Hamlet Reproaches His Mother

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

After Goethe’s "Faust," Delacroix chose "Hamlet" as his next major illustration project. The artist’s interest in Shakespeare began early—he wrote about reading and translating passages in 1819. Among the first subjects he undertook from the play was act 3, scene 4, in which Hamlet shows his mother a portrait of his late father, reproaching her for marrying his murderous uncle Claudius. The use of a straightedge to organize the architecture of the space—an uncommon procedure for Delacroix—demonstrates the care with which he prepared his prints.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art