L'Espérance

Watts finished this in 1886 and called it Hope, but he deliberately made it hard to feel hopeful. A blindfolded woman sits hunched on top of the globe, bent over a lyre whose strings have snapped until only one is left, and she leans in to catch whatever faint sound that last string can still make. The sky behind her is nearly empty, with a single star. Watts wanted the meaning to sit right on the edge between holding on and giving up. He gave the painting to the nation rather than sell it, and it took on a second life he never planned: Martin Luther King preached on it, and a Chicago sermon about it, heard by a young Barack Obama, later gave him the phrase the audacity of hope. Look closely and there is really only that one thin string left to play.