The Sleepers

Courbet painted these two sleeping women in 1866 for a private client, the Ottoman diplomat Khalil Bey, who kept a room of frank pictures in Paris and, that same year, commissioned Courbet's most notorious nude as well. This one was never meant for the public Salon, and for good reason in its day. Two women lie tangled together after love, and Courbet leaves the small evidence in plain sight, a broken string of pearls, a dropped hairpin, an overturned vase on the table behind. The red-haired woman was Joanna Hiffernan, an Irish model who was then the companion of the painter Whistler, a friend of Courbet's. The picture stayed largely hidden from public view until 1988, when the Petit Palais in Paris was finally able to hang it openly.