the blonde and the brune
Years and years ago, before I met C, I discovered a painting by Gustave Courbet rather unlike the social realism my art history teacher was showing us. Last year, I tracked it down online and downloaded an image of it: Le Sommeil [Sleep], commissioned by a Turkish diplomat named Halil Sherif Pasha. It shows two nude women lying down together with their eyes closed: a dark one on her back and a blonde one with her head on the other's left shoulder.
I've had it as wallpaper for a week or thereabouts and I'm not finding it quite satisfying.
The dark woman is lying on her back, with her lower body twisted and her left leg raised and thrown over the blonde woman's waist. She appears to have her shoulders somewhat elevated in a way that thrusts her breasts out. Her head seems more elevated than that, and it's not evident that there's anything beneath to support it. Taking it all together, her pose suggests not sleep but tension. The blonde woman looks more naturally relaxed, with her breasts angled to the sides and her lips slightly open, but as C remarked to me, her head does not appear to be resting on the dark woman's shoulder. All in all, the poses belie the title. There's more sense that their bodies are posed to provoke than that they are in the natural repose of postamorous sleep.
For me, at least, that falls short of what I would really like; indeed I would find convincing slumber more erotic than Courbet's composition. I'm rather sad about it. It's a good concept and elements of the painting are attractive, but now I can see that it could have been better.
![Le Sommeil [Sleep]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Sommeil#/media/File:Gustave_Courbet_-_Le_Sommeil_(1866),_Paris,_Petit_Palais.jpg){kind=link}
I've had it as wallpaper for a week or thereabouts and I'm not finding it quite satisfying.
The dark woman is lying on her back, with her lower body twisted and her left leg raised and thrown over the blonde woman's waist. She appears to have her shoulders somewhat elevated in a way that thrusts her breasts out. Her head seems more elevated than that, and it's not evident that there's anything beneath to support it. Taking it all together, her pose suggests not sleep but tension. The blonde woman looks more naturally relaxed, with her breasts angled to the sides and her lips slightly open, but as C remarked to me, her head does not appear to be resting on the dark woman's shoulder. All in all, the poses belie the title. There's more sense that their bodies are posed to provoke than that they are in the natural repose of postamorous sleep.
For me, at least, that falls short of what I would really like; indeed I would find convincing slumber more erotic than Courbet's composition. I'm rather sad about it. It's a good concept and elements of the painting are attractive, but now I can see that it could have been better.