Alfred Bruyas(1821 — 1877)

Alfred Bruyas had a singular fascination with his own portrait: he commissioned more than twenty likenesses of himself from the artists he supported, including Gustave Courbet, Alexandre Cabanel and Octave Tassaert. This self-centered collection reflects both his romantic personality and an original way of compensating painters while securing his own place in art history.

In 1854, Gustave Courbet painted “The Meeting” (also known as “Bonjour Monsieur Courbet”), depicting Bruyas welcoming the painter at the outskirts of Montpellier, hat in hand. The painting subverts the usual social codes: it is the bourgeois who bows before the artist, suggesting that Courbet — not Bruyas — holds the true nobility. Courbet himself embraced this reading.

Bruyas was known for seeing himself as a perpetual invalid, a self-image reflected in several of his commissioned portraits: some show him pale, melancholic, languid in a romantic pose. Courbet referred to this hypochondria with affection in his letters, never mocking it, finding in it the mark of an exceptionally sensitive soul.

Unlike most great collectors who bequeathed their holdings after death, Bruyas donated his entire collection to the Musée Fabre in Montpellier in 1868 — during his own lifetime. He was thus able to witness the public installation of his works and see his hometown enriched by this exceptional bequest, which included masterpieces of Realism.

During Courbet’s stay in Montpellier in 1854, the two men spent long hours working and debating art and society. Courbet wrote to those close to him that Bruyas was, for him, “the solution” — a term he used to describe this ideal patron, one capable of understanding and funding his revolutionary vision without betraying it.