Eugène Delacroix - part 2

1863 Portrait of Eugène Delacroix
etching
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire described his hero Eugène Delacroix as "a volcanic crater artistically concealed beneath bouquets of flowers." Beneath the surface of Delacroix's polished elegance and charm roiled turbulent interior emotions. In 1822 Delacroix took the Salon by storm. Although the French artistic establishment considered him a wild man and a rebel, the French government, bought his paintings and commissioned murals throughout Paris. Though Delacroix aimed to balance classicism and Romanticism, his art cenreed on a revolutionary idea born with the Romantics: that art should be created out of sincerity, that it should express the artist's true feelings and convictions. Educated firmly in the classics, Delacroix often depicted mythological subjects, themes encouraged by the reigning Neoclassical artists at the Académie des Beaux-Arts. But Delacroix's brilliant colors and passionate brushwork frightened them; their watchwords were "noble simplicity and calm grandeur." They barred him from academy membership until 1857, and even then he was prohibited from teaching in the École des Beaux-Arts. For those very reasons, he was an inspiration to the Impressionists and other young artists. Paul Cézanne once said, "We are all in Delacroix." Intensely private, Delacroix kept a journal that is renowned as a profoundly moving record of the artistic experience.

This is part 2 of of a 6-part series on the works of Eugène Delacroix:

1825-28 Faust:

1825-27 Faust and Mephistopheles in the Hartz Mountains
lithograph 24.8 x 21 cm (image)

1828 Faust and Mephistopheles Galloping Through the Night of the Witches' Sabbath
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 21 x 28.5 cm

1828 Faust and Wagner
lithograph in black on light grey China paper 19.5 x 26.1 cm (image)

1828 Faust, Mephistopheles and the Poodle
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 23.8 x 20.9 cm (image)

1828 Marguerite at the Church
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 26.9 x 22.4 cm (image)

1828 Marguerite at the Spinning Wheel
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 22.6 x 18.1 cm (image) 

1828 The Duel Between Faust and Valentine
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 23 x 29.9 cm (image)

1828 Mephistopheles Visits Martha
lithograph in black on white wove paper 24.5 x 20.8 cm (image)

1828 Mephistopheles Receiving the Student
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 26 x 21.5 cm

1828 Mephistopheles Flying
lithograph in black on white wove paper 28 x 23,9 cm (image)

1828 Mephistopheles at the Students' Inn
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 29.1 x 22.4 cm (image)

1828 Mephistopheles Appearing to Faust
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 25.8 x 21 cm (image)

1828 Mephistopheles and Faust Fleeing after the Duel
lithograph in black on China paper 26.5 x 22.5 cm (image)

1828 Marguerite's Ghost Appearing to Faust
lithograph in black on ivory wove paper 26.7 x 35.4 cm (image)

1827 The Death of Sardanapalus

Delacroix’s monumental painting helped establish his reputation as the leader of the French Romantic movement. Of the few pastels that Delacroix produced, this is the only group that can be related to a single painting. Inspired by an 1821 play by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, the canvas dramatically depicts the last king of the Assyrians. Reclining on his bed moments before his own suicide, the king gazes passively at his wives, concubines, and livestock as they are slain by his order to prevent their slaughter by the enemy army that has just defeated them.

1927 Death of Sardanapalus
oil on canvas 392 x 496 cm
Louvre Museum, Paris

1927 Death of Sardanapalus
detail 1

1827-28 Faust and Mephistopheles
oil on canvas 45.5 x 37.7 cm
The Wallace Collection, London

1827-28 Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard

The Met note: A highly literate artist, Delacroix was often drawn to the works of William Shakespeare. This scene from Hamlet, for example, appears and reappears in the artist’s drawings, prints, and paintings. It describes the tragicomic encounter between Hamlet and the gravediggers in Act V. Here Hamlet and Horatio contemplate the skull of the fool Yorick.

1827-28 Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard
 brush and brown wash with watercolour over graphite on heavy watercolour paper 34.4 x 20.1 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1827-29 Fallen Horse and Dead Knight
graphite, with touches of stumping, on cream wove paper 24.9 x 31.7 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

c1827 Landscape with an Aqueduct
pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash 8.6 x 17.3 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1827 The Old Bridge at Nantes
watercolour on cream wove paper 20.3 x 30.3 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1828 Hamlet Contemplating Yorick’s Skull
lithograph on chine collé 26.1 x 34.5 cm (image)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1828 Jane Shore
lithograph in black on light-grey China paper 26 x 34.5 cm (image)

1828 or earlier Interior of a Military Hospital
aquatint printed in black ink on heavy wove paper 29 x 23.6 cm (image)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1828 Portrait of Auguste Richard de La Hautière
oil on canvas (size not given)
Musée National Eugène Delacroix
©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris

1828 Portrait of Eugéne Berny d'Ouville
oil on canvas 61 x 49 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1828 Wild Horse Brought Down by a Tiger
lithograph in black on light grey China paper 22 x 27.1 cm (Chine)

1828 Wild Horse
lithograph: first state of two 22.9 x 23.5 cm

1828-29 Sketches of Tigers, and Men in 16th Century Costume
watercolour, pen and iron gall ink, and graphite, on ivory laid paper 39.7 x 51 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1828c Ecorché; Torso of a Male Cadaver 

The Met Note: The posthumous sale of the contents of Delacroix’s studio contained 126 of his anatomical drawings. None of the known surviving examples are dated, and Delacroix never mentioned the practice in written accounts. However, a drawing by the sculptor Henri de Triqueti of a corpse in a pose similar to this one records Delacroix’s presence with him at a hospital in June 1828. This work may derive from that same visit. Triqueti’s testimony makes clear that this was not an activity restricted to Delacroix’s student years.

c1828 Ecorché: Torso of a Male Cadaver
red, black, and white fabricated chalk, graphite 25.2 x 15.9 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1829 Duguesclin's Sister
lithograph 32/1 x 24 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1829 Vercingétorix
lithograph on paper 24.8 x 18.4 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1829 Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott:

1829 Fronte-boeuf and the Jew
lithograph on paper 21.5 x 25.6 cm

1829 Fronte-boeuf and the Jew 
 lithograph in black on white wove paper 16.6 x 21.5 cm (image)

 1829 Fronte-boeuf and the Witch
lithograph in black on white wove paper 21,2 x 20.3 cm (image)

1829 Steenie or Redgauntlet Pursued by a Goblin on Horseback
unfinished lithograph: first state of three 21.6 x 16.5 cm

1829 The death of Bois-Guilbert from Ivanhoe
pencil on paper 8.7 x 11.9 cm