Hamlet and the Ghost of his Father

Hamlet and the Ghost of his Father

Adam Vogler

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This dramatic nighttime subject, drawn from Hamlet (act 1, scene 4), shows the prince encountering his father’s ghost outside Elsinore, the Danish royal castle. Restrained by his friend Horatio, Hamlet struggles to follow the spirit, who will later reveal that he was murdered and demand revenge. Vogler’s composition responds to a painting that the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli created in 1789 for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, which the younger artist would have known through prints (see 42.119.545). This finely drawn variation emphasizes the mysterious moonlit atmosphere and adds accurately detailed Renaissance costumes, a strategy in keeping with the historical Romanticism that Vogler learned at the Viennese Academy from the Nazarene painter Joseph von Führich.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hamlet and the Ghost of his FatherHamlet and the Ghost of his FatherHamlet and the Ghost of his FatherHamlet and the Ghost of his FatherHamlet and the Ghost of his Father

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.