The Sleeping Beauty, 1910

The Sleeping Beauty 1910 watercolour by Paul Nash (1889-1946).

A composition with three figures beneath a willow bower.  Beside the stream a young woman lies asleep upon a raised platform. A young man, kneeling, draws aside the branches to view her face more clearly. The third figure, a second young woman, is seated on the ground in front of him with her hands in her lap and her gaze downcast. A peacock rests in the tree, its long tail feathers forming an arch above them.

The fairy tale Sleeping Beauty was first written by Charles Perrault in 1697. The two most well known adaptations of the story are Tchaikovsky’s ballet performed in 1890 and Walt Disney’s animated film produced in 1959. This watercolour illustrates the part of the story where the princess has pricked her finger on a spindle in a remote castle. This causes a spell to be cast which makes everyone in the castle sleep for one hundred years. Here we can see the prince approaching the sleeping princess who breaks the spell by kissing her. Paul Nash has written along the bottom of the drawing ‘Till he find the quiet chamber far apart’.

This was one of a number of works sent by Paul Nash to his long-standing friend and patron Gordon Bottomley in 1911. Bottomley, in his reply, wrote of it; 'Perhaps most of all we like the feeling in the little 'Sleeping Beauty' picture; it is very delightful, and the colour...is full of originality and richness.' Nash gave it to him, disparaging it as 'the veriest sketch-club 'done-in-a-hurry' thing and the drawing's vile.'  Nash had yet to make his mark on the art world when he produced this work, although it does show evidence for the watercolour technique and high-keyed colours that would later make his work so distinctive. Nash is one of the most evocative painters of the twentieth-century and gave Bottomley an unrivalled collection of his early watercolours and drawings. Nash is represented by over 100 works in the Tullie House collection.