Eugène Delacroix - part 4

Eugène Delacroix
© Musée d’Orsay, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Alexis Brandt

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 4 of of a 6-part series on the works of Eugène Delacroix:

1833 Ecce Homo (Christ with the Reed)
etching: first state of four 15.8 x 12 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1833 Muletiers de Tétuan
lithograph on paper 19.4 x 26.7 cm (image)
Philadelphia Museunm of Art, PA

1833 Portrait of Madame Frédéric Villot
etching, second state 8.6 x 8.3 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1833 Strolling Players
watercolour on paper 24.8 x 18.4 cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

1833 Study of a woman seen from the back
etching in black on off-white wove paper 10.5 x 15.5 cm (image)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1833 Women of Algiers
graphite on paper 20.7 x 33.5 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1833 Women of Algiers
lithograph: second state of two 16 x 22 cm (image)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1833 Arabes D'Oran
etching on paper 14.5 x 19 cm (image)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

c1833 Still Life with Dahlias
 oil on canvas 50 x 33 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1834 Bacchus and a Tiger
fresco 57 x 89 cm
Musée National Eugène Delacroix
©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris

before 1834 Henri IV Conferring the Regency upon Marie de' Medici (after Rubens)
oil on canvas 88.2 x 115.8
Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Henri IV Conferring the Regency upon Marie de' Medici
detail

Henri IV Conferring the Regency upon Marie de' Medici
detail

1834 Collision of Moorish Horsemen
etching on paper 26.2 x 18.4 cm (plate)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1834 Portrait of George Sand
oil on canvas 26 x x 21.3 cm
Musée National Eugène Delacroix
©RMN-grand Palais, Louvre Museum, Paris

1834 The Turkish Rider
gouache and watercolour, with scraping, selectively gum-varnished, on cream wove paper 25.2 x 18.7 cm
 Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1834 Women of Algiers in their Apartment
oil on canvas 180 x 229 cm
© RMN - Grand Palais (Louvre museum), Paris

1834 Young Clifford finding the body of his father, from "L'Artiste"
lithograph on paper 22.3 x 15.7 cm (image)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1835-43 Hamlet

In 1834 Delacroix began a series of lithographs devoted to Hamlet, creating moody images that mirror the troubled psyche of the prince. Choosing key scenes and poetic passages, the artist's highly personal and dramatic images were unusual in France, where interest in Shakespeare developed only in the nineteenth century. Gihaut frères published the artist's thirteen-print set in 1843, with a second expanded edition of sixteen issued by Bertauts in 1864. Cooly received at first, the prints eventually were recognised as one of the artist's most significant achievements.

1834 Hamlet and the Queen
lithograph in black on off-white China paper 25.4 x 19.8 cm (image) 

1834 Hamlet and the Queen lithograph in black on off-white China paper
26 x 17.9 cm (image)

1834 Ophelia's Song
lithograph in black on off-white China paper
25.8 x 20.7 cm (image)

What ist ? A rat?
lithograph in black on off-white China paper

1834-43 Hamlet and Ophelia
lithograph in black on off-white China paper 24.2 x 19.8 cm (image)

1834-43 Polonius and Hamlet
lithograph in black on off-white China paper 24.9 x 18.4 cm (image)

1835 Hamlet and the Body of Polonius lithograph in black on off-white China paper 25.6 x 17.8 cm (image)

1835 Hamlet Makes the Players Enact the Poisoning of His Father
lithograph in black on off-white China paper
24.9 x 32.3 cm (image)

1835 Hamlet Pursuing His Father's Ghost
lithograph in black on off-white China paper
25.9 x 20.3 cm (image)

1843 Hamlet and Guildenstern
lithograph in black on off-white China paper
25.1 x 20.2 cm (image) 

1843 Hamlet and Horatio with the Gravediggers
 lithograph in black on ivory China 28.4 x 21.2 cm (image)

1843 Hamlet and Laertes at the Tomb of Ophelia
graphite on tracing paper, laid down 23.3 x 30.6 cm

1843 Hamlet and Laertes in Ophelia's Grave
lithograph 28.5 x 19.4 cm (image)

1843 Hamlet and the Gravediggers
black chalk, with touches of graphite, on cream laid paper
28.4 x 20.1 cm

1843 Hamlet attempts to slay the King
lithograph in black on off-white China paper
25.4 x 18.1 cm (image)

1843 Ophelia's Death
lithograph in black on white wove paper 15.8 x 25.7 cm (image)

1843 The Ghost on the Platform
lithograph in black on off-white China paper
25.9 x 19.2 cm (image)

1846 Hamlet's Death
lithograph in black on white China paper 29 x 20.2 cm (image)

1849 Hamlet and His Mother 

This painting depicts the moment in Shakespeare’s epic tragedy Hamlet in which the protagonist, who has been speaking privately with his mother, Queen Gertrude of Denmark, notices a figure behind the curtains of her closet. Immediately afterward, Hamlet will impale the hidden Polonius with his sword, and utter the memorable phrase "How now! A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!" The composition is identical to a black and white lithograph Delacroix made for a portfolio devoted to the play, which was first published in 1843.

1849 Hamlet and his Mother
oil on canvas 27.3 x 18.1 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1834 Standing woman in Moroccan costume
graphite and watercolour on wove paper 32.5 x 20.8 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1835 Lion and tortoise
pen and iron gall ink with graphite on light blue moderately thick, smooth wove paper 19.8 x 26.1 cm
The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD

1835 Madame Henri François Riesener 

The Met note: Delacroix rarely portrayed anyone other than his closest family and friends. His affection for Madame Riesener, an aunt by marriage, is expressed through the frank tenderness of this portrait. She was once known for her beauty: some thirty years before the date of this portrait she served as a lady-in-waiting to empress Josephine, and having caught Napoleon’s eye, engaged in a brief liaison with him. After she died, Delacroix wrote to George Sand, "each of the beings necessary to our existence who disappears, takes away with him a whole world of feelings that no other relationship can revive."

1835 Madame Henri François Riesener
(Félicité Longrois, 1786–1847)
 oil on canvas 74.3 x 60.3 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1835 Male Nude Posing for figures in the Frieze of War
graphite on laid paper 19.6 x 29.1 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1838 Christopher Columbus and his son at La Rábida
oil on canvas 90.3 x 118 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1849 Arab Horseman at the gallop
graphite on tracing paper 32 x 25.7 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1849 Basket of Flowers and Fruit
oil on canvas 108.3 x 143.2 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1849 Basket of Flowers and Fruit
detail

Eugène Delacroix - part 3

1889 Portrait of Eugène Delacroix by Marcellin Desboutin
heliogravure
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 3 of of a 6-part series on the works of Eugène Delacroix:

1829-30 Lion of the Atlas Mountains
lithograph: probably second state of four 33 x 46.7 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

n.d. Lion Devouring a Rabbit
pen and brown iron gall ink, over graphite, on ivory laid paper 26 x 32 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

c1829 Studies of Lions
graphite on cream laid paper 22.7 x 34.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1829-30 Royal Tiger
lithograph in black on light grey China paper 32.5 x 46.4 cm (image)

1829-30 Royal Tiger
watercolour and graphite on paper 17.8 x 26.8 cm
The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City

c1830 Royal Tiger
watercolour on paper 14.1 x 25.1 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1829-30 Sketch for the Battle of Poitiers
oil on canvas  52 x 64.8 cm
The Walters Museum, Baltimore, MD

1829-30 Sketch for the Battle of Poitiers
detail

1829-30 Sketch for the Battle of Poitiers
detail

1829-31 Interior of the Church of Valmont Abbey
brown and grey wash over graphite 18.3 x 21.7 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1830 Liberty leading the People
oil on canvas 260 x 325 cm
© RMN - Grand Palais (Louvre museum), Paris

1830 Liberty leading the People
detail

1830 Liberty leading the People
detail

1830 Liberty leading the People
study

1830s The Runaway Carriage
pen and black ink on heavy laid paper 29.1 x 50.2 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

1931 Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid

The subject of this painting is from a popular nineteenth-century English novel, Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer, translated into French in 1821. A young man forced into a convent as a child undergoes harrowing trials in order to escape his punitive and corrupt surroundings. Here he is shown being dragged before the bishop of Madrid. The artist depicts a cavernous, vaulted room that is actually based on the interior of the Palace of Justice in Rouen, France. Delacroix's use of this decidedly un-Spanish, secular setting may have been an intentional reference to the oppressive link between civic and religious power, a theme prominent in the novel.

1831 Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid
oil on canvas 130.2 x 161.9 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA 

1831 Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid
detail

1831 Interior of a Dominican Convent in Madrid
detail

1831 Normandy
lithograph in black on ivory China paper 17.4 x 22.3 cm (image)

1831 Willibald Gluck at the Clavecin composing the score of his "Armide"
brush and brown washes, heightened with white 22.7 x 17.4 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1831 Young Tiger Playing with its Mother
lithograph in black on buff wove paper 11.2 x 18.7 cm (image)

c1831 Episode from "The Corsair" by Lord Byron
watercolour, brown ink, touches of gouache, over graphite underdrawing 24.3 x 19.2 cm
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

1832 A Moroccan Couple on Their Terrace

This is one of eighteen watercolours Delacroix presented to his travel companion, the diplomat Charles de Mornay, following their return from North Africa. The artist executed a number of the works while the men were quarantined for two weeks in Toulon. Inspired by the quality of Mediterranean light observed during the journey, he adopted a brighter palette than he had used previously. His fascination with Moroccan costume is apparent here in the attention he lavished on the multilayered attire of the woman, especially compared to his more abstract approach to other decorative aspects of the scene.

1832 A Moroccan couple on their terrace
watercolour over traces of graphite 13.7 x 18.9 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1832 Four sketches of Arab men
watercolour and graphite, on tan wove paper 18.4 x 26.9 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1832 Portrait of Amina Biasa, Minister of the Sultan of Morocco
graphite and watercolour on paper
Louvre Museum, Paris

1832 Saada, the Wife of Abraham Ben-Chimol

The Met note: Delacroix produced this sumptuous watercolor on a trip to North Africa in 1832. He accompanied his friend the Count de Mornay on his mission as good-will ambassador to the Sultan of Morocco, Abd-er-Rahman II. Assigned to the delegation as dragoman was the Jewish interpreter Abraham Ben-Chimol (Abraham Benchimol) of Tangiers, who introduced the Frenchmen to his wife and to his daughter, pictured here in her bridal attire. In his "Journal," Delacroix described in extensive detail a Jewish wedding he attended in Tangiers on February 21, 1832.

1832 Saada, the wife of Abraham Ben-Chimol, and Préciada, one of their daughters
watercolour over graphite on wove paper 22.2 x 16.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1832 Young Moroccan, standing
watercolour  over pen and brown ink 19.4 x 6.7 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1832 Young Spanish lady in costume of Manola
gouache and watercolour, with traces of scraping, over graphite, on cream wove paper 30.5 x 24.1 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1832-33 A Portrait of Dr. François-Marie Desmaisons
oil on canvas 88.9 x 8.3 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts. MI

1832-37 Three Arab Horsemen at an Encampment

Delacroix produced this watercolour based on his sketches, notes, and memories of a ten-day journey between Tangier and Meknès. The blue hills in the background evoke his description of the mountainous landscape as "violet in the morning and evening, blue during the day." He shows just three of the multitude of horsemen that accompanied the diplomatic envoy; two are seated at rest, while the central mounted figure adopts a posture reminiscent of Delacroix’s depictions of Sultan Abd er-Rahman.

1832-37 Three Arab horsemen at an encampment
watercolour over graphite 21.7 x 29.6 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1832 Arab horsemen
black, white and red chalk on brown paper 22 x 28.7 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

c1832 Sketches of Algerian men
pen and brown ink, with traces of graphite, on tan wove paper
20.5 x 30.2 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1833 A Blacksmith
aquatint, drypoint: between third and fourth state of six
16 x 9.8 cm (image)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1833 A Jewish Bride in Tangier
etching: first state of four 21.3 x 17.3 cm

1833 A Lord from the time of Francis I
etching and drypoint on white wove paper 17.3 x 12.7 cm (image)

1833 A Man with weapons
etching on paper (size not given)

1833 A vase of flowers
oil on canvas 57.7 x 48.8 cm
© National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh 

1833 Arabs of Oran
etching, roulette and drypoint on ivory laid paper
 14.4 x 19.3 cm (image)

1833 Chief Mohammed-Ben-Abou
etching on off-white chine 14.2 x 21.3 cm (plate)

1836-45 Goetz of Berlichingen

Drawing inspiration from literature and theatre, Eugène Delacroix developed a long-standing interest in the writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832). He completed a series of prints based on the famous “Faust” (1828) and seven lithographs, including this one, from “Goetz of Berlichingen” published in German in 1773; and French in 1823) that tells the story of the life of a German knight (1480-1562) who fought to regain the privileges of free knights, nullified by the emperor Maximilian I in 1495. Goetz’s reputation as a noble knight spread so far that even the gypsies declared their loyalty to him and provided him with aid. Goethe highly praised Delacroix’s interpretations of scenes from his plays, such as this one.

1836 Brother Martin clasping the iron hand of Goetz
lithograph in black on ivory China paper 24.7 x 18.9 cm

1836 The wounded Goetz cared for by the Bohemians
lithograph in black with scrapping on stone, on thin off-white paper 30.4 x 23 cm (image)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1836 Weislingen attacked by Goetz's men
lithograph in black on white China paper 31.1 x 27.2 cm (image)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1836-43 Goetz von Berlichingen writing his memoirs
graphite on beige wove paper 24.5 x 19.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1836-43 Goetz von Berlichingen writing his memoirs
lithograph on paper 26.5 x 19.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1836-43 The Wounded Goetz taken in by the Gypsies
lithograph on paper 30.4 x 23 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

c1836-43 The Death of Weislingen
lithograph on paper 27.8 x 21.7 cm (image)

1842 Goetz van Berlichingen's horse
pen and iron gall ink 13 x 19.2 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1843 Death of Goetz von Berlichingen
wood engraving 21.8 x 14.6 cm (block)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1845 Goetz and Friar Martin
wood engraving on paper 21.8 x 14.5 cm (block)