Arion on a Sea Horse (1855): Art, History and Details

Arion on a Sea Horse (1855) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

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.

Object facts

• Title: Arion on a Sea Horse
• Date: 1855
• Creator attribution: William Adolphe Bouguereau (French, 1825–1905)
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 87.3 x 127 x 5.4 cm (34 3/8 x 50 x 2 1/8 in.); Unframed: 71.3 x 111.8 cm (28 1/16 x 44 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1980.238.1

Collection credit

Bequest of Noah L. Butkin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jullian, Philippe. "The Symbolists." Architectural Digest 31 (January/February 1975): 58-63.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1980.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 68, no. 6 (June 1981): 163–219.
• Wissman, Fronia E. Bouguereau. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1996.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.