Lot Essay
La sieste was painted in the region of Ornans on one of Courbet's first trips back to his family home, since his arrival in Paris in 1840.
During his first years in Paris, the artist spent most evenings at the Atelier Suisse, which provided nude models for a modest fee. Courbet produced many sketches there which he later used for his pictures. Models were not easy to get at the time and, in a letter to his family in 1844, he wrote; 'If you think that I am having fun, you are dead wrong. For over a month I truly have not had fifteen minutes to myself. This is why: I have very expensive models, whom I paint from the moment I can see clearly in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon, my dinner hour. In the evening I must get whatever I need for my work, I must chase after models from one end of Paris to the other ...' (see Petra ten Doesschate Chu, Letters of Gustave Courbet, Chicago and London, 1992, p. 44).
There were many women in Courbet's life and most of his models were his mistresses. In La sieste he may have painted a certain Jeanette, about whom he wrote a song and with whom he had a brief love affair during one of hie visits to Ornans in the early 1840s.
La sieste was painted shortly before his first exhibit at the Paris Salon in 1844 and in this instinctive, early landscape he displays a spontaneity so different from his earlier literary and romantic subjects.
During his first years in Paris, the artist spent most evenings at the Atelier Suisse, which provided nude models for a modest fee. Courbet produced many sketches there which he later used for his pictures. Models were not easy to get at the time and, in a letter to his family in 1844, he wrote; 'If you think that I am having fun, you are dead wrong. For over a month I truly have not had fifteen minutes to myself. This is why: I have very expensive models, whom I paint from the moment I can see clearly in the morning until five o'clock in the afternoon, my dinner hour. In the evening I must get whatever I need for my work, I must chase after models from one end of Paris to the other ...' (see Petra ten Doesschate Chu, Letters of Gustave Courbet, Chicago and London, 1992, p. 44).
There were many women in Courbet's life and most of his models were his mistresses. In La sieste he may have painted a certain Jeanette, about whom he wrote a song and with whom he had a brief love affair during one of hie visits to Ornans in the early 1840s.
La sieste was painted shortly before his first exhibit at the Paris Salon in 1844 and in this instinctive, early landscape he displays a spontaneity so different from his earlier literary and romantic subjects.