Page 10 - G19C Opening Catalogue
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Gustave Courbet
YOUNG GIRL SLEEPING , 1847
Executed in 1847 and exhibited at the Salon of 1848, Young Girl
Sleeping is one of Courbet’s earliest paintings to explore the theme
of a woman asleep. He would return to this subject time and
again, culminating in The Sleepers (1866), a large-scale painting of
two nude women entwined in an embrace on a large bed, among
Courbet’s most erotic and sensual paintings. Young Girl Sleeping,
on the other hand, strikes a more innocent note. The young model
appears in a dream-like state, her head gently resting on her arm.
Her innocence is only matched by her ethereal beauty, yet Courbet
has still managed to capture her nascent sensuality, the folds of the
white drapery concealing, yet subtly emphasizing, the curves of her
body. The picture evokes Picasso’s lyrical portraits of Marie-Thérèse
Walter, where often the subject, mood and composition are similar
to those in Young Girl Sleeping. Courbet, like Picasso, would herald a
new age by defying so much of what had been acceptable in order to
create a new interpretation of what could and should be defined as
art. They each revolutionized and changed the course of art history.
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