Paul Delaroche

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Paul Delaroche
1797-1856
Mourners at a Tomb
1849
Graphite on off-white wove paper.
4 3/4 x 7 1/8 inches (120 x 180 mm)
Gift of John M. Thayer.
1995.18
Notes: 

After a successful career painting easel pictures and decorative cycles, Delaroche traveled to Italy for a year in 1844-45 and emerged with a stronger commitment to religious subjects and a heightened interest in portraiture. With the death of his wife, Louise, in 1845, the artist was distraught, and the revolutionary activities of 1848 further unsettled him. Delaroche spent much of the year and the following two outside Paris, staying at La Havre, Aix-la-Chappelle, and in Nice.
This sheet is inscribed "Nice" and dated 1849, indicating that it was executed while Delaroche stayed in the coastal town, just before he settled into a villa he had purchased next to that of the fashionable Delfina Komar (1807-1877), Comtesse Potocka of Poland. Potocka fled an unhappy marriage and settled in Paris in the 1830s, traveling to Nice and Naples, where her family owned villas. The expatriate countess was a patron of the arts, a friend of musician Frederic Chopin (who enjoyed her singing), and the Polish poet Zygmunt Krasinski. Delfine and her sister Ludmila (1819-1881) were part of the artist's social circle in Nice, and he painted portraits of them around 1849-50. A second drawing in the Morgan that remained with this sheet depicts the view to the villa Potocka from Delaroche's studio at the Hotel Chauvain in Nice (2007.91).
This elegiac design is preparatory for a grave monument or tomb. The inscriptions are taken from the Beatitudes, a summary of Jesus's teachings found in the Sermon on the Mount and recounted in the Gospel of Matthew. At upper left, Matthew 5:7, translates, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy," and at upper right, Matthew 5:8, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." The inscription at center is fuzzy and hard to decipher but seems to begin with a "W" and later contain the letters "ZO."

Inscription: 

Inscribed and signed in graphite, at lower left, "Nice. 1849. PD". Inscribed at upper left, “Beati misericordes: quoniam / ipsi misericordiam / consequentur;” at upper right, “Beati mundo corde quoniam / ipsi Deum videbunt / sec. Matth[ew] cap. V 8.”
Watermark: none.

Provenance: 
Molly Klobe, New York; John M. Thayer (1944-2004), Wilmington, DE.
Associated names: 

Klobe, Molly, former owner.
Thayer, John M. (John MacLane), 1944-2004, former owner.

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