Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree

Oedipus Taken Down from the Tree represents one of Millet's engagements with classical mythology during the mid-to-late 1840s, before his commitment to peasant subjects became total. The subject refers to the exposure of the infant Oedipus: his feet pierced and bound, he was given to a shepherd by King Laius, who feared the oracle's prophecy. The shepherd, unwilling to abandon the child, takes him down from the tree where he has been left. Millet's 1847 treatment, now in the National Gallery of Canada, focuses on this moment of rescue — a laboring man intervening to save an abandoned child — which resonates with his characteristic sympathy for the vulnerable and dispossessed. The painting preceded his Barbizon move by only two years, and its focus on the rescuing shepherd rather than the royal drama reflects Millet's instinctive identification with working figures. The myth's continuation — Oedipus raised by another family, eventually killing his father and marrying his mother — is entirely outside the frame; Millet takes only the moment of pastoral rescue.

The canvas balances the mythological setting with the immediate physical drama of the rescue, depicting the shepherd's effort to take down the bound infant with careful attention to the figure's posture and the tree's structure. The palette leans toward warm ochres and earth tones consistent with Millet's developing sensibility.