Artwork
Sleeping Monsters
Sleeping Monsters is an ink print by the Romanticist artist John Hamilton Mortimer. It is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.
About this work
Overview
Created in 1780, *Sleeping Monsters* is an etching executed by British artist John Hamilton Mortimer on a sheet of pale blue‑green paper. The work presents a monochrome scene of several massive, scale‑covered creatures sprawled across a rocky shoreline, their forms intertwined and partially immersed in shallow water.
Subject & Meaning
The composition depicts a cluster of large, reptilian beings at rest, their rough, fin‑like backs rendered with sharp linear marks. Though no narrative is supplied, the title suggests a contemplation of dormant danger, inviting viewers to consider the tension between the creatures’ stillness and their inherently threatening appearance.
Technique & Style
Mortimer employed the traditional etching process, incising the image onto a metal plate with acid to achieve fine, textured lines. The stark black‑and‑white rendering relies on crisp hatching to suggest scale, musculature, and the surrounding water and vegetation, a method typical of eighteenth‑century printmaking before the advent of color.
History & Provenance
Mortimer, who also painted romanticized Italian landscapes and war scenes reminiscent of Salvator Rosa, served as President of the Society of Artists in 1774. *Sleeping Monsters* reflects his interest in dramatic, often martial subjects during the 1770s, created just four years before his untimely death at the age of thirty‑nine.
Context
The print aligns with the period’s fascination with the exotic and the monstrous, themes common in the visual culture of late‑eighteenth‑century Britain. Its focus on fantastical beasts parallels contemporary literary and artistic explorations of the sublime and the unknown.
Artist & collection
Artist
John Hamilton Mortimer (17 September 1740 – 4 February 1779) was a British figure and landscape painter and printmaker, known for romantic paintings set in Italy, works depicting conversations, and works drawn in the…
![Mucius Scaevola [recto], by John Hamilton Mortimer](https://artifactworldgallery.com/img/john-hamilton-mortimer--mucius-scaevola-recto--0de678fa443f7962-w320.webp)
