Gustave Courbet

Hadol (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, January 8, 1876)
Lelogeais Collection (acquired at the above sale)
Mme. Boussaton
Mme Burnet (in 1937)
M. Jean Burnet (in 1955)
Private Collection
Meitetsu Department Store, Nagoya (1979)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in February 1979

Robert Fernier, La Vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. I, Lausanne and Paris, 1977, p. 236, no. 434, illustrated

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This painting is in good condition. The canvas has been lined using glue as an adhesive and the surface is stable and well stretched. The paint layer has been rapidly applied by the artist using a palette knife, which is his signature technique, and the surface exhibits all the signs that are familiar with his work. There is not a great deal of texture to the paint, which is typical and being a preparatory work, it is quite thinly applied in some places. There are some patches of ground color visible in the curtains at the top of the picture in the tree trunk on the left, around the hand and beneath the shoulders. Nonetheless, this is all very typical and not a sign of a condition issue. There is some retouching beneath the white sheet in the brown color and some of the most noticeable patches of thinness in the hair and beneath the hair have been retouched slightly. There are few restorations visible under ultraviolet light. There are patches of old milky varnish visible which were not removed during cleaning, but these do not in our opinion indicate any other issues. The picture should be hung as is.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Courbet worked frantically in early 1864 to finish a painting in time for the March deadline of the May 1864 Salon.  His letters in January and February recount his distress after his two potential submissions were damaged in his studio, together with his excitement over their replacement, "two nude women, life size and painted in a manner that you have never seen me do." (P. ten-Doesschate Chu, Letters of Gustave Courbet, Chicago, 1992, p. 237, letter 64-3). Courbet also wrote to the influential Etienne-François Haro, the official restorer of the Tuileries, that he was calling his new work Study of Women for the entry in  the Salon catalogue, but if one wanted to "give the painting a high-flown title one could call it Venus in Jealous Pursuit of Psyche." (P. ten-Doesschate Chu, p. 238, letter 64-4), (Fig.1).   No doubt, Courbet was trying to garner the success and critical acclaim of such Salon favorites as William Bouguereau by emulating a mythological title for his painting, thereby placing it in the category of preferred Salon subjects.  Or possibly as has been suggested, he wanted to assign a mythological title to act as a "fig leaf" to disguise the more taboo theme of Lesbianism (H. Toussaint, Gustave Courbet, 1819-1877, exh. cat., Paris-London, 1977-78 (quoted in London edition, p. 224). Whatever the title,  Courbet's painting was never hung in the Salon exhibition, and was supposedly rejected on grounds of immorality, a charge that infuriated Courbet and his defenders, such as Jean François Millet and Pierre Joseph Proudhon, but which was upheld by the critic writing for Le Figaro, who considered Courbet's women the personification of Charles Baudelaire's "obscene" Femmes damnées. (H. Toussaint,  p. 39).  Courbet eventually sent the painting to Brussels for exhibition in late 1864.  It subsequently entered a German collection but unfortunately was destroyed in Berlin during World War II.

While Robert Fernier states that the present painting is a study for Courbet's Woman with a Parrot (fig. 2)  and dates it 1865 (R. Fernier, La vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet, Lausanne, 1977, vol. I, pp. 236-237, no. 434), it is more likely a study for the reclining Psyche in Courbet's large scale composition outlined above.  Perhaps, Femme endormie is the first idea for the Woman with a Parrot composition; both paintings depict a similarly placed voluptuous red-haired model with flowing curls, reclining on crumpled white drapery, but there can be no doubt that it is more directly related to Venus and Psyche of 1864. One may presume then that Femme endormie was completed in the early months of 1864, a preparation for the potential Salon painting.  However, the model bears a striking resemblance to Léontine Renaude, who posed for Woman with a Dog (RF 631), (fig. 3) and Woman with White Stockings (RF 285).  If this is indeed the same model then Femme endormie would date closer to 1861; Léontine was Courbet's mistress in the early 1860s but the love affair ended badly in June 1862 when Courbet discovered her infidelity with Nadar's brother, Adrien Tournachon.