Qatar revealed this week that it’s the owner of Gustave Courbet’s famed self-portrait Le Désespéré (The Desperate Man), 1843–45, which went on view today at Paris’s Musée d’Orsay. It’s the first time the work has been on view in France, Courbet’s home country, in 17 years.
The artist’s piercing wild eyes now stare out from the same walls that exhibit Courbet’s other famed works, including The Stone Breakers (1849) and The Origin of the World (1866). The painting will be on view at the Musée d’Orsay for five years before it is transferred to its new home in Doha, according to the Agence France-Presse.
The painting was listed as being on loan from an unknown private collector with help of French bank BNP Paribas when it was previously exhibited at the National Gallery in London in 2006.
It was also included in a Courbet retrospective held between 2007 and 2008 at the Grand Palais in Paris. That show subsequently traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musée Fabre in Montpellier. The painting also appeared at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt in 2010 and 2011.
The work was later acquired by Qatar Museums, a state body that oversees the Emirati art scene. It is unclear how they acquired it or how much was paid for the artwork.
Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, head of Qatar Museums and sister of the Gulf state’s ruler, acknowledged Qatar’s ownership of the painting while she was at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris for a tribute honoring the late Sylvain Amic.
“In his memory, we unveiled Gustave Courbet’s Le Désespéré, a painting that will be on long-term loan from the future Art Mill Museum Collection to the Musée d’Orsay until our museum opens,” she wrote on Instagram. “It will then travel between our institutions, reflecting Sylvain’s belief that art must travel and be shared to inspire the world.”
Al Thani revealed the ownership as Qatar’s art scene undergoes a sea change. The Art Mill Museum, opening in 2030, is being billed as Qatar’s future museum of international modern and contemporary art. It is being designed by Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena and developed by the Qatar Museums in Doha.
Sheikha Al Mayassa is listed as one of ARTnews’s Top 200 Collectors. One of the world’s biggest contemporary art buyers, she oversees art acquisitions for the Qatar Museums.
