Jeniffer Harrison

The purpose of this paper is the formal analysis of the painting Orestes

Pursued by the Furies painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1862.

The painting measuring 91 x 109 3/8 inches and is an oil on canvas

painting created in a Classical style. Orestes Pursued by the Furies is

based on the myth of Orestes, the only son of Agamemnon and

Clytemnestra. According to the Homeric account, Agamemnon on his

return from Troy had not yet seen his son Orestes. Clytemnestra, his

wife and her cousin Aegisthus murdered him before he had an

opportunity to see his son. In the eighth year after his father's murder,

Orestes came from Athens to Mycenae and slew his mother,

Clytemnestra for the murderer of his father.

Bouguereau’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies was painted in 1862 in

the Classical style even though the art world was on the cusp of the

Impressionist movement in art. Bouguereau has pressed the five

figures in the foreground and the middle ground forward causing the

viewer to be directly involved in the drama. Orestes Pursued by the

Furies is painted with oil on canvas. His brushstrokes were extremely

smooth, barely discernible, and create a glossy glass-like finish. The

tones of the colors and classical studies by Bouguereau of painting the

human body contributed to the beauty and wide range of emotions

evoked by of this painting.

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The painting contains five figures, Orethes, his mother Clytemnestra,

and the three Furies: Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera all clustered

tightly together in the center of the canvas. In the Greek mythology

the Furies: Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera painted in the center of the

painting, surrounding Orestes, are driving him mad for Clytemnestra’s

murder. Orestes, the main character of the painting, is the semi-nude

male clad in only a stark white mantle draped around his left arm and

left thigh. He is clutching his ears violently to avoid hearing his crimes

screamed by the Furies. Additionally, the pain caused by his actions

and the Furies screams contorts Orestes’ face in pain and agony.

Clytemnestra, Orestes mother, is on the far left of the canvas with her

head thrown back, her long brown hair flowing down her back echoing

the long blood red mantle that drapes the lower half of her body and

continues to flow along the ground off the farthest right lower corner of

the canvas. The left most Fury supports the limp Clytemnestra’s upper

torso. Clytemnestra, not yet dead, is reaching with her right hand for

the dagger stabbed through her white night blouse and chest. Her

pallor is a pale almost lifeless color of a person teetering on the thin

veil between life and death. All the Furies have anger, vengeance, and

violence portrayed in their facial features and body language. Two of

the Furies bodies, with the exception of their upper torso, on the left of

the canvas are in the background behind Orestes and Clytemnestra.

The Fury furthest to the right of the canvas is half nude in a Classical
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style with a slate blue mantle flowing around the lower half of her

body, which also drapes her left arm. In addition, she is carrying a

torch in her left hand, a symbol of the illumination of a passage on a

journey. All the Furies have “Medusa like” hair with snakes echoing

the anger of the Furies themselves. The foreground illuminated by the

light from the sun during a break in the clouds is pushed forward

toward the viewer, while the background, obscured by the dark

threatening clouds, is subordinate via chiaroscuro. The overall effect is

the three dimensional illumination of Orestes and his punishment for

his murderous deed. In the right foreground a twisted and thorny

vines creep across the characters’ treacherous passageway

foreshadowing his turbulent journey.

Bouguereau utilized both actual line and implied line in this painting.

Several of the implied lines were accomplished through the pointing,

accusing fingers of all the Furies directed toward the murdered

Clytemnestra thereby directing the viewers’ attention to the victim and

away from the dramatic actions of Orestes. Clytemnestra’s own hand

and arm create an implied line in the opposite direction of the Furies

pointing toward the dagger in her chest and therefore the crime. The

parallel lines created by the Furies’ arms pointing toward the dagger in

Clytemnestra’s chest create focus and introduce a sense of jagged

chaos. The red, orange, and yellow flames emanating from the far
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right Furies’ torch makes an implied diagonal line from the torch’s

flame downward toward the left and flows along the outside of

Clytemnestra’s red robe down and off the far left bottom of the canvas.

An implied diagonal line leading from Orethes’ covered ears, across his

forearm leads directly to the dagger he plunged into his mother’s

chest. The effect of these implied lines redirects the sight of the

viewer in the direction of Orethes crime and of his victim. The horizon

line is at Orethes’ head as he is at our eye level and engages the

viewer in the composition. A horizontal line of muted red sky touches

the earth in the darkened, foreboding background to form the

boundary between earth and sky. All the actual and implied lines of

this painting serve to continuously redirect the viewers’ attention to

various parts of the drama being performed on the canvas.

Bouguereau balanced this painting, which created unity as well as

discord, via many methods including the use of several perceived

triangles. Traditionally, the main character would be placed at the

apex of the triangle thus creating a hierarchy of person’s within the

painting. In this painting; however, there is an inverted triangle with

Clytemnestra and the three Furies creating the long line of the triangle

and the lower point of Orestes’ white robe creating the apex.

Theoretically, there may be many reasons for the inverted triangle;

however, it makes sense that Orestes would be the apex as he is the

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center of the story; the inversion of the triangle is a symbol of the

discord of the story and theme of the painting. A triangle created by

Orestes’ legs on the ground serves to visually stabilize the painting as

is traditional in Classical painting. The fixed position and flexed

muscles of Orethes’ legs frozen in a single instant suggests a single

moment in the story via the stability in an arrested pose. The scene is

therefore a stabilized instant in Orethes’ torment painted on the

canvas.

Bouguereau made use of a restricted pallet on this canvas with grand

effect. The main colors utilized by the artist were reds in

Clytemnestra’s mantle, the snakes’ mouths, and the torch; slate blue

on the right most Furies’ mantle; browns in Clytemnestra’s hair and in

the foreground and some of the background; and a small amount of

yellow and orange is used in the torch. The use an eerie gray bluish

skin tone further heightens the inhuman characteristics of the Furies.

The pale white skin of Clytemnestra is in contrast to the sun warmed

skin tone of Orestes, which further distinguishes their opposing

physical relationship to this world. The use of red on the clothing of

the murdered mother serve to create a dramatic focal point and strong

emotion in the viewer as it flows down and off the right side of the

canvas much like the blood flowing down her chest caused by the

dagger plunged into her chest. The red is then repeated in a muted
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shade in small amounts dotted throughout the “Medusa like hair” of

the Furies in the snakes’ mouths and their forked tongues. The red in

the torch held by the outstretched arm of the right most Fury creates a

sideward teardrop shape extending outward toward the right of the

canvas. The Fury holding the torch is draped in a slate blue mantle,

which continues down her back, subsequently wrapping around her

lower torso to cover her otherwise nude figure. The red, orange and

yellow of the torch are muted in comparison to the red of the blood

and robe of Clytemnestra on the far left of the canvas. The torch;

however, small and muted in color draws the eye back to the

murdered Clytemnestra by creating an implied diagonal line from the

torch to the red robe. It must be noted that the red, orange, and yellow

of the torch’s colors pale in comparison to the red of the blood and

robe of the murdered Clytemnestra, much like the punishment for

Orestes pales in comparison to his crime.

The use of tone and value are also employed for both uniformity and

contrast. The stark white paint for Orestes’ robe surrounding his left

arm and his central torso is repeated on his mother, Clytemnestra’s

white night blouse on her upper torso and arms unifying the

relationship of the two figures. Bouguereau use of chiaroscuro, with

black and brown tones to create a subordination of the threatening

landscape in the background thus further drawing attention back to

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the focal point of the figures in the painting, which dominate the

foreground and middle ground space of the painting.

When painting Orestes Pursued by the Furies, Bouguereau painted the

canvas and the figures larger than life. There are two plausible

reasons for the size of both the canvas and the figures. The painting

itself refers to a Classical theme, time, and style, which would have

made the size of the painting quite appropriate. Moreover, the moral

lessons themselves are larger than life and were thus reflected in the

size of the canvas and the figures.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies, was

painted in 1862 on the cusp of the Impressionist movement, harkened

back to the Classical themes and styles. Bouguereau achieved such a

monumental work of art through his study of antiquity, unique

brushwork, tones, colors, value, line, and movement. This painting

portrays a metaphorical message of justice and guilt caught in a single

moment of Orestes’ torment.