canvas self-portrait created between 1844 and 1854 by the French Realist painter Gustave Courbet. In it, Courbet depicts himself in a romantic theme as a suffering, heroic man. Originally, the composition featured a woman leaning on the artist's shoulder. Sometime before May 1854, Courbet replaced her with a sword, and added a red bloodstain on his shirt.[1] Courbet's decision to depict himself as a wounded man may have arisen from his distress at the dissolution, circa 1851, of his 14-year relationship with Virginie Binet, with whom he had a son.[2]