Twilight 1845 - 1855

Célestin Nanteuil made this print called ‘Twilight’ using etching in nineteenth-century France. It depicts a nude woman standing next to a dog in a dark landscape with a crescent moon in the sky. The image draws on classical artistic tropes of the female nude in a natural setting, filtered through the lens of Romanticism. There’s a fascination with nature, the night, and a dreamlike atmosphere. But the setting lacks any specific historical context. This is an idealised, timeless scene. We know that Nanteuil was associated with the Romantic literary figure, Victor Hugo, and the print has an illustrative quality to it. It’s as if it could be an illustration from a novel. In nineteenth-century France, printmaking was a hugely important part of visual culture. Prints such as this one circulated widely, and often served to disseminate literary and artistic ideas. By consulting nineteenth-century periodicals and books we can get a better sense of the cultural context in which the image was made and consumed. Only then can we fully understand its purpose and meaning.