FERDINAND-VICTOR-EUGÈNE DELACROIX (SAINT MAURICE 1798-1863 PARIS)

This is a preparatory study for one of 17 lithographs illustrating the French translation of Goethe's Faust: a Tragedy, published in Paris in 1828 (L.D. 73). The French collector Étienne Moreau Nélaton (1859-1927) owned another drawing for the same composition, in graphite, with a focus on the characters (Musée du Louvre, inv. RF 10006; L. Delteil, op. cit., 1997, p. 189). Another version in brown ink, with vigorous brush strokes, and in the same direction as the lithograph is in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. FII 3 (PK); see J. Mack-Andrick, Eugène Delacroix, exhib. cat., Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle, 2003-2004, no. 47, ill.).