Detail of Automedon with the Horses of Achilles by Regnault in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, June 2010

Automedon with the Horses of Achilles
1868
Henri Regnault, French, 1843–1871

Dimensions: 315 x 329 cm (124 x 129 1/2 in.)

Medium or Technique: Oil on canvas

Classification: Paintings
Type: Mythological; Nude; Animal; Oversize

Accession Number: 90.152

Regnault's painting illustrates a story from Homer's Iliad. Automedon, chariot driver for the Greek warrior Achilles, restrains the horses Xanthos (behind) and Balios, two beasts who could predict the future. As Regnault wrote, "the horses, aware that their master [Achilles] is taking them into combat, and that this combat will be the last and will cost him his life, struggle and wrest with the groom who has come to take them from their pasture. One of them, chestnut brown, rises like a great dark phantom, outlining himself against the sky. I wanted to give the picture a foretaste of disaster."

Text from: www.mfa.org/collections/object/automedon-with-the-horses-...