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 6 of of a 6-part series on the works of Eugène Delacroix:
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| 1851 The Agony in the Garden oil on canvas 34 x 42 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| 1852 Hercules and Antaeus lithograph on wove paper 44.2 x 29.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1852 Study for Marphise and the Mistress of Pinabel graphite on tan wove paper, tipped onto board 25 x 19.7 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1852 Marphise and the Mistress of Pinabel oil on canvas 82 x 101 cm The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD |
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| 1852 The Good Samaritan oil on canvas 34 x 42 cm Victoria & Albert Museun, London |
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| c1852 Desdemona cursed by her Father oil on cradled panel 40.6 x 32.1 cm Brooklyn Museum, New York |
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| 1853 Christ on the Cross oil on canvas 73.5 x 59.7 cm The National Gallery, London |
1853 Christ on the Sea of Galilee
This scene is based on an incident recounted in three Gospels of the New Testament: a furious storm breaks out while Jesus and his disciples sail across the Sea of Galilee to spread Christ's message. To the disciples' amazement, Jesus calms the wind and the storm, dramatizing the power of Christian belief.
Delacroix produced multiple variations on this theme in 1853 and 1854, when this particular biblical subject became popular with French Catholics during the reign of Louis-Napoléon (r. 1852-70).
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| 1853 Christ on the Sea of Galilee oil on composition board 47.6 x 58.1 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1854 Christ on the Sea of Galilee oil on canvas 59.8 x 73.3 cm The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD |
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| 1853 The Disciples at Emmaus oil on canvas 55.2 x 47 cm Brooklyn Museum, New York |
c1853 Christ Asleep during the Tempest
The Met note: Delacroix painted at least six versions of this New Testament lesson in faith: when awakened by his terrified disciples, Christ scolded them for their lack of trust in Providence. In the earlier works, the seascape is more prominent; in the later ones, as here, Christ’s bark occupies a more significant place. After Vincent van Gogh saw this version in Paris in 1886, he wrote, "Christ’s boat—I’m talking about the blue and green sketch with touches of purple and red and a little lemon yellow for the halo, the aureole—speaks a symbolic language through colour itself.”
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| c1853 Christ asleep during the Tempest oil on canvas 50.8 x 61 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1854 Lion hunting oil on canvas 90 x 116.7 cm © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Franck Raux |
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| 1854 Tiger hunting oil on canvas 73 x 92.5 cm © Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Patrice Schmidt |
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| 1854 Tiger stopped cliché-verre on wove paper 16.7 x 19.9 cm (plate) |
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| c1854 Arab Rider oil on panel 35 x 26.5 cm Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
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| 1855 Arab saddling his horse oil on canvas 56 x 47 cm The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia |
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| 1855 Lion hunt in Morocco oil on canvas 74 x 92 cm The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia |
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| 1858 Crossing a ford in Morocco oil on canvas 60.5 x 74 cm © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Stéphane Maréchalle |
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| 1858 Forest pencil on paper 26 x 40.4 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| 1858 Lion Hunt oil on canvas 91.7 x 117.5 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1858 Lion Hunt detail |
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| 1858 Lion Hunt detail |
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| 1858 St. Sebastian with St. Irene and attendant oil on panel 38.1 x 50.8 cm Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) |
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| 1859 The Puma oil on wood panel 41.2 x 30.7 cm © RMN-Grand Palais (Orsay Museum) / Sylvie Chan-Liat |
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| 1859 Ovid among the Scythians oil on canvas 87.6 x 130.2 cm The National Gallery, London |
1862 Ovid among the Scythians
The Met note: This is the final work Delacroix devoted to a theme that had first attracted him in 1835. It depicts the exiled poet Ovid, who in A.D. 8 was banished from Rome to the coast of the Black Sea, at present-day Constantsa, Romania. He was treated with kindness by the Scythians, who are shown feeding him and expressing mare’s milk for him to drink. This painting reprises a larger composition that Delacroix exhibited at the Salon of 1859 (now National Gallery, London). Reviews were mixed, but its admirers included Edgar Degas and the critic Charles Baudelaire, who wrote "The mind sinks into it with a slow and appreciative rapture…”
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| 1862 Ovid among the Scythians oil on paper, laid down on wood 32.1 x 50.2 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| 1862 Ovid among the Scythians detail |
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| 1862 Ovid among the Scythians detail |
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| 1860 Arabian horses fighting in a stable oil on canvas 65.5 x 81 cm © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée d’Orsay) / Franck Raux |
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| 1860-61 Lion Hunt oil on canvas 76.5 x 98.5 cm Potter Palmer Collection, Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1860-61 Lion Hunt detail |
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| 1860-61 Lion Hunt detail |
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| 1862 The Miraculous Draught of Fishes brown ink on paper 12.8 x 20.6 cm Kunsthalle, Bremen |
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| n.d. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes pen, brown ink, and washes on paper 20.6 x 26.7 cm (sheet) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1862 Tiger and Snake oil on canvas 33 x 41.2 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
1863 (August 29) La Pietà, from “L'Illustration"
Published just two weeks after the death of Delacroix, this print is described as the artist's "last drawing on wood." Customarily, to make a wood engraving, an artist would supply a drawing on paper to be translated by another hand onto the wood block, before being engraved by yet another practitioner. By drawing directly onto the wood himself, Delacroix believed the medium could serve as an outlet for the direct expression of his thought. This composition corresponds more closely with Delacroix's first oil sketch (private collection) for his Pietà than the final mural executed in Saint-Denys-du-Saint-Sacrement, which does not include the angels and reverses the figural group.
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| 1863 (August 29) La Pietà, from "L'Illustration" wood engraving 36.1 x 51.9 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| n.d. Armed riders and figure on the ground pen and brown ink, black and red chalk with graphite, on ivory wove paper 34.2 x 21.7 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| n.d. Charioteers (recto) pen and purple-black ink on wove paper 17.3 x 37 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| n.d. Charioteers (verso) pen and purple-black ink on wove paper 17.3 x 37 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| n.d. Man at Arms etching and drypoint 23.4 x 20.5 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| n.d. Portrait of a Child graphite on paper 13.3 x 14.1 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| n.d. Studies of a sleeping lioness black crayon on oatmeal paper 13.2 x 20 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| n.d. Study of Arabs watercolour and graphite on laid paper 21.1 x 28.9 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| n.d. The assassinated man lithograph on paper National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia |
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| n.d. Tiger Ready to Spring cliché verre on cream wove paper 15.8 x 19.1 cm (image) Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| n.d. Two sketches of a sitting cleric pen and ink on paper 20.6 x 25.7 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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