Often called the father of American illustration, Felix Octavius Carr Darley was best known for his renderings of distinctively American subjects such as turkeys, corn husks, and covered wagons, among others. Darley was regularly commissioned to create vignettes for bank notes and gained an international reputation. When Prince Napoleon, the cousin of Emperor Napoleon III, visited the United States in 1861, he commissioned four pictures from Darley. The Repose is a watercolor version of one of these commissioned works. Featuring two youths reclining beneath a tree, the charming scene would have appealed to the conservative Victorian sentiments that prevailed at mid-century.