Hamlet and Laertes at the Tomb of Ophelia

Description

Figures crowd around the tomb at the center of Eugène Delacroix’s drawing of Hamlet and Laertes at Ophelia’s grave. The dense lower gathering gives the place a strong human presence, allowing a scene of loss to become an encounter among living people. Shakespeare’s dramatic subject acquires immediacy through the shared ground and the relationships brought together around it.

Made around 1843, the work uses graphite on tracing paper. Delacroix gives the literary episode the intimate form of a drawing rather than presenting it as a finished painting. The subject’s appeal lies in the relation between two people brought together by another person’s death, where a shared place need not create a shared response. A remembered dramatic world becomes immediate through the particular bodies and encounter being considered on paper.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Eugène Delacroix collection.