"Sleep, that Knits up the Ravell'd Sleave of Care"
Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, ROI, RWS 1872-1945
From a photograph by Dixon & Son, London, after the original Water-colour in the Collection of Miss Evans
1900
Source: Sparrow 114
The quotation used in the title is from Macbeth, where it expresses Macbeth's anguish that conscience will no longer allow him to partake of sleep's healing quality. This painting, with its fairy-tale atmosphere, shows exactly what he has lost. A poor weary wayfarer, with torn trousers and shoes cast off, sleeps sweetly to the strains of a violin played by an angel on the bank above him.