The Dream after the Ball 

Hans Makart made "The Dream after the Ball" sometime in the late 19th century. We see here the image of a woman in a state of undress surrounded by cherubic children, perhaps a depiction of the artist’s own ambivalent feelings toward the society in which he lived. Makart was working in Vienna at a time of great social change when the institutions of art were being challenged by new ideas about the role of the artist in society. He lived in an opulent age of industrial expansion, but his historical paintings were criticized for being too decorative and lacking in substance, and he was accused of pandering to the tastes of the wealthy. Here, Makart may be commenting on the social structures of his time, particularly the relationship between art, commerce, and the upper classes. Historians can shed light on such paintings by researching the artist’s life, the social conditions in which they worked, and the art market of the time, as all these contribute to our understanding of the painting’s meaning.