An avid reader, his life-long love affair with literature provided him with endless subjects for his pictures. More than one hundred of his works were derived from literary sources, although it was rare for Delacroix to illustrate a text. Nevertheless, he did produce a series of seventeen (some refer to nineteen) lithographs to accompany a translation of Goethe's Faust. For the subjects, Delacroix chose the highest moments of the drama. Faust and Mephistopholes on the Witches Sabbath is the second to last print in the series (the last being Faust and Margarite in Prison). In this scene Faust and Mephistopholes are riding to where Margarite is imprisoned. They come to an open field where a witches guild is preparing the gallows, symbolic of the judgment of Margarite. The French text appears below the image. Faust is clutching on for his dear life, his hand behind his back in a cautionary gesture. Mephistopholes is very much in control, hat in place, no reins, no saddle. The scene would be difficult to "stage"; having a conversation while these two steeds gallop wildly by is improbable. But, Delacroix does make this scene work, and the viewer is struck by the imagery rather than the improbability. Riding a horse with 'possessed eyes', Mephistopholes is a very eerie figure.

The deep blacks of his lithographic crayon record light in conflict with shadow, and heighten the sense of doom and violence. Delacroix used his fingernails, pins and needles to create interesting lithographic effects. A ghost image of a signature is scratched in the lower right corner. One of Delacroix's biggest fans was Goethe himself, who praised the Faust series by claiming that Delacroix found his "proper food" and "surpassed my [Goethe's] own pictures of the scenes I myself wrote." Goethe saw Delacroix's attempts as successful, and so did the public. Financial success with this series (published in 1829) and another based on Shakespeare's Hamlet saved Delacroix from financial ruin.