Leopold Bloom

Richard Hamilton British

Not on view

James Joyce’s modernist epic Ulysses (1922) follows the wanderings of the unlikely protagonist Leopold Bloom over a single day—June 16, 1904. For Hamilton, Joyce’s novel offered a model of how to combine diverse styles and techniques in a single work. Hamilton began composing illustrations for the book between 1948 and 1949, when he made some twenty-eight preliminary drawings and studies. One of the first was a portrait of Bloom, intended as a frontispiece for the book. Almost forty years later, he transferred his drawing to an etching plate, using a roulette tool to simulate pencil marks in a style reminiscent of Picasso’s Neoclassical phase of the early 1920s.

Leopold Bloom, Richard Hamilton (British, London 1922–2011 Oxfordshire), Soft ground etching, roulette, engraving and aquatint

Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.

Open Access

As part of the Met's Open Access policy, you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes.

API

Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API.