"Nude Woman Reclining" Rediscovered and Revealed

A few years ago my mother passed along to me a collection of prints that she bought at an estate sale. Centered on women in fine art, in her lovely Southern accent she warned “there are a couple of dirty ones in there as well”. Needless to say I was more than a little interested to see what my mother considered dirty. No doubt, she was referring to Gustave Courbet’s “Origin of the World” – the controversial cornerstone of the French painter’s career.

Created in 1866, and now a resident of the Musee d’Orsay in Paris, this still somewhat stunning portrait of a, how shall we say, “Le blason” (a delicate paean to the “most beautiful treasure of the female anatomy) still draws scandalized gasps even in the 21st century. Several of the paintings previous owners kept it concealed. A Hungarian baron hung it in his bathroom, while the celebrated psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan bought it and hid it behind a panel that he uncovered for guests.

Courbet’s work is drawing a new round of gasps these days, but for different reasons. Until recently art experts believed that another of his salacious works ‘Nude Woman Reclining’ had been lost, maybe even destroyed, a casualty of Red Army or Nazi looting in Hungary during World War II. Fortunately for us, they were wrong.

Previously owned by the same collector who hung ‘Origin of the World’ in his loo (Baron Ferenc Hatvany) the painting was stolen from the bank vault where the baron had put them for safekeeping during WWII. The baron, who was Jewish, survived the war but lost all of his art, the largest collection in Hungary. He tracked down and bought back some of his lost works, including ‘The Origin of the World,’ but he never knew what happened to the other Courbet nude.

During the war, 'Nude Woman Reclining' wound up in the possession of a Soviet soldier who gave it as a gift to a doctor in Bratislava (part of Slovakia). The painting hung in the doctor’s home for decades until his death. His family then attempted to sell it. After negotiations and a reward of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars to the doctor’s family, the painting was returned two years ago to the baron’s heirs.

Currently the painting is appearing at a special show at the Grand Palais in Paris through January 28th. Then it will come to New York and be shown at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York from Feb. 27 to May 18.

As the Musee d’Orsay is actively seeking funding to purchase the painting for its collection, it looks like another trip to New York is in order.