The Hammock

French artist Gustave Courbet painted this sensuous image of a woman reclining in a hammock, her body relaxed amid lush summer foliage. Dappled light plays across her white dress as she rests in the shade. The scene suggests lazy afternoon pleasure, far from the political subjects that often marked Courbet's work.

Courbet painted women with frank sensuality that sometimes scandalized his contemporaries. His Realist approach treated bodies as material fact rather than idealized form. The painting belongs to the Oskar Reinhart Foundation in Winterthur, Switzerland.