Nov 03, 2021 - Sale 2586

Sale 2586 - Lot 705

Price Realized: $ 12,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
EUGÈNE DELACROIX
(Saint-Maurice 1798-1863 Paris)
Le Tasse dans le Maison des Fous.

Pencil on cream wove paper mounted on card stock. 290x340 mm; 11 1/2x13 1/2 inches. With the artist's initials red ink stamp (Lugt 838a, lower left recto).

Provenance: Jean Pierre Selz, Paris; Lynven Inc., New York; private collection, London.

Another version of this drawing is in the Cuellar-Nathan Collection, Zurich, which was sold at the artist Eugène Devéria's estate sale (Paris, April 9, 1858, number 122). That drawing was sent to Delacroix to be signed (see Joubin, Correspondence Generale d'Eugène Delacroix Paris, 1936, volume IV, pages 26 and 27). It is believed that it was at this time that Delacroix executed this second, current drawing of the subject, one that fascinated him most of his life.

Devéria also made a lithograph of the subject from Delacroix's drawing.

Dr. Frank Andersen Trapp, Professor Emeritus, Amherst College and Director of the Mead Art Museum 1969-1990, Massachusetts, has seen this drawing and confirmed the attribution to Delacroix.