Oedipus at Colonus

About this work

You see an old, blind man in tattered robes kneeling on rocky ground, one arm wrapped around a young woman while the other points angrily at his own face. This is Oedipus, the Greek king who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. The painting was made just after the French Revolution, when stories of exiles returning home felt urgent. The artist shows Oedipus not as a monster, but as a broken man clinging to his daughter for comfort. For more on how this story played out in Paris at the time, look up the subject france, 18th century.