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Woman Sleeping in a Landscape with a Letter
Bernard Gaillot (French, 1780–1847)
c. 1800
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 36 x 44 cm (14 3/16 x 17 5/16 in.); Unframed: 32.4 x 40.6 cm (12 3/4 x 16 in.)
- Culture
- France
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Bequest of Muriel Butkin
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
The subject matter here probably comes from an English novel popular in France around 1800. The monument’s inscription indicates that the wife of Fotheringham, an English military leader in India, has recently died. The reclining woman (perhaps sleeping, mourning, or dead) has dropped a portrait miniature of Fotheringham, accompanying a letter to his mother. The narrative has yet to be deciphered, but the husband may have written home, unaware of his wife’s death.
