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 5 of of a 6-part series on the works of Eugène Delacroix:
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| 1838 Frédérik Chopin oil on canvas 45.5 x 38 cm © RMN - Grand Palais (Louvre museum), Paris |
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| 1838-40 Study of a male nude: Study for "The Death of Seneca" graphite on buff Bristol board 31 x 23.4 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1839 Arab Encampment oil on fabric 38.1 x 46.3 cm Milwaukee Art Museum, WI |
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| 1839 Crouching tiger pen and brush and iron gall ink 13.1 x 18.7 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1840-50 Mountain landscape watercolour on paper 15.4 x 24.8 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| 1840-60 Dante’s Bark oil on canvas 34 x 40.2 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1840-60 Dante’s Bark detail |
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| 1840-60 Dante’s Bark detail |
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| c1840 The Shipwreck of Don Juan oil on canvas 81.3 x 99.7 cm Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| 1841 Jewish musician in Mogador costume, Morocco, from "Le Magasin Pittoresque" wood engraving on newsprint 17.4 x 12.8 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1842 The Education of the Virgin oil on canvas 95 x 125 cm Musée National Eugène Delacroix ©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris |
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| 1842-43 George Sand's garden at Nohant oil on canvas 45.4 x 55.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1842-43 The edge of a wood at Nohant watercolour on paper 15.5 x 20.5 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1843 Flowers watercolour, gouache, and black chalk, over charcoal on light brown wove paper 22.5 x 21.9 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
1843 Model for Orpheus
“ This painting takes on grandeur and simplicity. I believe it is what I have done best in the genre, ” noted Delacroix on March 4, 1848, when he completed the final work, on the ceiling of the library of the National Assembly. If this study is only a first thought for the final work, painted on a hemicycle 6.80m in diameter, it is nevertheless quite close to the final composition. This is one of the rare sketches that has preserved its original state, that is to say in a semi-hemispherical shape. It was Louis-Philippe, on the advice of his minister Adolphe Thiers, who commissioned Delacroix in 1833 to decorate the Palais Bourbon. After the paintings in the Assembly room, which excited the deputies, comes the ceiling of the library, to which the painter devoted ten years of his life.
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| 1843 Model for Orpheus bringing the arts and peace to the still wild Greeks painting on canvas mounted on wood 40 x 70 cm Musée National Eugène Delacroix ©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris |
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| 1843-44 Collision of the Moorish Horsemen oil on canvas 81.3 x 99.1 cm The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD |
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| 1844 Lion devouring a horse lithograph in black on ivory China paper 17 x 23.5 cm |
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| 1844 The Death of Sardanapalus oil on canvas 73.7 x 92.6 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1844 The Death of Sardanapalus detail |
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| 1844 The Death of Sardanapalus detail |
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| c1844 The Education of Achilles graphite on paper 23.6 x 29.7 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| c1844 The Education of Achilles pencil on paper 21.1 x 15 cm J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| 1862 The Education of Achilles pastel 30.6 x 41.9 cm J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| 1845 A false scalping performed by Iowa Tribe members in Paris pen and brown ink on laid paper 20.1 x 31.4 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1845 Peasant women from the region of the Eaux-Bonnes watercolour, with touches of gouache, over traces of graphite, on cream wove paper 34 x 26.2 cm |
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| 1845 The Madeleine in the desert oil on canvas 55.5 x 45 cm Musée National Eugène Delacroix ©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris |
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| 1832-33? Study for "The Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage" brush and brown ink 19.4 x 25.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1845 Study for "The Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage" graphite on paper 59.7 x 49.7 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1845 The Sultan of Morocco and his Entourage oil on canvas 377 x 340 cm Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, France |
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| 1846 Lion and Snake watercolour heightened with gum on slightly textured, moderately thick, cream wove paper 38.7 x 59 cm The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD |
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| 1846 The Abduction of Rebecca oil on canvas 100.3 x 81.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| c1846 Mathurin Régnier watercolour and gouache over traces of graphite on wove paper 30.8 x 22.4 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| c1846 Tiger lying in the desert etching, roulette, bitten tone, and drypoint on thin laid beige tracing paper; third state of six 9 x 13.3 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1848-49 Arch of Morning Glories, study for "A Basket of Flowers" pastel on blue paper 30.6 x 45.7 cm |
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| 1848-49 Basket of Flowers oil on canvas 107.3 x 142.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1849 A Hunter stalking a lion in the mountains of North Africa pastel and charcoal 24 x 31.1 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
1849-52Hercules Binds Nereus
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was commissioned in early 1852 to create a set of designs to decorate the Salon de la Paix of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris. He painted a scene based on the theme of Peace Descending to Earth for the ceiling, classical gods and goddesses for eight chambers, and episodes from the life of Hercules for eleven tympanums around the doors and windows. The finished look—the last project undertaken by Delacroix for a public building—was inaugurated in 1854 but was unfortunately destroyed in a fire in 1871.
Delacroix made the unusual decision to represent episodes of the life of Hercules rather than his twelve labours. This scene occurs just before the eleventh labour. Hercules binds or chains down Nereus—the “old man of the sea” who can change shape to a lion, snake and so on—to get him to reveal the location of the garden of Hesperides, from which he wants to steal some golden apples. The characters wrestle in front of a large vault-shaped rock, which frames their bodies.
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| 1849 Hercules binds Nereus pencil on tracing paper 2.4 x 33.8 cm Musée National Eugène Delacroix, Louvre, Paris |
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| 1852 Hercules binds Nereus oil on canvas 24 x 47 cm Musée National Eugène Delacroix, Louvre, Paris |
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| 1849 Lioness tearing at the chest of an Arab soft ground etching and roulette on cream chine 21.2 x 28.1 cm (plate) |
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| 1849 The Lamentation (Christ at the Tomb) oil on canvas 162.6 x 132.1 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1849-50 Arab Horseman attacked by a Lion oil on panel 43.9 x 38.1 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1850 Jacob wrestling with the Angel oil over pen and ink on tracing paper; mounted on canvas 56.8 x 40.6 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| c1850 Moroccan Horseman crossing a Ford oil on canvas 46 x 38.1 cm J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| c1850 Sunset pastel on blue laid paper 20.4 x 25.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
1850s A Lioness and a Caricature of Ingres
This drawing likely dates from a period in which tensions between Delacroix and his rival Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres were particularly high. In the 1840s, critics increasingly cast the two artists as adversaries with opposing styles, and their respective solo exhibitions at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris amplified the sense of competition. Delacroix also blamed Ingres for blocking his election to the Institut de France, the nation’s premier learned society—a post he eventually achieved in 1857. Here, he inserts at left an acerbic caricature of Ingres in profile, demonstrating the incisiveness he could achieve in pen and ink.
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| 1850s A Lioness and a caricature of Ingres pen and brown ink on laid paper 18.6 x 24.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1851 Romeo and Juliet (scene from the Capulet tombs) oil on paper mounted on canvas 35.2 x 26.5 cm Musée National Eugène Delacroix ©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris |
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