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The Contemplator
Eugène Carrière (French, 1849–1906)
1901
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 47.6 x 57.2 x 5.1 cm (18 3/4 x 22 1/2 x 2 in.); Unframed: 33.6 x 41 cm (13 1/4 x 16 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- France, late 19th-early 20th Century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- In memory of Ralph King, gift of Mrs. Ralph King; Ralph T. Woods, Charles G. King; and Frances King Schafer
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This painting illustrating Victor Hugo's poem Boaz Sleeping is one of five images Carrière created to commemorate the centennial of Hugo's birth. A reclining poet gazes at the stars above, as if in a dream, placing one hand over his heart and gesturing toward a crescent moon. The moon was thought to exert a special influence on poets and artists, inspiring not only creativity but darker thoughts of melancholy and suicide.
