4x5 transparency scanned on Hasselblad Flextight X1 by Ed Pollard-2010.

Orestes Pursued by the Furies

Artist Adolphe-William Bouguereau (French, 1825-1905)

Date1862

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions91 x 109 5/8 in. (231.1 x 278.4 cm)
Overall, Frame: 101 7/8 x 121 1/4 x 4 in. (258.8 x 308 x 10.2 cm)

ClassificationsEuropean art

Credit LineGift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.

Object number71.623

Terms

Collections

European Art before 1945

On View

On view

DescriptionThis is a large oil on canvas painting. There are five figures clustered in the center, leaving the dark landscape background largely unnoticed. A thorny vine creeps across their path in the right foreground. The one male, nude, holding his hands over his ears with an expression of pain on his face, is swarthy and surrounded by four females in various tints of pale. Three of the females, hair swarming with snakes, are the furies: Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera point at his crime, as he covers his ears and tries to escape. The female to his left, his mother, has a knife buried deep in her chest. Her head is tilted back and she is supported by one of the furies. The mother's hair hangs down long past her waist, blood drips on her creamy white skin and garments. Her lower body is draped in a swirling red cloth. The three furies have an eerie cast to their skin, and their faces are distorted in anger. The one on the right side of the canvas holds a torch in her left hand, but the flames are subdued in comparison to the red garment draped about the murdered woman. Orestes, the one male in the painting, murdered her for killing his father.

Label TextAdolphe William Bouguereau French, 1825–1905 Orestes Pursued by the Furies, 1862 Oil on canvas In this scene from an ancient Greek tragedy, Orestes avenges his father by murdering his own mother. Even before her body hits the ground, the mythological spirits of vengeance known as the Furies have overwhelmed the guilty son. By pitting Orestes’ nude body against the hideous trio swarming around him, William Bouguereau set the bar for late 19th-century academic painters. His use of classical figures to animate strikingly dramatic scenes won him both commercial success and critical recognition as the grand master of the French art establishment. Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 71.623