Charles Suisse  1861

Suisse, a former artist’s model, established an informal—and extremely liberal—art school in Paris which the young Courbet attended in the mid-1840s. By the time of this portrait, dated to 1861, Manet, Monet, and Pissarro had also studied at the Académie Suisse. The sitter’s spectacles and tousled gray hair indicate that he is getting on in age, but his gaze is sharp and a...