Sleep takes many shapes in art, whether sensual or drunken, deathly or full of nightmares, but it is rarely peaceful. Even slumbering babies can convey anxiety, discovers Claudia Pritchard.

Sweet dreams: there is a classical serenity to the sleeping figure in Dod Procter’s 1926 work Morning, bought for the nation by the Daily Mail after being voted picture of the year in the RA Summer Exhibition of 1927. (Photo by Jean-Marc ZAORSKI/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Sleep takes many shapes in art, whether sensual or drunken, deathly or full of nightmares, but it is rarely peaceful. Even slumbering babies can convey anxiety, discovers Claudia Pritchard.