Gustave Moreau

The centaur Nessus grabs Dejanira with one arm around her waist and the other pinning her legs to his torso as he climbs the river bank while she twists to escape his arms. Hercules permitted Nessus to transport his wife, Dejanira, across the river. Instead, the centaur, a half-man, half-horse creature from Greek mythology, abducted the beautiful woman against her will. Moreau painted the subject in 1872-73 (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles), though, in that rendering, the centaur reaches around to hoist the calm and elongated body of an almost-levitating Dejanira, far from the struggle seen in this quick study. In the Getty canvas, Moreau set the episode in the foreground of a fantastic landscape, rich with warm tones, in keeping with his desire to link the subject with the fall season as part of a series that was never realized. Moreau's point of departure for the Getty canvas was a depiction of the theme by his friend Elie Delaunay (1870; Musée des beaux-arts, Nantes), which contains a more violent struggle between woman and centaur.
The verso of the sheet contains a study for a portrait of a seated man, with his right leg crossed over his left, and a quick sketch of another struggle or abduction, possibly also of Nessus and Dejanira.