Provenance
Gustave Duruflé (1834–1909), Paris [invoice and Mathieu 1976]. Georges Wildenstein (1892–1963), Paris; confiscated by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (E.R.R.), before January 15, 1943 [January 15, 1943 is the date the drawing was entered into the E.R.R.’s records at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris; see ERR card W162]; recovered by the American Forces’ Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Service (M.F.A.A.) and processed at the Munich Central Art Collecting Point, June 27, 1945 [Central Collecting Point card]; repatriated to France, October 10, 1946 and restituted to Georges Wildenstein (date unknown) [Central Collecting Point card; Cultural Plunder by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg: Database of Art Objects at the Jeu de Paume (on-line)]; by descent to his son, Daniel Wildenstein (1917–2001), 1963–at least 1976 [Mathieu, 1976]. Sold by Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris, to the Art Institute, 1983.
Accession Number
100264
Medium
Pen and brown and black ink and graphite, with touches of brush and brown wash, heightened with lead white, discolored, on cream laid paper prepared with a pale brown wash, tipped on blue laid paper, laid down on cream board
Dimensions
18.3 × 15.8 cm (7 1/4 × 6 1/4 in.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Credit Line
Purchased with funds provided by the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation
Background & Context
Background Story
"Hercules and the Hydra of Lerna" is a c. 1876 pen and ink drawing by Gustave Moreau that demonstrates the French Symbolist master's preparatory process and his engagement with the Hercules myth through the intimate medium of drawing. The composition is a small work—18.3 × 15.8 centimeters—showing Hercules and the Hydra with the pen and brown and black ink and graphite with touches of brush and brown wash heightened with lead white on cream laid paper creating a surface of extraordinary draftsmanship and mythic suggestion. The small scale enhances the sense of intimate study and concentrated energy, the drawing suggesting both the physical preparation for the larger painting and the independent beauty of the mythic sketch. The c. 1876 date places this work in the same period as the large painting, suggesting that it served as a study for the more monumental composition. Art historians have connected this drawing to the broader tradition of the mythological study in European art, from the drawings of Michelangelo to the sketches of the Romantic period, noting that Moreau's treatment is more focused on the jewel-like detail and the hallucinatory suggestion, the transformation of preparatory sketch into visual poem, than the anatomical precision or the compositional planning of these other traditions.
Cultural Impact
This c. 1876 pen-ink drawing made Hercules study intimately mythic through small 18cm jewel-like draftsmanship and cream-laid-paper concentrated energy, using large-painting preparation to transform mythological sketch into independent visual poem beyond Michelangelo anatomical compositional planning.
Why It Matters
It matters because Moreau drew a hero and a monster in a small space and made the paper feel like it was holding an entire epic in a whisper—proving that even a sketch could be a saga if the ink was rich enough.
