A domestic interior with a lady, dressed in a satin and lace ball-gown and shawl, asleep on a blue padded sofa, her feet on a round footstool, a fire in the grate, with her white gloves and a bouquet of red roses on the mantlepiece; the clock shows seven in the morning. The fire has burnt low and the lamp appears pale in comparison to the dawn light. A young woman has been dancing all night, has just returned from the ball, left her things on the mantlepiece and fallen asleep fully dressed. 

The painting is typical of Baugniet’s genre scenes of bourgeois women within an elegant interior, many of which were painted for the British market.

In a review of the Exposition Universelle, the Art Journal reported that ‘Charles Baugniet contributes three genre subjects. “The Reverie after the Ball' is certainly not surpassed for delicate drawing and handling of drapery.’ In an earlier review of the 1866 Salon, Eugene van Bemmel recalled that the artist depicts a ‘virtuous lady, weary after lots of dancing, fast asleep and dreaming of her betrothed’.

Charles Baugniet (1814-86) Belgian painter and lithographer, produced portraits of public figures in Belgium, France, and England, including thirty portraits of contemporary artists. He was a pupil of Drolling and Cabat, and worked in London and Sèvres, exhibiting at the Royal Academy from 1847 to 1870. In 1841 he was appointed court painter to the Belgian Royal Family. He was commissioned to paint a portrait of Prince Albert in 1851 (see RCIN 605845).