The painting "The Desperate Man" ("Le Désespéré"), where Courbet with a staring gaze looks out of the canvas, was made from 1843 to 1845 and is one of his most famous works.
The portrait was included in a large retrospective Courbet exhibition in France in 2007-2008, which also traveled to New York. It was also exhibited in Frankfurt in 2010. At that time, the painting was lent by an unknown private collector with the help of the French bank BNP Paribas, but has since been acquired by the state-owned Qatar Museums.
The head of the museum is Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, sister of the Gulf state's ruler, who says that the painting is intended for Art Mill Museum, a future art center in the oil emirate that is planned to open in 2030.
Sheikha Al Mayassa is one of the world's largest buyers of contemporary art and the museum is said to hold an art portfolio worth several billion dollars.
