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The Sluggard

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Leighton, Frederic, The Sluggard
Photo Credit: 

Petegorsky/Gipe

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Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton of Stretton (British, 1830-1896), The Sluggard (detail), 1882 modeled; 1890 cast
Photo Credit: 

Laura Shea

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Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton of Stretton (British, 1830-1896), The Sluggard, 1882 modeled; 1890 cast
Photo Credit: 

Laura Shea

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Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton of Stretton (British, 1830-1896), The Sluggard, 1882 modeled; 1890 cast
Photo Credit: 

Laura Shea

Not On View
Leighton, Frederic, 1st Baron Leighton of Stretton
British (1830-1896)
Place made: 
Europe; United Kingdom; Great Britain; England; London
The Sluggard, 1882 model; 1890 cast
Bronze
Overall: 20 5/8 in x 9 in x 6 1/2 in; 52.4 cm x 22.9 cm x 16.5 cm; Base: 1 1/2 in x 5 7/8 in x 6 1/2 in; 3.8 cm x 14.9 cm x 16.5 cm
Purchase with the Warbeke Art Museum Fund
MH 1985.4

Already a renowned painter, Frederic Leighton became an influential sculptor almost by accident. Like many other 19th-century painters, he sculpted small clay figurines to aid him in his paintings. One of these studies, Athlete Wrestling with a Python, was enlarged to life-size and exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1877, gaining him recognition as a sculptor. The Sluggard in this exhibition relates to Leighton’s second life-size sculpture (1886, Tate Britain, London), and is one of the numerous bronze statuettes cast from his preparatory sketch-model. If the Athlete shows a powerful Olympian hero at work, The Sluggard suggests languor, sensuality, and passivity. Both works quickly became a clarion call for the “New Sculpture” in England, a stylistically diverse movement marked by innovative reconsiderations of classical sculpture. -Robert Chesnut (Class of 2016), University of Massachusetts Amherst A Very Long Engagement: Nineteenth-Century Sculpture and Its Afterlives (July 29, 2017 - May 27, 2018)