Cromwell with the Coffin of Charles I

Cromwell with the Coffin of Charles I is a partially-varnished c. 1831 watercolour by the French painter Eugène Delacroix, now in the Département des Arts graphiques of the Louvre in Paris.

Both works are based on a fictional account by François-René de Chateaubriand of Oliver Cromwell opening Charles I's coffin after the latter's execution.

[1] Delaroche's work was less a portrayal of an event than an oblique comment on the French Revolution and Louis XVI's execution,[2] with Cromwell standing in for Napoleon.

[7] Unlike Delaroche, Delacroix preferred to imagine an evolving and troubled Cromwell on the edge of the scene not at its centre, finding the coffin by accident.

[4] Delacroix's work was acquired in December 1942 from Raphaël Gérard for 8,750 ℛ︁ℳ︁ (175,000 francs) for the Museum Folkwang in Essen, but was returned to the Louvre in 1948 as part of the first consignment of looted art to leave Düsseldorf.