Ariadne2.0008

George Frederick Watts, 1817-1904, "Ariadne in Naxos," 1888-1890, oil on canvas, Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, no. 1943.213.

Note this picture's similarity to 1869 Ariadne (=Ariadne2.0004_Watts) exhibited at the Watts Gallery's centeniary exhibition.

Watts engaged this same subject with much different perspectives across four decades — in 1863, 1875 (=1.0183), 1896 (=1.0184), and at other points in his career. Ariadne's abandonment is among the first mythological subjects Watts painted upon his formative visit to the Aegean in the early 1860s. The 1869 Ariadne is reminiscent of other Watts paintings of the 60s for which he posed the household maid known as Long Mary (cf. his "Wife of Pluto" and "Study with the Peacock's Feathers"). V.F. Gould compares the 1869 Ariadne to Manet's "Olympia" (1863), both paintings depicting "women whose lover is absent". One ought also to consider John Vanderlyn's 1812 Ariadne (=Ariadne1.0130_Vanderlyn), which has Sebastiano Ricci's 1710 (=DionysosAriadne1.0085_Ricci) as forebear.

Extensive bibliography at the Fogg Museum site (upper left).