St Paul at Philippi, 1872

William Charles Thomas Dobson RA (1817 - 1898)

RA Collection: Art

This painting depicts an episode from the Bible in the Book of Acts, in which the apostle Paul encounters an unnamed ‘slave-girl’ in the city of Philippi, renowned for her ability to predict the future. The owners of the enslaved girl are said to have exploited her gift of fortune-telling to become extremely wealthy. Paul, sensing that the girl was possessed by a spirit, purges her of the ability to predict the future and thus angers her owners who can no longer profit from her talent.

In this painting, the artist William Charles Thomas Dobson captures the moment when Paul turns to the girl, who had been following him, and rids her of the spirit that enabled her to tell the future. The ‘spirit of divination’ (Acts 16) is here represented by the owl-like bird in the top left of the picture.

The choice of this New Testament story is unusual for a history painting, and Dobson seems to be the only artist of his time to paint the tale of Paul and the Philippian girl. However, the subject matter reflects a theme that was popular in the Victorian era, that of the ‘fallen’ or the ‘outcast’ woman. These were most commonly encapsulated in art by paintings and prints of Mary Magdalene (who in popular culture was believed to have been a prostitute) and figures like the tragic heroine of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who in the play veers towards a state of insanity and drowns herself.