Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix

Estate of the artist (L.838a);
with Galerie Kurt Meissner, Zurich

Hinge mounted. There is an old repaired tear to the upper left corner and a light brown stain to the lower right corner, where an old piece of adhesive tape to the verso has shown through the sheet. There are three creases to the upper right edge and small areas of surface dirt throughout. Otherwise in good condition with the medium reasonably fresh throughout. Sold in an Empire style giltwood frame.
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Delacroix executed a number of figure studies in relation to literary works,¹ with a particular emphasis on the writings of William Shakespeare and Goethe’s Faust, for the latter of which the artist produced seventeen lithographs between 1825 and 1827.

The present work is a fine example of Delacroix’s fluid graphic technique and typical of the style he developed during the first quarter of the 1820s.  The study of the man with a beret can be linked to the 1825 lithograph of Macbeth and the Witches,² which was, importantly, not only Delacroix’s first representation of a Shakespearean motif, but also his first experiment with a literary theme.

Parallels to the figure sitting on the right can be found in the 1824 drawing Head of an Old Woman in Profile,³ whilst to her left a sumptuously dressed female figure, her head crowned and her left hand resting on a sword, reflects another popular source of artistic inspiration for Delacroix, that of Medieval and Renaissance costume. 

1. M. Sèrullaz, Inventaire générale des dessins. École française. Dessins d’Eugène Delacroix 1798–1863, Paris 1984, vol. I, pp. 237-269

2. Eugène Delacroix: Sonderausstellung des Landes Baden-Württemberg, exhib. cat., Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, 2003, p. 128, no. 28, reproduced

3. Ibid., p. 116, no. 20, reproduced