Arion on a Sea Horse
These paintings are from a series of eight works that Anatole Bartholoni commissioned the 29-year-old Bouguereau to create for his Paris home, decorated in the fashionable Pompeian-revival style. The paintings emulate ancient Roman designs. Crisp, cut-out forms are set against a gold background painted in imitation of mosaic. Arion was an ancient Greek poet who escaped death by riding away on the back of a sea creature who had been attracted by the poet's song. In the companion picture, a bacchante—a female worshipper of the wine god Bacchus—rides a panther, the god's symbolic animal. These works were shown at the 1857 Paris Salon exhibition.
Colors in this work
Details
- Date
- 1855
- Medium
- oil on fabric
- Dimensions
- framed: height 0.873 m, width 1.27 m, depth 0.054 m; unframed: height 0.713 m, width 1.118 m
- Origin
- France, 19th century
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Bequest of Noah L. Butkin
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
-
Classical Mythology Both · 99%
The title and museum description identify Arion, an ancient Greek poet whose song attracted the sea creature that carried him to safety; the image depicts the mythic rider with a lyre.
-
Nude Visual · 99%
A nude male figure is prominently depicted at the center of the composition.
-
Hybrids and Imaginary Creatures Both · 99%
The image shows a horse-like marine creature with fins and a curling tail, while the title identifies it as a sea horse.
-
Related to Music Both · 98%
The figure visibly holds a lyre, and the museum description specifically connects Arion’s escape to the poet’s song.
-
Antiquity as Subject Both · 95%
The subject is drawn from ancient Greek tradition, and the museum describes the commissioned series as emulating ancient Roman designs in a Pompeian-revival interior.
Visual Qualities
-
Patterns Visual · 99%
A dense, continuously repeated geometric and floral-like motif covers the gold-colored ground within the oval panel.
-
Flatness Both · 91%
The composition uses sharply bounded, cut-out-like figures against an extensively patterned ground with limited conventional spatial recession; the museum describes this crisp decorative treatment explicitly.
-
Highly Ornamented Both · 98%
The gold ground is extensively decorated with repeated motifs, consistent with the museum’s description of a decorative background painted in imitation of mosaic.
Medium and Techniques
-
Oil Painting Metadata · 99%
The Cleveland Museum of Art records the medium as oil on fabric and classifies the work as a painting.
Time Periods
-
19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The work is dated 1855.
Geographic Regions
-
French Art Metadata · 99%
The artist is identified as French, and the place of origin is recorded as France, 19th century.
Source & rights
William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905). Arion on a Sea Horse. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 6,310 × 4,051 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available