Part of Gustave Courbet’s erotic correspondence with one of his mistresses between 1872 and 1873 was discovered in the library of the Franche-Comté town, the town revealed this Wednesday, November 27.
They had been kept in the greatest secrecy since the beginning of the 20th century due to their sulfur content. A hundred erotic letters exchanged between the painter Gustave Courbet and his mistress were discovered last year in the attic of the Besançon library, France Bleu Besançon revealed this Wednesday. These are precisely 116 letters written between November 1872 and May 1873 between the Franche-Comté painter and Mathilde Carly de Svazzema, a lady of good Parisian society, unhappy and abandoned by her husband. Twenty-five are in the hand of Gustave, 91 by Mathilde.
Agnès Barthelet, conservation assistant at the municipal library, says she discovered these letters by chance in November 2023 on a shelf in the dusty attic of the Besançon Study and Conservation Library. “This neat little pile piqued my curiosity,” remembers the librarian with emotion. “When we started to look through the pile, we said to ourselves, ‘Hey, there’s a certain Gustave,’ then we saw an envelope addressed to Mr. Gustave Courbet… There, everyone reacted differently. I think I was a little paralyzed, I didn’t expect that.” confides the curator of the premises, Pierre-Emmanuel Guilleray. These letters were subsequently officially authenticated, thanks to meticulous work.
While Gustave Courbet already had a sulphurous reputation for having been the author in 1866 of “The Origin of the World”, a realistic painting of a female genitalia exhibited today at the Musée d’Orsay, Agnès Barthelet argues that these letters had “somewhat scabrous content”. Extract : “But dear Whore, think about it, you know that I adore you, you know that I do unjust things to please you; you know that I would give I don’t know what right now to suck your cunt, bite your golden hairs, your mound and devour your large pointed nipples, unload in your mouth, kiss your protruding belly, caress your sides lovingly with my tongue, introduce it if I could into your other little cunt between your beautiful buttocks, what do I know!!” writes, for example, the leader of the realist movement. And Mathilde replied: “I will have my c… all ready to receive the sensations you want to make it experience.” At that time, the painter was in Ornans, his hometown located 15 kilometers from Besançon, and she was in Paris.
Letters soon to be published in full
These letters were probably entrusted to the library around 1905 by the heirs of Doctor Blondon, Courbet’s executor, who never married and whose only son died young. Instructions were given not to make them public due to their quasi-pornographic nature. The secret was passed from curator to curator, until it was forgotten.
But for the mayor of Besançon, Anne Vignot, more than a century after the letters were written, the time for secrecy is over. “These letters have been missing for 135 years. It was impossible for us to keep such a discovery secret. who brings “an intimate and fascinating insight into Courbet’s psychology at this complicated period of his life.” “These are the only referenced and known letters from Courbet with erotic content,” adds Henry Ferreira-Lopez, director of the municipal libraries of Besançon. We read there “a lot of sensitivity and (his) very modern conception of relationships between men and women”according to him.
“We are preparing a full publication of these letters and an exhibition next year which will end during Heritage Days,” also informs the city councilor. The municipality will organize from March 21 to September 21, 2025, at the Municipal Library of Besançon, the exhibition “Courbet, the hidden letters. Story of a found treasure”, where it will be possible to find a selection of this correspondence.
