The Destruction of the Children of Niobe

The Destruction of the Children of Niobe

1760
Richard Wilson
British, 1714–1782, active in Italy 1750–1757/58 and 1765–71
Oil on canvas
58 x 74 in. (147.3 x 188 cm)

Richard Wilson’s art was a crucial influence on the generation of Romantic artists who followed him. In this painting, the figures in the foreground of Niobe and her children from Ovid’s Metamorphoses are overpowered by not only the arrows shot by Apollo at upper left but also the wild and storm-whipped landscape around them. Unlike Thomas Gainsborough, who depicted calm and even weather and light in an equally fantastical landscape also on view in the exhibition, Wilson reveled in representing wind, stormy seas, and even a flash of lightning. These elements dominate the godly figures, presaging the Romantic obsession with the representation of the power of the natural world.

B1977.14.81
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection