Gustave Courbet (1819–1877)
Alms from a Beggar at Ornans, 1868
Graphite with stumping, squared, with touches of crayon on cream wove paper
11 5/16 x 8 11/16 in. (28.7 x 22.1 cm)
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1955.1846
A beggar becomes an almsgiver in this social critique that Courbet produced for publication after his controversial painting of the same subject. The impoverished man, who appears to have come from the city in the distance, takes pity on a gypsy family, suggesting that theirs is a world in which only the poor give to the poor.