Dear Joan of Art,

I visited Washington, D.C., and saw a beautiful sculpture—white plaster or marble—of two cherubs curled together on a small pedestal. Do you know the title and artist of the work?

Dear Visitor,

I believe you might be referring to William Henry Rinehart's Sleeping Children, part of the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Sleeping Children is currently included in the museum's traveling exhibition Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum and is on view at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Here is some additional information on this artwork from Treasures from the National Museum of American Art by William Kloss:

"The original 'sleeping children' sculpture, [was] conceived as a marker for the grave of the children of Hugh and Sarah Sisson, in Greenmount Cemetery, Baltimore. Presumably, the commission was for two children who had recently died, but between 1855 and 1864 the Sissons lost five children altogether.

"This shocking reminder of infant mortality in the last century explains the mordant appeal of Rinehart's creation; there are twenty-five known replicas in marble and plaster, including this one. … The marbles were largely or entirely the work of professional stone cutters in the artist's employ.

"Funerary monuments that depict children and infants merely 'sleeping' were not without precedent. Indeed, sleep is the usual metaphor for death in nineteenth-century funerary sculpture."

I hope this information is helpful.

Sincerely,
Joan of Art

Source: William Kloss. Treasures from the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

Pictured: William Henry Rinehart 1825 USA–1874 Italy, Sleeping Children, modeled 1859, marble, 18 3/8 x 36 3/4 x 18 3/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Benjamin H. Warder.