Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) | DMA Staging Content Management System

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Eugène Delacroix looms over any discussion of art in 19th-century France. To a degree unparalleled by any of his contemporaries—even his arch-rival Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres—he personified the complete artist in the grand mode of the Old Masters, a protean talent capable of expressing the tenderest intimacy or the stagiest and most colossal grandiloquence. His imagination was drawn to the narrative challenges of literature, religion, and poetry and to the popular appeal for the exotic, even the dangerous. From the very beginning of his prolific career, the well-born artist was the acknowledged leader of the French romantic movement. Famous for his avowed preference for color over line, he was nevertheless unmatched as a draftsman. He left many thousands of drawings, some of them mere notations of what he saw, made on the spot for possible later use; others that were studies for details in his complex historical works; still others that were complete compositional studies; and some that were finished works in their own right. Since his death in 1863, his works on paper—embracing the media of pen and ink, pencil, watercolor, pastel, and combinations of them—have been collected avidly and are now dispersed throughout the world.

Delacroix painted his first masterpieces of so-called orientalism— The Massacre at Chios (1824, Musée du Louvre), Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux), and The Death of Sardanapalus (1827, Musée du Louvre)—without ever having seen the Middle East. In 1832 he managed to join the diplomatic mission to Morocco conducted for King Louis- Philippe by the Comte de Mornay. The alien and exotic culture filled him with delight, which he likened to being surrounded by Greeks and Romans in their togas and robes. The drawings and studies he made on this trip served for the rest of his life as sources of inspiration and points of departure for paintings and drawings that continued to spring from this romance with the exotic.

Delacroix seemed to predict his role in the history of painting when he defined what he understood by romanticism: "If by romanticism is meant the free display of my personal impressions, and my repugnance for the type invariably admired in the schools and for academic formulas, I must confess that not only am I a romantic, but that I was so even at fifteen: I already preferred Prud'hon and Gros to Guerin and Girodet."

Adapted from

William B. Jordan, "Eugène Delacroix, 'Sheet of Moroccan Studies'," in Mind's Eye: Masterworks on Paper from David to Cézanne, eds. Olivier Meslay and William B. Jordan (Dallas Museum of Art; New Haven, NJ: Yale University Press, 2014) 38-39.
DMA research document, n.d., Collections Records Object File.

NOTES

This note was previously tagged #routed (and possibly !Routed_Feb15). I am removing those tags and replacing with #draft so that this note proceeds to GDocs for routing and is harvested to Brain. (EAS, 12/22/2016)

Need to return to TMS constituent record to verify that dates and geo x-refs are complete.

b. April 26, 1798

d. August 13, 1863

Birth- Ile de France

Trained- Rouen- (c. 1810s)- Attended the Lycée Louis-le-Grand

Trained- Paris (starting in 1815)- Studied under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.

Worked- Paris (1821-

Worked- England- (1825)- Visited Thomas Lawrence and Richard Parkes Bonington

Worked- Spain- (1832)- Traveled as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco.

Worked- North Africa- (1832)- Traveled as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco.

Died- Paris

ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS

Romanticism

Orientalism

Nineteenth-Century France

AUDIO ASSETS

"Learn about Eugene Delacroix," DMA Collections smartphone tour, 2012. Audio file- collections_2012_delacroix.mp3. 44997688: UMO
Dorothy Kosinski, Icons of French Painting: From Delacroix to Courbet, (Icons series lecture; with Richard Brettell, George Shackleford, Phyllis Tuchman, art critic and journalist; Masterworks of French Painting, "Bonjour Monsieur Courbet!": The Bruyas Collection of the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, October 17, 2004–January 2, 2005), lecture on November 4, 2004. Filename- IconsFrenchPainting, audio casette, transcript exists. 13313012: UMO

VIDEO ASSETS

IMAGE ASSETS

265931973: UMO. [Caption]Photography of Eugène Delacroix by Félix Nadar. Source: Nadar, or Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 15, 2016.

WEB RESOURCES

Eugène Delacroix~See examples of Delacroix's most famous works and read more about his technique, influences, and legacy.
Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People~Read Dr. Bryan Zygmont's essay about this iconic painting and the history of French Romanticism, Delacroix, and politics in 19th century France (Khan Academy's Smarthistory).
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863): Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from North American Collections~Look at this 1991 exhibition catalogue available through the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ARCHIVAL RESOURCES

FUN FACTS

When Delacroix visited England for the summer of 1825, he befriended two British artists whose works are also in the DMA Collection; Sir Thomas Lawrence created the Portrait of the Honorable Mrs. Seymour Bathurst (1828, 1986.56.FA) and Richard Parkes Bonington painted A River in Normandy (1824-1825, 1982.103). Bonington accompanied the visiting artist on a trip to study a private collection that resulted in Delacroix's series of lithographs depicting ancient coins (1953.49).
“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.” (Charles Baudelaire, French writer and critic, in “Le Salon de 1846,” 1846)
“To steal the gesture, seize the animated silhouette of the creature, conquer the movement; to throw upon canvas, to pin down human mobility; to push the picture to that violence of things called drama; move, agitate, excite the line . . . these are the inspirations and ambitions of Delacroix.” (Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, in “La Peinture à l’Exposition de 1855,” 1855)

TEACHING IDEAS

RULES

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General Description

Eugène Delacroix looms over any discussion of art in 19th-century France. To a degree unparalleled by any of his contemporaries—even his arch-rival Jean- Auguste-Dominique Ingres—he personified the complete artist in the grand mode of the Old Masters, a protean talent capable of expressing the tenderest intimacy or the stagiest and most colossal grandiloquence. His imagination was drawn to the narrative challenges of literature, religion, and poetry and to the popular appeal for the exotic, even the dangerous. From the very beginning of his prolific career, the well-born artist was the acknowledged leader of the French romantic movement. Famous for his avowed preference for color over line, he was nevertheless unmatched as a draftsman. He left many thousands of drawings, some of them mere notations of what he saw, made on the spot for possible later use; others that were studies for details in his complex historical works; still others that were complete compositional studies; and some that were finished works in their own right. Since his death in 1863, his works on paper—embracing the media of pen and ink, pencil, watercolor, pastel, and combinations of them—have been collected avidly and are now dispersed throughout the world.

Delacroix painted his first masterpieces of so-called orientalism— The Massacre at Chios (1824, Musée du Louvre), Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux), and The Death of Sardanapalus (1827, Musée du Louvre)—without ever having seen the Middle East. In 1832 he managed to join the diplomatic mission to Morocco conducted for King Louis- Philippe by the Comte de Mornay. The alien and exotic culture filled him with delight, which he likened to being surrounded by Greeks and Romans in their togas and robes. The drawings and studies he made on this trip served for the rest of his life as sources of inspiration and points of departure for paintings and drawings that continued to spring from this romance with the exotic.