The numerous books and articles that have been devoted to Courbet's well-known canvas The Painter's Studio (fig. 1) invariably presuppose that the painting is a pictorial manifesto rather than a factual representation of what went on in the artist's studio — indeed, that The Painter's Studio “hides making” and “shows creation.” This premise appears to be justified by the work's complete title, L’Atelier du peintre: Allégorie réelle déterminant une phase de sept années de ma vie artistique (The Painter's Studio: Real Allegory Determining a Phase of Seven Years of My Life as an Artist), which encourages an allegorical reading — though the word “real” appears to suggest that the allegory is constructed from, or may contain, real elements.

In the century and a half since it was painted, the monumental canvas has been interpreted in countless different ways. It has been linked with the ideas of philosophers Charles Fourier and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon; it has been read as a Masonic allegory in which each figure stands for a significant nineteenth-century political personage; and it has been cited as an example of Courbet's “embodiment” in his own paintings, to mention only a few examples. In this article I will not attempt to add yet another explanation of, or layer of meaning to, Courbet's deliberately enigmatic and endlessly polysemic “real allegory” (in a letter to a friend, he wrote that the painting was “passablement mystérieux” and added, “divinera qui pourra”). Instead, I intend to subvert not only the standard approach to the painting but also the theme of this collection of essays, by trying to assess to what extent L’Atelier du peintre, despite its apparent emphasis on “showing creation,” reveals something about Courbet's “making” — and does so, I shall argue, deliberately.

In The Painter's Studio, Courbet has portrayed himself in the center of his Paris studio. Flanked on the right by a group of patrons, critics, and friends and on the left by a motley crowd of contemporary popular types — hunter, farmer, clown, priest, Jew, veteran — the artist is seated at his easel, which supports a large, nearly finished canvas. (Judging by its relationship to the figures nearby, it must measure a little over a square meter.) Though commonly referred to as a view of the Franche Comté, the painting does not appear to depict a specific site in the region, nor does it resemble any known work by Courbet.