Eugène Delacroix - Hamlet and his Mother 1849-1850
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Hamlet and his Mother 1849-1850
28x17cm oil/canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
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From Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
This painting depicts the moment in Shakespeare’s epic tragedy Hamlet in which the protagonist, who has been speaking privately with his mother, Queen Gertrude of Denmark, notices a figure behind the curtains of her closet. Immediately afterward, Hamlet will impale the hidden Polonius with his sword, and utter the memorable phrase "How now! A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!" The composition is identical to a black and white lithograph Delacroix made for a portfolio devoted to the play, which was first published in 1843.