Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/770

 DELACROIX

690

DELACROIX

the Holy Sacrament), fainting from grief for her cruci- fied Master, to an impression made upon him by the canticles of the month of May; while it was under the emotion produced by the music of the Dies Irse that he brought forth the terrible angel of the fresco of Helio- donis (Saint-Sidpice). After his studies at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand, he entered the school of Fine Arts in Paris and studied there under Guerin.

The extreme poverty which fell to the lot of Dela- croix after the death of his parents in 1819 drove him to the production of lithographs, caricatures, etc. In the mean time, how-ever (1818), a distinct promise of his future eminence had been manifested in the first of his recorded canvases, "Roman Matrons Sacrificing Their Jewelry to Their Country". Against the advice of his master, Guerin, he ex- hibited at the Salon of 1822 the "Dante and Virgil", which immediately had the effect of bringing to its creator notoriety, if not fame, for it aroused a whirlwind of critical controversy. In the then exist- ing state of French public opinion in matters of art, it is not wonderful that Delacroi.x should have failed to win the much-coveted Prix de Rome, for which he was a competitor; but two years later (1824) his "Massacre of Scio" renewed the strife of the critics which his earlier Salon picture had first kindled, and brought him a little nearer to the goal of success. The conservative classicists condemned his work, as they condemned that of all the new romanticists, for its "contempt of established traditions; the subse- quent triumph of romanticism brought with it in good time his personal triumph, to be eventually signalized and confirmed by the acquisition of the two bitterly criticized early canvases, the " Roman JIatrons " and the "Massacre of Scio ", for the national collection of the Louvre. But only after the Revolution of 1830 did official recognition and approval visit him. In the year next following that event he travelled through Spain and Morocco, whence he brought back an inspiration of Southern light, colour, and vital force which was to make itself effectively felt in ail his later and more widely known work. The new- government made him a chevalier of the Legion of Honour; the day of nineteenth-century romanticism had begun in France, and DelacroLx, always a leader of this new school, was fairly arrive. From the ex- hibition of his "Murder of the Bishop of Liege" in the Salon (1831) his progress was never seriously inter- rupted, in spite of incessant criticism, until, in 1857, it brought him into the fold of the Institute of France. It was during this quarter of a century of his career that he produced those great compositions ori medie- val and Arabian themes with which his name is nowa- days most commonly associated.

The bitter opposition which DelacroLx had all his life to endiu-e drew him into discussions in which he displayed a real literarv talent. No one who would arrive' at a true idea of the man should omit the peru- sal of his essays on art and his correspondence. The number of his pictorial works is immense, aggregating about 9140 subjects, classified by Ernest Chesneau as follows: 853 canvases, 1525 pastels, water-colours, etc., 6629 drawings, 24 engra\'ings, 109 lithographs, and 60 albums. The following may be ment ioned as marking important moments in the development of his genius: "The 2Sth of July, 1830" (1830); "Charge of Arab Cavalry" (Montpellier Museimi— 1832); ".\lgerian Women" (Louvre— 1834); "Jewish Wedding in Morocco" (Louvre — 1841); "Taking of Constanti- nople by the Crusaders" (Versailles Museum— 1841); "Muley-abd-el-Rahman leaving his palace at Me- qumez" (Toulouse Museum— 1845); "The Two Fos- cari" (Collection of the Due d'.\umale at Chantilly — 1855). To his early period belong the famous litho- graphs of Faust which brought him warm praise from Goethe himself. "Sardanapalus" (Salon, 1828), an- other early chef-d'(eurre, drew from Vitet the remark

that " Delacroix etait devenu la pierre de scandale des Expositions", while Delecluze called it "une erreur de peintre". "Richelieu Saying Mass", was ordered by the Duke Louis Philippe d'Orleans, while "The Death of Charles the Bold" was ordered by the Minister of the Interior. "The Murder of the Bishop of Liege", the canvas which actually assured his contemporary fame, was probably the best of all his pictures. From this on, masterpieces follow one another until adverse criticism could no longer seriously affect his position in the world of art.

Appreciation of His Work. — The real founder of the nineteenth-century French School of art, Delacroix stands alone and unsurpassed. The difficulties he had to contend with came from his forcing upon an ignorant public a new school wholly opposed to that of David, which was insincere in its coldness and artificiality, con- ventional, and absolutely unsjinpathetic. Though one can find in Delacroix almost all the best poir.ts of men like Rem- brandt, Rubens, and Correggio, from the moment he shook off the influence of G^ ricault — so man- ifest in " Dante and Virgil" — he threw himself en- tirely on the re- sources of his own genius. On the eve of finishing the "Massacre of Scio" he had oc- casion to notice some works of Constable, and there discovered and made his own a principle of art which so many masters have failed to appreciate, viz. that in nature, what seems to be of one colour is in reaUty made up of many shades, discovered only by the eye which knows how to see. There- after colouring had no secret for him. Delacroix was an artist in a supreme degree. Possessed of a deep knowledge of history, he studied each group and each individual in series of sketches, which were retouched again and again; then only did they take place in the ensemble. With the instinct of a poet he saw \'i\'idly the scene he was painting. His artistic sense kept him from falling into the melodramatic, but he remains tragic, and it is for this tragic note, which finds expression in so many bloody themes, that I he is generally criticized. Delacroix worked with an unerring instinct of composition, avoiding the monot- ony of regular line by the varied attitudes of his fig- ures. He excelled m the various branches of his art, ! and his decorative pictures in the Gallery of .Apollo at j the Louvre, the drawing-room of the king, the cham- : hcT of deputies, and St-Sulpice are as excellent as his canvases. There is hardly a tragedy of the human soul which is not reproduced in his work. He is not popular because the multitude wants pleasure, and Delacroix, like Pascal, does not make one laugh; hei terrifies. In the " Murder of the Bishop of Liege", be-' fore admiration comes one has shivered at the vividi portrayal of human ferocity; in the "Christ in the| Garden of Gethsemani" there is no human sorrow equal to that. Delacroix is the highest manifestation! of French genius in art; he not only honours France, Init mankiiKl, ani.1 is one of tho.se who Emerson sair were "representative of humanity".

Goethe, Conversfifions. tr. Delebot: L^s Beaux-.Arls ft Eurov (Paris, 1S.^)6'I: Eufi'nw Drlncrnix in Fine .Arts Qimrlirb Review, III; Atherton, Some Masters of Lithography (1897),

Eugene Delacroix