Skip to Content
Log InRegister
    HomePaintingsDrawingsPrintsBrowse All WorksWilson CollectionsWilson Collections MapTercentenary ExhibitionOther ExhibitionsProject HighlightsThemes and MediaBiographiesBibliographical Resources
    Advanced Search
    Work of ArtBiographiesExhibitionsBibliographical Resources
    Settings
    Pages
    300 years
    Return to "Farington Diary" is linked to these Works 17 items
    of 17

    Apollo destroying the Children of Niobe

    This item is active and ready to use
    Apollo destroying the Children of Niobe
    Apollo destroying the Children of Niobe
    Apollo destroying the Children of Niobe
    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
    title=Credit line
    Larger ImageShareFeedback
    Artist
    Studio of Wilson
    Title
    Apollo destroying the Children of Niobe
    Date
    Mid-1760s (undated)
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    Metric: 127 x 178.1 cm
    Imperial: 50 1/8 x 70 1/8 in.
    Collection
    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. To license image, click here.
    Accession Number
    17.586
    Wilson Online Reference
    P90D
    Description
    Apollo, with Artemis behind him, is shooting the children of Leto (Latona) with arrows from the cloud at the left. Niobe stands at the centre of the main group of figures, who are being destroyed all around her. The highly dramatic landscape setting conveys the mood at least as much as the figures themselves.
    Exhibited
    BI 1817 (47 - lent Robert Udney); BI 1832 (7 - lent H.A.J. Munro); New York, World's Fair, Masterpieces of Art, May - October 1940 (158); Cambridge, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Sense and Sensibility, 30 April - 31 May 1965 (38); Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 28 August - 12 December 1978, English Paintings from the Storerooms
    Provenance
    Commissioned by Sir Peter Leicester, (1732-1770), Tabley House, Knutsford, Cheshire; his son, Sir John Fleming Leicester, created Lord de Tabley, 1826; bt by John Parke, oboist by 1802; bt by Thomas Lister Parker (1779-1848), Browsholme Hall, Yorkshire, antiquary and collector by 1804 for 300 guineas; Hon. Charles Francis Greville (d. 1809); Christie's, Greville sale 31 March 1810 (99), bt for 205 guineas by Col. Robert Udney; H.A.J. Munro of Novar by 1832; Christie's, Munro sale, 26 March 1860 (145); bt for £162-15-0 by Henry Wallis (d. 1892); by 1895 James Orrock, Bedford Square, London; Orrock-Linton sale, Christie's 25-27 April 1895 (321, bt in); Christie's, Orrock sale, 4 June 1904 (144); bt for 95 guineas by S.T. Smith & Son, 37, Duke Street St, St James's, London; by 1906 with Blakeslee Galleries, New York; by 1917, Denman Waldo Ross, Cambridge, MA., USA; given to the Museum of Fine Arts and accessioned 15 February 1917
    Signature/inscription
    Unsigned; no inscription
    Verso inscriptions
    [1] Lower left corner in red ink inverted: F558
    Labels
    [1] Verso lower left.: Masterpieces of Art, Art Associates Inc., Street of Wheels, New York World's Fair, N.Y. [n.d. = 1940] Cat. No. 158
    [2] Verso lower right: Museum frame exchange label
    Subject
    This painting is inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 6, lines 144-312. Niobe, daughter of Tantalus and Queen of Thebes, is punished for having dared to suggest, because she had seven sons and seven daughters, that she was superior to the goddess Leto (or Latona). Apollo and Artemis, children of Leto, killed all of Niobe's offspring in revenge and she herself wept until she was turned into stone.
    Related Drawings
    D53/35 Niobe from An Italian Sketchbook Victoria & Albert Museum Sketchbook p. 35
    D280/27 Study of two Herms, Italian Sketchbook, 1754, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, p. 28(r)
    D325 The Children of Niobe, The British Museum
    D355 Recumbent Male Nude, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    D369 Ascribed to Wilson, Landscape Study, Victoria & Albert Museum
    Related Prints
    E52 William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, Niobe, 1788, National Museum Wales, Cardiff (NMW A 11416)
    E54 William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson Niobe, 1792, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven
    E54A William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, Niobe, 1792, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
    E58 William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, Niobe, 1803, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (1577/3)
    E65 William Pengree Sherlock after Wilson, Niobe, c.1820, The British Museum
    E79/1 Samuel Lacey after Wilson, Niobe, The British Museum
    E79/3 John Charles Varrall after Wilson, Niobe, (The National Gallery) No. 1
    E86 William James Linton after Wilson, Destruction of the Children of Niobe, The British Museum
    Versions
    See 'Links' tab
    Related Works by Other Artists
    [1] Gaspard Dughet, The Cascade, late 1660s, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
    [2] William Hodges (1744-1797) after Wilson, Niobe, graphite, brown and white chalk, 370 x 425 mm, ex-Paul Sandby collection, Christie's 12 December 1981 (40i). Location unknown.
    [3] Jacques-Louis David, Apollo and Diana attacking the Children of Niobe, 1772, Dallas Museum of Art, USA
    Critical commentary
    An exercise in Sublime landscape. A version of the subject was famously criticised by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his Discourse XIV (1788): 'Our late ingenious academician, Wilson, has, I fear, been guilty, like many of his predecessors, of introducing gods and goddess, ideal beings, into scenes which were by no means prepared to receive such personages. His landskips were in reality too near common nature to admit supernatural objects. In consequence of this mistake, in a very admirable picture of a storm, which I have seen of his hand, many figures are introduced in the fore-ground, some in apparent distress, and some struck dead, as a spectator would naturally suppose, by the lightning; had not the painter, injudiciously (as I think) rather chosen that their death should be imputed to a little Apollo, who appears in the sky, with his bent bow, and that those figures should be considered as the children of Niobe.'

    In the case of the present version, Joseph Farington recorded in 1802 that he had 'called with Daniell at Parke's in Dean Street, and saw a Niobe, by Wilson, painted for Sir Peter Leicester.' (Diary, 2 March 1802). His son, Sir John Fleming Leicester had sold the picture to John Parke (1745-1829), who was collecting paintings on a large scale. He was the principal oboist of England and played in the Duke of Cumberland's band at Covent Garden, where Wilson had had his studio. Farington later reported that according to Northcote, Parke had paid 300 guineas for the picture, adding 'It is dearly purchased not being of Wilson's first quality.' (Diary, 22 June 1803). Cumberland was also the original owner of P90 The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, which, according to Farington, his nephew the Duke of Gloucester had unsuccessfully offered to Sir John Leicester for £500 (Diary, 2 May 1806).
    Bibliography
    J. Spence, Polymetis, Book 2, London 1747, pp. 96-100 and 111; Phillis Wheatley, 'Niobe in Distress for her Children' in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, Boston, 12 June 1773; Booth Notes Doc. 5, p. 1; Farington Diary, vol. 5, p. 1754 (2 March 1802); vol. 6, p. 2062 (22 June 1803) & p. 2423 (7 October 1804); vol. 7, p. 2743 (2 May 1806); Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Catalogue of Paintings, 1921, no. 462 (attributed); Whitley 1800-1820, p. 296; [W. Pach et al.], exh.cat., New York, World's Fair, Masterpieces of Art, 1940, p. 110, no. 158; WGC, p. 162, pl. 18 (version 3 of P90B - lost Beaumont-National Gallery picture); R. Paulson, Literary Landscape Turner and Constable, 1982, p. 53, pl. 21; M. Paley, The Apocalyptic Sublime, 1986, p. 102, pl. 51; K. Baetjer, Glorious Nature: British Landscape Painting 1750-1850, 1993, p. 19; E.K. Waterhouse, Painting in Britain 1530-1790, 1994, p. 237, pl. 184 (re P90B); W. Vaughan, British Painting: The Golden Age, 1999, pp. 224-25, pl. 161 (re P90 - Yale Center for British Art version)
    More Information
    This painting is a slightly larger studio version of P90B (ex-National Gallery destroyed) that differs in the distribution of light and shade and in the landscape details. The Orrock-Linton sale catalogue of 1895 gives a description of the figures but at some later date the foreground figures were overpainted and made into rocks and Apollo and Artemis were hidden by a dark cloud. The painting was then known as The Storm. The repaints were removed in 1935.
    Condition/Conservation
    Relined. Backed in foamboard. In early twentieth-century classical frame.
    Updated by Compiler
    2021-09-21 00:00:00

    Work of Art

    Drawings

    • Studies and Designs done in Rome in the Year 1752, p. 35 Niobe, Victoria & Albert Museum
    • Study of two Herms, Italian Sketchbook, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven, p. 28(r)
    • The Children of Niobe, The British Museum
    • Recumbent Male Nude, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • Ascribed to Wilson, Landscape Study, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

    Prints

    • William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, Niobe, 1788, National Museum Wales, Cardiff
    • William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, Niobe, 1792, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven
    • William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, .Niobe, 1792, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
    • William Sharp and Samuel Smith after Wilson, Niobe, 1803, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
    • William Pengree Sherlock after Wilson Niobe, c.1820, The British Museum
    • Samuel Lacey after Wilson, Niobe, c.1836 The British Museum
    • John Charles Varrall after Wilson, Niobe, 1836, (The National Gallery, No. 1)
    • William James Linton after Wilson, XXIII Destruction of the Children of Niobe, 1857,The British Museum

    Versions

    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, Private Collection at Ashridge, England
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth / Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The Destruction of Niobe's Children, ex-National Gallery; destroyed 1944
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The Destruction of Niobe's Children, Private Collection, Devon
    • Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782) The Destruction of the Children of Niobe, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven

    Biographies

    • Joseph Farington (1747-1821)
    • Sir Peter Leicester (1732-1770)

    Documents

    • William George Constable, Richard Wilson
    • Joseph Farington, The Diary of Joseph Farington, July 1793 - December 1821
    • William Thomas Whitley, Art in England 1800-1820
    • Benjamin Booth, Unpublished Notes, Document 5: List of Wilson's Works with Owners
    © Richard Wilson OnlineCreditsCopyright & DisclaimerPrivacy