Child Asleep (The Rosebud)

A register kept by Sully records the painting of this picture between June 7 and 21, 1841. It has been suggested that the subject is the grandson of the artist, Francis Thomas Sully Darley, but since Darley is shown at an older age in a portrait painted over a year earlier than this (see 14.126.5) the identification here seems impossible. This may instead be a "fancy" subject of the type that began to occupy Sully’s time around 1840. In 1848 the picture, bearing the title "The Rosebud," was engraved as an "embellishment" to John Sartain's "The American Gallery of Art" and the owner of the picture was listed as M.W. Baldwin. C. Chauncey Burr wrote a seventeen stanza poem entitled "The Infant Poet" to accompany the illustration. It begins: "A little happy boy / Lay dreamy in the summer air— / His young heart trembling as a prayer / With visions of sweet joy." With its roots in the tradition of the sleeping Eros, the work blends the nineteenth century taste for classical revival with the rising trend toward sentimentalization.