Woman with a Parrot by Gustave Courbet

“Woman with a Parrot” is an iconic and scandalous work of realism, kept at the Met in New York. Gustave Courbet depicts a woman languorously thrown back on her back, completely naked on an unmade bed, her abundant brown hair spreading like a dark cascade over the rumpled white sheets. Her arm gracefully raised, she welcomes a parrot with shimmering feathers (yellow, blue, and red) that perches on her hand, offering the only true burst of bright color in the composition. Her pale, pearly skin, modeled with carnal and assertive sensuality, contrasts powerfully with the theatrical darkness of the heavy drapes in the background and the velvety green of the divan. Courbet defies the academicism of his time here by proposing a modern, palpable, and bold eroticism, where the woman is no longer a mythological goddess, but a creature of flesh.