Sleeper and Humor

Henry Davis Sleeper’s interiors targeted the emotions rather than the intellect, conjuring visual “moods” with little regard for historical authenticity or even the intrinsic value of individual objects. Providing a glimpse of his criteria for collecting, Sleeper once offered an object to a client with the caveat, “if it gives you no emotion” he should reject it. 

Campy amusement ranked high among the emotions Sleeper conjured, evidenced by the many visual jokes he orchestrated at Beauport. Consider the collection of glass balls he placed in his Red Roof-facing window—as much a satire about Piatt Andrew’s virility as they are an homage to nineteenth-century craft—or the military epaulette he placed in the Admiral Nelson Room, converted into a lady’s pincushion. Speaking of the wood stove he installed in Beauport’s Stair Hall, cast in the shape of a standing George Washington, Sleeper reportedly said: “It’s wonderful to sit here and see him get hot, he is slow to anger, but so comforting.”