Apollo and Marsyas
<p>Along with <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artists/33320">Arnold Böcklin</a>, Hans Thoma was a leading Northern European figure in the shift from Realism and history painting to art inspired by classical myths and legends. Taken from Ovid’s epic poem <em>Metamorphoses</em>, Thoma showed the satyr Marsyas challenging Apollo, the master of the lyre, to a musical contest. Although he avoided depicting the cruel outcome of the match (the satyr lost and was flayed alive by Apollo), the artist’s treatment of Apollo, whose idealized body and luminous skin set him apart from the shadowy halftones of his challenger, hints at the winner. Thoma’s painted frame may also have been inspired by a tale from Ovid’s <em>Metamorphoses</em>.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1888
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 101 × 73.5 cm (39 3/4 × 28 7/8 in.); Framed: 127.4 × 100.1 cm (50 1/8 × 39 3/8 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Hans Thoma
Artist
Painting
Hans Thoma was a German-Badense painter known for intimate landscape and genre scenes that bridged Romantic sensibility with a precise naturalistic observation of light and atmosphere. Active from the 1860s through the early twentieth century, he worked primarily in oil and developed a distinctive approach to domestic interiors and rural subjects, often populated by solitary figures or small groups. His work remained rooted in a lyrical, accessible realism that resisted both academic convention and modernist abstraction.
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Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Hans Thoma
- Year
- 1888
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 101 × 73.5 cm (39 3/4 × 28 7/8 in.); Framed: 127.4 × 100.1 cm (50 1/8 × 39 3/8 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1888-022333
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified