When the Japanese collector Michimasa Murauchi decided to sell Gustave Courbet’s painting “Le Chêne de Flagey” (“The Flagey Oak Tree”), it was a chance for the recently renovated Courbet Museum in the artist’s hometown of Ornans to acquire one of his most emblematic works. With support from the French government, the department of Doubs in eastern France, where Ornans is located, will pay €4 million ($5 million) for the painting, which measures 43 by 35 inches and was painted in 1864.
“Le Chêne de Flagey” has a brief and illustrious provenance. The American banker and philanthropist Henry C. Gibson bought it from the artist’s sister Juliette Courbet in 1896, and he bequeathed it to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The Philadelphia institution parted with it in 1987, and it entered Murauchi’s private museum outside Tokyo.
