Delacroix 2018

22. Study for the Lithograph “Hamlet and Laertes at the Grave of Ophelia” Etude pour la lithographie “Hamlet et Laertes dans la fosse d’Ophelie”

c. 1843 Pencil on paper 10 3 ⁄ 4 x 7 3 ⁄ 8

inches (27.6 x 18.9 cm) Estate sale stamp lower left: Lugt 838a

PROVENANCE Delacroix sale 1864, no.405; Purchased by A. Robaut for 205 FF; Posssibly his sale, December 18, 1907, n° 62 (with an incorrect indication of the location of the stamp); Vente Albert Pontremoli, Drouot, June 11, 1924, no. 23; Vente Louis Godefroy, Paris, 29 avenue Henri Martin, 1924, no. 217; Vente duc de Trévise, Galerie Charpentier, May 19, 1938, no. 2; Purchased by Vidal Bloch.

LITERATURE Robaut, no. 755.

EXHIBITIONS Paris, Ecole nationale des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Eugène Delacroix au profit de la souscription destinée à élever un monument à sa mémoire, March 6–April 1885, no 379 (Property of A. Robaut);

New York, Wildenstein, Eugène Delacroix 1798 – 1863, Loan Exhibition in Aid of the Quaker Emergency Service, October 18– November 18, 1944, no. 74; Paris, Galerie Marcel Guiot, Exposition E. Delacroix oeuvre gravé et dessins , November 25–December 24, 1927, no. 53. Between 1834 and 1843, Delacroix worked on a project to illustrate Shakespeare’s Hamlet which he published in 1843 as a suite of thirteen lithographs. The 1843 edition excluded his compositions for Hamlet and Laertes and two other scenes, while a posthumous edition published all sixteen.

Hamlet and Laertes at the Grave of Ophelia , 1843, lithograph