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The Sluggard
Leighton, Frederic - Enlarge image
The Sluggard
- Object:
Statuette
- Place of origin:
England, Great Britain (cast)
- Date:
ca. 1890 - ca. 1900 (cast)
- Artist/Maker:
Leighton, Frederic (Lord), born 1830 - died 1896 (sculptor)
Arthur Leslie Collie (producer)
J.W. Singer and Sons (manufacturer) - Materials and Techniques:
Bronze
- Museum number:
820-1901
- Gallery location:
Sculpture, room 21, case 1
This statuette is made by Frederic Lord Leighton R.A. in ca. 1890-1900. Original acquisition information records that this bronze was cast from the clay sketch-model for the bronze statue exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886. The Sluggard, also sometimes known as Athlete Awakening from Sleeping, was produced in large numbers, originally published by Arthur L. Collie in 1890, cast in the Singer Foundry in Frome, Somerset. The copyright passed from Collie to J.W. Singer & Sons Ltd some time in the early decades of the 20th century; it appears in the Singer trade literature around 1914. The Royal Academy has a bronze statuette cast from a plaster version given to the Royal Academy by the sculptor's sisters Mrs Orr and Mrs Matthews in 1896. The original model for the life-size bronze statue of 1885 was presented to the Tate Gallery, and is now on loan to Leighton House, London.
Published versions held in museum collections include those in the Leeds City Art Gallery and in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. A version dated 1885 is in the Tate Gallery.
Frederic Leighton (1830-96) was born in Scarborough in 1830, the son of a physician. After receiving an all round education, he studied art at Frankfurt under Steinle, and at Brussels, Paris and Rome. In 1852 he began to work independently and spent the next three years in Rome.
Leighton's painting Cimabue's Madonna carried through Florence (1853-55) was his first major work, and an immediate success. When it was shown at the Royal Academy in 1855, it was bought by Queen Victoria.
Leighton settled in London in 1859, though he frequently travelled abroad; he was elected ARA in 1864 and RA in 1868, and attained the Presidency of the Royal Academy in 1878. He was the most influential of the Victorian Classical painters, and an important exponent of the 'subjectless' painting associated with the Aesthetic Movement, in which pictorial narrative is suppressed in favour of beauty and atmosphere. Leighton died on 25 January 1896 and is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.
