Day Dreams

Day Dreams from 1904, now in the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida, depicts a young woman in a reverie — a state of abstracted, inward attention that was one of Bouguereau's most characteristic late subjects. The dreaming or daydreaming figure gave him licence to present a female subject with closed or distant eyes, removed from the viewer's gaze, in a pose combining apparent vulnerability with a sense of protected inner life. This mood painting is characteristic of his final years, when the grand religious and mythological compositions that had made his reputation gave way to more intimate figure studies and psychological states.

The figure's dreaming absorption is conveyed through downcast or closed eyes, relaxed posture, and the soft out-of-focus quality of the background reinforcing the introspective mood. Bouguereau's smooth handling gives the face a luminous, sleep-like stillness quite different from his more energetic mythological compositions.