THÉODORE CHASSÉRIAU
Othello.

Complete set of 16 etchings, 1844. 640x475 mm; 25¼x18¾ inches (sheets), wide (full ?) margins. Second edition. Published by the Chalcographie du Louvre, Paris, with the blind stamp. Superb, dark impressions.

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where there is another set of these etchings by Chassériau (1819-1856), "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." Fisher 6-22; Sandoz 270-285.