Charles Delacroix

“ It is interesting to note how completely this vivid description of the mature man tallies not only with the painted portrait of Delacroix at the age of thirty-one, but with another description of the adolescent, left by his college friend, Philarète Chasle, who speaks of him as "a lad, with olive-hued forehead, flashing eyes, a mobile face with prematurely sunken cheeks, abundant wavy black hair, betraying southern origin." ”

“ Such passionate emotion was wholly unknown to Delaroche; he painted deeds of murder with the wildness of Mieris. Delacroix everywhere grasps what is essential, and gives to every scene its poetical or religious character. A couple of lines are for him sufficient means wherewith to produce a deep impression. In presence of his pictures one does not think of costumes; one sees everywhere passion overflowing with love and anger, and is intoxicated with the harmony of sentiment and colour. ”

“ Neurotic and distempered, Delacroix worked feverishly. As a sound, full-blooded being Courbet painted, as a man drinks, digests, and talks, with an activity that knows no exertion, a force that knows no weariness. ”

“ True, when I first knew Delacroix he was over forty, but those who had known him at twenty and twenty-five never hinted at any romantic attachment or even at a sober, homely affection. And assuredly a (p. 169) man of forty is not invulnerable in that respect. And yet, the woman who positively bewitched, one after another, so many of Delacroix' eminent contemporaries, Jules Sandeau, Alfred de Musset, Michel de Bourges, Chopin, Pierre Leroux, Cabet, Lammenais, etc., had no power over him. ”

“ His only passions were his art, his love of romantic literature, and his staunch friendship. A few journeys and frequent spells of illness were the only events that broke the even tenor of his life. As a writer, Delacroix has left a marvellous "Journal," which ought to be consulted and carefully studied by every artist, and a number of carefully constructed magazine articles on various æsthetic questions, which only reveal the cool intellectual side of his dual nature. He was a man of great reticence, who rarely allowed himself to be drawn into criticising the art of his contemporaries. ”

“ Pierre nodded without speaking, knowing he was being instructed to punish a possible, but improbable, offender.
"Now, we are four intelligent men, I trust," said Monsieur Delacroix, pretending not to notice the glow of pleasure which suffused Jacques' features at being included in their number. "We are the Delacroix's, which is sufficient. And as leaders we must, from time to time, grant certain concessions to the inferior mentalities of the unfortunate who dwell in ignorance ”

“ The feverish disposition which he brought with him into the world was heightened by the acrimonious feuds in which, as a painter, he was forced to engage, and which left great bitterness behind them in his mind. His life and his art were in accord, in as much as both were battles. It is not easy to live when one is always ill; not easy to meet with recognition when one proclaims the exact opposite of that which for a generation past all the world has held to be true. And Delacroix took not a single step to meet his opponents half-way. ”

“ There were, indeed, some difficulties raised by the family, the father inclining to law, the mother to the diplomatic service; but, at eighteen, Delacroix lost his fortune and his father; he had only forty thousand francs left, and liberty to make himself a painter. He then went to Guérin, as soon as it could be arranged, and, working like a negro, dreamed, composed and executed his picture of Dante. This picture, not the worst of those he has painted,—strong men sometimes put as much or even more into their first work as into any afterwards,—came under the [Pg 475] notice of Géricault. ”

“ To-day we may be surprised that a picture so balanced in design, so sober in colour, so sculpturally plastic in the modelling of the human form, could have been considered in any way revolutionary and should have evoked such violent abuse as was showered upon it by the Davidists. But turn from this "Dante" to David's "Oath of the Horatii" and "Leonidas," which may be taken to typify the artistic standard of the time, and you will grasp the full significance of Delacroix's bold step. True, Géricault had already followed similar aims with his "Raft of the Medusa" ”

“ Sulpice fresco, that the very first glance reveals the essentially human element in the first, and the irresistible force of the supernatural in the second. The tempestuous, sweeping onrush of the two flying angels contrasted with the calm consciousness of all-conquering strength expressed not only in the mounted heavenly messenger but in the very action of his noble horse—the horses in Delacroix's paintings invariably reflect the mood of the drama or tragedy that forms the subject of the picture—are a pictorial conception of unsurpassed grandeur. ”

“ The patrimony he inherited, or perhaps it should be said, what remained of it, was 10,000 livres de rente, and with economy he lived on this, and continued the expensive process of painting large historical pictures. In 1831 he reappeared in the Salon with six works, and immediately after left for Morocco, where he found much congenial matter. Delacroix never went to Italy; he refused to go on principle, lest the old masters, either in spirit or manner, should impair his originality and self-dependence. His greatest admiration in literature was the poetry of Byron ”

“ Women wept and strong men paled before this terrible illustration of human agonies endured unto death, but the academicians attacked the work and the artist with almost savage fury. Géricault, a genius, sensitive and nervous, quailing before the storm which beat upon him, fled to England, but, pining in exile, returned home, only to die, crushed and broken-hearted.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a man of firmer fibre than his friend and fellow-student, and his was the strong hand to take up the gage of battle when Géricault fell in the fight. ”

“ Among all those men who had a profound, ineradicable contempt for the bourgeois, I have only known one who despised him even to a greater extent than he; it was Gustave Flaubert. Though Delacroix' manners were perfect, he could scarcely be polite to the middle classes. With the exception of Dante and (p. 168) Shakespeare, Delacroix was probably the greatest poet that ever lived; a greater poet undoubtedly than Victor Hugo, in that he was absolutely indifferent to the material results of his genius. ”

“ Coming down to the more modern painters we find even less consideration given them by the Britannica's editors. Delacroix, who ushered in a new age of painting and brought compositi back to art after a period of stagnation and quiescence, is nailed to France as follows: “As a colorist and a romantic painter he now ranks among the greatest of French artists.” Certainly not among the greatest English painters, for Constable is given more space than Delacroix ”

“ What can be more admirable than Delacroix’s “Nymph,” at whose feet crouches a panther? “Behold this work,” writes Théophile Gautier, “and you will see that for colour France has no longer any reason for envying Italy, Flanders, or Spain. Delacroix, in this great page, in which the energy of his talent is freely displayed, shows a knowledge of decorative art which has never been surpassed. Impossible while never departing from his own genius to be more in harmony with the style of the gallery and of the epoch. ”

“ It was on the occasion of this 1827 Salon that the terms "Romanticism" and "Romanticists" first came into general use. Their exact definition is not an easy matter. Broadly speaking, the romantic movement in literature, music, and painting signifies the accentuation of human emotions and passions in art, as opposed to the classic ideal of purity of form. Delacroix himself did not wish to be identified with any group or movement, but in the eyes of the public he stood as the leader of the Romanticists in painting, just as Victor Hugo, with whom he had but little sympathy, did in literature. ”

“ Whether he stretched some human type to the limit of caricature or invested it with attributes of bird, beast, or reptile, or used some familiar form of animal, or created a hybrid monster, he had the faculty of giving it an actuality that makes it seem reasonable. As to the meaning of the subjects, the titles which he himself gave them furnish, except in a few instances, an intelligible clue. Prints of this set were brought to England by officers engaged in the Peninsular War and later found their way to Paris and exercised a very conscious influence upon Delacroix. ”

“ Eugène Delacroix had exhibited in the Salon of 1831 his Tigres, his Liberté, his Mort de l'Évêque de Liége. Notice how well the grave and misanthropie face of Delaroche is framed between Horace Vernet, who is life and movement, and Delacroix, who is feeling, imagination and fantasy. Here is a painter in the full sense of the term, à la bonne heure! Full of faults impossible to defend, full of qualities impossible to dispute, for which friends and enemies, admirers and detractors can cut one another's throats in all conscience. ”

“ His second picture echoes Rubens, the Venetians and Goya. Later came more prominent evidences of Titian and Veronese. Delacroix was museum-bred. He absorbed impressions avidly, and did his best work only after he had undergone an intellectual experience. Had his art been truly expressive of all that was within him, he would have been in turn—diluted, to be sure—a Giotto, a Caravaggio, a Rubens, a Rembrandt. He felt the call of these men, but instead of halting at appreciation, he tried to use them. But the old masters, like the lords of the earth, are not amenable to high-handed demands. ”

“ The colour and spirit of events had no power over his imagination; he merely apprehended them with a cool understanding, and put them laboriously together in keeping with it. Delacroix sought counsel from nature; but in the moment of creation, in front of the canvas, he could not bear direct contact with it. “The influence of the model,” he wrote, “lowers the painter’s tone; a stupid fellow makes you stupid.” Delaroche draped his models as was required, made them posture and pull faces, and while he was painting, laboriously screwed them up to the pathos demanded by the situation. ”

“ To-day, as one examines the ten masterpieces by Delacroix in the Salle des États at the Louvre—ten pictures which may without fear of contradiction be asserted to form an epitome of the art of the man who is now generally acknowledged to be the fountain-head of all modern art—one can only with difficulty understand the bitter hostility, the fierce passion, aroused by these works when Delacroix's name was the battle-cry of the moderns, when Delacroix was the leader of the numerically small faction which waged heroic war against the inexorable tyrannic rule of academic art. ”

“ Ingres, certainly, did not owe his revived reputation to the love and admiration which his grey monochromes inspired, but to the fear and hatred which were inspired by the flashing brush of Delacroix. All men above the age of fifty were for Ingres; all young people below the age of thirty were for Delacroix. ”

“ The whole is exquisitely composed and executed, full of intellect and thought, and particularly full of skill—skill, yes! for Delaroche par excellence is the dexterous painter. He possesses the expertness of Casimir Delavigne, with whom he has all kinds of points of resemblance, although, in our opinion, he strikes us as being stronger, as a painter, than Casimir Delavigne as a dramatic author. Every artist has his double in some kindred contemporary. Hugo and Delacroix have many points of contact ”

“ Even the most cunningly devised cannot make a place for all the many manifestations of temperamental activity. Like Géricault, a pupil of Guérin, Delacroix found in his master and in the general spirit of the school an insistence on the letter of the classic law to which his richly endowed nature could not bend, and was thus forced to rebel ”

“ Adolphe Nourrit, passionate and ascetic, with the spirit of some mediæval monastic painter, an enthusiastic servant of art in its purest, severest form, a combination of poet and anchorite, is also there; for he loves the gentle musician, who seems to be a visitor from the world of spirits. Eugène Delacroix, one of the greatest of modern painters, his keen eyes half closed in meditation, absorbs the vague mystery of colour which imagination translates from the harmony, and attains new insight and inspiration through the bright links of suggestion by which one art lends itself to another. ”

“ Delacroix himself tells in his Journal that he was so powerfully impressed by the intense realism of his friend's work, that on leaving the studio he ran through the streets like a madman. How much he benefited by Géricault's example became clear when his "Dante and Virgil" appeared at the Salon of 1822, raising its author with a single bound to fame. ”

“ Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) was born at Paris, and studied under Baron Gros. He became a celebrated artist and was made a member of the Institute of France, a Professor in l’École des Beaux-Arts, and an officer of the Legion of Honor. His principal works represent scenes of important historical interest, and he so arranged them that they appeal to one’s sympathies with great power. Among these pictures are the “Condemnation of Marie Antoinette,” the “Death of the Duke of Guise,” “Cromwell Contemplating the Remains of Charles I.,” and other similar historical incidents. ”