Friday, September 30, 2022

Romantic Art of Ingres's Nemesis, Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix
Animal Skulls
ca. 1820
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Académie
ca. 1850
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Cloud Study
before 1863
watercolor
(formerly owned by Edgar Degas)
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Conversion of St Paul in Pendentive
ca. 1840
drawing, with watercolor
(study for wall painting, Palais Bourbon, Paris)
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Bouquet of Flowers
1849
watercolor, gouache, pastel
(formerly owned by Paul Cézanne)
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix after Francesco Primaticcio
Arion and Anaximander
ca. 1840
drawing, with watercolor
(study of fresco at Fontainebleau)
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Cromwell before the Corpse of Charles I
(disregarding the fact that Charles was beheaded)
ca. 1824-27
watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Figure bound by the Wrists
ca. 1843
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Figure Study
before 1863
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Hamlet and Gertrude
ca. 1824-29
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Sheet of Studies
1857
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Skull and Irises
ca. 1820
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Studies for Demon subdued by St Michael
ca. 1857-61
drawing
(study for fresco in the church of Saint Sulpice, Paris)
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Triton supporting Winged Genius 
ca. 1860
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix
Study of Torso
ca. 1840
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Up to the present, Eugène Delacroix has met with injustice.  Criticism, for him, has been bitter and ignorant; with one or two noble exceptions, even the praises of his admirers must often have seemed offensive to him.  Generally speaking, and for most people, to mention Eugène Delacroix is to throw into their minds goodness knows what vague ideas of ill-directed fire, of turbulence, of hazardous inspiration, of chaos, even; and for those gentlemen who form the majority of the public, pure chance, that loyal and obliging servant of genius, plays an important part in his happiest compositions.  . . .  This intervention of chance in the business of Delacroix's painting is all the more improbable since he is one of those rare beings who remain original after having drunk deep of all the true wells, and whose indomitable individuality has borne and shaken off the yokes of all the great masters in turn."

– from The Salon of 1846, published in Art in Paris, 1845-1862: Salons and Exhibitions reviewed by Charles Baudelaire, translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne (London: Phaidon Press, 1965)

Thursday, September 29, 2022

Théodore Chassériau - caught between Ingres and Delacroix

Théodore Chassériau
Study of Antique Torso
ca. 1840
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Draped Leg
before 1856
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau after Michelangelo
Ignudo from Sistine Ceiling
ca. 1840
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Sketch of Shakespeare
before 1856
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Académie
before 1856
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Académie
before 1856
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Académie
before 1856
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Académie
before 1856
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Portrait of Alphonse de Lamartine
1844
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1850-55
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Sleeping Apostle
ca. 1844
drawing
(study for painting)
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Rocks at Capri
1840
watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Diana and Actaeon
before 1856
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Cain Accursed
before 1856
watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Chassériau
Young Neapolitan
1840
watercolor
Musée du Louvre

"This child will be the Napoleon of painting," Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres predicted about the prodigy who entered his studio at age eleven.  Before he was seventeen, Théodore Chassériau won a third-class medal at the Salon.  . . .  In 1840 he joined Ingres in Rome.  Increasingly critical of the academic curriculum, Chassériau became interested in the Romantic art of Ingres's nemesis, Eugène Delacroix.  As Chassériau recounted the break, "In a long conversation with M. Ingres, I saw that on many issues we could never have a meeting of minds."  In response, Ingres announced, "Never speak to me again of that child!"

– from curator's notes at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Wednesday, September 28, 2022

Louvre - Unassigned French Study Drawings - 17th Century

Anonymous French Artist
Le Bassin d'Apollon, Versailles
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Louis XIV with Courtiers
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Courtier of Louis XIV
17th century
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Royal Nurses at the Court of Louis XIV
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Fall of Phaethon
17th century
drawing, with watercolor
(study for ceiling)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Creation of Adam
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Apollo and Marsyas
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
The Lamentation
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Apostle Paul on Malta shaking off Viper into Flames
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Moses trampling Pharaoh's Crown
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
St Sebastian tended by St Irene
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
St Sebastian tended by St Irene
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
St Jerome kneeling before the Virgin and Child
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Landscape with Rocks
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Sheet of Studies
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

from The Little Walls Before China

           A courtier speaks to Ch'in Shih-huang-ti, ca. 210 B.C.

Highness, the former walls were helpless. They
stood alone in the middle of small fields
protecting nothing. A single peasant's holding
engulfed each one as it ran briefly, straight
from noplace off to noplace, with ruinous steps
of broken stone at both ends. Only head-high,
without the towers, gates and towns of your great wall,
they stuck where they were, never rising over hills
or curving through valleys: nothing but shoddy masonry
and a mystery: who built them, how long ago,
what for? They seemed to have no role but balking
the reaper and the ox; their bases made
islands in the flashing scythe-strokes, where wild flowers
and shrubs sprouted.

                             So all the people praise you
for burying such walls and their memory
in your vast one, which joins them, stretching far
beyond where they once crumbled to hold your Empire:
a wall which therefore can never have an end
but has to go on extending itself forever.
How useful, how cogent your wall is: a pale
for the civilized, a dike against the wild people
outside, who trade their quiet human blood
for the rage of gods, tearing men to pieces,
throwing them, watching them fall. In burying
those little walls, Lord, you have covered our shame
at our ancestors, best forgotten, whose mighty works
were so pointless, or so pitiably useless. 
Was all their effort so that daisies could grow in fissures?
So that some human work would rise over the flats
and weather till it seemed not human? Only
so that something of ours could be like trees and rocks:
docile-seeming, yet sullenly opposed
to use, and when compelled, only half serving,
reserving from the functions that we give them
a secret and idle self. The peasants would make
lean-tos for cattle against those walls: they served
for this alone.

– A.F. Moritz (1999) 

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Louvre - Unassigned French Figure Studies - 17th Century

Anonymous French Artist
Laocoön
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
(after Nicolas Poussin)
Nymph
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
River God
17th century
drawing
(fresco cartoon)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Personification of Time
ca. 1600-1650
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Study of Antique Torso
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Study of Draped Model offering Fruit
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Académie
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Académie
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Académie
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Académie
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Académie
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Annotated écorché Figure
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Meeting of Neptune and Venus on the Water
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Cain slaying Abel
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Two Heads of Bearded Man
ca. 1650-1700
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Study Nature

I do.
     Victim.
     Sales
     Met
     Wipe
     Her
     Less.
     Was a disappointment
     We say it.
                         Study nature.

     Or
     Who
     Towering.
     Mispronounced
     Spelling.
     She 
     Was
     Astonishing
     To
     No
     One
     For
     Fun
                         Study from nature.

     I
     Am
     Pleased
     Thoroughly        
     I
     Am
     Thoroughly
     Pleased.
     By.
     It.
     It is very likely.
                         They said so.

     Oh.
     I want.
     To do.
     What
     Is
     Later
     To
     Be
     Refined.
     By
     Turning.
     Of turning around.
                         I will wait.

– Gertrude Stein (1914)