Tired Women in Art

I saw a Reddit post the other day titled Art of women being tired? The whole thread was people posting paintings like these:

I thought it was interesting because I’d never really considered exhaustion as a theme in art, and yet there are so many examples of it.

But then I wondered, are there similar examples of tired men in art? I decided to look for some.

Most of what I found at first are depictions of men tired from labor. They’re just working so hard.

That’s very different from the women above, except for Rockwell’s salesgirl. It was harder to find paintings of men just tired at home. But I did find a couple.

That guy has taken off his slippers before falling asleep reading his book. A bit of a contrast with this guy who has someone to take his shoes off for him:

That one was likely painted as a magazine illustration, but I couldn’t figure out what article or story it was painted for.

I like this one, the idea of a self-portrait when tired. It reminds me of that They Might Be Giants lyric, “I’ll never see myself in the mirror with my eyes closed.”

And this etching of exhaustion happens to also be a nice image for spooky season.

So I did find a few images of tired men in older art, but it was easier to find depictions of tired men in contemporary art.

I suspect that a lot of what I found were actually studies by modern artists depicting someone they live with, and maybe sleepy people just make for better or more willing models.

The thing about all of these paintings is that I relate to every single one of them. The men, the women, and heck even this kid and her dog:

I look at every single one and I’m, like, “Yes. I feel you.”

There is an obvious difference between how the women are depicted – mostly alone and at home, exhausted from either boredom or the trials of motherhood – and the men who are tired from working hard and more visibly earning their rest. And with some exceptions, the paintings of women largely depict a moment, while the paintings of men tell more of a story of why they’re so tired.

But as I looked beyond what was shared in the Reddit thread, I found more paintings that showed tired women who had been working, too, even if they weren’t out in the field.

Even so, it seems like when women were shown as tired, the painting didn’t always need to explain why. But when men were, it usually did. It’s like only recently were men allowed to just be tired in paintings.

Granted, my knowledge of art is not exactly exhaustive (excuse the pun) and my search terms may have biased my results. I used “tired” as a keyword, and a painting of a tired doctor called simply “The Doctor” would not have shown up for me.

If you’re tired enough, you’ll eventually fall asleep. And that’s a whole other category of paintings. I found this three-part series that looked specifically at sleep in paintings including biblical and mythological stories like this one:

And I like this painting of sleep. The color of this dress is incredible:

I think sleeping is a slightly different category than just tired, but there is certainly some overlap.

If you have a favorite tired person in art, please share it in the comments!

And that’s it for another newsletter. Thank you as always for reading. It’s been quite a while since I’ve mentioned that you can support this newsletter by either becoming a subscriber (free or paid! your choice!), or by making a one-time donation.

I’m going to go take a nap. See you next time!

David