Eugène Delacroix
French, 1798-1863
The Queen Tries to Console Hamlet (act 1, sc. 2), 1834
lithograph
9 61/64 x 7 3/4 in.
SBMA, Museum purchase, Alfred Moir Endowment Fund
2013.5.1
“I have no love for reasonable painting. There is in me an old leaven, some black depth which must be appeased. If I am not quivering and excited like a serpent in the hands of a soothsayer, I am uninspired. I must recognize this and accept it. Everything good that I have done has come to me in this way.” – Eugene Delacroix
RESEARCH PAPER
Eugene Delacroix was born near Paris, in 1798. By age 16, he was a destitute orphan. Support eventually came from his uncle, who backed and encouraged Delacroix’s work. Delacroix first studied drawing, writing, and music at the Imperial-Lycée in Paris, and then advanced to the École des Beaux-Arts, one of the most prestigious art schools in France.
Despite his difficult early years, he achieved respect and prominence in his 30’s as a leader of French Romanticism, a cultural movement concerned about caring for others, promoting individual liberty, and supporting democratic ideas. Romantic works of art include influences of “turbulent emotions, complex composition, soft outlines, and sometimes heroic or exotic subject matter.” (Getlein, p. 551)
Although most of Delacroix’s most well-known works are colorful oils on canvas, for a period of time he had become interested in printing, and created over a hundred black-and-white lithographs. “One of the biases we have perpetuated concerning the art of Eugene Delacroix is that he was a great colorist and less than a great draftsman. That he was one of the greatest colorists of the 19th century cannot be denied, but that he was not an accomplished draftsman should be challenged.” (Shirey. p. 484)
In 1834 he produced a series of 13 lithographs depicting the most pivotal points in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” called “Treize Sujets dessinés par Eugène Delacroix (Thirteen Subjects Drawn by Eugène Delacroix)”. Delacroix later added three additional prints in 1843. He apparently attended at least one live performance of the play as an English production in Paris in 1827.
The works were printed in a chine applique-style: black ink on thin, silk-like, white paper, which was backed with more durable, thicker paper. There was no text besides the captions gleaned from the play.
“The Queen Tries to Console Hamlet” is the first plate in the series. Here, in Act I, Scene 2, Gertrude urges her son to shed his dark attire. The caption under the print reads: “Cher Hamlet, écarte cette sombre apparence, et jette un regard ami sur le roi.” (Translation from French: “Dear Hamlet, put aside this somber appearance, and cast a friendly glance at the king.” Shakespeare’s original quote in English: “Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.”) Still mourning his father, and distressed at his mother's hasty re-marriage to his father’s brother, Hamlet sees no reason to comply, and his glance demonstrates growing suspicion of his uncle, the new king.
Delacroix’s lithographs reflect the influence of Romanticism in several ways: the “turbulent emotions” of the characters in each plate are made evident through the “complex composition” reflected in facial expressions and body language. In this lithograph, Hamlet, the protagonist, is clearly the central figure of the piece, dressed in black in contrast to the light clothing of Gertrude and the king. All other faces look toward the center, where Hamlet is placed, but while he faces his mother, he looks toward the king. Gertrude’s bent right arm on Hamlet’s draws the eye across Hamlet to the king. Both men keep their left arms rigid at their sides as their right arms are also bent, and the king’s right arm ends at his sword, as a foreshadowing. The stances of the three main figures mimic each other: In addition to the mimicry of their arms, their feet all point in the same direction. The use of details is evident in the elaborate garments and in the architecture of the throne room. The people in the crowd appear blurred and soft compared to the striking look of the characters in the foreground. The two faces between Hamlet and the king seem to be whispering to each other while looking at Hamlet as if they know something that Hamlet does not know.
Delacroix printed the 20 sets of the Hamlet plates at his own expense, and 60 sets were later made on white woven paper. The series was not well received — it was either ignored or elicited negative responses. The lack of financial and critical success of his lithographs might have led to his decision to abandon his work in this field after
1843. However, the Hamlet series is now considered as some of the best work ever created by Delcroix, and it has been reproduced several times after his death.
Delacroix kept a journal of his daily life for many years. The last journal entry was dated about 2 months before his death. This passage seems to sum up Delacroix’s feelings about seeing, appreciating, and knowing art: “The first quality in a picture is to be a delight for the eyes. This does not mean that there need be no sense in it; it is like poetry which, if it offend the ear, all the sense in the world will not save from being bad. They speak of having an ear for music; not every eye is fit to taste the subtle joys of painting. The eyes of many people are dull or false; they see objects literally, of the exquisite they see nothing.”
“The Queen Tries to Console Hamlet” is an example of an “exquisite” lithograph because it is a beautiful and well executed work of art used to bring Hamlet to life. In the plate we see the use of details, shading, and composition, all of which invites us to understand and connect to the characters and setting in Hamlet. Delacroix has created an extraordinary version of an ordinary scene.
Prepared for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art Docent Council by Barbara Ross, 2020
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chine Appliqué [Blog post]. (n.d.). Retrieved from Antique Prints Blog:
http://antiqueprintsblog.blogspot.com/
Cumming, R. (2015). Art: A visual history (2015 ed.). New York, New York: DK.
Delacroix, E., Wellington, H., & Norton, L. (2010). The journal of Eugene Delacroix: A selection (3rd ed.). London: Phaidon Press.
Eugène Delacroix - Biography and Legacy. (n.d.). Retrieved from The Art Story website:
https://www.theartstory.org/
"Eugène Delacroix's Lithographs of Hamlet." Emory College English Department,
http://english.emory.edu/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/dh.html
Exhibition on Line: Hamlet. (n.d.). Retrieved from Maitres Des Arts Graphique website:
https://www.maitres-des-arts-graphiques.com/index.html
Getlein, M., & Gilbert, R. (2010). Living with art (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Jacobs, T. (2013, December 11). Hamlet Through the Eyes of an Artist. Santa Barbara Independent. Retrieved from https://www.independent.com
Katz, B. (2018, September 17). Delacroix, the Visionary Romantic Artist, Gets First Major North American Retrospective. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved from
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/
Shakespeare, W. (n.d.). The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. In MIT. Retrieved from
http://shakespeare.mit.edu
Shirey, David L. "Delacroix the Draftsman." New York Times.com, New York Times, 27 Mar. 1977,
www.nytimes.com/1977/03/27/archives/long-island-weekly-delacroix-the-draftsman.html
POSTSCRIPT
On Wednesday, Dec 11, 2013 the Santa Barbara Independent Newspaper published an article announcing an exhibit at the Santa Barbara Museum: Hamlet Through the Eyes of an Artist—Delacroix Takes on Shakespeare.
“Arguably his greatest accomplishment along these lines is his Hamlet suite, a series of 16 lithographs on display through January 26, 2014, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The images depict such key moments as the play-within-the-play, the murder of Polonius, and the death of Ophelia.
Elizabeth Saari Browne, who will give a guided tour of the Hamlet series on Thursday, December 12, at 6:30 p.m., is full of both knowledge of and enthusiasm for these remarkable works, created when lithography was still a new medium. Created over a period of nine years (1834-43), the best of them do with lines and shadings what Shakespeare did with words: beautifully convey the characters’ mixed emotions and deep ambivalence.”
COMMENTS
The “Hamlet” lithographs can be divided into those designed in 1834 or 1835 and those dated 1843, the year the series was published. Though this is not a hard and fast distinction, the early illustrations tend to handle the medium in a more theatrical way, making histrionic capital out of stark contrasts of dark and light. (The technique is even more pronounced in the “Faust” lithographs of 1827.) At this point Delacroix seems most in the grip of his memories of “Hamlet” in the theatre: we several time encounter splendid dramatic gestures that recall Hogarth’s Garrick. The later and more numerous illustrations bring an underlying note of quietness into the play and are more truly pictorial in the way they work. The series still makes a coherent whole, but we feel that by the end Delacroix understood “Hamlet” better. The early power and bravura are deepened. More precisely, as he grows more sensitive to Shakespeare’s poetry, so does his command of the lithographic medium grow subtler, his line more spontaneous and less bent on making an effect. This is a delicate thing to describe, though plain to the eye. When Baudelaire refereed to "the charming indecision of the drawing on Hamlet," his perception was apt yet limited. He attributes a characteristic of Shakespeare’s hero to Delacroix’ style. Perhaps the artist intended us to link the two, but his quivering, nuanced line is in fact as wiry as it is indecisive. It moves differently, in ample volumetric folds, in rendering the recumbent pathos of Ophelia or the penitent Gertrude from the nervous way it moved to capture the splenetic young prince about to draw back the arras. Pathos, meditativeness and violent energy all met each other in his view of the play.
Most pictorial Hamlets look weighed down with their own souls, but Delacroix always gives a baroque flourish to his pensiveness. From the 1834 lithograph to Act I, scene ii, his Hamlet has a stillness that is never really still. Caught between a Gertrude who protests too much and a strong, regal Claudius, he seems irresolute only until we notice that he is holding himself in suspense. The alert way he both shrinks from Claudius yet tilts his head towards him makes his uncle uneasy. Behind him the anxious faces of the watching court register the tension, though they cannot see as we do the counterpoint of nervous restraint in the protagonists’ hands (a superb piece of drawing). Hamlet’s delicacy (Delacroix is said to have used a female model for him) is no mere dreaminess "sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought." His quickness of mind is intimated in his physical agility: his thoughts have depth not because he looks philosophical but because his body is on the “qui vive.” His face has a capacity for wit and scorn; the pathos of his enforced idleness, as in the play, is underlined by his litheness and his quickness of attention. He is as fitted to fence or to tease Polonius as to soliloquize, a creature of lines that are never quite still.
- David Gervais, Delacroix' Hamlet, Cambridge Quarterly, v. 13 (1984), pp. 40-70
SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS
Hamlet, suite of 16 lithographs
Of all of Shakespeare‘s works, Hamlet took particular hold of Delacroix‘s imagination, and he returned to the play continuously in drawings, paintings, and lithographs. Unlike earlier depictions of the play, Delacroix‘s Hamlet suite is unique in that it concentrates on climactic moments of intense emotion rather than attempting to illustrate the narrative in its entirety. Typical of a Romantic interest in states of mind, Delacroix portrays Hamlet as alternately ambivalent, desperate, haughty, annoyed, cunning, indecisive, and enraged. While the captions record well-known passages of the play and suggest a straightforward account of a single moment, Delacroix nuances the psychological complexity of the characters through exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, to pantomime the multifaceted emotions introduced through fragments of theatrical oratory. Delacroix‘s unconventional approach to literary illustration was initially poorly received by critics, and it was only posthumously that the suite was recognized for its distinctive originality.
Delacroix began his series of Hamlet lithographs in 1834, and returned to them intermittently until 1843, when they were initially published. The first edition, issued at Delacroix‘s personal expense, consisted of only thirteen images. After Delacroix‘s death, the lithographic stones were sold to Paul Meurice (1820–1905). In addition to the thirteen published plates, the lot included three stones that Delacroix did not utilize for the first edition: Hamlet and Ophelia, Ophelia’s Song, and Hamlet and Laertes in Ophelia’s Grave. Meurice had the set reissued, incorporating the three previously unpublished scenes into a second edition in 1864.
Delacroix and Lithography
The Hamlet suite represents an extraordinary achievement in the relatively new medium (lithography was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder).Unlike more traditional printing techniques, the process of lithography allows the artist to draw with a greasy crayon directly on the surface of the printing stone, typically limestone. The stone is then treated with a combination of acid and water, which, when submitted to ink, repels the ink in all places of the stone not touched by the crayon. The ink is transferred to the printed page when the stone is pressed against the paper support. Not only did lithography represent a quicker and less expensive printing process, but the technique of drawing directly on the stone allowed artists to achieve greater tonal gradations, less easily accomplished by the more linear techniques of engraving. For the Hamlet suite, Delacroix utilized the entire stone to create sensual harmonies and rich contrasts of light and dark.
The Queen Tries to Console Hamlet (act 1, sc. 2), 1834
Caption: ―Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted colour off, and let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.‖
This scene represents Hamlet‘s entrance into the play. The young prince‘s first lines reflect his concern that his uncle Claudius, now the king through marriage to Hamlet‘s mother, Queen Gertrude, is only interested in taking possession of the castle and his inheritance. Thinking that her son is upset merely by his father‘s passing, Gertrude seeks to console Hamlet, reminding him that ―all that lives must die,‖ and encouraging his loyalty to king and country. Delacroix hints at Hamlet‘s suspicions through his sidelong glance at Claudius.
- Delacroix and the Matter of Finish, 2013