The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of March 29, 2024

Sleep

Sleep

c. 1771
(French, 1732–1797)
Framed: 127.5 x 160 x 14 cm (50 3/16 x 63 x 5 1/2 in.); Unframed: 97.6 x 130 cm (38 7/16 x 51 3/16 in.)

Did You Know?

A source of inspiration for this painting was probably the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses, which describes the god of sleep as living in a cave with sleep-inducing poppies at the entrance.

Description

The tradition of painting nude male figures in a studio setting was the cornerstone of artistic practice, teaching artists to depict the human body in complex poses in order to create larger narratives. However, by the late 1700s, some artists began to see these studies as independent works of art. By adding the wings and the poppies, Restout transformed his study into a more specific subject, and he first exhibited the work in a privately organized exhibition in 1783 under the title of Morpheus, the god of sleep.
  • 1771
    possibly exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1771, cat. 137 ("Sommeil, figure d'etude)
    1783
    possibly exhibited at the Salon de la Correspondance of 1783, cat. 144 (as "Morphée")
    1797
    possibly listed as "Morphée" in the inventory made at the artist's death, 1797
    (Sold, Boussod, Valadon et Cie., Paris [as attributed to Fragonard])
    December 2, 1910
    (sold, Hotel Drouot, Paris, December 2, 1910, no. 13, as attributed to Fragonard)
    Octave Linet (1870-1962), Paris and Tours, France
    March 23, 1963
    (Octave Linet, sold, Palais Galliera, Paris, March 23, 1963, no. 16, as "Le genie du sommeil," as by François Boucher)
    -1963
    (Galerie Cailleux, Paris, France), sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1963.
    1963-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • "Year in Review." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, L, (December, 1963): 278-279. Mentioned: 278-279; Reproduced: no. 88
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 141 archive.org
    Francis, Henry S. “Jean Honoré Fragonard: Morpheus.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 53, no. 3 (1966) Reproduced: fig. 1-3 www.jstor.org
    Wildenstein and Company. Gods & Heroes: Baroque Images of Antiquity. New York, NY, 1968. Reproduced: no. 15, pl. 38 ingallslibrary.on.worldcat.org
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 141 archive.org
    Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France). De David à Delacroix: la peinture française de 1774 à 1830 : [exposition], Grand Palais, 16 novembre 1974-3 février 1975. Paris: Secrétariat d'État à la culture, Éditions des musées nationaux, 1974. p. 38
    Welu, James A. "Sleeping Endymion by Nicolas-Guy Brenet," Worcester Art Museum Bulletin, no. 1 (1974). 7, fig. 2
    Rosenberg, Pierre. The Age of Louis XV: French Painting 1710-1774 : [Exhibition] 1975-1976, the Toledo Museum of Art, October 26-December 7, the Art Institute of Chicago, January 10-February 22, the National Gallery of Canada, March 21-May 2. Toledo, OH: Toledo Museum of Art, 1975.
    Rubin, James Henry, and David Levine. Eighteenth-century French life-drawing: selections from the Collection of Mathias Polakovits. Princeton, NJ.: Art Museum, Princeton University, 1977. Mentioned: p. 88-89; Reproduced: fig. 27
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 186 archive.org
    Sandoz, Marc, and Gabriel Briard. Gabriel Briard, 1725-1777: avec des remarques liminaires sur Jean-Baptiste Alizard. Paris, France: Editart-Quatre Chemins, 1981. Reproduced: p. 79
    The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Catalogue of Paintings, Part 3: European Paintings of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1982. Mentioned: p. 157-160; Reproduced: p. 158
    Bailey, Colin B., and Carrie A. Hamilton. The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David. New York, NY: Rizzoli, 1992. Mentioned: p. 493; Reproduced: fig. 6
    Ian Woodner Master Drawings Symposium, and Diana Dethloff. Drawing: Masters and Methods: Raphael to Redon : Papers Presented to the Ian Woodner Master Drawings Symposium at The Royal Academy of Arts, London. London, United Kingdom: Philip Wilson in association with the Royal Academy of Arts, 1992. Reproduced: p. 9, fig. 52
    Dethloff, Diana. Drawing: Masters and Methods : Raphael to Redon. London: P. Wilson Publishers in association with the Royal Academy of Arts, 1992. p. 9, fig. 2.
    Foster, Carter E. "Jean-Bernard Restout's Sleep: Figure Study: Painting and Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture," Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 3 (1998): 48-85. Mentioned and reproduced: P. 48-49, fig. 1 www.jstor.org
    "La Chronique des Arts," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 133 (1999). p. 16
    Poulet, Anne L., and Jean Antoine Houdon. Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment. Washington, DC: Published by the National Gallery of Art in association with the University of Chicago Press, 2003. Reproduced: p. 93, fig. 3
    Poulet, Anne L., and Jean Antoine Houdon. Jean-Antoine Houdon: Sculptor of the Enlightenment. Washington, DC: Published by the National Gallery of Art in association with the University of Chicago Press, 2003. fig. 3, p. 93
    Rosenberg, Pierre. Only in America: One Hundred Paintings in American Museums Unmatched in European Collections. Milano, Italy: Skira, 2006. Mentioned: p. 144-145
    Scherf, Guilhem, and Jean Antoine Houdon. Houdon, 1741-1828: statues, portraits sculptés--. Paris, France: Musée du Louvre, 2006. Reproduced: p. 23, fig. 10
    Bédard, Sylvain "Le nu historié: les envois des pensionnaires de l'Aacdémie de France à Rome us XVIII siècle," in Studiolo: Revue de l'Art de l'Académie de France à Rome, 2006. p. 217, fig. 4
    Faroult, Guillaume, Christophe Leribault, Guilhem Scherf, Edgar Peters Bowron, and Helga Kessler-Aurisch. Antiquity Revived: Neoclassical Art in the Eighteenth Century. Paris, France: Gallimard, 2011. Reproduced: p. 185
    Jollet, Etienne. Anti-Pygmalion: Body Movement and Equivocalities in Jean-Baptiste Restout's "Diogenes Asking for Alms." In Body Narratives: Motion and Emotion in the French Enlightenment. Susanna Caviglia, editor., 63-80: Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2017. Mentioned; p. 66; Reproduced: p. 164. pl. 10
    Willk-Brocard, Nicole. Jean-Bernard Restout: 1732-1796: Peintre du Roi et Révolutionnaire. Paris: Arthéna, 2017. Reproduced; p. 4; 49, #67 P; 156; Mentioned: pp. 156-157
    Jackall, Yuriko. America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting. 2017. Pl. 50. 226-227
    Jackall, Yuriko. America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting. Chicago, IL: Art Stock Books, Independent Publishers Group, 2017. Reproduced: p. 226-227, pl. 50, 258-259 (detail); Mentioned: pp. 279
    Schmuckli, Claudia, Kehinde Wiley, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Emil Kraig Wilbekin, Janna Keegan, Thomas P. Campbell, Darren Walker, and Justin Steele. Kehinde Wiley: An Archaeology of Silence. San Francisco, California : Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco ; New York, NY : DelMonico Books/D.A.P., 2023. Mentioned and reproduced: p. 129, fig. 31
  • America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (organizer) (May 21-August 20, 2017).
    Neoclassicism: A Taste for the Antique, 1720-1790. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (organizer) (March 20-May 30, 2011).
    A Painting in Focus: Jean-Bernard Restout's Sleep and the French Royal Academy. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 14-May 23, 1999).
    Gods and Heroes, Baroque Images of Antiquity. Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY (organizer) (October 29, 1968-January 4, 1969).
    Year in Review (1963). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 27, 1963-January 5, 1964).
  • {{cite web|title=Sleep|url=false|author=Jean Bernard Restout|year=c. 1771|access-date=29 March 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1963.502