Her unconscious hand pours out the deadly draught

George du Maurier

17 January 1863

Wood engraving by Joseph Swain.

6 x 4½ inches

This is the seventh and final illustration for Charles Warren Adams’sThe Notting Hill Mystery in Once a Week 8 (17 January 1863): 85.

A gruesome suicide (?) scene that brings the novels to its Sensational climax. du Maurier’s awkward placing of the corpse intensifies the effect and suggests emotional turbulence in his use of a swirling, expressive line. As usual, the figure is placed in baroque configuration, practically falling out of the picture-plane into our own space.

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Scanned image and text by Simon Cooke.

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