Eugène Delacroix – Early interest in music, literature and art
Eugène Delacroix was born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice near Paris on 26 April 1798. His mother came from a family of cabinetmakers whilst his father was a member of the revolutionary government as foreign minister until 1797 and later worked as French ambassador to the Netherlands. The subject, however, that Charles Maurice de Talleyrand was actually Delacroix’ father, has been seriously discussed within research. Strong indications for this are the strikingly similar physiognomy of Talleyrand and Delacroix, the inability of the nominal father to procreate due to illness, and above all, the lifelong protection the painter received from the influential statesman. Delacroix showed a pronounced musical inclination from early on, drawing attention with his singing talent at school, and during his time at the Lycée Impérial, developed a keen interest in literature. A vacation in a Gothic monastery in Normandy finally inspired him to paint, and his uncle Johann Heinrich Riesner took him to the studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, whose student he became.
Radical Romantic following literary motifs
In 1816, Eugène Delacroix began studies at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris; important artistic influences included the English painter John Constable, who oriented Romanticism towards a new realism, and the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens, whose baroque brushstroke was free from all classicist tendencies. Delacroix had the chance to observe his compatriot Théodore Géricault at work on his major piece The Raft of Medusa – a profound experience that inspired him to his own first masterpiece, The Barque of Dante (1822), based on motifs from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Literary motifs continued to play an important role in the art of Eugène Delacroix after this first great success, and he also drew inspiration for his history paintings from William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Lord Byron. When he virtually radically dressed up the horror in his painting The Death of Sardanapalus with romantic aesthetics, he encountered harsh criticism amongst his contemporaries who warned him not to waste his great talent lightly.
An indulgent oriental riot of colour
Eugène Delacroix also made a name for himself as a lithographer, and here in particular he was able to live out his preference for an unbridled depiction of the demonic. In 1831, his painting Liberty Leading the People, in which he addressed the events of the July Revolution of 1830 in Pairs, brought widespread recognition. Wealthy and influential friends enabled Delacroix to travel to Morocco which provided him with a flood of new impressions and experiences which he recorded in hundreds of sketches and notes and used as the basis for numerous colourful paintings. His almost uncontainable creative urge, which was further fueled by several commissions from the French government, meant that he was hardly able to maintain his social contacts and had to employ several staff. Among his few friends were the writer George Sand and the composer Frédéric Chopin.
Eugène Delacroix died in Paris on 13 August 1863.
Eugène Delacroix - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
