Dusk

Dusk (Le Crépuscule in French) is an 1882 oil on canvas by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, held in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. It is the companion piece to Dawn and belongs to a series of four canvases devoted to the times of day, completed by Night (1883) and Day (1884). The female figure appears nude or barely covered by a transparent cloth that seems to flutter around her body, as if caught by a breeze in mid-flight. Her red hair and the shimmer of the sea set a warm note against a cool, soft palette. The light of twilight is handled with the polished modelling typical of academic painting, where the body is built through almost imperceptible transitions. Bouguereau conceived the work as an allegory rather than a specific scene, so the figure embodies the time of day instead of telling a story. Today its interest lies largely in seeing how late nineteenth-century academicism treated mythological and symbolic subjects through the idealised nude.

Painter

William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Date

1882

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

208 × 108 cm

Museum

National Museum of Fine Arts of Cuba, Havana

Movement

academic art

Genre

allegory, nude

Depicts

nudity, specular reflection, chignon, waist-length hair, red hair, sea, wind wave, nipple

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