William Bouguereau

With Goupil & Cie, Paris (acquired directly from the artist on 10 November 1866)

Theo van Gogh, Amsterdam (acquired from Goupil's Amsterdam branch, 30 December 1866)

Private Collection

Sale, Christie's, London, 12 March 1880, lot 109

Possibly Thomas Agnew & Sons, London

Possibly Samuel P. Avery, New York

Mary Radcliffe

Sale, Christie's, London, 22 February 1908, lot 30 (as An Italian Mother and Boys)

With Bernheim-Jeune et Cie., Paris (as Maternité)

Mrs Escudero, Buenos Aires

Sale, Adolfo Bullrich y Cia, Buenos Aires, 14 November 1973, lot 20 (as Maternidad)

With Hammer Galleries, New York

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Tanenbaum, Toronto (by 1975)

Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 16 February 1995, lot 73

West Coast Private Collection (purchased at the above sale)

Sale, Christie's, New York, 23 April 2003, lot 9

Private Collection, Italy (purchased at the above sale)

Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 9 May 2013, lot 15

Where acquired by the present owner

Hempstead, New York, The Emily Lowe Art Gallery, Hofstra University, Art Pompier: Anti-Impressionism, 19th Century French Salon Painting, 1974, no. 14

Ottawa, The National Gallery of Canada, The Other Nineteenth Century: Paintings and Sculpture in the collection of Mr and Mrs. Joseph M. Tanenbaum, 1978, no. 11

New York, Borghi & Co., William-Adolphe Bouguereau: L'Art Pompier, 1991, no. 20

Emmanuel Benezit, Dictionnaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveurs, Paris 1976, Vol 2 , p. 221

Louise D’Argencourt; Douglas Druick, (ed)., The Other Nineteenth Century: Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. Tanenbaun, Ottawa 1978, p. 54-55, no. 11, illustrated

Mark Steven Walker, "William Bouguereau: A Summary Catalogue of the Paintings," William Adolphe Bouguereau, L’Art Pompier, exh. cat., Borghi & Co., New York 1991, p. 21, no. 20, illustrated

Damien Bartoli with Frederick C. Ross, William Bouguereau, Catalogue Raisonné of His Painted Work, New York 2010, p. 78, no. 1864/03A, illustrated

This réplique of Bouguereau's Le Sommeil, exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1864, exemplifies Bouguereau's poised yet tender figure groups inspired by, and in the tradition of, the Renaissance masters Titian and Raphael.

While the Salon painting presents the figure group in a sunlit courtyard, here Bouguereau has chosen to place the family in a softly-lit interior beside a staircase, adding a still life to the left. While there are no overt religious references in either painting, the image of the mother and children can be interpreted as a secular portrayal of the Holy Family, in this instance dressed as Italian peasants. Critics of the day recognized the influence of earlier religious works on this secularized subject. Theophile Gautier declared "There is a great deal of charm in this maternal grouping, which could easily become a Sainte Famille" and Paul de Saint-Victor described it as "three white figures, composed and grouped like a working-class Holy Family" (Ludovic Baschet, Catalogue illustré des oeuvres de W. Bouguereau, Paris, 1889, p. 28). Indeed, Bouguereau’s own Sainte Famille of 1863, painted the year before and which belonged to the Imperial Family and hung in the Palais des Tuileries, clearly provided the inspiration for Le Sommeil.

After receiving the esteemed Prix de Rome in 1850, Bouguereau spent four years in Italy studying the works of Giotto and Raphael, whom he most revered. The plasticity in the modeling that Bouguereau, the consummate academic, achieves in Le Sommeil recalls the surfaces and articulations of the saints of the great masters of the cinquecento.