Nude Male Figures Bearing the Bodies of their Dead Companions
c. 1779
Medium
Pen and black ink and brush and reddish-brown wash on cream laid paper
Dimensions
35.5 × 56.4 cm (14 × 22 1/4 in.)
Classification
drawings (visual works)
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
238624
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
James Jefferys’s powerful and eccentric drawing demonstrates the emotional intensity, exaggerated gesture, simplified form, and bold modeling that defined the new style forged by Henry Fuseli, whose circle Jefferys frequented when both artists lived in Rome in the 1770s. While the exact subject of the drawing is obscure, it appears that the two dead youths are being carried by their companions to a funeral pyre. An almost obsessive use of vertical ink hatching reminiscent of printmaking (in whi...