Young

attributed to Simone Bianco
Head of an Infant
ca. 1510
bronze
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Brunswick Monogrammist (Flemish Painter)
Boy with Dog
ca. 1525-50
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of a Little Girl
ca. 1550-75
marble bust
Musée du Louvre

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Maddalena Cattaneo
1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Filippo Cattaneo
1623
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Johann Zoffany
The Lavie Children
ca. 1770
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous English Painter
Portrait of James Henry Leigh Hunt, age 7
1791
watercolor miniature on ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

John Brett
Portrait of Laura Theresa Epps
1860
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Pierre Bonnard
The Artist's Sister and her Children
1899
oil on cardboard, mounted on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

George Bellows
Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett)
1907
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous French Photographer
Girl in a Garden
ca. 1910
autochrome
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Frank Brangwyn
Study for Missouri State Capitol Mural
ca. 1914
gelatin silver print, squared in graphite
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ekaterina Zernova
Pioneers! Fortify the Defenses of the Land of the Soviets!
1933
lithograph (poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Garry Winogrand
New York
ca. 1962
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Joan Brown
Noel in the Kitchen
ca. 1964
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Diane Arbus
Girl in a Watch Cap, N.Y.C.
1965
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Michael Ackerman
Cabbagetown
1998
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from In Time of War (Commentary)

'Sweet is it', say the doomed, 'to be alive though wretched',

And the young emerging from the closed parental circle,

To whose uncertainty the certain years present

Their syllabus of limitless anxiety and labour,

At first feel nothing but the gladness of their freedom,

Are happy in the new embraces and the open talk.

But liberty to be and weep has never been sufficient;

The winds surround our griefs, the unfenced sky

To all our failures is a taciturn unsmiling witness. 

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Nymphs

Roman Empire
Nymph
AD 125-150
marble
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Victor Müller
Model posed as Wood Nymph
ca. 1862
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Sleeping Nymph spied upon by Satyr
ca. 1775-85
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Agostino Carracci
Satyr and sleeping Nymph
(Lascivie Series)
ca. 1590-95
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Hans Thoma
Faun and Nymph
1888
watercolor on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Alexander Keirincx (landscape) and Dirck van der Lisse (figures)
Nymphs at Rest
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

François Boucher
Nymphs and River Gods
ca. 1735-40
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

attributed to Benedetto Bordone
Nymph leading Poliphilo
1499
woodcut and letterpress
(from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna
published by Aldus Manutius in Venice)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Marco Dente
Vulcan with Nymph and Putti
(series, Antike Basreliefs)
ca. 1510-25
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Christos Karas
Centaur and Nymph
1930
screenprint
National Gallery, Athens

Pietro Rotari
Marsyas discovered by Nymphs and Satyrs
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anselm Feuerbach
Children making Music while Nymph listens
1864
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Felice Torelli
Diana with Nymphs
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Diana with her Nymphs
1659
oil on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop
Diana and Nymphs departing for the Hunt
ca. 1615
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean-Antoine Watteau after Peter Paul Rubens
Satyr embracing Nymph
ca. 1714
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Leonardo was obviously dissatisfied with the current method of drawing trees.  He knew a better way.  "Remember," he taught, "that wherever a branch divides, the stem grows correspondingly thinner, so that, if you draw a circle round the crown of the tree, the sections of every twig must add up to the thickness of the trunk."  I do not know if this law holds.  I do not think it quite does.  But as a hint on "how to draw trees," Leonardo's observation is invaluable.  By teaching the assumed laws of growth he has given the artist a formula for constructing a tree – and so he can still feel like the creator, "Lord and Master of all things," who knows the secrets of nature and can "make" trees as he hoped to "make" a bird that would fly.   

I believe what we call the Renaissance artists' preoccupation with structure has a very practical basis in their need to know the schema of things.  For in a way our very concept of "structure," the idea of some basic scaffolding or armature that determines the "essence" of things, reflects our need for a schema with which to grasp the infinite variety of this world of change.  No wonder these issues have become somewhat clouded by a metaphysical fog which settled over the discussions of art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Drowse

Ippolito Marracci
Allegory of Sleep with Cupid, Diana, Endymion and Hebe
ca. 1690-1710
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Mansi, Lucca

Tim Gardner
Untitled (Ryan in Bed)
2002
watercolor on paper
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

James Tissot
Woman Sleeping
ca. 1871-73
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Louis-Claude Vassé
Sleeping Shepherd
1751
marble
Musée du Louvre

Lee Friedlander
Helen Levitt, New York City
1959
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Auden, Emma and Dogs
1989
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
Virgin and sleeping Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1605
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Henri Decaisne
Guardian Angel
(after poem by Lamartine)
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

François Le Moyne
Daphnis with sleeping Chloe
ca. 1721
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

François-Nicolas Delaistre
Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1790
marble
Musée du Louvre

Juan Antonio Escalante
Angel with prophet Isaiah in the Wilderness
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous French Photographer
Clinique vétérinaire Malvezin, Paris
ca. 1905
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paris Bordone
Sleeping Warrior
before 1571
drawing
British Museum

Marlene Dumas
Jen
2005
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

attributed to Ubaldo Gandolfi
Sleeping Child
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anne-Louis Girodet
Sleeping Bacchus
ca. 1790-91
oil on panel
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Conrad Marca-Relli
Sleeping Figure
1953-54
collage of painted canvas elements on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from In Time of War

Wandering lost upon the mountains of our choice,

Again and again we sigh for an ancient South,

For the warm nude ages of instinctive poise,

For the taste of joy in the innocent mouth.

Asleep in our huts, how we dream of a part

In the glorious balls of the future; each intricate maze

Has a plan, and the disciplined movements of the heart

Can follow for ever and ever its harmless ways.

We envy streams and houses that are sure:

But we are articled to error; we

Were never nude and calm like a great door,

And never will be perfect like the fountains;

We live in freedom of necessity,

A mountain people dwelling among mountains.

– W.H. Auden (1938)