PD photo: Le Sommeil (Sleep) featuring two women in bed, a 1866 painting of dimensions 135 cm x 200 cm (53.15 in x 78.74 in) by Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), located at Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.
PD Photo: Portrait of Jo (La belle Irlandaise), 1865-1866, Metropolitan Museum of Art, a painting of Joanna Hiffernan, the probable model for Le Sommeil (Sleep) shown above, Femme nue couchée and The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde), CLICK on the links to view them.
“I am fifty years old and I have always lived in freedom; let me end my life free; when I am dead let this be said of me: 'He belonged to no school, to no church, to no institution, to no academy, least of all to any régime except the régime of liberty” - Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet, an unfettered man and an acclaimed artist, was ahead of his times, and the above words reflect that image of him. True, he refused to be identified with any school, church, institution, or academy. When, though as a sign of appeasement to the Liberals, Napoleon III nominated him to the Legion of Honour in 1870, he refused the cross of the Legion of Honour and angered those in power.
In the Salon of 1857 Courbet exhibited six paintings, including the sensational and scandalous ‘Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine (Summer)’, depicting two prostitutes, as well as the first of his famous ‘hunting scenes’ series. These brought to him both notoriety and sales. These were followed by a series of highly controversial works such as the Femme nue couchée, and The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde), which depicts female genitalia and they were not publicly exhibited until 1988.
