Sleep by Henry George Alexander Holiday (1839-1927). 1878? Tinted plaster; dimensions unknown. Whereabouts unknown. Click on image to enlarge it.
Holiday describes the genesis of this work well in his Reminiscences:
I have always held that a decorative artist ought to be a master of all forms of plastic art, and, in the great days of Italian art, they usually were so, but till this year I had never attempted sculpture, nor do I know what prompted me then, but an image of perfect repose came into my mind in the form of a sleeping girl, - not as a picture but in the complete rounded form, and I set to work at once. I had never even handled modelling clay before, but found the work fascinating in the highest degree. I made a small sketch first, but was impatient to get to the life-size work, and it was a new sensation to see a veritable human form coming into existence under my hand. Painting can offer much which is unattainable in sculpture, but this sense of an actual personality gives to a statue its peculiar charm, a charm which is persistent and is not lost by changing one’s point of view. The back of a painted canvas makes a very poor show, and its edge is no better, but in the statue, the back view or the profile may be as beautiful as the front. [260-610]
G. F. Watts came to view the sculpture in progress and Holiday’s work greatly benefitted from his criticism.
Although begun in 1878 the work was not exhibited at the Royal Academy until 1881, no. 1539. While F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum merely mentions this sculpture in his initial review of the Royal Academy exhibition (596), he provides a more detailed appraisal in a later review where he praises the work as noteworthy: “We conclude our notes on the Royal Academy with honourable mention for two capital sculptures: The recumbent, life-size female figure which Mr. H. Holiday has very happily designed, vigourously modelled, and aptly called Sleep (1539), a noteworthy work by a painter” (757). The critic for The Illustrated London News gave it the most extensive review:
Mr. Holiday’s recumbent statue, ‘Sleep’ (1539), is a great surprise as from a painter. Had the artist been a sculptor simply he might have rendered (his perceptions being of form alone) the couch more yielding; he might have adjusted the legs somewhat differently, and chosen a less risqué position for the figure, yet the conception is nobly frank and pure, the forms recall those of the Phidian time; the torso, head, and arms are very beautiful (though the surface might be more delicately varied); and the drapery is exquisitely disposed and modelled. [579]
The black and white image of the sculpture suggests it was tinted, similar to how sculpture would have been treated at the time of Phidias.
Bibliography
Holiday, Henry. Reminiscences of My Life. London: Heinemann, 1914, 260-61.
“Royal Academy Exhibition.” The Illustrated London News LXXXVII (June 11, 1881): 579.
Stephens, Frederic George. ”The Royal Academy Exhibition.” The Athenaeum No. 2792 (April 30, 1881): 596-99.
Stephens, Frederic George. ”The Royal Academy Exhibition.” The Athenaeum No. 2797 (June 4, 1881): 754-57.
Last modified 17 January 2023