Featuring paintings of The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, Manfred, Sardanapalus, and two scenes from the second canto of Don Juan.
Byron
A legend of a young Cossack who has an affair with a married countess in the Polish royal court, and is strapped to the back of a wild horse to ride to his death.
For his third Salon in 1827, he submitted one huge work developed from Lord Byron’s account of the death of Sardanapalus.
Byron, no stranger to forbidden love, swam across the Dardanelles in 1810, retracing the strokes of the legendary Leander who died trying to reach his lover Hero.
Boy meets girl but has to swim a mile in treacherous waters to keep meeting her. When she tells him how she burns with passion, he pushes his luck in the sea.
The Death of Sardanapalus, a story from Orlando Furioso, and the question of narrative in Courbet’s paintings.
The Eclectic Light Company 