The Dream of the Poet or The Kiss of the Muse by Paul Cézanne

This is the painting Dream of the Poet, also called The Kiss of the Muse, painted by Paul Cézanne in 1859-1860.

It is drawn in a strange, almost mysterious kind of way. Both the poet and the muse are very pale. Also, honestly, the poet looks dead. His face seems to be very flat.

One of the things I notice first is the fact that the poet and muse have about the same skin color. Usually when I picture some heavenly body such as a muse of a ghost, I think of something very pale and white, unlike this painting, which shows the muse with a more or less average skin color.

Another thing I have noticed: where's the pen? What has the poet been writing with? There's nothing in his hand, nothing on the table. No wonder he's having trouble writing: he doesn't have a writing instrument! Duh!

The clothes he is wearing also surprise me.  At the time the picture was painted, this isn't what men wore. It looks slightly like his PJs, and I don't think they wore those outside of the bed in the 19th century. Today, maybe. 19th century... no. The woman's clothes aren't necessarily the most likely outfit for a ball either, but she has an excuse. She's a muse, and there's no required clothing style for those as far as I know.

Upon closer observation of the painting, I have noticed that both character's eyes are closed. The poet, I understand. He's asleep. The muse most likely isn't. Did Paul Cézanne have a dirty secret... that he was bad at drawing people's eyes??? We'll never know. Of his other pictures which I have briefly viewed with a google search, only one has humans with their eyes clearly drawn. That's a self-portrait. Maybe he drew eyes on himself but nobody else. Maybe he thought he could mess up his own eyes but nobody else's.