# Self-Portrait \(Courbet with Black Dog\) [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [COURBET, Gustave]() - Date: 1851-1900 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 27 x 23 cm ## Commentary Courbet's favourite subject in the 1840s seems to have been the self-portrait. This relatively unusual genre requires the artist to observe his own reflection, demanding remarkable stillness and concentration. Traveling to Belgium and the Netherlands for the first time in the summer of 1846, Courbet went to The Hague to admire the Rembrandt self-portraits. But unlike Rembrandt, Courbet liked to dress up and stage his own appearance. The series of self-portraits that Courbet painted between 1842 and 1849 is clearly Romantic in inspiration and the source of a very personal and modern interpretation of the myth of the artist in the nineteenth century. ## Related artworks - [A Burial at Ornans]() - [After Dinner at Ornans]() - [Artist at His Easel]() - [Beach near Trouville]() - [Burial at Ornans \(detail\)]() - [Cliffs at Étretat]() - [Courbet in his Cell at Sainte-Pélagie]() - [Farmers of Flagey on the Return from the Market]() - [Firemen Running to a Fire]() - [Flower Still-Life]() - [Landscape]() - [Landscape with a Dead Horse]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()