The Sleepers

Painted in 1866 and now in the Musée de la Ville de Paris (Petit Palais), this double female nude was, like 'L'Origine du monde,' commissioned by Khalil Bey and displayed privately. It depicts two women asleep in bed in an embrace that leaves nothing about their relationship ambiguous. Courbet painted it with the same frank directness he brought to all erotic subjects, but The Sleepers has acquired particular art-historical significance as a depiction of female same-sex intimacy at a time when such representation was almost entirely confined to the male erotic imagination. Courbet's friend Théophile Gautier reportedly visited Khalil Bey's collection to see it. The painting's eventual public acquisition represents a late-twentieth-century reassessment of its significance beyond erotic curiosity.

The two-figure composition arranged horizontally on white bedding required Courbet to differentiate two pale flesh tones and two hair colors within a very similar tonal range. Dark and light hair provide the primary differentiation. The intimate intertwining of the two bodies required careful study of how two figures occupy overlapping space, with arms, legs, and torsos interlocked.