Tobias Saying Good-Bye to his Father

Tobias' Farewell to His Father is a painting by the French artist Adolphe William Bouguereau from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, the only painting by Bouguereau in Russian museums.

The painting illustrates the Old Testament plot described in the Book of Tobit (5:9-18). There is a scene of Tobias, the son of Tobit, being sent to collect a debt from Habael, the son of Gavriev, in the Rags of Mizhi: the blind Tobit holds his left hand in a blessing gesture above the head of Tobias bowing before him. To the left behind them is Tobias' companion archangel Raphael, who pretended to be a man named Azariah. On the right, Tobias' mother Anna weeps. At the bottom right is the artist's signature and date: W. Bouguereau 1860.

As follows from the signature, the picture was painted in 1860 and immediately bought by N. A. Kushelev-Bezborodko, and the next year it was shown to the public in St. Petersburg at the exhibition "Paintings and rare works of art belonging to members of the imperial house and private individuals of St. Petersburg". After the death of the owner, the painting, like all the works from the collection of Kushelev-Bezborodko, was willed to be transferred to the Museum of the Academy of Arts and became part of the special Kushelev Gallery there; in the gallery catalogue of 1868 it was listed under the title "Setting off the son of Tobias on the journey"; in 1922 it was transferred to the State Hermitage Museum. It is exhibited in the General Staff Building in the halls dedicated to the Paris Salon.

A fully developed preparatory drawing with charcoal on cardboard is known, having exactly the same dimensions as the finished picture; this drawing was exhibited at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and is in a private collection. A separate drawing by Tobias was also exhibited there, where the character's posture and the folds of his clothes also correspond to the Hermitage painting.

Chief Researcher of the Department of Western European Fine Arts of the State Hermitage, Doctor of Art History A. G. Kostenevich, describing the picture, noted:

In the relief-like "Farewell of Tobias..." everything is subject to an extremely impersonal approach. Behind each fold of clothes there is a meticulous study of the art of Antiquity and the Renaissance, everything is verified and reliably distanced from the viewer by some coldly majestic Byzantinism. Such is academicism in its "chemically pure" form, the category of honed but lifeless mastery.

Earlier, in 1856, Bouguereau painted the painting "The Return of Tobias". All the characters involved in it are repeated in the Hermitage picture. This work was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1857; it is now housed in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon.