The Dance of the Nymphs and Cupid (c. 1900) — Édouard Bisson

Artist

Édouard Bisson

Year

About 1900

Medium

Oil on canvas

Collection

Private collection

Bisson was born in Paris in 1856 and studied under Jean-Léon Gérôme. He won a bronze medal at the 1900 Universal Exposition and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1908. He spent his career painting women in soft, atmospheric light, and his work held on to an idealized kind of feminine beauty at the turn of the century.

This one is set on a bank of cloud, at an hour that could be dawn or dusk. The sky has gone the pink of the inside of a petal. Six women in loose silk gowns sit and stand barefoot, their veils lifting in a wind you can almost feel.

Cupid arrives from the upper left, bow in hand.

Only one of them gets up to meet him. She's in pink, hair loose, arms raised, and she turns toward him as if she's been caught mid-step. The rest stay where they are. One looks out at the horizon. One gazes up at nothing in particular. The woman in white at the center leans back into the cloud with an arm folded over her head, the way you stretch at the end of a long day.

Love shows up, and most of them don't even look.

That's what we keep coming back to. These women aren't arranged for anyone. They're resting, drifting, half in their own thoughts. Cupid is the one making an entrance, and the painting barely makes room for him.