Untitled (Domestic interior with a sleeping soldier) [descriptive title]
Henry Nelson O'Neil
ca. 1860s
Physical Description: Painting, oil on canvas, glazed and framed in a gilded wood frame.
Materials & technique:oil on canvas
Dimensions:Height 88cm (sight)
Width 70cm (sight)
Height 121cm (framed)
Width 104cm (framed)
Geffrye Museum of the Home (UK)
The subject of this painting is the Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857-58 and the impact of that conflict on the homes and families of British soldiers involved in the fighting.
The artist, Henry Nelson O’Neil, had already explored this theme in a number of earlier paintings. The most famous of these is Eastward Ho! August 1857. That picture focuses on the grief of separation, showing families bidding emotional farewells to fathers, husbands, brothers and sons in the moments before a ship carrying soldiers to fight in India departs from Gravesend. It was followed by Home Again, 1858 a companion piece showing the return of the injured and weary soldiers to their waiting families and The Soldier's Return.
In this picture the action takes place in the peaceful setting of a comfortably furnished bedroom in a middle-class home. The location is not identified but the architectural features which are visible, notably the single sash window typical of a rear bedroom in the back extension of a terraced house, are consistent with many London houses of the period. At the centre of the picture a young man can be seen sleeping soundly while his mother looks anxiously on. Two travelling trunks, which appear in the foreground of the painting, provide clues about his identity and the narrative of the picture. The first contains a neatly folded military uniform and has a sword propped up beside it. The other has an inscription on the lid, partly cut off at the edge of the image, which reads ‘…VI/[Be]ngal’, suggesting that the young soldier is a subaltern in the 6th Native Bengal Infantry. The regiment and their fate in the Indian ‘Mutiny’ would have been well-known to Victorian viewers of the painting. The British officers of the regiment, many of them young and only recently arrived in India, were killed when their previously loyal native troops rose up against them at Allahabad in June 1857.
This painting has previously been interpreted as an image of a soldier recently returned from India but it is more likely that it shows a young man about to leave the safety of his home to embark upon a military career, apparently unaware of the dangers he will face. The cricket bat and other games equipment hanging on the wall at the top right of the picture emphasise his youth, suggesting that he is barely more than a schoolboy.
O’Neil exhibited a work called Asleep at the Royal Academy in 1864 which may perhaps be this painting. It was shown alongside another, probably related, painting with the title Awake!
The frame was acquired with the painting but it has been altered and refinished at some time and is probably not original to this picture.