Artist Lawrence Lebduska (1894 - 1966)

Self-Portrait, Asleep with Creatures

Date1943

DimensionsFramed: 37 × 43 × 2 in. (94 × 109.2 × 5.1 cm) Sight: 29 3/8 × 35 1/2 in. (74.6 × 90.2 cm)

Object numberN0012.2000

Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Museum Purchase

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextBorn to Czech parents in Baltimore, Lawrence Lebduska studied stained glass-making and decorative painting while growing up in Leipzig, Germany. When he returned to the United States, he began work as a decorative mural painter as part of the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Art Project. For a brief period of his life he lived on his cousin’s horse farm near Baltimore and his love for the animal shines through in his work. In his spare time, he painted fantasies and fables based on his memories, alongside images of Czech folklore, biblical stories, and personal observations.

Lebduska loved nature, and his paintings focused on animals—his favorite being horses. He placed his menagerie in bright landscapes, which often combined disparate scenes like the forest and the jungle. In this painting, he depicts himself fast asleep in the foreground, while the painting he had started unfolds around him in a dreamlike fashion.

Exhibition History"The Unbridled Paintings of Lawrence Lebduska," Mennello Museum of American Art, Orlando, FL, January 25, 2019 - May 12, 2019; Michelson Museum of Art, Marshal, TX, September 3, 2019 - November 9, 2019.

On View

On view