Boreas

Boreas is an oil painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style created in 1903 by John William Waterhouse.

The painting is titled Boreas, after the Greek god of the north wind and it shows a young girl buffeted by the wind. The 1904 Royal Academy notes described the subject of the painting as:

"In wind-blown draperies of slate-colour and blue, a girl passes through a spring landscape accented by pink blossom and daffodils."

Boreas (Greek: Βορέας, Boréas) was the Greek god of the cold north wind and the bringer of winter. His name meant "North Wind" or "Devouring One". Boreas is depicted as being very strong, with a violent temper to match. He was frequently shown as a winged old man with shaggy hair and beard, holding a conch shell and wearing a billowing cloak. Pausanias wrote that Boreas had snakes instead of feet, though in art he was usually depicted with winged human feet.

Boreas was closely associated with horses. He was said to have fathered twelve colts after taking the form of a stallion, to the mares of Erichthonius, king of Troy. These were said to be able to run across a field of grain without trampling the plants. Pliny (Natural History iv.35 and viii.67) thought that mares might stand with their hindquarters to the North Wind, and bear foals without a stallion. The Greeks believed that his home was in Thrace, and Herodotus and Pliny both describe a northern land known as Hyperborea ("Beyond the North Wind"), where people lived in complete happiness and had extraordinarily long lifespan.

Boreas was also said to have kidnapped Oreithyia, an Athenian princess, from the River Illissus. Boreas had taken a fancy to Oreithyia, and had initially pleaded for her favours, hoping to persuade her. When this failed, he reverted to his usual temper and abducted her as she danced on the banks of the Illissus. Boreas wrapped Oreithyia up in a cloud, raped her, and with her, Boreas fathered two sons—the Boreads, Zetes and Calais—and two daughters—Chione and Cleopatra.

From then on, the Athenians saw Boreas as a relative by marriage. When Athens was threatened by Xerxes, the people prayed to Boreas, who was said to have then caused winds to sink 400 Persian ships.

The abduction of Oreithyia was popular in Athens before and after the Persian War, and was frequently depicted on vase paintings. In these paintings, Boreas was portrayed as a bearded man in a tunic, with shaggy hair that is sometimes frosted and spiked. The abduction was also dramatized in Aeschylus's lost play Oreithyia.

In late accounts, Boreas was the father of Butes and Lycurgus (from different lovers) and the lover of the nymph Pitys.