Cast Shadows

The light comes from somewhere low, a lamp outside the picture, and in 1891 it could have been gas or perhaps the new electric light. Friant uses it to throw the couple's shadows high onto a pale flowered wallpaper. The young man sits, looking up at the woman and holding her hand. She stands beside him in black, her eyes lowered, turned away from him. The shadows do not quite obey the rules of optics. Hers is stretched, his is shrunk, and the gap between their shadowed heads is wider than the gap between the real ones. They recall a story told by the Roman writer Pliny, of a young woman in Corinth who traced the outline of her departing lover's shadow on a wall. Friant showed the picture that same year at the newer of the two Paris Salons, on the Champ-de-Mars.