Accession Number
1997/1.70

Title
The Last Supper

Artist(s)
Eugène Delacroix

Artist Nationality
French (culture or style)

Object Creation Date
probably 1862

Medium & Support
pen and brown ink on blued white wove paper

Dimensions
4 15/16 in x 7 13/16 in (12.54 cm x 19.84 cm);14 3/8 in x 19 3/8 in (36.51 cm x 49.21 cm)

Credit Line
Gift of the Lannan Foundation in Honor of the Pelham Family

Label copy

This sheet belongs to a set of drawings that Delacroix made toward the very end of his life, from January to February 1862. The exact purpose of these drawings is unknown. Until now only ten such drawings have been recorded, most on the theme of the Passion of Christ. These drawings are in museums in Amiens, Bremen, Bucharest, and Princeton, in the Louvre, and in a private collection in Paris. All seem to have been executed in brown ink with a reed pen. Hovering on the edge of abstraction, they are audaciously minimalistic in their use of broad, loose pen strokes describing loops and blunt marks, which dissolve the figures into signs of spirituality without relinquishing narrative meaning. Himself a skeptic in religious matters, Delacroix was drawn to these scenes, rendering them with a directness of expression rivaling that in Rembrandt’s late works, which with they have been compared.

Primary Object Classification
Drawing

Collection Area
Western

Rights
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Figures
Last Supper
seated
study
table