Swooned Murmuring of Love, and Pale with Pain

Will Hicock Low · 1885

Medium

Black, gray and white gouache, with touches of black chalk, on cream wood-pulp laminate board

Original size

45.6 × 35.5 cm (18 × 14 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

"Swooned Murmuring of Love, and Pale with Pain" is a quietly haunting work — its restrained palette of black, gray, and white lending it the atmosphere of a dream half-remembered. Will Hicock Low was one of the leading American painters of the Aesthetic Movement, trained in Paris under Carolus-Duran alongside John Singer Sargent. His work consistently drew on classical themes and Romantic poetry, weaving literary sentiment into images of timeless feminine grace. This 1885 piece, executed in gouache and chalk on board rather than canvas, shows his facility with tonal subtlety — achieving depth and emotion through restraint rather than colour. Low was a close and lifelong friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, and the two men's shared romanticism runs through much of Low's output from this period, including works that took their titles directly from verse. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates the original's delicate tonal drama into the warmth and texture of oil on canvas, preserving the mood and compositional grace of Low's vision while bringing a new richness to a work that has long been tucked away in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection.