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)