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Lot Essay
Throughout his entire career Courbet was a tireless voice who championed realist painting and spoke out against the Academie, state patronage and the notion of aesthetic ideals. The late 1840's found Courbet focusing the majority of his energies on figural painting and portraiture in and around his childhood home of Ornans and the nearby Franche-Comte. Indeed, at the culmination of the decade, he unveiled his 1849 masterpiece, Burial at Ornans, a revolutionary work in which he chose to depict the common people and the rituals of his hometown on a monumental scale, previously reserved for the grand themes of history painting. Within the frieze of standing figures are careful individual portrait studies of actual townspeople.
The present work, painted in 1847 and exhibited in the Salon of 1848, is one of a handful of paintings that explores the theme of the sleeping woman. The Hammock, painted in 1844, as well as The Sleeping Spinner of 1853, stand as perhaps his best-known larger scale works devoted to this same theme.
Courbet was a keen observer and stood witness to the provincial daily rituals of the people around him. Whether the townspeople were at work in the fields, at rest under a tree or eating a meal, Courbet found a certain poetry in both action and stillness. As one scholar notes "it was by means of the activities of these actual persons that Courbet could express the meaning of his witness; his purpose was not to record individuals per se (though he did that in portraits)" (S. Faunce, Courbet, New York, 1993, p. 68). The head is not posed but rather rests in a natural state. Working with a constrained palette of dominated by white, the woman's head seems enveloped by the white dress and pillow that surrounds her and thus has almost an abstract sensibility. Other particularly beautiful passages include the ringlet of hair that falls across the model's neck.
Now, more than one hundred years later, the legacy of Courbet's sleeping women live on in the works of Pablo Picasso, an avid admirer of Courbet's paintings who explored the same theme of the sleeping woman especially in the decade of the 1930's. Although it is not proven that the present work was a direct source for any one painting by Picasso, works such as Le miroir of 1932 (fig. 1) and La femme aux chevaux jaunes, 1931 (fig. 2) are subtly based on Courbet's sleeping models.
Jeune femme dormant was first documented in the Gérard collection, which possibly contained a painting of the same theme, La Dormeuse (Fernier, no. 95) The work later passed to Theodore Reinhart and then to the noted Courbet collector Jacques Guérin.
Jean-Jacques Fernier has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Le miroir, 1932, Private Collection.
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, La femme aux cheveux jaunes, 1931, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978.
The present work, painted in 1847 and exhibited in the Salon of 1848, is one of a handful of paintings that explores the theme of the sleeping woman. The Hammock, painted in 1844, as well as The Sleeping Spinner of 1853, stand as perhaps his best-known larger scale works devoted to this same theme.
Courbet was a keen observer and stood witness to the provincial daily rituals of the people around him. Whether the townspeople were at work in the fields, at rest under a tree or eating a meal, Courbet found a certain poetry in both action and stillness. As one scholar notes "it was by means of the activities of these actual persons that Courbet could express the meaning of his witness; his purpose was not to record individuals per se (though he did that in portraits)" (S. Faunce, Courbet, New York, 1993, p. 68). The head is not posed but rather rests in a natural state. Working with a constrained palette of dominated by white, the woman's head seems enveloped by the white dress and pillow that surrounds her and thus has almost an abstract sensibility. Other particularly beautiful passages include the ringlet of hair that falls across the model's neck.
Now, more than one hundred years later, the legacy of Courbet's sleeping women live on in the works of Pablo Picasso, an avid admirer of Courbet's paintings who explored the same theme of the sleeping woman especially in the decade of the 1930's. Although it is not proven that the present work was a direct source for any one painting by Picasso, works such as Le miroir of 1932 (fig. 1) and La femme aux chevaux jaunes, 1931 (fig. 2) are subtly based on Courbet's sleeping models.
Jeune femme dormant was first documented in the Gérard collection, which possibly contained a painting of the same theme, La Dormeuse (Fernier, no. 95) The work later passed to Theodore Reinhart and then to the noted Courbet collector Jacques Guérin.
Jean-Jacques Fernier has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, Le miroir, 1932, Private Collection.
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, La femme aux cheveux jaunes, 1931, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978.