Emil Hannover, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of C. W. Eckersberg no. 110, mentioned p . 66.

Provenance: Privy councillor and consul general in Paris Michael Classen. His widow. Classen was Eckersberg's patron in Paris, and he appears very often in the painter's diary, as he often helped Eckersberg financially.

Literature: Peter Michael Hornung and Kasper Monrad, “C. W. Eckersberg - dansk malerkunsts fader”, 2005 p. 92 mentions, that Michael Classen bought four paintings by Eckersberg in March 1812. Here is reproduced “Tegnekunstens oprindelse” (the origin of draughtmanship) owned by Fyns Kunstmuseum with the same measurement as “Oedipus and Antigone”. These two paintings must be two of the four Classen ordered.

Oedipus' fate was that he should kill his father and then marry his mother, with whom he had four children, including Antigone. When Oedipus realises, what he has done, he blinds himself, as he realizes his guilt and that it is inevitable. Eckersberg depicts the blind Oedipus and his daughter Antigone, leading her father over a bridge in a rocky landscape with a very profound representation of nature.