The Tragic Actor Rouvière as Hamlet is an 1866 stage portrait by famed French painter Édouard Manet.
This is a portrait of Édouard Manet’s friend Philibert Rouvière, painted in 1866 just a year after the actor’s passing. Suitably for the character of Hamlet, he is painted in the black garb of mourning and has a melancholy expression.
His hands are placed by Manet clasping his cloak and scholar’s hat to signal Hamlet’s inaction. Of course, the choice of Shakespeare’s prince signals Manet’s own grief at his friend’s passing into the final inaction of death.
Édouard Manet’s The Tragic Actor Rouvière as Hamlet is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., United States.