The Dream of the Shepherd
Sitting alone with a sorrowful aura around him, The Dream of the Shepherd is a Symbolistic painting that is empathized with a feeling of sadness and separation of class. Made in 1896 by Symbolist European artist Ferdinand Hodler, the Shepherd’s face is seen buried in his left hand, and his right hand gripping onto his shepherd’s staff below eight nude women in a dancing movement.
In the painting, the sadden shepherd is seen sitting on the grassy ground with boulders and pebbles around him while grieving by himself, but he is not alone as there are eight nude women all seem to be dancing at the ground above and far from the shepherd. The painting is beautifully painted with delicate brush strokes that spread from the grassy plains the shepherd is sitting on to the blue water, and the bright sky with the women. The stylized gestures of the eight naked women evoke the young modern dance movement, and women’s pale, ethereal forms mark them as apparitions, in stark contrast to the shepherd’s muscular body, rendered with naturalistic detail.
The Dream of the Shepherd explores a universal and psychological played themes of sleep, dreams, death, and love, often with erotic tones, and produces an otherworldly realm, covered with strains of erotic and seductive desire. The eight nude women dancing above creates an attraction that contrasts with the saddened emotion illuminating from the lonely shepherd. There is a complete contrast in the expressions and relationship of the shepherd and the expressions of the eight nude women.
The painting also conveys a message of social structure and classes to show that there will always be a gap between the upper class and lower class. The nude women seem to be dancing with enjoyment that is shown through their flexible and smooth movements, gestures and light, faded colors of white, beige and blue, while the skin of the shepherd is smooth and hairless with several light to dark values. He is painted without shoes, which can possibly point out that the Shepherd is poor and living in poverty. The eight nude dancing women can represent wealth and ease; they are stress free and their nude represents their freedom in society. Whereas the shepherd is all covered and is oppressed by society as a lower class and different cultural backgrounds.
The painting gives emotions of both happiness and sadness, and opens up a numerous amount of values, theories, and imagination to many different emotions and meanings to understand other different cultures and values. It represents a separation of the rich and wealthy to the poor and poverty, similar to today as status and class has a large impact on society where people can be as free as the women, or as unfortunate as the shepherd.
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