Macbeth and the Witches (Primary Title)
Eugène Delacroix, French, 1798 - 1863 (Artist)
In this work, Delacroix depicts the dramatic night scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Act IV, when the witches warn Macbeth about Macduff. Macbeth has encountered the witches at the mouth of a cavern; the figures are lit from the cauldron’s fire: “Double, double toil and trouble; / fire burn, and cauldron bubble.” Delacroix treated the subject in a lithograph of 1825 before developing this oil sketch during the winter of 1825–26.
Gift of George Corbin Harwell and Kathleen Leigh Williams Harwell
Image released via Creative Commons CC-BY-NC
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