{
"data": {
"id": 155871,
"accession_number": "1991.173",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "A Eunuch's Dream, 1874. Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff (French, 1842\u20131923). Oil on wood; 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.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Mrs. Noah L. Butkin, 1991.173",
"current_location": null,
"title": "A Eunuch's Dream",
"creation_date": "1874",
"creation_date_earliest": 1874,
"creation_date_latest": 1874,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"France, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on wood",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "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.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 0.54,
"height_inch": 21,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.25,
"width": 0.745,
"width_inch": 29,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.3125,
"depth": 0.055,
"depth_inch": 2,
"depth_inch_fraction": 0.1875
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.393,
"height_inch": 15,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.5,
"width": 0.654,
"width_inch": 25,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.75
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Signed center left: Lecomte du Nou\u00ff / 1874\r\n",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311486,
"title": "Signs of Affection: Gifts Honoring the Museum's 75th Anniversary",
"description": "Signs of Affection: Gifts Honoring the Museum's 75th Anniversary. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 27, 1992-January 3, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1992-10-27T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 227636,
"title": "From Homer to the Harem: The Art of Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff",
"description": "From Homer to the Harem: The Art of Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff. Dahesh Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (June 22-September 19, 2004).",
"opening_date": "2004-06-22T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 226126,
"title": "European Orientalists: From Delacroix to Kandinsky",
"description": "European Orientalists: From Delacroix to Kandinsky. Mus\u00e9e Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium (October 15, 2010-January 9, 2011); Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, Germany (organizer) (January 29-May 1, 2011); Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts, Marseille, Marseille, France (May 20-August 21, 2011).",
"opening_date": "2010-10-15T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, N.Y.; Neuberger Museum, State University of New York, College at Purchase. Orientalism: The Near East in French Painting 1800-1880 (1982), no. 55, 81 (repr.), 83.",
"opening_date": "1982-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Dahesh Museum of Art (6/22/2004 - 9/19/2004): \"From Homer to the Harem: The Art of Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff\"",
"opening_date": "2004-06-22T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Mus\u00e9e Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (10/15/2010 - 1/9/2011), Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung [organizer] (1/29/2011 - 5/1/2011), and Mus\u00e9e des Beaux-Arts, Marseille (5/20/2011 - 8/21/2011): \"European Orientalists: From Delacroix to Kandinsky\", ex. cat. no. 148, p. 181.",
"opening_date": "2010-10-15T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "(Sale, Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, April 28, 1977, lot 209, possibly sold to Noah L. and Muriel Butkin)",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": [
"The consignor to this auction is not specified in the catalogue, which lists the Lecomte de Nou\u00ff under the \u201cproperty of various owners.\u201d The catalogue does not include a price list, but the Butkins made many purchases around this time, so it is possible that they were the buyers of the painting at this sale. The earlier provenance of this painting is unclear. A painting by Lecomte de Nou\u00ff entitled \u201cLe Kieff du Sch\u00e9riff (Souvenir d'Orient)\u201d appeared in the H\u00f4tel Drouot sale of the \u201cF.J.\u201d collection on March 23, 1877 (no. 37). However, it seems unlikely that this painting is the Cleveland picture, because while the description provided in the catalogue of the man in the painting matches that of the Cleveland picture, the female figure, so important to the composition, is not mentioned. Furthermore, another version of this composition (see Roger Diederen, From Homer to the Harem: The Art of Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff, no. 86) but without the female figure or knife-wielding cherub, appears in Montgailhard\u2019s 1906 monograph on Lecomte du Nou\u00ff under the title \u201cLe kief du Sch\u00e9riff.\u201d This painting\u2019s current location is unknown. What we do know is that the Cleveland painting was likely intended by the artist for direct sale to a private collector: the painting\u2019s content \u2013 more graphic than that of the other versions of the composition - may have been considered inappropriate for public display.
"
],
"date": "1977",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "(Noah L. and Muriel S. Butkin, Cleveland, Ohio, given by Muriel S. Butkin to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "Possibly 1977-1991",
"sortorder": 2
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "1991-",
"sortorder": 3
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Much of Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff's artwork was inspired by travelling to Egypt as a young man.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "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.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60476671"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1991.173-a-eunuch-s-dream"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Sotheby Parke Bernet Inc. 19th Century European Paintings. April 28, 1977.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Diederen, Roger. From Homer to the Harem: The Art of Jean Lecomte Du Nouy\u0308. New York: Dahesh Museum of Art, 2004.",
"page_number": null,
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \"The Year in Review for 1992.\" The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (1993): 38-79.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 60; Mentioned: p. 66",
"url": "https://www.jstor.org/stable/25161388"
},
{
"citation": "Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 385-387, Vol. II, no. 134",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Bergez, Daniel, and Kate Deimling. Painting the Dream: From the Biblical Dream to Surrealism. New York; London: Abbeville Press Publishers, 2018.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 110, no. 77",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Bergez, Daniel. Peindre le re\u0302ve: des re\u0302ves bibliques au surre\u0301alisme.
Paris : Citadelles & Mazenod, 2017.",
"page_number": "Reproduced and mentioned: p. 110.",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Watson, A.M. \"Paul Durand-Ruel and James Duncan of Benmore.\" The Burlington Magazine 160, no.1384(July 2018): 558-571.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 564, fig. 10",
"url": null
},
{
"citation": "Dialer, Corinne. Oneirische Oszillation: Zum Neuzeitlichen Bildthema des Ku\u0308nstlertraums. Hildesheim: Olms; [Mu\u0308nchen]: UB, Universita\u0308tsbibliothek Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita\u0308t Mu\u0308nchen, 2022.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: P. 166, abb. 128; Reproduced: P. 273, abb. 128",
"url": ""
},
{
"citation": "Kola\u0301r\u030cova\u0301, Petra, Na\u0301rodni\u0301 galerie v Praze, and Veletrz\u030cni\u0301 Pala\u0301c v Praze. V Krouz\u030cC\u00edch Dy\u0301Mu : Portre\u030cT Modern\u00edho Ume\u030cLce. [Praha]: N\u00e1rodn\u00ed galerie v Praze, 2023.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 71",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1991.173",
"images": {
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"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Mrs. Noah L. Butkin",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 155871,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1793,
"description": "Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff (French, 1842\u20131923)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Jean Lecomte du Nou\u00ff was the descendant of a noble Piedmontese family that settled in France in the fourteenth century. In 1861, at age nineteen, he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre (1808-1874) and two years later trained under the guidance of \u00c9mile Signol (1804-1892). With his fascination for historical and exotic subjects in mind, Lecomte du Nou\u00ff entered the studio of G\u00e9r\u00f4me (q.v.) in 1864. Lecomte du Nou\u00ff began exhibiting at the Salon in 1863 and received his first critical approval two years later for Le sentinel grec (1865), based on the tragedy Oresteia (458 BC) by Aeschylus. One year later he won a gold medal for another classical subject, Invocation de Neptune (1866, Mus\u00e9e des Beaux Arts, Lille), which exempted him from jury approval for future Salons. In 1865 G\u00e9r\u00f4me encouraged him to join F\u00e9lix Cl\u00e9ment (1826-1888) on a trip to Egypt, as the latter had received a commission to decorate the Choubrah Palace of Prince Halim near Cairo. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) meant hardship for many artists, including Lecomte du Nou\u00ff who struggled to get by without commissions. In 1872 he won the Second Prix de Rome and received a good deal of attention at the Salon with Les porteurs de mauvaises nouvelles (Minist\u00e8re de Affaires Culturelles, Tunis), which was bought by the state for the Mus\u00e9e du Luxembourg. That same year the French government asked him to go to Venice to copy The Marriage of St. Ursula by Carpaccio for the \u00c9cole des Beaux-Arts. Three years later he painted an altarpiece for the chapel of St.-Vincent-de-Paul in the church of La Trinit\u00e9 in Paris. He traveled throughout his life and, in 1875, embarked on an extensive voyage to Greece, Egypt, Turkey, and Asia Minor. Twenty years later, on his way to Constantinople, he stopped in Bucharest in order to visit his brother, Andr\u00e9 Lecomte du Nou\u00ff (1844-1914), who was a court architect. He ended up staying several years, as he received commissions for portraits of members of the royal family and frescoes in Romanian churches. Throughout his career, Lecomte du Nou\u00ff painted many religious and history paintings; he was also a prolific portraitist and sculptor. In 1875 he married Mlle Peign\u00e9-Cr\u00e9mieux, who died soon afterward; in 1891 he married Caroline Evrard.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1842",
"death_year": "1923",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1991-12-16T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1874,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1874",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-06-24 11:19:26.798000"
}
}