Ovid Among the Scythians

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Ovid Among the Scythians
ArtistEugène Delacroix
Year1859
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions87.6 cm × 130.2 cm (34.5 in × 51.3 in)
LocationNational Gallery, London
Ovid Among the Scythians
Oil on wood
Dimensions32.1 cm × 50.2 cm (12.6 in × 19.8 in)
LocationMetropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Ovid Among the Scythians is the title of two oil paintings by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, executed in 1859 and 1862. The less famous second version was painted to integrate the figures and landscape and rectified the problems of scale of the first version, which had an unusual composition and strange scale of the characters, provoking negative criticism, even among Delacroix's admirers such as Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier, although artists suh as Edgar Degas were deeply impressed.[1]

Delacroix painted this subject first in 1844 as part of the decorations for the ceiling of the Library of the Palais Bourbon in Paris, in a painting there titled Ovid Chez Les Barbares.[2] They depict the life of the Ancient Roman poet Ovid when exiled by the Emperor Augustus to the Black Sea port of Tomis, in what was then part of Scythia and is now south-east Romania, where he spent his last eight years and wrote poems such as Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto.[3] The Scythians were an ancient Iranic people whose way of life was described by Herodotus in his Histories as "nomadic";[4] Ovid himself called them a "wild tribe".[5]

However, with its cultured man standing before

civilisation confronted with barbarity.[6] Henri Loyrette
wrote:

Low but sometimes steep mountains covered with scrubby vegetation surround a still, shallow lake, boggy at its edges; scattered huts built precariously of wood and thatch suggest a pastoral and nomadic culture. In the foreground a man milks a large mare; behind him, various figures are casually placed, squatting, walking or standing still – a child, an old man, a nursling in its mother's arms, soldiers, resting shepherds. And, dolefully stretched out on a gentle incline, swathed in drapery, lies the figure identified by the painting's title as Ovid. He appears like a fallen meteorite on whom converge the friendly but startled inhabitants of this savage country. Delacroix has given him the pose of a Madonna in a Nativity [...].[7]

The first version was

Les Martyrs to evoke "the landscape, its solitude, its calm charm".[12] Zacharie Astruc, in his first Salon criticism, praised all the details in the picture: Ovid ("what noble elegance!"); the mare ("what color and air around it!"); the dog, which made him think of classical sculpture; the water ("a strange beauty"); and, above all, the landscape.[13] In the catalog, by Delacroix himself, was written: "Some examine him [Ovid] with interest, others go home and offer wild fruit and mare's milk, etc., etc."[14]

The wildness and the misunderstood genius were key concepts in Romanticism and are very well portrayed in these two paintings by Delacroix.[15] The second version, contrary to what one might think, is not an oil sketch but a completed version which develops many elements of the London work. Delacroix painted it with more vivid colors, replaced the barbarian with a shield on the back by a woman bringing food, and also closely integrated the figures and landscape in a manner that is more in keeping with a historical landscape.[16] It was painted a year before his death, in 1862, most probably for a private collector. It was given to Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in honor of Philippe de Montebello, in 2008. According to the art historian Gary Tinterow, "This is his late, final statement on a theme that interested him his whole life."[17]

References

  1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
    Bulletin, v. 66, no. 2 (Fall, 2008).
  2. ^ http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/search.aspx?q=DELACROIX,+Eug%C3%A8ne&mode=artist&frm=1 [dead link]
  3. ISBN 978-0-415-05777-6
  4. ^ Her. Hist. 4.46.3, .127.2.
  5. ^ Ov. Tris. III, X, 5. The poet regrets the place of his exile in the whole poem. After all, no one understood his language (III. 11. 9–10, III. 14. 37–40, V. 10. 35–36), and when they heard Latin words they laugh (10. 37–38). Ovid also complains about constant wars (III. 10. 53–70, V. 10. 21–26; Ep. I. 2. 13–14) and the harsh climate, with cold, snow and ice (III. 8. 27–32, V. 2. 63–66; Ep. I. 2. 23–26, I. 3. 45–50).
  6. ^
    ISBN 978-3-8228-5988-9
  7. ^ a b Henri Loyrette, "Delacroix's 'Ovid in exile'" In: The Burlington Magazine (The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.), Vol. 137, No. 1111 (Oct., 1995), pp. 682–683.
  8. ^ L. Jourdan: Les Peintres français, Salon de 1859, Paris [1859], p. 35.
  9. ^ T. Gautier: Exposition de 1859, ed. W. Drost and U. Henninges, Heidelberg [1992], p. 35. (See the review in p. 607 of this issue.)
  10. ^ M. Du Camp: Le Salon de 1859, Paris [1859], p. 34.
  11. Oxford University
    , p. 288.
  12. ISBN 978-0-87413-867-2
  13. ^ Z. Astrug: Les 14 statins de Salon – 1859, Paris [1859], pp. 260–61.
  14. ISBN 978-1-85709-346-9
  15. ISBN 0-674-93736-8
  16. ^ Barthélémy Jobert, Delacroix, Paris, 1997, p. 268.
  17. ^ "Drawing Center Won’t Move to Seaport" (March 14, 2008), by Carol Vogel. In New York Times. Consulted on January 19, 2010.

External links

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