The Dream of the Shepherd

1896

Oil on canvas, 250.2 × 130.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A kneeling shepherd in an Alpine landscape dreams of eight pale women who appear in a row above him. The picture divides into two zones, earth below and vision above.

The women repeat related poses in a steady, frieze-like rhythm. The painter later named this kind of ordered repetition parallelism.
It was first shown in Geneva.
Look at the women's stylized gestures, which recall Puvis de Chavannes.
Red-brown contour lines outline the women over pale, thinly brushed color.
The Metropolitan Museum bought it in 2013.

According to the Met, the women may stand for spiritual insight, oneness with nature and physical longing. The picture helped build the painter's name as an explorer of sex, death and the unconscious.

Parallelism: The painter's principle of repeating similar forms in symmetrical order to express unity.

Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Open Access · CC0