 |
| Eugène Delacroix Mademoiselle Rose ca. 1820 oil on canvas Louvre |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Barque of Dante 1822 oil on canvas Louvre |
Quotations below are translated excerpts from Delacroix's journals and letters –
"There is no merit in being truthful when one is truthful by nature, or rather when one can be nothing else; it is a gift, like poetry or music. But it needs courage to be truthful after carefully considering the matter, unless a kind of pride is involved; for example, the man who says to himself, "I am ugly," and then says, "I am ugly" to his friends, lest they should think themselves the first to make the discovery."
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi 1826 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Still life with lobster 1826-27 oil on canvas Louvre |
"I believe it safe to say that all progress must lead, not to further progress, but finally to the negation of progress, a return to the point of departure."
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Execution of Doge Marino Faliero 1826-27 oil on canvas Wallace Collection, London |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Woman with a parrot 1827 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Liberty leading the people 1830 oil on canvas Louvre |
"They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other."
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Justice (detail of mural) 1833-37 oil & wax on plaster Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon, Paris |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Justice (detail of mural) 1833-37 oil & wax on plaster Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon, Paris |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix War (detail of mural) 1833-37 oil & wax on plaster Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon, Paris |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Cleopatra with a peasant delivering a serpent 1838 oil on canvas Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Sketch for Peace Descends to Earth 1852 oil on canvas Musée de Petit Palais, Paris |
"... art is no longer what the vulgar think it to be, that is, some sort of inspiration which comes from nowhere, which proceeds by chance, and presents no more than the picturesque externals of things. It is reason itself, adorned by genius, but following a necessary course and encompassed by higher laws."
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Lion hunt in Morocco 1854 oil on canvas Hermitage |
In Morocco, Delacroix felt that he had discovered "men who were more men than us." He concluded that "... to paint such men, it is necessary to take on the greatest difficulty, which consists in moving at every instant from an admiring style to an informal style that lends itself to painting grotesque scenes. You must, so to speak, change pens all the time. You see the most imposing and the most ridiculous things pass before your eyes without transition."
 |
| Eugène Delacroix Jaguar attacking a horse ca. 1855 oil on canvas Národní Galerie, Prague |
"Michelangelo did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much less to the action of the picture as a whole. Therein lies his great merit - he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated limb."