Sleep

Also known as: Sleep---Figure Study; Somnus; Allegorical Figure of Sommeil (God of Sleep); Morpheus or Allegory of Sleep

About the Artwork

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.

Exhibition history

Year in Review (1963). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 27, 1963-January 5, 1964). Gods and Heroes, Baroque Images of Antiquity. Wildenstein & Co., New York, NY (organizer) (October 29, 1968-January 4, 1969). 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). Neoclassicism: A Taste for the Antique, 1720-1790. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX (organizer) (March 20-May 30, 2011). America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (organizer) (May 21-August 20, 2017).

Quick Overview

Artist: Jean Bernard Restout (French, 1732–1797)
Date: c. 1771
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 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.)
Type: Painting
Classification: Painting
Department: European Painting and Sculpture
Credit line: Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
Accession no.: 1963.502

Provenance

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

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.