Pierre-Joseph Proudhon et ses enfants en 1853

In the garden of his house on the rue d’Enfer in Paris, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) sits on the steps of his property in a workman’s blouse, books and papers at his side, his felt hat set further off. Beside him his daughters amuse themselves: the younger plays at her doll’s dinner while the elder, seated at a table, works through an alphabet; on a chair rests a workbox. Courbet, a friend and political ally of the anarchist philosopher — the man who wrote that “property is theft” — painted this double portrait of domestic intellectual life in 1865, the year of Proudhon’s death. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.