"Owake! what ho! Brabantio! thieves! thieves!": plate 1 from Othello (Act 1, Scene 1)

Théodore Chassériau|William Shakespeare

1844 · Etching, engraving, and roulette on chine collé · Drawings and Prints

In 1844 Eugène Piot commissioned the young Chassériau to prepare fifteen illustrations to Shakespeare's Othello. Inspired by a series of ground-breaking Hamlet lithographs that Delacroix had created one year earlier, the younger artist opted for the more linear technique of etching. His expressive conception of form had been learned in Ingres's studio then developed under Delacroix. In the series, key exchanges offer a compressed summary of much of the play, with a final cluster devoted to the tragic conclusion. Here, in the opening scene, Iago and Roderigo simulate a robbery in order to wake Senator Brabantio and inform him that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with Othello.

Artist

Théodore Chassériau|William Shakespeare

Date

1844

Medium

Etching, engraving, and roulette on chine collé

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932