Collection of the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Jason Returning to Demand His Father's Kingdom

Artist/Maker Washington Allston (United States, 1779-1843)

Date1807-1808

Mediumoil and chalk on canvas

DimensionsSight: 168 x 240 in. (426.7 x 609.6 cm)

ClassificationsVisual Works

Credit LineGift of The Washington Allston Trust

Terms

Object number56.140.000

On View

On view

Collections

Art of North America

DescriptionWashington Allston is a seminal figure in the development of American art after the American Revolution. Although he favored neoclassicism while studying art abroad after his graduation from Harvard, he abandoned such influences upon returning to the United States. America's first Romantic artist, he explored a broad range of subject matter, from landscape to portraiture. The subject matter of the museum’s painting derives from Allston's knowledge of classical sources, as well as a series of designs on the same subject made by Jakob Asmus Carstens (1754-1798). The heroic-size composition, which is geometrically ordered around a central statue, remains incomplete. Some areas are roughly sketched in, and other areas of coloration lack glazes. As the principal figure of Jason was never executed, it is the figure of Jason's uncle, Pelias, that dominates the composition. Note the lower right corner of the painting, where the artist has improvised a palette. The canvas, abandoned in Rome when Allston returned to the United States, was sent to Boston after the artist's death. It remains a powerful reminder of Allston's early classical training.
Visual Description

This 14-foot-tall by 20-foot-wide oil and chalk on canvas is an incomplete painting depicting a crowd of people in an open square backed by an ancient Greek temple. The crowd occupies the lower half of the canvas. Some of the life-sized subjects have been fully, or near-fully rendered, but most have been left as a base layer of terracotta red paint. Some subjects are terracotta silhouettes, but others have been sketched-in with thin black and white lines. At our lower righthand corner of the massive canvas is a vertical rectangle smeared with gobs of pink, brown, and terracotta paint; a palette left by the artist.