Small Oil Study for 'Achilles and Briseis'

Painting height: 16 cm
Painting width: 55 cm
Mount height: 43.7 cm
Mount width: 62.5 cm
Frame height: 62.4 cm
Frame width: 83.2 cm

This oil, watercolour, and pencil on canvas study for a fresco at Bowood House is one half of a pair with the study for Coriolanus, given to the Watts Gallery in 1908. The study for Achilles and Briseis is fully worked out with very few changes between this piece and the massive fresco. The real differences are in the amount of detail, not surprising given the difference in scale; the finished fresco has far more background action. The picture shows the episode from the Iliad known as the Departure of Briseis, when Achilles’ war captive and concubine Briseis is taken from his tent by the order of Agamemnon, leader of the Greek side in the Trojan War. This was a grave insult to Achilles and he refused to fight in the war any longer. Briseis, as an enslaved woman, has no choice in the matter and is silently led off by Agamemnon’s messengers, while Achilles’ lover Patroclus and another man comfort him.

As a child, Watts was sickly, and read classical literature while he was out of formal schooling. In the Annals, Mary recorded:

The Iliad, perhaps the first and best beloved of all, he read and re-read until gods and heroes were his friends and acquaintances; he thought of them as such, judged critically of their words and actions, and was deeply moved by all that was noble and beautiful and restrained; he knew this to be a very living school, and every fibre of his being answered to the splendour of the great epic [1].

This familiarity with classical subjects, particularly the Iliad (from which he could recite passages from memory), informed much of Watts’ work, although rarely so literally as in this composition. This oil and watercolour on paper study for the monumental fresco frieze  for Bowood House, commissioned by the Marquess of Lansdowne in 1858, lays out the major components of the finished work at a fraction of the size. The fresco itself was removed from Bowood House in 1956 before the house’s demolition and is now in the collection of the Watts Gallery—Artists’ Village along with its companion painting on canvas, Coriolanus [2]. Another oil study, half the size of the fresco, was sold by the Wattses’ ward and heir Lillian (Mrs Michael Chapman) in 1956 and is currently untraced, having toured with the 1905 memorial exhibitions following George’s death in 1904 [3].

The scene Watts chose to depict was the Departure of Briseis, in which the enslaved woman Briseis, who Achilles had taken captive from a previous military campaign, was taken from Achilles’ tent by the heralds of Agamemnon. The king of the Greeks and brother-in-law of Helen of Troy, Agamemnon had been forced to return his enslaved war captive Chryseis to appease the god Apollo who had cursed the Greeks with plague. Agamemnon only gave up his prisoner of war in exchange for Achilles’. Briseis’ opinion on the matter was not considered, although artists depicting the scene tend to depict both her and Achilles as heartbroken [4]. Agamemnon’s claim to Briseis is what leads to the opening incident of the Iliad, the Wrath of Achilles, in which he declares he will not fight the Trojans until the insult is rectified. Achilles also complained to his mother, the sea-nymph Thetis, who then went and complained to Zeus while Achilles sulked in his tent and everyone else got on with the war without him.

Achilles’ wrath is his defining characteristic in the Iliad. In Watts’ interpretation of the Departure of Briseis, Achilles’ wrath has calmed, and his expression is instead pensive and even pouty as he twists away from the heralds and towards Patroclus and the gathering of nymphs and an oceanic god at the far left of the picture. This study clarifies Janet Ross’s recollection that she modelled for Patroclus in “dressed up in a magnificent suit of armour, which hurt my shoulders” [5]. In the finished work none of the figures are wearing armour, while here Patroclus wears a helmet and greaves. The figure in the leopard skin tunic is unidentified but might be Diomedes, the youngest Greek king and the second greatest warrior after Achilles. Watts’ overall composition is derived from John Flaxman’s illustrations to the Iliad, which includes a plate of the Departure [6]. Watts would have been introduced to Flaxman’s designs at the Royal Academy when he was a student, and they remained popular on various media throughout the nineteenth century.

Watts’ interpretation of Achilles contrasts with those of earlier continental artists like Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen, whose visions of Achilles in this episode are still in the throes of wrath. Rather, Watts casts him as a sensitive figure; Achilles’ pose would later become the figure in The Genius of Greek Poetry, connecting the Iliad as one of the greatest surviving Greek poetical works to Watts’ more symbolic representation of poetry at large [7].

Footnotes:  

[1] Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: the Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1912), p. 14.

[2] See Achilles and Briseis (COMWG.94, 1858-1860)

[3] Exhibition of works by the late George Frederick Watts, R.A. O.M. and the late Frederick Sandys, (London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1905), cat. 107, p. 20.

[4] In Pope’s translation, Briseis “in soft sorrows, and in pensive thought, / Pass’d silent, as the heralds held her hand, / And oft looked back, slow-moving o’er the strand.” Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer, Engraved From The Compositions Of Iohn Flaxman R·A· Sculptor, London. (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme, Paternoster Row, R.H. Evans, Pall Mall, W. Miller, Albemarle Street, & I. & A. Arch, Cornhill, 1805) lines 451-3. In a later book of the Iliad, Achilles refers to her as his wife/bride, but then even further along, after Patroclus’ death, Briseis bemoans her fate because Patroclus is not there to convince Achilles to marry her properly. Briseis prepared Achilles’ body for death after he was killed in battle; she may have been then given away to Achilles’ comrades like the rest of his possessions.

[5] Janet Ross, The fourth generation; reminiscences by Janet Ross (London: Constable and company ltd, 1912) p. 49.

[6] The Departure of Briseis from the Tent of Achilles

[7] See also Genius of Greek Poetry (COMWG.22, 1857-1878) and Bronze Study for the Male Nude Figure in 'Genius of Greek Poetry' (COMWG.452, 1904)

Further Reading:

Dora Wiebenson, ‘Subjects from Homer's Iliad in Neoclassical Art,’ The Art Bulletin Vol. 46, No. 1 (Mar., 1964), pp. 23-37 ,

Text by Dr Melissa Gustin