Delacroix 2018

25. Hercules and Hippolyte, Study for a Lunette of The Salon de la Paix Hercule et Hippolyte, esquisse pour une lunette du Salon de la Paix

Oil on canvas 9 5 ⁄ 8 x 18 5 ⁄ 8

inches (24.5 x 47.5 cm) Estate stamp in red wax verso on the stretcher

PROVENANCE Delacroix sale 1864, lot 46; Purchased by Baron Dejean for 46 FF; Sale, 14 May 1873, lot 23, 1500 FF (as Hercule vainqueur du roi d’Oechalie ); Hartmann of Mulhouse;

His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, May 11, 1876, lot 14; Purchased by Louis Bazille, of Montpellier for 1960 FF; Pierre Leenhardt, Montpellier; His sale, May 4, 1922, lot 18, 8500 FF; Sale, Paris, Galerie Charpentier, March 9-10, 1956, lot 37; Sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, November 20, 1996, lot 16.

EXHIBITIONS Paris, Galerie Louis Martinet, Oeuvres d’Eug è ne Delacroix , 26, Boulevard des Italiens, opened August 13, 1864, no. 167.

LITERATURE Robaut 1885, no. 1134; Johnson 1981, Vol. V, no. 586, p. 153, Vol. VI, plate 38, illustrated.

This work is a close compositional study for one of the paintings of the Hercules decorative cycle, Salon de Paix, Hôtel de Ville, commissioned by the City of Paris in 1849. It depicts Hercules’s accomplishment of his ninth labor, the taking of the belt of Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons, who had in turn received it from Ares, the god of war. L. Johnson states that the lunette painting at the Hôtel de Ville closely follows this sketch, with changes only to the position of the horse and of Hercules’s hand, and the addition of a corpse behind the figures (see Johnson 1981, Vol. V, p. 153). The paintings were destroyed by fire in 1871 during the Paris Commune, and are known now only through preliminary studies.