Sleeping Faun

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TitleSleeping Faun

Artist Edward Clark Potter (American, 1857 - 1923)

Daten.d.

MediumPlaster

DimensionsOverall: 11 1/2 × 38 × 17 3/4 in.

SubmissionNA diploma presentation, June 1, 1908

Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY

Object number91-S

Label TextThe original model for this sculpture, Potter's only known ideal work, dates from his student days in Paris and was the work with which he made his debut at the Salon in 1889. In that same year, he exhibited it at the Academy.
The sculpture depicts a sleeping male infant, nude except for a laurel wreath on his head which is being nibbled by a rabbit. It was evidently one of Potter's favorite works and he had several versions of it cast in plaster, bronze, and concrete. Two of these were owned by Daniel Chester French who, in 1919, wrote to Potter: "I am sending to the Art Exhibition in Stockbridge the cast of your Sleeping Faun that I have had for so many years. . . . and there is no doubt but that it will be the most popular piece of sculpture in the show. I particularly want to have it shown because so many people have seen the concrete cast that we have up in the woods and it is hardly fair to you that they should get their impression of the beautiful statue from that unflattering reproduction." The concrete version to which French alluded is still in the woods at Chesterwood, French's home and studio. Bronze casts were being made of the work as late as 1919 by the Gorham Company. One of these, one-third life size, was exhibited at the first exhibition of the Society of Greenwich Artists in 1912. Today, bronze casts are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and in the collection of Susan Larkin, Greenwich, Connecticut. A marble version is in the Art Institute of Chicago.