This chalk, pastel, and wash study from 1827 is one of five known pastel drawings Delacroix made while preparing his monumental Salon painting The Death of Sardanapalus, now in the Musée du Louvre and inspired by Lord Byron's 1821 tragedy. It captures one of the doomed Assyrian king's concubines in the instant before her death, her twisting, recoiling posture built from sweeping, urgent lines. Pastel studies are uncommon in Delacroix's surviving work, making this sheet a rare, intimate look at how the leader of French Romanticism worked out raw emotion before committing it to canvas.
Jacquard-woven as a soft, double-sided tapestry throw with fringed edges — a warm layer for the sofa or bed.
