与狗嬉戏的裸女

Courbet built his name on rough, unglamorous realism, quarrymen and stone breakers, so a soft reclining nude sits oddly in his work. He painted this around 1861 and 1862, though he only dated it 1868, the year he first showed it in public. The woman is Leontine Renaude, his mistress at the time, stretched on white drapery above a hazy landscape with a small dog reaching toward her. The pose, the cloth and the little dog, a traditional emblem of faithfulness, are borrowed almost openly from the Venetian nudes of Titian three centuries earlier. The brushwork here is lighter than usual for Courbet and the skin smoother and more flattering. The dog's white coat is picked out with the same care as the woman's shoulder.