Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is widely regarded as the leader of the French
Romantic school of painting. Drawing from the tradition of Rubens, English
Romanticism and the works of the Venetian Renaissance, Delacroix developed a style
that followed in the footsteps of his mentor Théodore Géricault. He utilized
expressive, heavy brushstrokes of saturated color to depict historical scenes and
important current events teeming with sensuous movement and drama—he believed
the first merit of a painting was to be a “feast for the eye.” In this respect, as well as
with his study of the optical effects of color, he had a profound influence on the
Impressionists. However, while he championed the observation of nature, he made
clear that he used it as the foundation for his paintings, not the subject itself (he
once stated that, “Nature is but a dictionary. A dictionary in not a book, it is an
instrument with which to make books”). Like many of his contemporaries, he sought
to capture the exotic and traveled to North Africa in the early 1830s for inspiration,
ultimately producing over 100 paintings and drawings, and a handful of etchings and
lithographs based on the life of the people of Morocco and Algeria.
The AAPS recognized Delacroix as the founder of Romanticism (in opposition to the
Classicists led by Ingres and the Realists led by Courbet) and placed him in Gallery
P with other artists who followed in a similar vein to Delacroix’s Romanticism,
including Daumier, Renior, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and also some Symbolist works by
Redon. The distinction between the Classicists (who were considered Academic
painters) and the Romanticists was the dependence on formalism and draughtsmanship
versus that of the evocative use of color and the physicality of paint. The Realists,
on the other hand, sat somewhere between the two movements. These three schools
would eventually merge to create the newly formed tenets of modern art at the turn-
of-the-century.
Delacroix’s sole painting exhibited in the Armory Show was an 1853 canvas of
Christ
on the Lake of Genesareth
—a composition harkening to Géricault’s
Raft of the
Medusa
, from 1818-19 (though considerably less morbid). The work was lent by
William Mead Ladd, a successful Portland politician and banker, and is currently in
the Portland Museum of Art, Oregon.
Beyond accomplishing success as a painter from his early career onward (his first
major work,
The Barque of Dante
, was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1822 and
immediately purchased by the French State for the Luxembourg Galleries), Delacroix
was widely recognized for his lithography and etchings, and was among the earliest
artists to use lithography (developed in the late 1790s) for the purpose of producing
original works of fine art. He produced 25 etchings and more than 100 lithographs
from 1814 to the early 1850s. The examples presented in this catalogue were inspired
by his trips to Algeria and Tangiers (lots 5-7) and depict exotic Orientalist scenes.
