The Last Toilet of Charlotte Corday

Charlotte Corday, who murdered the Jacobin Jean-Marie Marat, is seen here imprisoned in the Conciergerie (a medieval palace in Paris) awaiting execution. An artist who has just finished her portrait packs away his paints, and a jailor who wears a Cap of Liberty cuts Charlotte's hair to prepare her for the guillotine. The print is based on a painting shown at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 1863 (no. 124) titled "La Toilette des Morts." The image offers a grim variation on a woman's dressing ritual, with the jailor replacing a hairdresser, and the canvas taking the place of a mirror. First published in London's "The Art Journal" in February 1869 the engraving here comes from a later American edition.

The following lengthy review accompanied the print in "The Art Journal," demonstrating that contemporary readers could be assumed to have a good grasp of French Revolutionary history.

"If assassination may be under any circumstances justified, then the deed which brought the young and beautiful Girondist of Normandy to the scaffold places her in the ranks of a true heroine, for she boldly rid the world of a man whose name is only another word for a monster in human shape. Marie Anne Charlotte Corday d'Armans, better known as Charlotte Corday, a descendant of a noble family—among whom was Corneille, the celebrated tragic writer, father of the French drama—was born at St. Saturnin, near Seez, Normandy, in 1768. The republican principles of the French revolutionists struck deep root into her enthusiastic mind, and her zeal for their establishment increased after the Jacobin party had overthrown the Girondists in 1793, and the chiefs of the latter had fled into Normandy in hope of arousing the people in their favour. Resolved to advance their cause by some extraordinary action, she proceeded to Paris, and selected Marat as her victim, one of the most violent and blood-thirsty of the Jacobins. After two unsuccessful attempts to gain an interview with him, she obtained admission on July 15th, 1793, to the chamber in which he was confined by a slight indisposition, and stabbed him to the heart. Being instantly arrested, and carried before the ‘Tribunal Revolutionnaire,’ she avowed and justified the act. She heard with perfect calmness the sentence of death pronounced upon her, and maintained her composure to the last hour. Two days after Marat's assassination her head was stuck off by the guillotine, when she had only just reached the age of twenty-five. / Lamartine, in his ‘Historie des Girondins,' states that Charlotte Corday was induced, before proceeding to her death, to sit for her portrait to a painter of the name of Hauer, an artist with whom we are totally unacquainted. He had seen her in court, and began a sketch with her knowledge and approval; afterwards she consented to sit to him in her dungeon and, at her request he made a small copy, which was presented to her father after her death. The incident, and its attendant circumstances, have furnished Mr. E. M. Ward with a subject as striking and original as it is appalling in its solemnity to contemplate, for he has rendered it with almost terrible fidelity and power. Hauer has completed his task—we wonder whether it exhibited aught of tremor of hand—and, while gathering together his pigments, he watches the face of the young Norman girl, who sits with clasped hands, and calm, earnest gaze on the portrait, as the executioner remorselessly applies his scissors to her luxuriant hair, lest it should turn aside the edge of the guillotine. The action and the attitude of the heroine show what are her feelings at this dread moment, rather than the expression of her countenance; and in this negation of obtrusive mental agony Mr. Ward has made a stronger appeal to our sympathy than if he had represented the victim convulsed with horror. / This fine historic picture was exhibited under the title ‘La Toilette des Morts,' at the Royal Academy, in 1863. Our engraving is taken, by kind permission of its owner, from the picture in the charming collection of Thomas Williams, Esq."