Ariadne

George Frederic Watts was the most philosophically ambitious painter in Victorian Britain — an artist who saw painting as a vehicle for moral and spiritual communication, his allegorical canvases addressing hope, love, death, and human aspiration in forms accessible to a broad public. 'Ariadne' (1889) depicts the mythological figure abandoned by Theseus on Naxos before being found and consoled by Dionysus — a subject of abandonment and rescue that Watts could approach through the psychological dimension of the female figure in extremity. His classical mythological subjects were among his most ambitious works.

Watts renders Ariadne with the monumental, sculptural quality he brought to all his allegorical figure subjects — the form modeled with solidity and weight that gives the mythological figure physical presence. His palette for such subjects tends toward the muted, deep tones of his characteristic allegorical work: rich but not brilliant, the color serving the psychological and moral content rather than purely decorative effect. The landscape setting provides the mythological geography of the island shore.