This is one of a handful of drawings (see also Chappuis, Adrien. The Drawings of Paul Cézanne. 2 vols. Greenwich, Conn., 1973, nos. 820, 835) in which the powerful black lines and compact forms suggest less the tenderness and vulnerability of the sleeping boy than his potential strength, like that of the young Hercules (with whom Cézanne identified himself) lying in his cradle. Theodore Reff, from Paul Cézanne: Two Sketchbooks (1989), p. 36.