Now Was the Day Departing, circa 1890. Illustration by Gustave Doré.

Art History
May be a black-and-white image

Visual Composition

The illustration captures a liminal moment: the transition between day and night. The title itself, “Now Was the Day Departing,” signals twilight, a time traditionally associated with endings, reflection, and uncertainty. Doré emphasizes this through dramatic contrasts of light and shadow: the glowing horizon dissolves into encroaching darkness, while tall, barren trees or looming natural forms frame the scene and amplify its somber tone.

Doré’s line work is meticulous and rhythmic, leading the viewer’s eye across the page. The use of negative space — a clearing sky or fading light — feels almost divine in its intensity, surrounded by intricate detail in the foreground. This juxtaposition of clarity and density mirrors the thematic contrast of revelation and obscurity.

Atmosphere and Emotion

The mood is melancholic, even solemn. Twilight in Doré’s hands is not soft or romantic but heavy, filled with spiritual weight. It evokes transience, mortality, and the passage of time. The scene suggests that what departs is not only daylight but also hope, security, and the known world, leaving the viewer suspended in uncertainty.

Doré frequently infused his works with a sense of the sublime — nature and time overwhelming human presence. If figures are included in this illustration, they are dwarfed by their environment, reinforcing the insignificance of humanity before cosmic cycles.

Literary and Symbolic Resonance

The phrase “Now was the day departing” is rooted in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto II). Doré illustrated this epic extensively in the 19th century. In that passage, Dante marks the moment when the sun sets and shadows lengthen — a metaphor for his descent into the underworld, both literally and spiritually.

In this context, Doré’s image becomes a visualization of transition: from safety to peril, from the earthly realm to the metaphysical unknown. The encroaching darkness symbolizes both death and initiation, while the receding light recalls divine grace just out of reach.

Artistic Significance

  • Sublimity: Doré transforms a natural event (sunset) into a stage for cosmic drama.
  • Universality: The image resonates beyond its Dantean roots — twilight is a universal metaphor for endings, mortality, and liminality.
  • Style: Characterized by Doré’s signature engraving style — dense, intricate, and almost cinematic in its contrasts — the piece is a hallmark of 19th-century Romantic imagination.

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