In the Third Sleep

1944

Kay Sage
American, 1898–1963

Kay Sage depicted a large, two-pronged structure resembling drapery, which rises straight up into the air from a ramp or dock that recedes into the distance at right and is punctuated by geometric and curvilinear forms. The striking canvas suggests the mystifying environs of a dreamscape, reflecting Sage’s fascination with the unconscious. In the mid-1930s, the artist lived in Paris and worked alongside French Surrealists, including Yves Tanguy, whom she married in 1940 after moving to New York at the outbreak of World War II. Painted in 1944, In the Third Sleep attests to her continued investigation of the otherworldly.

Status: On View, Gallery 262
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Kay Sage
Title: In the Third Sleep
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1944
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: signed l.r. Kay Sage 44
Dimensions: 100.3 × 144.8 cm (39 1/2 × 57 in.)
Credit Line: Friends of American Art Collection; Watson F. Blair Prize Fund
Reference Number: 1945.198

Judith Suther, A House of Her Own: Kay Sage, Solitary Surrealist (University of Nebraska Press, 1997), ill.
Lynn Gamwell, ed., Dreams 1900–2000: Science, Art, and the Unconscious Mind, (Cornell University Press, 2000), ill.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 141.

New York, Julian Levy Gallery, Paintings by Kay Sage, Oct. 3–31, 1944, no. 1.
Art Institute of Chicago, Fifty–Sixth Annual American Exhibition of Paintings, Oct. 25, 1945–Jan. 1, 1946, no. 126, ill.
Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, New Accessions USA, July 15–Sept. 2, 1946, cat. 9.
Hartford, CT, Wadsworth Atheneum, Yves Tanguy, Kay Sage, Aug. 10–Sept. 28, 1954, no. 2.
Lake Forest College, A Century of American Painting, Masterpieces Loaned by the Art Institute of Chicago, June 10–16, 1957, no. 31.
Art Institute of Chicago, Two Centuries of American Art, 1750-1950, Oct. 1, 1959–Jan. 10, 1960, no cat. [downloadable checklist available].
University of California at Berkeley, Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art, Oct. 3–Dec. 30, 1990, np.
Roslyn Harbor, New York, Nassau County Museum of Art, Surrealism, Jan. 15–Apr. 16, 1995, ill.
Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, Staging Surrealism: A Succession of Collections 2, Sept. 18, 1997–Jan. 4, 1998.

Kay Sage (1898–1963), 1944; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1945.

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