Pascal Auguste Jean DAGNAN-BOUVERET (Paris, 1852 - Quincy, 1929) Hamlet and Horatio at the Cemetery Original canvas, 1883 Dated lower left: "1883 95.3 x 70.5 cm (Accident on the right, piece on the back) Provenance: Count François-Joseph Aymard Marie Théodule de Grammont (1865-1940). Bibliography: G. P. Weisberg, Against the Modern. Dagnan-Bouveret and the Transformation of the Academic Tradition (New York: Dahesh Museum of Art, 2002), p. 69. A student of Cabanel in 1869 and of Gérôme in 1872, Pascal Auguste Jean Dagnan-Bouveret exhibited at the Salon from 1875. He also benefited from the advice of Jean-Baptiste Corot, whose neighbor he was in his early days in Paris. In the early 1880s, Dagnan-Bouveret was already working on subjects of contemporary inspiration when he undertook the composition of Hamlet and the Gravediggers. The unexpected choice of this Shakespearean theme can be explained by the personality of the commissioner, his master Gérôme, a great lover of theater. It seems that Dagnan-Bouveret had difficulties in the elaboration of his work, as is shown in a letter addressed to Gustave Courtois about the figure of Horatio: "(...) I have just dropped my Hamlet to start it again in another way and on another canvas that I asked for (sic) yesterday and that I am waiting for. I think I have found a better way and am on the right path for this painting. I give much more importance to the figures and I reduce the frame" (Vesoul, Archives départementales de la Haute-Saône, 12 J 37). Our painting is the first version that the artist renounced. The final composition, which offers few variations, is kept in a private collection.