TitleSleep
Artist
Kenyon Cox
(American, 1856 - 1919)
Date1893
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 24 × 29 1/2 in.
Framed: 33 1/2 × 39 1/4 × 2 1/2 in.
SignedSigned lower right: "Kenyon Cox - 1893-"; on verso: "-Sleep- / by Kenyon Cox / 145 W. 55th St. / New York/ -1893-"
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of Allyn Cox, Caroline Cox Lansing, and Leonard Cox, 1959
Object number1982.2554
Label TextSomewhat tenuously executed, Sleep is uncharacteristic of Cox's work in the prominence of its brushwork and the exaggerated physical presence of the model set against blurry landscape forms. Critics acknowledged Cox's unexpected painterliness, but their responses to the subject were sharply divided. The reviewer in the Critic welcomed the change from the artist's more meticulous technique, commenting, "Mr. Cox has, for once, allowed himself the luxury of painting with a full brush and a free hand, and the result more than meets our expectations." More typical of the regular criticism of Cox's nudes were the remarks in the Magazine of Art:
[block quote:]
Among nudes meaning nothing is "Sleep" by Kenyon Cox, an exercise in painting the female nude in a Titianesque way. Technically it is the finest piece of work that Mr. Cox has shown, but as usual the subject is offensive. It shows a Bacchante of a gross body who has dropped down on the ground in the sodden sleep after a debauch. She ought to have a gin bottle in her clasped hand but actually holds a poppy. There is no meaning in this flower except to give a bit of color of the right sort.
[end of block quote]
Cox was accustomed to criticism of his nudes as amoral. Indeed, earlier in his career, he had labored to overcome the disapproval of his parents. He set out his views in a letter to his mother in 1885: "I insist that there is nothing immodest whatever about the nude when treated from a high artistic point of view, and that it is impossible for it to be as suggestive and lascivious as a figure partially draped and knowingly uncovered. The nude is pure. It is the undressed that is pure."
