Sketch for Chiron and Achilles

Achilles, the greatest fighter of the Trojan War, was handed over as a small child to the centaur Chiron, who raised him on Mount Pelion. According to the Greek mythographer Apollodorus, Chiron fed the boy on the innards of lions and wild boars and on the marrow of bears, and taught him to hunt. Here the lesson takes place in the sky. Achilles sits astride the centaur's back among the clouds, both of them drawing their bows, while an eagle crosses overhead. Sargent painted this sketch in oil over pencil between 1922 and 1924, while working out the paintings for the ceilings around the museum's grand staircase, and the finished canvas of the same subject was put up there in 1925. Chiron was the centaur the Greeks remembered as a teacher of heroes, and Jason and the healer Asclepius had been his pupils too.