For six months in 1893, much of the world’s greatest artworks were on exhibit in the Art Place at the World’s Fair in Chicago. Not everyone in town knew how to behave themselves around it.

The Palace of Fine Arts by Childe Hassam.

Within weeks of the opening of the Columbian Exposition, one oil painting was nearly damaged by an overly enthusiastic visitor to the galleries. Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestes was one of four oil paintings and two sculptures exhibited at the Fair by Sir Frederick Leighton (1830–1896). One of the most famous British artists of the Victorian age, Leighton served as the chairman of the Committee on Fine Arts for Great Britain and as president of their Royal Academy in 1893.

Fondness for classical mythology

“The best and most permanently valuable examples of the British art of to-day are those in which an appeal is made to some other than the purely aesthetic emotions,” wrote Humphry Ward, art critic art critic of the London Times. Ward included Leighton in his list of great names in English painting, “for all his fondness for abstractions and for classical mythology.”

Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestes (1869–71) is a 51 1/8 x 104 1/2 in. canvas that hung in Gallery 18 of the Palace of Fine Arts. The painting was on loan from Sir Bernhard Samuelson M. P. and reportedly was greatly admired by the English poet Robert Browning.

Leighton’s classical work portrays the story of Hercules and Alcestis, ready to sacrifice her life for that of her husband Admetus. “The grim, black-winged angel is powerless in the grasp of Hercules, who holds him fast until he promises that Alcestes shall live,” wrote the Chicago Inter Ocean. “She lies the central figure in a group of startled men and women, who watch the struggle with fearful interest.”

“Miss Inquisitive rips the costly canvas.” Despite the caption from this illustration accompanying the Chicago Times article, the canvas suffered only an indentation. [Image from “Vandalism at the Fair” Chicago Times June 3, 1893.]

Quivered under the pressure

A struggle and fearful interest of a different sort took place in front of the canvas while on display at the Columbian Exposition. The Chicago Times reported on the incident of alleged vandalism:

A woman passing down the main hall of the British section was attracted by the magnificent coloring and splendid action in Sir Frederick Leighton’s Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestes.

So deeply impressed was she by the wonderous beauties of Sir Frederick’s masterpiece that she attracted the attention of her escort to it. Both pressed close to the iron rail supposed to protect the paintings from the hands of injudicious visitors. The woman lifted toward to picture her umbrella, and, to emphasize her comments on the recumbent figure of Alcestes, placed the point directly against the canvas. It quivered under the pressure and sank deep around the point.

A group of artists standing near wrung their hands, expecting every instant to see the umbrella tear its way into the canvas. One looked around for a Columbian guard and another, deeming the masterpiece of more value than the conventionalities, started forward to demonstrate with the woman of the umbrella.

Just before he reached her side the engine was slowly lowered and all necessity for intervention was past for the time being. But the body of Alcestes bore for a long time the indentation caused by the umbrella.

The Chicago Times noted that such an egregious incident would never take place in the art museums of Europe or New York, where patrons do not carry their bumbershoots into the galleries. “Free check booths for canes and umbrellas are a pressing necessity at every entrance to the art palace,” the paper advised. “Then there will be no chance of the custodians having to experience the humiliation of informing some great European master that his noblest work has been ruined beyond repair while in the custody of Americans.”

Exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis by Frederic Lord Leighton is now in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford , CT.

Now titled Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis, the painting is owned by the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford , CT, and currently is on view there. The indentation from 1893 presumably is no longer visible.

SOURCES

“In the Art Gallery” Chicago Inter Ocean July 16, 1893, p. 27.

“Notes and Comments” Hartford (CT) Daily Courant Jan. 23, 1893, p. 4.

“Vandalism at the Fair” Chicago Times June 3, 1893, p. 5.

Ward, Humphry “English Art” in Art of the World Illustrated in the Paintings, Statuary, and Architecture of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Volume 2 Ripley Hitchcock (Ed.). Appleton, 1893.

https://www.fredericleighton.org/hercules-wrestling-with-death-for-the-body-of-alcestis/