Oedipus at Colonus (1798): Art, History and Details

Oedipus at Colonus (1798) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Fulchran Jean Harriet (French, 1778–1805).

The work and its context

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

The ancient mythical Greek king Oedipus fulfilled his fate by unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother. He subsequently blinded himself and was exiled. Here, Oedipus reprimands himself, while protecting his daughter Antigone. Oedipus became popular in France just after the French Revolution, since the subject addressed the return of exiles. The ancient Greek writer Sophocles provided the best-known version of the tragedy, but an interpretation that played in Paris in 1797 inspired Harriet’s work.

Object facts

• Title: Oedipus at Colonus
• Date: 1798
• Creator attribution: Fulchran Jean Harriet (French, 1778–1805)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 187.5 x 164.5 x 8.5 cm (73 13/16 x 64 3/4 x 3 3/8 in.); Unframed: 157 x 134 cm (61 13/16 x 52 3/4 in.)
• Collection: P - French 18th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2002.3

A detail from the museum

Fulchran Jean Harriet died young at age 29, and less than 10 of his works survive today.

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Rubin, James H. “Oedipus, Antigone and Exiles in Post-Revolutionary French Painting.” Art Quarterly 36 (Fall 1973): 141–71.
• James H. Rubin, email to Victoria Sears Goldman, Jan. 28, 2014, in CMA curatorial file.
• Grand Palais. De David à Delacroix: la peinture française de 1774 à 1830. Paris: Editions des Musées Nationaux, 1974.

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.