Beschreibung:

Edward Matthew Ward R.A. (British, 1816-1879) "La Toilette des Morts - Charlotte Corday in the Prison of the Conciergerie", 1862 oil on canvas signed and dated lower left "E M Ward, R.A. 1862". Framed. 30-1/2" x 25", framed 39-1/4" x 34-1/4" Provenance: Thomas Williams Esq., London, 1863; George Fox Esq. 1873; (Messrs.) Christie's, London, April 17, 1880 (L.325. 10s.); Christie's, Scotland, October 25, 1995, lot 926; Lyon and Turnbull, London, December 6, 2002, lot 30; Sotheby's, London, November 30, 2003, lot 333; Christie's, New York, April 22, 2004, lot 78. Exhibited: Royal Academy, London, 1863, no. 124; World Exposition, Vienna, 1873, no. 118. Literature: Graves, Algernon. The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors, vol. 8. London: Henry Graves & Co./George Bell & Sons, 1906; The Art-Journal. London: Virtue & Co., 1869, p. 36 and engraving of the painting illustrated on the frontispiece; The British Architect and Northern Engineer. vol. 13 (Jan.-June): 1880, p. 202; Welt-Ausstellung 1873 in Wien, Officieller Kunst-Catalog. Vienna: Druckerei des Journals, die Presse, 1873, p. 78. Notes: How to die in the bath? That is the question to be asked. . . Agamemnon, by many accounts, was murdered in the bath after his return from the Trojan Wars; Emperor Hadrian's favored youth, Antinous, drowned under dubious circumstances in the Nile; and, perhaps most famous of all, Shakespeare's Ophelia, who commits suicide by drowning after her lover Hamlet murders her father. The art of dying in the bath is not only a modern phenomenon but also a historical one that has informed millennia of Western art and is at the heart of the painting offered here - the "Toilette des Morts ("Bath of Deaths" or the "Last Toilet"), and its 1852 pendant work. Charlotte Corday, often regarded as a heroine of the French Revolution, was a member of the Girondins - a moderate political faction that advocated an intellectual revolution over the more radical Jacobin faction that promulgated the bloody "Reign of Terror". In attempt to stymie the escalating violence, Corday, in a daring vigilante act, gained entry to the residence of the Jacobin leader Jean-Paul-Marat and assassinated him in his bathtub in July 1793. The moment of his death, immortalized in the canon of art through Jacques-Louis David's famous painting from the same year, elucidated multiple artistic renditions in the century that followed. In 1852, Ward exhibited a painting of "Charlotte Corday Being Led to Execution" at the Royal Academy while his rival and former colleague John Everett Millais exhibited the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painting of "Ophelia" (now conserved in the Tate Museum) in a watery bed of willows. Ward's painting catapulted him to immediate acclaim after it beat out Millais' oeuvre for the Liverpool medal. "Ophelia", or "O' Failure" as Ward dubbed it, received mixed reviews that culminated in multiple legal bills, after the family of Elizabeth Siddal - the model for Ophelia, sued the artist, claiming that Siddal's untimely death years later resulted from complications to the pneumonia she contracted after posing for hours in a poorly heated bathtub. In the decade that followed, Ward returned to the subject of "Charlotte Corday", painting a prequel to his famed 1852 work, depicting her at her toilet. Before her execution, Corday requested that her portrait be painted in prison. Jean-Jacques Hauer a courtroom artist and member of the National Guard, captured her likeness at her toilet - her last washing and dressing, as her hair was shorn and the red overblouse - the dress of a condemned traitor of the state - was donned. "Toilette des Morts" was equally lauded; it was shown at two major international exhibitions and in 1869, an engraving of the work was produced by Lumbar Stocks, R.A. for the Art Journal and mass distributed to its subscribers.
In generally very good professionally restored condition. Canvas is relined. Faint craquelure. Abrading to edges where canvas meets the frame. Scattered small areas of inpainting, including main figure's hair, outside the outline of her left profile, hands and a very minor touch-up to the nostril. Some unevenness to varnish and UV light difficult to penetrate the right side of the canvas.