Bring your favorites together in your free personal gallery.
Your galleryThe Dreamer (La Rêveuse)
Look first
- What catches your attention?
- Where does your eye go next?
- What would you ask about this work?
Show me
Look at her turban and fur-trimmed gown, then at her sideways glance and the closed fan in her hands.
This small panel, about 23 centimeters tall, takes its traditional title from a print made after it for a wider public. Like several of Watteau’s small figure paintings, it borrows its costume from the theater: the woman wears an imaginary Turkish outfit, a sign of the European taste for things Turkish at the time. Many painters of the 18th century followed his delicate, intimate manner.
Oil on panel · 23.2 × 17 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Rococo
Look again
What do you notice now?
Try a quick sketch
Take a minute to sketch on any paper. No upload needed.
What did you draw first? What did you leave out?
Details and source
- Museum title
- The Dreamer (La Rêveuse)
- Artist
- Jean Antoine Watteau (French, 1684–1721)
- Date
- 1712–14
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 23.2 × 17 cm (9 1/8 × 6 11/16 in.); Framed: 35 × 28.9 × 7 cm (13 3/4 × 11 3/8 × 2 3/4 in.)
- Credit line
- Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.







