Exhibition | Romantic Shakespeare

Posted in exhibitions by Editor on June 3, 2017

Now on view in Saint-Omer:

Shakespeare Romantique: Füssli, Delacroix, Chassériau
Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer, 24 May — 30 August 2017

Curated by Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Marie-Lys Marguerite, and Roman Saffré

In May 2017, the musée de l’hôtel Sandelin presents a new exhibition organized as part of a prestigious partnership with the musée du Louvre and the musée national Eugène-Delacroix. The exhibition will present some 70 exceptional works. These painters, printmakers, and sculptors built a collective imagination around the parts of an author who was particularly inspirational for them throughout the 19th century, the great English playwright Shakespeare. Fuseli, Delacroix, Chassériau, Moreau, Préault, and Doré were able to recreate in their creations the feelings, the strangeness, and the morality of Shakespearean tragedies. Their works still influence the staging of Shakespeare’s plays.

In 1824, Stendhal wrote: “All the great writers were romantics of their time.” In fact, the 19th century was marked by a renewed interest in the great literary frescoes past Dante, Ariosto, Shakespeare, Racine become essential sources of inspiration for the romantic authors, but also for painters, who then have a special relationship to the art of staging.

Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth, 1784, 221 × 160 cm (Paris: Louvre).

The early 19th century saw the birth of a true rediscovery of Shakespeare in France. The feelings of strangeness and morality in each of Shakespearean tragedies influence painters, printmakers and sculptors to create some art of emotion and narrative. The exhibition aims to show the the creation of a collective imagination that gave rise to the plays of Shakespeare. These designs still influence the staging of the texts of the English playwright. Works presented in the exhibition come mainly from the collections of the Louvre, the Musée national Eugène-Delacroix, the d’Orsay Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Curators
Dominique de Font-Réaulx, General Curator of Heritage and Director of Eugene Delacroix Museum
Marie-Lys Margaret, Heritage curator and director of the Museum of Fine Arts of Arras
Romain Saffré, Heritage curator and director of museums Saint-Omer

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