F.V. EUGÈNE DELACROIX & THE FRENCH ROMANTIC SCHOOL

All good things have and end, and The Grandma and her friends have returned to their homes: Corto Maltese to somewhere along the ocean, Joseph de Ca'th Lon to his beloved Switzerland, and Claire Fontaine and The Grandma to Barcelona.

During the trip from Sant Feliu de Guíxols to Barcelona, The Grandma has been reading about Eugène Delacroix, the French Romantic artist who died on a day like today in 1863.

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798-13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school. In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form.

Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the forces of the sublime, of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible. Together with Ingres, Delacroix is considered one of the last old Masters of painting and is one of the few who was ever photographed.

As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott, and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Eugène Delacroix was born on 26 April 1798 at Charenton-Saint-Maurice in Seine, near Paris. His mother was Victoire Oeben, the daughter of the cabinetmaker Jean-François Oeben.

Delacroix drew inspiration from many sources over his career, such as the literary works of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron, and the artistry of Michelangelo. But, throughout his life, he felt a constant need for music, saying in 1855 that nothing can be compared with the emotion caused by music; that it expresses incomparable shades of feeling. He also said, while working at Saint-Sulpice, that music put him in a state of exaltation that inspired his painting. It was often from music, whether the most melancholy renditions of Chopin or the pastoral works of Beethoven, that Delacroix was able to draw the most emotion and inspiration. At one point during his life, Delacroix befriended and made portraits of the composer Chopin; in his journal, Delacroix praised him frequently.

At the sale of his work in 1864, 9140 works were attributed to Delacroix, including 853 paintings, 1525 pastels and water colours, 6629 drawings, 109 lithographs, and over 60 sketch books. The number and quality of the drawings, whether done for constructive purposes or to capture a spontaneous movement, underscored his explanation, Colour always occupies me, but drawing preoccupies me.

On 13 August, Delacroix died. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

More information: The Art Story

 Do all the work you can; 
that is the whole philosophy 
of the good way of life.

Eugène Delacroix