What it is
A blindfolded woman sits hunched on top of a globe, holding a lyre with a single string left, and listens close to its sound.
What it represents
Hope as persistence rather than optimism. Watts wanted to paint the stubborn act of making music when almost everything is gone.
The symbolism
The blindfold is the darkness she cannot see through; the one string is what remains; a single faint star shines above her. The title was borrowed for a sermon, and later for a famous book. The picture's strength is how little it promises.
Poems and letters beside it
poem
Invictus
William Ernest Henley (1875)
A refusal to be broken. Watts's blindfolded woman keeps playing her one remaining string.
