The artist looking at himself. Or the artist seen by others. Between these two poles unfolds the exhibition Visages d’artistes. De Gustave Courbet à Annette Messager, presented at the Petit Palais in Paris from 18 March to 19 July 2026. Bringing together around one hundred works including paintings, sculptures, photographs and decorative arts, the exhibition explores a central theme in modern art: the construction of the artist’s image. The exhibition begins with the museum’s own collections, where artists’ portraits have long formed one of the most significant areas of acquisition. Among the works on view is Gustave Courbet’s Autoportrait au chien noir, an emblematic image of the Romantic artist, conscious of his role and individuality. Alongside well-known masterpieces, the exhibition also brings to light works rarely displayed, including a series of busts portraying the leading Impressionist painters sculpted by Paul Paulin. The exhibition follows a progression that moves from the self-portrait towards a more collective dimension. In the opening rooms, the artist’s face becomes a space of freedom and experimentation, freed from the conventions of patronage. Self-portraits by Courbet, Puvis de Chavannes and Léon Bonnat reveal how artists used their own image to assert style, identity and vision. The exhibition then expands to explore relationships between artists. Group portraits and tributes among peers evoke the formation of creative communities. Henri Gervex’s large painting Panorama du siècle captures the cultural climate of the late nineteenth century, while Paul Paulin’s gallery of Impressionist busts transforms portraiture into a form of collective memory. Another section focuses on the artist’s studio, the symbolic site of artistic creation. Paintings and photographs show artists in their ateliers, surrounded by their works and personal objects, in a space that functions simultaneously as workshop, social setting and public representation of creative work. The most contemporary aspect of the exhibition emerges from the dialogue between these historical works and a selection of contemporary women artists including Giulia Andreani, Sophie Calle, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, Claire Tabouret and Annette Messager. Their works question the traditional codes of the artist’s portrait, revisiting a genre that for a long time was dominated by a male gaze. The result is a dialogue across different periods, in which the artist’s face is no longer simply a symbol of authority or genius, but becomes a field open to multiple identities, disguises, irony and reinterpretation.
