Currently not on view
Oedipus' Fury,
ca. 1808
Alexandre-Evariste, son of the eighteenth-century French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard, exhibited this highly finished drawing in the Salon of 1808 under the title Les fureurs d’Oedipe (The Furies of Oedipus). Fragonard chose the pivotal moment in Sophocles’s play in which the title character has learned of his incestuous marriage to his mother, Jocasta. His daughters Antigone and Ismene stand before him, distraught over the news; his sons Polynices and Eteocles are in the background. Oedipus realizes to his horror that he has fulfilled his tragic destiny, foretold by an oracle—he would kill his father and marry his mother.
Information
ca. 1808
Private collection, France,
sold Sotheby’s, Monaco, 22 February 1986, lot 112, reprod. (See reference Bib. 4832);
[Adrian Ward Jackson, London]; Frederick Koch, until 1994;
purchased from Didier Aaron, Inc., NYC (Brame& Lorenceau, Kate de Rothschild-Didier Aaron, Master Drawings 1996 [New York, 1996] no. 43., illus.)(See reference Bib. 4830);
Oedipus and his Daughters
- Explication des ouvrages de peinture et dessins, sculpture, architecture et gravure des artistes vivans...exposes au Musee Napoleon, le 14 Octobre 1808, (Paris: Salon des artistes français, 1808). , p. 34, no. 221
- Tableaux anciens et du dʹebut du XIXe siècle: 1986 Feb. 22, (Monte Carlo: Sotheby's Monaco S.A., 1986?). , lot 113 (illus.)
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Kate de Rothschild, Master drawings 1996, (Turin: Società Editrice Umberto Allemandi & C., 1996).
, no. 43 (illus.) - "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1996," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 56, no. 1/2 (1997): p. 75-115., p. 107
- Pierre Rosenberg, Dominique-Vivant Denon: l’oeil de Napoléon, (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999)., cat. no. 389; p. 372 (illus.)
