Delacroix

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	Time: 16 hours Level: Introductory

	Introduction Introduction Resource In this unit you will be introduced to a variety of Delacroix’s work and see how his paintings relate to the cultural transition from Enlightenment to Romanticism.

	1: Overview 1.1: Delacroix’s background Resource Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was an artist raised amid the heroism and turmoil of Napoleon’s regime but whose artistic career began in earnest after Waterloo. His father (who died in 1805)... 1.2: Ideas and influences Resource The Oriental and the exotic played a central role in this process of artistic negotiation and reconciliation. The Enlightenment’s preoccupation with ‘exotic’ lands as part of an indirect critique of western...

	2: The Death of Sardanapalus 2.1: Inspiration for the Death of Sardanapalus Resource Plate 1 is a reproduction of Delacroix’s The Death of Sardanapalus, believed to have been completed sometime between November 1827 and January 1828. 2.2: Sardanapalus – subject and composition Resource The following explanatory text was published in the booklet accompanying the paintings at the 1827–8 Salon, where Delacroix’s canvas was exhibited: 2.3: A passionate reaction Resource The painting provoked a furore because both its subject and the manner in which it was painted were felt to be excessive: this delirious orgy, playing on Byronic notions of fieriness and Faustian concoctions... 2.4: Controversial colour and composition – exercise Resource In order to understand the furore created by Sardanapalus it will be helpful to compare the work with others more acceptable to the domain of public art. With this in mind, you are asked here to work on... 2.5: Neoclassical – the established style Resource All of the disorientating effects of Delacroix’s composition were noted by his contemporaries, whose mindset was very much attuned to more legible treatments of picture space. This was exemplified by David,... 2.6: An alternative deathbed tradition Resource Delacroix does not draw on this neoclassical tradition. He uses an alternative deathbed tradition, in which the bed is artificially raised and tilted towards the viewer to allow a fuller view of the dead... 2.7: Interpreting the classical form Resource The female nudes in The Death of Sardanapalus are of the curvaceous, fleshy, wild-haired type favoured by Rubens, slightly streamlined for a contemporary audience. We can see in the work the influence... 2.8: Colour and light – exercise Resource Compare the effects of colour and light in Sardanapalus with those in David’s Andromache mourning Hector (Plate 3). What similarities and differences can you see? (You may find it helpful to look also... 2.9: Painterly techniques Resource A sensuous use of colour subverted the neoclassical aesthetic, in which moral and intellectual messages – or, at the very least, a concept of ‘noble form’ – were intended to dominate. In the case of Delacroix,... 2.10: Colour versus line Resource Rubens versus Poussin, colour versus line – these were the polarities around which much debate in France had been structured since the late seventeenth century, when the Royal Academy of Painting had been... 2.11: Birth of the ‘Romantic’ Resource The ‘ardent and animated’ aspects of Delacroix’s work made commentators describe his large canvases of the 1820s as ‘Romantic’. By the end of the decade, he was regarded by many younger artists as the...

	3: Delacroix – classic or Romantic? 3.1: A classical education Resource This section maps out some of the aspects of Delacroix’s early career that help to explain his approach in Sardanapalus. 3.2: The influence of Géricault and Gros Resource It was at the École des Beaux-Arts that Delacroix met Théodore Géricault, whose Romantic canvases, such as The Raft of the Medusa (Plate 15), made an impact on him. Delacroix posed as one of the foreground... 3.3: A Baroque influence Resource Another influence on Delacroix, as we have seen, was Rubens, who represented a particular strain of classicism often referred to as Baroque. This term was first applied to painting by nineteenth-century... 3.4: Neoclassical and the Baroque – a delicate balance Resource As, from the seventeenth century onwards, French aesthetic preferences polarised around Poussin and Rubens (perceived champions, respectively, of line and colour), the argument was largely one of degree:... 3.5: The Barque of Dante – innovation within tradition Resource The urge to depart from tradition, without abandoning classicism, is apparent in Delacroix’s earliest Salon exhibits. Displayed there in 1822, some years before the Sardanapalus, The Barque of Dante (see... 3.6: Massacres of Chios – challenging the establishment Resource If the Barque had marked Delacroix out as an innovator, his next important Salon exhibit, Massacres of Chios (1824) (see Plate 20), was much bolder in its challenge to the establishment. The painting is... 3.7: Massacres of Chios – a critical stir Resource Chauvin viewed both Delacroix’s subject and his technique as barbaric: the painting dealt with no eternal truths and delivered no inspiring lesson. Other complaints were voiced about the rough brushwork... 3.8: Transcending the Romantic-classic divide Resource Much of the ground for the reception of Sardanapalus had now been prepared. The classic-Romantic divide, with David’s followers on one side and Gros and Géricault on the other, was already well established... 3.9: Delacroix’s early career – exercise Resource In order to sum up your work on this section, jot down some notes on how Delacroix's early career might be seen as moving away from a respect for the classical tradition and for the reason and order demanded...

	4: The Romantic artist and the creative process 4.1: The Romantic aesthetic Resource In a journal entry of October 1822 Delacroix expressed the view that artists, unlike writers, don’t have to say everything explicitly: 4.2: Imagination and inspiration Resource Even William Gilpin, whose own artistic practice was so formula-bound, recognised the importance of leaving something to the imagination. In his Observations … on … the Mountains, and Lakes of Cumberland,... 4.3: Delacroix – sensitivity and suffering Resource Although in public Delacroix assumed the demeanour of the accomplished socialite (he dined regularly with Hugo, Alfred de Musset and other writers, and was friendly with Chopin and George Sand, among others),... 4.4: Revealing the inner being – exercise Resource Read the following extract (dating from May 1824) from Delacroix’s journal. From 1822, following Rousseau’s tradition of self-confession, Delacroix kept a diary in which he expressed his views on himself... 4.5: The soul and sensitivity Resource In another journal entry of 1824, Delacroix speaks of the fact that the soul is inevitably trapped within the physical body: 4.6: From Enlightenment to Romantic thinking Resource The Enlightenment had typically expressed, on the one hand, the soul and imagination and, on the other, reason and intelligence in terms of incompatible opposites. Not so Delacroix:

	5: Romantic themes and subjects in Delacroix’s art 5.1: Sardanapalus – a disconcerting subject Resource Many of Delacroix’s contemporaries found the subject matter of his Sardanapalus excessive and unpalatable. This was the opinion of an anonymous reviewer in the Moniteur Universel on 29 January 1828, who... 5.2: Sardanapalus – passion and futility Resource For many of Delacroix’s Romantic contemporaries, versed in Byronic despondency and melancholic ruminations on the futility and transitory nature of worldly pleasure, Sardanapalus expressed the condition... 5.3: The popular Gothic Resource Most of the subjects Delacroix painted in the 1820s broke free from the constraints of the morally uplifting themes of the classical tradition, which had focused on the heroic and sacred achievements of... 5.4: A taste for the grotesque Resource The grotesque was one aspect of this new aesthetic. The antithesis of the sublime and the beautiful, it was defined by Victor Hugo in his Preface to Cromwell: 5.5: The Gothic, the grotesque and artistic expression Resource The Gothic and the grotesque replaced classical reason, order and regularity with the irrational, the irregular and the deformed. Delacroix was drawn to them as a means of breathing new life into artistic... 5.6: Modernity – challenging tradition Resource Delacroix also challenged tradition in paintings like Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826) and Liberty Leading the People (1830) (Plates 29 and 30), in which he mixes conventional, classical allegory... 5.7: Extremes of modernity Resource Between 1826 and 1828, after seeing in London a dramatic adaptation of Goethe’s play, Delacroix made a series of 18 lithographs of Faust (Plates 31–36 are reproductions of six of these). A mixture of the... 5.8: Delacroix’s modernity – the historical context Resource It is important to place Delacroix’s modernity in its historical context because it had, in its time, a political resonance. Delacroix was not exactly anti-establishment. He appreciated very much the government... 5.9: A reaction to the bourgeois establishment Resource Delacroix made many satirical drawings that expressed his criticism of the monarchy (even its more liberal incarnation in the form of Louis XVIII), aristocracy and clergy, and that made clear his sympathies... 5.10: Features of French Romantic art and artists – exercise Resource Try to list as many features as you can of French Romantic art and artists, as explored here.

	6: The Oriental and the exotic 6.1: Oriental literature Resource As part of this section you will be studying the material in a video, Eugene Delacroix: The Moroccan Journey. Before doing this, however, it will be useful to look at some of the factors that affected... 6.2: A sense of sumptuous hedonism Resource In the sphere of painting, decoration and architecture, Orientalist schemes of decoration, which were all the rage in the eighteenth century among those who sought a more colourful and sumptuous life,... 6.3: Western perceptions – Oriental stereotypes Resource The sympathy of Byron, Delacroix and others for the Greeks, in their recent wars with the Turks, had become by 1824 a major concern of all European liberal opinion. This relates to a further Orientalist... 6.4: Recasting the Turkish identity Resource There was a similar ambivalence towards the Turks in music. The plots of eighteenth-century ‘Turkish’ operas had represented Turks as both unenlightened barbarians and enlightened humanitarians. Rameau’s... 6.5: Romanticising the Oriental Resource Heroic Byronic quests such as that of the Giaour were ideally suited to Delacroix’s taste and formed part of his Romantic modernity. In the preface to his 1829 collection of poems, The Orientals, Victor... 6.6: Delacroix – exoticism and animal energy Resource It is significant that Delacroix characterised his genius as that of a wild animal, as the energy and exoticism of such creatures also inspired him as subjects. He went to see wild animals in the Jardin... 6.7: Delacroix – Orientalism and personal identity Resource Recent commentators have read paintings such as Sardanapalus as revealing the personal character or values of the artist. Delacroix’s recourse to the exotic and Oriental is seen as an extension of his...

	7: Conclusion 7: Conclusion Resource Delacroix’s fascination with the Oriental and the exotic both fuelled and influenced his Romantic tendencies. His journey to Morocco encouraged him to balance Romantic obsessiveness with classical restraint...

	References and Acknowledgements References Resource Acknowledgements Resource

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Topic outline

Introduction

1: Overview

2: The Death of Sardanapalus

3: Delacroix – classic or Romantic?

4: The Romantic artist and the creative process

5: Romantic themes and subjects in Delacroix’s art

6: The Oriental and the exotic

7: Conclusion

References and Acknowledgements

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