A few years before he died, Proust received a questionnaire asking him to list his eight favourite French paintings in the Louvre [into which he hadn’t stepped for fifteen years]. His wavering answer: Watteau’s L’Embarquement or perhaps L’Indifferent; three paintings by Chardin, a self-portrait, a portrait of his wife, and Nature Morte; Manet’s Olympia; a Renoir, or perhaps Corot’s La Barque du Dante, or maybe his La Cathédrale de Chartres; and finally, Millet’s Le Printemps.
