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Artwork · 1866 · Nude painting

Woman with a Parrot

Gustave Courbet
1866 · Oil on Canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
★ 5.7 editorial score

A nude woman lies on her back across rumpled white sheets, her dark hair spilling loose, one raised hand offering a perch to a small bright parrot. Courbet renders her ample, relaxed body and tousled abandon with rich, tactile realism, sidestepping the polished idealization the Salon expected of a nude. Now in the Metropolitan Museum, Woman with a Parrot brought his frank sensuality to the official exhibition - the goddess replaced by a real, fleshly woman in a moment of languid play, painted with the same earthy honesty he brought to landscapes and laborers.

Movement
Realism

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Other media onSubject·Birds
Quote · 1977

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain.”

Colleen McCullough