A Sacrifice Interrupted (1770s): Art, History and Details

A Sacrifice Interrupted (1770s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is John Hamilton Mortimer (British, 1740–1779).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

One of the most talented draftsmen of his generation in England, John Hamilton Mortimer became known for a style of drawing in pen and ink that was bold, confident, and energetic. This sheet depicts a large crowd in a frieze-like arrangement gathered to witness a figure with an axe on the verge of decapitating a young male captive. Mortimer deliberately sought out obscure narratives and leaned toward the violent and macabre. In spite of the research of numerous art historians, the specific subject of the drawing has yet to be identified.

Object facts

• Title: A Sacrifice Interrupted
• Date: 1770s
• Creator attribution: John Hamilton Mortimer (British, 1740–1779)
• Culture: England, 18th century
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 24.5 x 36 cm (9 5/8 x 14 3/16 in.); Secondary Support: 31.7 x 43.7 cm (12 1/2 x 17 3/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - British
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1978.20

A detail from the museum

John Hamilton Mortimer's close friend James Gandon described Mortimer's technique: "He never altered a line . . . and all the time he [worked] he conversed and entertained his friends with the same easy cheerfulness and pleasantry as if wholly unemployed."

Collection credit

Cornelia Blakemore Warner Fund and Delia E. Holden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. "The Year in Review for 1978." Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 1 (1979): 3-47.
• Sunderland, John. "John Hamilton Mortimer, His Life and Works." Walpole Society 52 (1988).
• Smiles, Sam. The Image of Antiquity: Ancient Britain and the Romantic Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.