Lot 1684 D α

In the beginning of the fifth act of Shakespeare's “Macbeth“, a doctor and a lady in waiting encounter the sleepwalking Lady Macbeth as she gazes at her hand and utters “Yet here's a spot”. What Lady Macbeth believes to see is an imaginary blood stain left over from the murders she committed earlier in the play. In this famous and gruesome opening scene, Shakespeare illustrates the psychological trauma caused by feelings of guilt which were to drive the character to her eventual suicide.
Wilhelm Trübner picked up this theme several times throughout his oeuvre. Two small studies or sketches of the subject are listed in the auction catalogue accompanying the sale of the artist's estate, but are sadly not illustrated (auctioned by Rudolph Lepke, Berlin, Nachlass Wilhelm Trübner I. Teil: Eigene Gemälde. Arbeiten seiner Gattin Alice. Werke aus dem Freundeskreise, 4.6.1918, lot 131 and 145). A larger version of the painting shows Lady Macbeth as a lone, three-quarter length figure concealing the imagined blood stained on her hand with her garment (cf. Jos. Aug. Beringer (ed.): Trübner. Des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart und Berlin 1917, illus. p. 144). A further version which is most similar to the present work shows a full-figure depiction of the protagonist in the same pose (cf. Beringer, a.a.O., p. 145). However, in this work the figures of the doctor and lady in waiting are depicted on the right whereas in the present, previously undocumented but similarly sized work they are seen in the background on the left. Their placement between Lady Macbeth and the small column creates a more interesting composition.
This version of the motif can, like the above mentioned version, presumably also be dated to around 1882 and belongs to a group of works for which Trübner coined the term “Begebenheitlich” (lit.: incidental). He used it to describe works based on historical, mythological or - as in the present work - literary, incidents.