La despedida de Telémaco y Eucaris

By 1818 Jacques-Louis David was an exile. He had voted for the execution of Louis XVI in 1793, and when the monarchy returned after Waterloo he left France for good and settled in Brussels. There the painter of stern republican duty turned to something softer, young lovers out of myth. Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, wraps an arm around the nymph Eucharis before he must sail away and leave her, his gaze already elsewhere while she holds on to the moment. David was in his late sixties, cut off from Paris and the great public commissions of his prime, painting intimate mythologies for private buyers. A German count paid him 5,000 francs for this one.