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Two Men with a Sleeping Woman

Image credit: The National Gallery, London

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The objects on the table – an innkeeper’s slate, playing cards, a pipe, a silver cup, a tankard and a backgammon box – imply that this is a tavern. The sleeping woman might be the innkeeper’s wife, a barmaid or, possibly, a prostitute, and the painting is drawing attention to her vices. Cards and backgammon were used for gambling, not a respectable activity for a woman. More seriously, she has been smoking and has fallen asleep drunk. The leering men are clearly amused: one seems to use the stem of his pipe to draw open the front of her dress while his friend laughs. To the modern eye this is harassment, but in seventeenth-century Amsterdam attitudes differed. Female drunkenness was disapproved of in polite society and tobacco, considered an aphrodisiac, was seen as a threat to a woman’s virtue.

The National Gallery, London

London

Title

Two Men with a Sleeping Woman

Date

about 1655-60

Medium

Oil on oak

Measurements

H 37.1 x W 32.4 cm

Accession number

NG970

Acquisition method

Wynn Ellis Bequest, 1876

Work type

Painting

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Normally on display at

The National Gallery, London

Trafalgar Square, London, Greater London WC2N 5DN England

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