The Opals

A row of fashionable women drifts across this canvas, their wide hats and sweeping gowns melting into soft clouds of white, lilac, and pale green. Painted in 1904 by the Spanish artist Hermenegildo Anglada-Camarasa, "The Opals" earns its name from the way the colors shimmer and shift, glowing like the milky stones. The figures never quite settle into firm shapes. They seem to hover between solid and vapor, dressed for an elegant evening that feels more like a memory than a real event.

Anglada-Camarasa spent these years in Paris, drawn to the glittering nightlife and stylish crowds of the city. His loose, hazy brushwork places him among the Symbolist and Art Nouveau painters of the era, artists who cared far more about mood and beauty than about crisp detail. Against the deep green and blue background, the women blur into one another like ghosts at a party. Though he later became a respected teacher and a big name in Spanish art, his fame faded beyond his home country over time. Works like this one, with their dreamy elegance and rich color, help explain why crowds of his day found him so enchanting.