Sleeping Woman

This comes from the same year, 1919, when De Smet had decided a painting owed almost nothing to likeness. So the sleeping woman is built rather than copied: the body reduced to a few broad planes, the face simplified to a blunt mask, the whole held in the heavy play of light and deep shadow he favoured then. Sleep suits that handling. A sleeping figure is already still and closed in on itself, so the shapes can stay simple without seeming to lose anything. The paint is thick and matte, worked in solid masses instead of fine detail.