Sleep at the Antechamber of Death

A headdress of poppies, flanked by wings at the brow, denotes the figure of Sleep, rendered in Solomon’s most penumbrous style, as if his profile is composed of shadows. Eyes closed, Sleep stands at the doorway leading thrugh which we can discern his brother Death.
This drawing may have been conceived as an illustration to an incident in the artist’s allegorical prose-poem, A Vision of Love Revealed in Sleep, published in 1871, but modified with the passage of time and adapted for a different purpose. In A Vision, the encounter takes place under 'a shadow as of the darkness before all things were' (p.11). There, it is the author-narrator - rather than Sleep – who is brought into the presence of Despair - rather than Death. Thus, Solomon himself stands at the threshold of a “dreadful mystery” when a door opens into a chamber at the touch of an olive branch (p.11), an action depicted in this drawing. Death is draped in a hooded garment, head bowed, much as Despair is described in A Vision, but in a manner which suggests knowledge of G.F. Watts’s painted allegories on similar themes, such as Love and Death (c.1886, Tate).

We are grateful to Colin Cruise for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.