GLR March-April 2023

zine published in France from 1904 to 1967 (with notable hiatuses due to world events). When com pared to Courtois’ work of 1907, there are striking resemblances between the photo and the treatment of the body in the painting. The shadow on the right, the bulging vein on the right forearm, the right clavicle all mirror each other, giving the por trait its photographic quality. In this way, Courtois violates several unspoken rules of academic por traiture. Whereas most athletes featured in artworks were presented either in the midst of performing an athletic feat or as a mythological hero, he chose to humanize Deriaz by giving him a name and a face that would be recognizable to those acquainted with the wrestling world and La Culture Physique magazine. Rather than focusing on sartorial de tails—a long staple of portraiture to define the sit ter’s psychology—Courtois presents Deriaz half naked. The lack of any other props (aside from the sash) to contextualize the subject further empha sizes the corporality of Deriaz as a real person. Fur thermore, by alluding to the cover of La Culture

Detail of Gustave Courtois sketching a model in his studio. Courtesy of the Frick Collection/Frick Art Reference Library Archives.

this village together with two other paintings by Courtois repre senting Deriaz: Hercules at the Feet of Omphale (1910) and Perseus Freeing Andromeda (1912). His father wanted him to become a lawyer, but the young Maurice was more interested in physical jousting than oratory debates. He followed in the foot steps of his six brothers, who were all involved in sports. He moved to Paris at age eighteen to join one of them, Émile, who managed a gym in the French capital. Like many bodybuilders of the time, Deriaz became a popular showman, with engagements and wrestling matches all over the world, reminiscent of Eugen Sandow’s career. Although the timing and circumstances of their first en counter remain a mystery, the portrait of 1907 is only one of several depicting the “Swiss Lion,” confirming a professional relationship that spanned several years, at least from 1907 to 1912. That said, the encounter between a flourishing painter and an athlete was not uncommon at the time: strongmen such as Deriaz were sought after to become models for artists. Actually, Deriaz’ brother Adrien had been used as a model and posed for sculptures. In a similar vein, as Jim Elledge pointed out in this magazine (July-August 2011), early in 1887 Sandow “found himself stranded and jobless in Brussels. To make ends meet, he modeled nude for established and up-and-coming artists, some of whom paid for more than his ability to stand still.” We don’t know if Deriaz actually did more than just “stand still” for Courtois, but the portrait establishes a connection be tween “deviant” sexualities and the bodybuilding craze that ran from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th and beyond. After the Oscar Wilde trial had set off a “queer panic,” the more suspect ephebic and feminized representations of the male body were replaced by muscular, virile strongmen who embodied national ideals of manhood. At the same time, such representations served as screens behind which a homosexual audience could remain closeted while enjoying the sight of ideal masculine bodies referencing classical antiquity. Maurice Deriaz had actually graced the September 15, 1906, cover of La Culture Physique , a very popular culturist maga

Physique , the portrait functions as a winking reference to the numerous photographs by both famous athletes and private in dividuals published in the pages of the magazine. In fact, every issue was peppered with illustrations of what we could call “selfies” of half-naked (and sometimes fully naked) men, including those of professional and amateur ath

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March–April 2023

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