Hibernation Rumination - Esther

Human hibernation should be a thing. I dislike the dark winters intensely. All this leaving in the dark, coming home in the dark; anyone that works never sees the daylight until their days off or weekends. Then the light becomes a shock. Right now, I’m inclined to go to bed earlier because the light has gone earlier. After all, we’re mammals that go to sleep in the dark & wake up when the sun’s up. 

I enjoy my sleeps. There’s nothing better than being cosy & warm & corried doon under the covers, knowing you have hours of sleep ahead of you, maybe managing a little read just to get you nodding off nicely. Even better if you can avoid alarms & wake up naturally or at least at the end of a sleep cycle. They say we spend a third of our lives asleep. That depends. My ability to nap could win an Olympic gold for Scotland. Early risers are often smug about their ability to go without much sleep; a friend once said, “It’s not a virtue.” & it isn’t. It’s more like a tragedy to the clinophile.

As it’s a festive season for many, let’s make the best of it & celebrate the art of sleeping. After all, what better model could you have than a person or other creature lying in a state of deep & uninterrupted repose?

1. Schlafende (1911), Egon Schiele 

Sometimes a sleep is a nap & we catch them whenever we can. Buses, trains, waiting rooms, staff meetings. As recreational sleepers, we do what we can. Despite being surrounded by a nest of fabric, this is not a woman hunkered down for a long night’s rest, but a chance to catch forty winks sitting up. She could have nodded off during a planned modelling session or it could be one of the artist’s opportunistic sketching stints. Schiele’s the expert in depicting a pose in as few strokes as necessary. We may never know the story of the image but in any case, the title translates as Sleeping. We can tell. She’s out cold & I’m envious.

2. Taking a Rest (1882), Ilya Repin

When I was a child & I’d complain about feeling tired, my grandma used to say, “Tired? At your age? How can you be tired at your age?” Whilst part of me has always found this presumably rhetorical question to be ridiculous, another part is even more tired than ever & I marvel at the energy of the young. In a similar vein to Schiele’s sleeper here we have a young woman fully dressed & almost upright as Repin’s model. She’s resplendent in colour co-ordinated maroons, lace & what appears to be an extremely comfortable chair. This is nineteenth century realism at its finest. & most casual.

3. The Nightmare (1781), Johann Heinrick Füssli

I recently experienced my first - & sincerely hope last - bout of sleep paralysis. For anyone that’s ever had it, you’ll know how terrifying it is. The feeling of being unable to move but being completely conscious was especially hard for a control freak like myself… How much crueller than a nightmare to be afraid of sleep! I had read some time before however that this image was regarded as a metaphor for the sleep paralysis. I had also read further about the condition thanks to the painting. So a big thank you to Herr Füssli for priming me for what could easily have been a much more unsettling incident...

4. Sleeping Staś (1904), Stanislaw Wyspiański

Is there anyone that has worked with or had their own children who hasn’t thought at some time or other, “Oh they’re great when they’re asleep…”? An example of the sheer crash that children uniquely experience, regardless of the activity or time of day, here Wyspiański speaks for us all. There are of course many examples of sleeping children in art, but there’s a tendency towards slightly weird or majorly twee. Although beautiful, this is an unsentimental presentation, showcasing the artist’s style & smart use of colour in that dress.

5. Sleeping Vagabonds (1912), Ernst Barlach

Could be sleeping, could be unconscious. At first the figures look like they might be drunken monks or other people of the cloth but on closer inspection they’re coats, not robes & it looks more like a man & a woman leaning into him, her coat folded over her arm & covering up her lower half like a blanket. Despite the solid sculptural style & almost comic pose, the title & the theme remind us of those struggling to find a place to sleep safely & in the warm. A very real tragedy in the twenty-first century.

6. Sleeping Puppy (1640), Rembrandt

If you want a natural pose, a warts-&-all depiction of any living thing, Rembrandt is your man. From this beautiful rendering, you can imagine this spark-out dog mid-dream, legs twitching whilst he dreams of chasing rabbits across the clean, flat fields of the Netherlands…

7. Old Man Sleeping (1629), Rembrandt

…& his old men asleep, awake, stressed or angry are as expressive & emotional as they are in reality. The expertise of Rembrandt’s art renders the model as realistic in sleep as they are awake & responding to the world around them.

8. The White Cat (1911), Franz Marc

Once you’ve had a dog, the cat is here for balance. Marc’s naïve style & primary colours are distinctive & simple but his sleeping feline is no less charming. A cat makes a beautiful shape, no matter what it’s up to & Marc’s is nearing a little white croissant. 

9. The Painter’s Mother Resting (1975-6), Lucian Freud

As a painter of the human form in all its forms, Freud presents us here with a modest portrait of his old mum. Though she’s not quite asleep, she is nevertheless almost there, in that hopefully short spell when the resting & unconscious self finally meet. The skin of Freud’s figures always appears waxy, brightly lit & super real. He painted many family members, many self portraits but this one of his mother is subdued by his standards & it’s interesting to see the detail he includes in the patterns on her dress, considering the alarming nudes he often painted. 

10. The Dormouse (1865), John Tenniel

Perhaps the most admirably prolific sleeper in all of art & literature, Lewis Carroll’s dormouse is the hero of the clinophile. The absolute pinnacle of all sleepers & horribly bullied, he can’t even stay awake for tea & cake. Being Wonderland of course, it’s likely Tenniel felt he had free reign to make him appear absolutely enormous & therefore quite difficult to stuff into a teapot. There’s not a lot of the dormouse in the drawings or the text but he’s a champion dozy, snoozing, slumbering napper & today we salute him.