Witch from Macbeth
Jacques-Louis Gautier
French, 1820–1900

Details
Title
Witch from Macbeth
Artist/Maker
Jacques-Louis Gautier (French, 1820–1900)
Date
1853, cast later
Medium
Bronze with green and black patina
Dimensions
30 3/4 x 5 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches
Credit
Gift of Irene and Howard Stein
Accession #
1999.37
Jacques-Louis Gautier was a product both of the Salon system and the changing art market of nineteenth-century Paris. While he used the annual state-sponsored Salon as a venue to increase his visibility and enhance his reputation, he also produced small, moderately priced works that were attractive to middle-class collectors. The subjects of this sculpture and its pendant, Mephistopheles, Gautier borrowed from two of the most popular pieces of literature during the Romantic period: Goethe’s Faust and Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The elongated figures appealed to a Romantic taste for the macabre.
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