Woman Sleeping in the Nude in a Wooded Landscape 

Robert Smirke, working in England sometime in the late 18th or early 19th century, painted this scene of a nude woman asleep, or perhaps dead, in a wooded landscape. Smirke was best known as an illustrator, producing images for books and prints that could be widely distributed. The image of a nude woman was acceptable if it was part of a classical, biblical, or allegorical scene. This image is intriguing as the woman seems to be the only figure in a wild landscape, drawing attention to the female body without reference to a moralizing story. Is Smirke commenting on the commodification of the female body as a spectacle? Or is he just pandering to it? To interpret this painting fully, we would need to investigate Smirke's other work, the critical reception of his images, and the wider artistic and social context of his time.