Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"

Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"

Eugène Leroux

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The palette, pistol, and note lying on the floor indicate that an artist, overcome by adversity, has tragically taken his life. This lithograph reproduces a painting by Decamps of ca. 1836, now at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, whose subject may have been suggested by the 1835 suicides of fellow artists Léopold Robert and Baron Antoine-Jean Gros–the latter distressed by harsh criticism of his late paintings. The print is number 59 in the series "Les Artistes Contemporains."

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"Le Suicide, from "Les Artistes Contemporains"

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.