Eugène Delacroix

“ 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. ”

“ We will try to draw this great and strange artistic figure, which is like nothing that has been and probably like nothing that ever will be; we will try to give, by the analysis of his temperament, an idea of the productions of this great painter, who bore a likeness to both Michael Angelo and Rubens; not so good at drawing as the first, nor as good at composition as the second, but more original in his fancies than either. Temperament is the tree; works are but its flowers and fruit.
Eugène Delacroix was born at Charenton near Paris,—at Charenton-les-Fous ”

“ The King, Henri III, pale and trembling, emerges from behind a curtain to gaze upon his slaughtered victim, whilst the hired assassins gloat over their ghastly deed. This picture, which hangs in the Tribune, was painted by Delaroche specially for the Duc d’Orléans.
We now come to Eugène Delacroix, who, in company with Gericault, is considered as the pioneer of Romanticism. His Capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders at Chantilly is a vividly composed representation of this important event. The Two Foscari (Tribune) depicts one of the greatest tragedies in Venetian history. ”

“ It was on 26th April 1799, at midday, that the first genuine painter’s eye of the century saw the light, at Charenton Saint-Maurice. Géricault had made a beginning, but it was the impetuous, powerful genius of Eugène Delacroix which entered in and completed his work. What Gros had dimly perceived, but had not dared to express, what Géricault had barely had time with a courageous hand to point out, a hand too soon stiffened in death—the modern poetry of colour, of fever, and of quivering emotion—it was reserved for Delacroix to write.
“That child will grow up to be a famous man ”

“ Eugène Delacroix.
It would appear that the painter had shown signs of yielding to the charms which few men were able to withstand, or, at any rate, that George Sand fancied she could detect such signs. Whether it was from a wish on George Sand's part to precipitate matters or to nip the thing in the bud, it would be difficult to determine, but it is certain that she pursued her usual tactics—that is, she endeavoured to provoke an admission of her admirer's feeling. ”

“ The decorators were no other than Eugène Delacroix, Louis and Clément Boulanger, Alfred and Tony Johannot, Decamps, Grandville, Jadin, Barye, Nanteuil—our first painters, in fact. Ciceri undertook the ceilings. The question arose as to whether the subject should be from a novel or from a play of each of the authors who would be there. Eugène Delacroix undertook to paint King Rodrigo after the defeat of the Guadalèté, a subject taken from the Romancero, translated by Émile Deschamps; Louis Boulanger chose a scene from Lucrèce Borgia; Clément Boulanger, a scene from the Tour de Nesle ”

“ If Delacroix has none of the great serenity and cheerfulness of Titian, or the large and manly way of seeing of Veronese, he has an imaginative fervor and intensity we do not see in them, and of which Tintoret and Tiepolo only among the Venetians show any trace. Generations hence, Eugene Delacroix will loom larger above his contemporaries, now hiding him by proximity.
SYMPATHETIC LYING.
If "all men are liars," and everybody deceives us a little sometimes, so that David's dictum hardly needs his apology of haste, it is a comfort to remember that many lies are not downright, but sympathetic ”

“ Get enfant deviendra un homme cclebre, mais sa vie sera des plus laborieuses, des plus tourmentees, et toujours livree a la contradiction." Delacroix the elder died at Bordeaux when Eugene was seven years of age, and his mother returned to Paris and placed him in the Lyce e Napoleon. ”

“ At the present time, one needs to be among the most intimate of the friends of Delaroche to have the right to enter his studio. Besides, he is not even any longer in Paris: he is at Nice; he is said to be [Pg 488] ill. Hot sun, beautiful starlit nights, an atmosphere sparkling with fireflies, will cure the soul, and then the body will soon be cured!...
There is no sort of physical resemblance between Delacroix and his two rivals. He is like Vernet in figure, almost as slender as he, very neat and fashionable and dandified. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the Mythological Dictionary. What a classicism, inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence the hour!
Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his ‘Medea’ is a genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The real subject is yourself; it is your impressions, your emotions before nature. You must search within yourself, not look about you.” Delacroix’s life was embittered by the jealous rivalry of Ingres, who called him “the apostle of ugliness” and prevented him from teaching in the Academy, but his daring use of color was to influence many later painters.
In the Romantic era, nature, which had been neglected as long as the classical tradition prevailed, was extolled by poets and painted by outstanding masters. ”