The Marmottan / Monet Museum has a new exhibition, co-curated by Laura Bossi, a neurologist and science historian – The Empire of Sleep – all about paintings of people snoozing, napping or getting some shuteye, an original subject that includes some objectively lovely artworks.

We all spend around a third of our life sleeping (and possibly dreaming), but surprisingly the Marmottan Museum is the first in France to take a look at this universal pastime as seen in works of art.

It’s such a vast subject, touched upon by a large number of famous artists, and the exhibition thus includes work from many big names – Monet of course, but also Goya, Courbet, Vallotton, Cocteau, Blake, Ingres, Rembrandt, Rodin, Picasso, Munch… – and includes 130 pieces, including paintings, drawings, sculptures and objets.

The presentation is in seven main sections (the press release says eight, but lists only seven):

— Sweet sleep, pure hapiness,

— Figures of sleep in the Bible,

— Hypnos and Thanatos: sleep and death are brothers,

— Erotic sleep: love revealed and sleeping beauties,

— The doors to dreams,

— Troubled sleep: when reason is absent, and

— To bed!

The exhibition has been able to secures loans from major institutions including the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre, the National Museum of Modern Art, the Petit Palais, the musée des Beaux-arts de Montréal, the Pargaue National Gallery, Palazzo Pitti-Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Florence, the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid and more, and the presentation was designed by Martin Michel.

If you’d like to look at these lovely images in the comfort of your own home, and learn more about the subject, the French exhibition catalogue (248 pages, around 35€) has just been published and can be found here at your local Amazon.

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The exhibition The Empire of Sleep is at the Marmottan Museum (here) until 1st March 2026

Open every day except Mondays from 10am-6pm (9pm Thursdays)

Admission: 14€ / 9€ / free for under-7s

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