Hypnos, 1900

James Pittendrigh MacGillivray was born in Inverurie, Aberdeenshire in 1856 and died Edinburgh on 29 April 1938. He was brought up and educated in Edinburgh. In 1872 he became studio assistant to William Brodie, where he remained for six years; then, around 1880, he spent two years in the studio of John Mossman in Glasgow. He returned to Edinburgh in 1894 and executed many portrait busts, monuments and statues, becoming a regular exhibitor at the Royal Scottish Academy where he was elected A.R.S.A. in 1892 and R.S.A. in 1901. Among his public works, the most important of these are the statues of Robert Burns, Irvine (1895); Lord Byron, Aberdeen; the 3rd Marquess of Bute, Cardiff; John Knox, Edinburgh; and the multi-figure monument to William Gladstone, Edinburgh (1902). Although closely aligned to the Celtic revival, his art was often inspired by Greek mythology as in this piece: Hypnos, the Greek God of Sleep, is normally depicted as a young man with wings attached to his head. According to Greek mythology, he put men to sleep by touching them with his wand or by fanning them with his dark wings. Macgillivray's choice of a female Hypnos reflects the fin de siècle fashion for the femme fatale.