The Good Samaritan
1861
Medium
Lithograph on white China paper laid down on white wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 56.4 × 44.3 cm (22 1/4 × 17 1/2 in.); Sheet: 69 × 55.4 cm (27 3/16 × 21 13/16 in.)
Classification
lithograph
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
109503
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Considered the masterwork of Bresdin' s career and one of the outstanding lithographs of the nineteenth century, The Good Samaritan relates the parable of the heathen who aided an injured traveller, whom a priest and a Levite had passed by with averted eyes. The work was first exhibited in the state-sponsored Salon of 1861 under the title Abd el-Kader aiding a Christian, in reference to the Muslim hero who personally saved thousands of Christians from Syrian aggression in 1860. While the event s...
About the Artist
Rodolphe Bresdin · 1822–1885
Rodolphe Bresdin (1822–1885) was a visionary French draughtsman, engraver, and lithographer whose fantastical imagery captured the empathy of rural poverty and the wild exuberance of the imagination. Born on August 12, 1822, in Montrelais near Le Fresne-sur-Loire in Brittany, he grew up in the Breton countryside amid its bardic folklore traditions before a family dispute left him homeless in Paris...