"I'd like to come in your mouth": erotic letters by Gustave Courbet discovered. They will be exhibited

An exceptional discovery that was announced a few days ago in France: an unpublished correspondence between one of France’s greatest artists, Gustave Courbet (Ornans, 1819 - La-Tour-de-Peilz, 1877) and a Parisian woman, Mathilde Carly de Svazzema, twenty years his junior, with whom he had a platonic, epistolary relationship, dense with eroticism. The letters, exchanged between the two in the period between November 1872 and April 1873 (Courbet was fifty-three, Mathilde thirty-three), remained hidden for more than a century because of their explicit erotic nature. However, these missives reveal a previously unknown Gustave Courbet, and they are able to offer researchers and art lovers an intimate and fascinating look at one of the masters of realism.

Some of the letters will be on display from March 21 to September 21, 2025, at the Besançon Municipal Library, where the exhibition Courbet, les lettres cachées - histoire d’un trésor retrouvé (“Courbet, the hidden letters - history of a rediscovered treasure”), an invitation to the general public to discover a selection of these unpublished missives (there are 36 on display) and the fascinating hidden side of this revelation.

The discovery of Gustave Courbet’s erotic letters.

The discovery dates back to late 2023: three employees of the Besançon Municipal Library were searching for documents in a library storage room, located in the attic of the building, when their attention was caught by a stack of old papers, decorated with a bizarre note evoking the “scabrous” letters of a famous artistic figure. Reading the letters in question, the three library officials unearthed the contents of a correspondence consisting of 25 letters by Gustave Courbet and 91 letters by Mathilde Carly de Svazzema.

A handwritten note reveals that these intimate letters, entrusted to the library between 1900 and 1920, had been secretly stored there for more than a century. Passed from curator to curator, this confidential material would have remained unknown to the public. Instead, fate decided otherwise, and now everyone has the opportunity to delve into the painter’s intimacy.

The 116 handwritten letters exchanged between Courbet and Mathilde between 1872 and 1873 reveal an intimate and little-known part of the painter’s personality, where passion, poetry and eroticism intertwine, in an explosive cocktail of lyricism, audacity and sentimentality. Courbet’s pen, usually reserved for the description of his works, reveals itself here unfiltered, capable of expressing desires and emotions of an intensity comparable to that of his most famous paintings. Some of these letters are so stark, the library points out, that reading them may be uncomfortable for many even in this day and age.

“We didn’t dare believe what we were seeing,” says Pierre-Emmanuel Guilleray, curator of the Besançon Library, “because these letters are an extremely rare thing, and we quickly realized that it was the discovery of the year for us. And above all we were very surprised to find such a treasure in our attics.... it’s incredible, something that has remained secret until today.” On the letters, Guilleray explained, “there was no dust, which means they came out of a closet or an envelope not long ago. And actually there was a closet in the library conservator’s office that was moved to the attic about fifty years ago, but the letters probably came out two or three years ago when we started rearranging the attic. The thing that surprised us in the letters is the taboo-free, very detailed sexual vocabulary, and that makes the discovery even more incredible: it’s very unique.”

After the discovery, the letters were digitized in order to be able to transcribe the contents and work better on the texts: this is the work that occupied scholars from the moment of discovery until the announcement (it was also necessary to understand, in fact, if they were really Courbet’s letters, so the handwriting was also carefully studied and it turned out that it corresponds in every way to the known handwriting of the French artist).

These letters also enrich scholarly knowledge of his work by revealing clues about his artistic philosophy and his perception of human emotions, which are closely related to his approach to the representation of bodies and feelings. This unique body of work, according to the Besançon Library, could also inspire new interpretations of his painting, particularly in his approach to female nudes (think only ofOrigine du monde, one of his most famous paintings), which he considered a mirror of his own emotions.

Excerpts from some of the letters

Gustave Courbet, February 8, 1873

“Mais chère Putain, réfléchis donc, tu sais que je t’adore, tu sais que je fais des choses injustes pour t’être agréable ; tu sais que je donnerais je ne sais quoi en ce moment pour sucer ton con, mordre tes poils dorés, ta motte et dévorer tes grands tétons pointus, te décharger dans la bouche, t’embrasser ton ventre proéminent, te caresser les flancs amoureusement avec ma langue, l’introduire si je pouvais dans ton autre petit con entre tes belles fesses, que sais-je!!” (“Dear whore, think about it, you know I adore you, you know I do unfair things to please you; do you know that I would give I don’t know what right now to suck your pussy, bite your golden hairs, your pubes, and devour your big pointed nipples, come in your mouth, kiss your protruding belly, lovingly caress your hips with my tongue, and put it, if I could, in your other little pussy, between your beautiful buttocks, that I know!!”.

Mathilde Carly de Svazzema, February 12, 1873

“L’aveu de ton amour, de ton adoration pour moi doit à lui seul me donner le courage qu’il me faut ! Et j’aurai mon con tout prêt à recevoir les sensations qu’il te plaira lui faire éprouver. Ces grands tétons pointus n’ont pas bandé parce que j’étais malade, la fièvre me dévorait ! Je n’avais point sommeil du tout et des nuages épais obscurcissaient ma vue” (“Only the confession of your love, of your adoration for me must give me the courage I need! And I will have my cunt ready to receive the sensations you want her to feel. These big pointed nipples did not harden because I was sick, the fever was eating me up! I wasn’t sleepy at all and thick clouds were obscuring my vision.”).

"I'd like to come in your mouth": erotic letters by Gustave Courbet discovered. They will be exhibited

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.