A Eunuch's Dream (1874): Art, History and Details

A Eunuch's Dream (1874) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ (French, 1842–1923).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This painting, inspired by Charles Montesquieu's Persian Letters (published in 1721), depicts a eunuch who wanted to marry a harem slave. He experienced a vision of her while smoking his opium pipe, but her little companion holding a knife dripping with blood reminds us that the eunuch's anatomy precludes the fulfillment of his dream. The outline of a hand next to the signature is a khamsa, a symbol used to ward off evil.

Object facts

• Title: A Eunuch's Dream
• Date: 1874
• Creator attribution: Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ (French, 1842–1923)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 54 x 74.5 x 5.5 cm (21 1/4 x 29 5/16 x 2 3/16 in.); Unframed: 39.3 x 65.4 cm (15 1/2 x 25 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1991.173

A detail from the museum

Much of Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ's artwork was inspired by travelling to Egypt as a young man.

Collection credit

Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Mrs. Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc. 19th Century European Paintings. April 28, 1977.
• Diederen, Roger. From Homer to the Harem: The Art of Jean Lecomte Du Nouÿ. New York: Dahesh Museum of Art, 2004.
• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1992." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (1993): 38-79.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.