Evening or Lost Illusions

The painting Evening was exhibited at the Salon of 1843, and his contemporaries added the appropriate subtitle, as a reference to the novel by Honor� de Balzac, ‘Les Illusions perdues’, which had appeared that year.

Gleyre’s painting is a dreamlike representation of a vision he had on the bank of the Nile in 1835, as his diary shows. He depicts himself as a weary singer, whose lyre has slipped from his hand, as he no longer find words.