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"She thank'd me": plate 2 from Othello (Act 1, Scene 3)

Subject William Shakespeare British
1844
Not on view
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 we see Desdemona entranced by Othello's account of past adventures, a subject that is not staged, but described as Othello explains to the Duke of Venice how he won his wife's hand in marriage.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: "She thank'd me": plate 2 from Othello (Act 1, Scene 3)
  • Series/Portfolio: Suite of fifteen prints: Shakespeare's Othello / Quinze Esquisses à l'eau forte dessinées et gravées par Théodore Chasseriau
  • Artist: Théodore Chassériau (French, Le Limon, Saint-Domingue, West Indies 1819–1856 Paris)
  • Subject: William Shakespeare (British, Stratford-upon-Avon 1564–1616 Stratford-upon-Avon)
  • Date: 1844
  • Medium: Etching, engraving, roulette, and drypoint on chine collé
  • Dimensions: plate: 14 7/16 x 10 3/8 in. (36.6 x 26.3 cm)
    image: 11 x 8 5/16 in. (28 x 21.1 cm)
  • Classification: Prints
  • Credit Line: Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932
  • Object Number: 32.7.5
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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