La peine de mort

Details

FÉLICIEN-JOSEPH-VICTOR ROPS (1833-1898)
La peine de mort
signed Felicien Rops (lower right)
black chalk and grey wash on paper, indistinct watermark
40 x 28 cm. (15 ¾ x 11 1⁄16 in.)

Provenance

Eugène Rodrigues (1853-1928), Paris; Moline, Paris, 7 March 1900, lot 19.

Exhibited

Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Aus der Werkstatt des Künstlers – Druckgraphik und vorbereitende Zeichnungen der Sammlung Hegewisch, March 1999 - October 2000, p. 23 (ill.) & p. 89.

Engraved

By Felicien Rops, softground etching, circa 1880.

Conditions of sale

Brought to you by

Zack Boutwood Cataloguer

zboutwood@christies.com +44 (0) 20 7389 2025

Lot Essay

This haunting drawing of a woman clutching her hair as she looks up to the sky in the glimmer of sunrise, with the looming guillotine in the background and its victims' severed heads barely hidden by the white sheet in the foreground, is preparatory for an etching of the same title, dated to circa 1880, an example of which is in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio (inv. no. 2014.328).

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