La peine de mort

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).