Le Sommeil

Two nude women lie asleep entwined on a bed, limbs and hair tangled together, pearls and a fallen hairpin scattered nearby - a frankly sensual image of intimacy between women. Courbet painted Sleep on private commission, beyond the reach of the Salon's proprieties, with all his lush, tactile realism. Now in the Petit Palais in Paris, it is among the boldest erotic works of its century, tender and explicit at once. Like his other nudes, it refuses mythological cover, presenting desire and the sleeping body as simple, unidealized human fact.