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Find the spear lying in the grass at the bottom, then look from Procris’s pale face up to Cephalus in his red cloak and across to the hound at the right.
In Ovid’s tale, Procris feared that her husband Cephalus loved another and spied on him as he hunted; hearing a rustle in the woods, he took her for game and threw his spear, which never missed. West shows the moment after, with Cephalus bending over her in grief and his hounds close by. He signed and dated the small panel in 1770 and wrote on it that he retouched it in 1803.
Oil on panel · 32.4 × 41.2 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Death of Procris
- Artist
- Benjamin West (American, active England, 1738–1820)
- Date
- 1770, retouched 1803
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Dimensions
- 32.4 × 41.2 cm (12 3/4 × 16 1/4 in.); Framed: 41.6 × 50.8 × 5.1 cm (16 3/8 × 20 × 2 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of William O. Cole
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.