GLR March-April 2023

ESSAY

Gustave Courtois in the Paris Salon E DUARDO A. F EBLES

A PORTRAIT of strongman and wrestler Mau rice Deriaz (1885–1974) executed by Gustave Courtois (1852–1923) in 1907 has not been forgotten. It currently makes the rounds on social media sites dedicated to the male figure or to artistic images of masculine bodies. But regardless of the medium, the portrait seduces the viewer through its beautiful depiction of Deriaz’manly physique and its palpable eroticism. In this half-length portrait, Deriaz stands slightly turned to the right. The flawless porcelain-white skin of the brawny ex posed chest stands out against the dark, blurred background. A light blue sash with a silver lining hugs the waist below the navel, tied in a knot on Deriaz’ left hip. The light shines bright est on the middle of the hairless chest and the left clavicle, cre ating shadows on the right side of the body. The gracefully flexed arms allow the biceps to bulge slightly as the left hand gently clasps the right hand below the sash. Lush brown hair crowns the proud face while the curvatures of the bushy eye brows—echoed by the discrete moustache over thin carmine lips—frame the seductive gaze from eyes looking intensely to wards the left, avoiding direct contact with the viewer. For a portrait artist of Gustave Courtois’ caliber, the work signaled a bold statement. A bare-chested wrestler and body builder was out of place in the polite society usually associated with academic art at the time. When shown at the Paris Salon of 1907, it raised many eyebrows among critics. One journal ist accused Courtois of bad taste for showing the athlete bare chested, while another speculated on the artist’s experience of pleasure while executing the work: “What intense pleasure M. Gustave Courtois must have felt while giving shape to the tri umphant torso of the athlete Maurice de Riaz! How he has ca ressed its sinuous contours!” Without a doubt, the critics’ uneasiness upon seeing the portrait lay bare the homoerotic content of the piece and hinted at Courtois’ “deviant” sexual ity, raising suspicions about the relationship between the artist and model. But who were Courtois and Deriaz, and what was the nature of their relationship? Gustave Courtois was born in 1852 in the tiny town of Pusey in eastern France, about 35 miles north of Besançon. He was raised by his single mother, Jeanne Jobard, a laundress who hardly made enough money to pay the bills. Thanks to his re markable artistic talent, he received a scholarship in the spring of 1869 to join the atelier of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a renowned Orientalist painter and professor at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Although Courtois went on to reach the upper echelons of Parisian society as one of the most sought Eduardo A. Febles is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Simmons University in Boston.

after portraitists of his time, his story has been largely forgotten or erased. In fact, he might be the queerest 19th-century French painter about whom the least is known. This is because part of his work was destroyed or altered by early owners of his paint ings to hide this aspect of his life and work. Similarly, in the only extant biography of Courtois, written by his former stu dent Robert Fernier and published in 1943, the author goes to great lengths to justify his subject’s bachelorhood, blaming it on his extremely timid nature. Nevertheless, Courtois’ interest in men has been firmly established, and he had a lifelong rela tionship with another man, the Bavarian artist Carl Ernst von Stetten, whom he met in the 1870s while studying in Paris at Jean-Léon Gérôme’s atelier, and who posed for many of his paintings. In 1907, when Courtois’ portrait of Maurice Deriaz’was pub licly shown in the Paris Salon, the Swiss athlete was only 22 years old, 33 years younger than Courtois. Deriaz was born in 1885 in the town of Baulmes in the Swiss Alps just over the French border. The portrait itself hangs today in the city hall of

Gustave Courtois. Portait of the Athlete Maurice Deriaz , 1907.

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