La Mort d'Ophélie

In 1827 an English theatre company came to Paris and performed Shakespeare, and the young French Romantics were electrified. Delacroix was among them, and Hamlet in particular stayed with him for decades. This is his Ophelia, driven mad and drowning in the stream, a death Shakespeare never shows on stage but has the queen describe in a few lines. Delacroix seizes the exact moment the willow branch she clings to gives way and she slips backward into the water, her dress still spread across the surface. He returned to this subject again and again. He first painted it in 1838 and made this larger version in 1844, one of three he would leave behind.