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ral decorations it may be as well to sketch in brief outline the course of the remaining years of his life--a life of ceaseless productive energy, interrupted only by spells of illness, but otherwise strangely uneventful. After the references in the preceding pages of the important pictures which constitute, as it were, the landmarks in Delacroix's career, it would be as impossible as it is superfluous to describe, or even to enumerate, the masterpieces produced year by year by his indefatigable brush. A volume of considerable bulk would be needed for a mere list, for, according to Robaut's statement at the beginning of his catalogue: "Eug?ne Delacroix has left about 9140 works, of which number 853 are paintings, 1525 pastels, water-colours, or wash-drawings, 6629 drawings, 24 engravings, 109 lithographs, and over 60 albums!"

This is the great picture with which Delacroix, then twenty-four years of age, made his debut at the Salon of 1822. The dramatic power of the central group and the frenzied movement and superb modelling of the nude figures clinging to the boat, caused an immense sensation with a public accustomed to the frigid classicism of the David School. Unfortunately the picture is now badly cracked and discoloured, probably owing to the use of bituminous pigment, which Delacroix only discarded at a later period.

Whether it be due to his unshaken perseverance on the path he had chosen from the very outset, or to the waning interest caused by the wearing off of the novelty, Delacroix's art was now more readily accepted, or, at any rate, discussed without the bitterness of the early attacks. Nevertheless, even now, and indeed to the end of his life, he could only obtain wretched prices for his pictures, and the Academy remained implacably hostile, until the special collection of his principal works at the International Exhibition of 1855 brought him at last that general public applause that had till then been denied to him. Delacroix himself showed no bitterness to the Academy, and presented himself time after time for election, his claims being invariably couched in terms as modest as they were dignified. His first attempt was in 1837, when the votes were cast in favour of Schnetz. Two vacancies occurred in 1838, and on both occasions Delacroix knocked at the doors of the Academy, but Langlois and Couder were preferred to him. His next attempt was in 1849, when Cogniet secured the majority of votes. When he presented himself again in 1853, insult was added to injury, his very candidature being refused! Time has avenged the wrong; the names of Schnetz, Langlois, Couder, and Cogniet are all but forgotten, whilst Delacroix has become immortal.

Encouraged by his triumph at the Universal Exposition of 1855, Delacroix presented himself for the sixth time when the next vacancy arose in 1857, and this time his perseverance at last found its reward--he was elected just before he entered upon the seventh decade of his life. But even now he was denied peaceful enjoyment of his tardy success. His next contributions to the Salon, in 1859, led to a renewed outburst of vituperative criticism and abuse, and this time Delacroix was hurt to the quick. He decided not to expose himself in future to the gibes of his detractors, and for the remaining four years of his life, although continuing his artistic activity to the very end, refrained from contributing to public exhibitions.

The years 1837-1841 mark a fruitful epoch in Delacroix's career. The masterpieces that issued from his studio in these years would alone have sufficed to establish his lasting fame. In 1837 he painted the magnificent "Battle of Taillebourg," which is the glory of the gallery of battle pictures at Versailles, but found so little favour with the jury of the Salon that it narrowly escaped being rejected. The tumult and confusion of hand-to-hand fighting had never before been rendered with such force and such absence of heroic attitudinising. To the next year we owe "The Enraged Medea," of the Lille Museum, and that extraordinary scene of fitful, jerky, furious movement known as "Les Convulsionnaires de Tanger," which, after having twice changed hands at public auction during the artist's lifetime, for ?87 in 1852 and for ?1160 in 1858, rose to ?1940 at a sale held in 1869, and finally found a purchaser for ?3800 in 1881.

The "Jewish Wedding in Morocco," in which the painter's concern with true tone-values and beautiful quality of pigment is carried even further than in the "Algerian Women," and the intensely dramatic "Hamlet and the Gravediggers"--both are now at the Louvre--were his chief works in 1839; whilst in the following year he devoted his energies to the large "Justice of Trajan" at the Rouen Gallery, and the powerful "Shipwreck of Don Juan," surely one of the most tragic and impressive pictures ever conceived by human genius. It bears the same relation to the "Dante and Virgil" that "The Crusaders" bears to "The Massacre of Scio." And it is one of the most striking instances of Delacroix's power to make colour itself expressive of the mood of the drama. The conception, though based on Byron's poem, owes little to the literary foundation--that is to say, it is not illustrative in the sense that acquaintance with the poem is essential for its appreciation. It is just a vivid realisation of the combined horrors of shipwreck and starvation in which the tragic aspect of sea and sky is as significant as the ghastliness of the wretches whom hunger has turned into cannibals. The sombre tonality and the flashes of livid light, recall El Greco in his later period. To the year 1841 belongs "The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople," of which mention has already been made.

At the Salon of 1845 appeared the large painting of "The Sultan of Morocco surrounded by his Guard," which was bought by the State for the Toulouse Gallery at the price of ?160. Baudelaire, ever an ardent admirer of Delacroix, draws attention to the peculiar quality of the colour harmony in this picture which, "notwithstanding the splendour of the tones, is grey, grey like Nature, grey like the atmosphere of a summer day, when the sunlight spreads like a twilight of vibrating dust upon every object." "The Sultan of Morocco" was one of the last large canvases produced by the master, whose best energies were now absorbed by his gigantic decorative tasks, although he continued to paint an endless succession of easel pictures, many of which were variations of earlier compositions.

The Library of the Palais Bourbon has been described by a well-known recent German critic as the "French Sistine Chapel." To any one examining this vast work in an unprejudiced spirit it will be difficult to share this enthusiasm. The cool and noble intellectuality which is at the basis of Delacroix's art, even where it is apparently most spontaneous and fugous, certainly renders these decorations supremely interesting. But the appeal is intellectual rather than sensuous. The beholder is filled with profound respect, instead of being thrilled by the emotional effect of colour. Nor can this be entirely due to bad lighting and to the serious deterioration and indifferent restoring of the paintings, of which scarcely more than the design is by Delacroix's own hand, the execution being almost entirely due to Lassalle Bordes and other assistants, who are also largely responsible for the actual painting of the Luxembourg decoration.

The work in the Library of the Chamber of Deputies consists of two hemicycles of "Peace" and "War" , and twenty pendentives--four in each of the five cupolas--with connecting ornamental bands and cartouches. In the first cupola, Poetry is illustrated by "Alexander and Homer's Poems," "The Education of Achilles," "Ovid with the Barbarians," and "Hesiod and the Muse." Theology is the subject of the second dome: "Adam and Eve," "The Babylonian Captivity," "The Death of St. John," and "The Tribute Money." Law of the third: "Numa and Egeria," "Lycurgus," "Demosthenes," and "Cicero"; Philosophy of the fourth: "Herodotus," "Chaldean Shepherd Astronomers," "Seneca's Death," and "Socrates"; and Science of the fifth: "The Death of Pliny," "Aristoteles," "Hippocrates," and "Archimedes." Each pendentive depicts, not a single figure, but an admirably composed scene of history or legend. The series was commenced in 1837 and completed in 1847. The two hemicycles are painted in the encaustic manner direct upon the wall, whilst all the rest is executed in oils on canvas.

The decoration of the Library in the Luxembourg Palace took from 1845 to 1847. It consists of a fan-shaped hemicycle of over 30 feet in width, the subject of which is Alexander, after the Battle of Arbela, ordering the works of Homer to be enclosed in a golden casket captured from the Persians; and the paintings in the cupola--a composition in four parts but without division , and four pendentives, St. Jerome, Cicero, Orpheus, and the Muse of Aristoteles.

Delacroix himself considered this picture, which was painted in 1826, to be his masterpiece. Exhibited first at the Salon of 1827, when "The Death of Sardanapalus" caused a veritable torrent of abuse to be showered upon the artist, it failed to attract the favourable attention which its nobly balanced design, brilliant colour, and intensely dramatic feeling would otherwise surely have commanded, and which was given to it in the following year by the London public. "Marino Faliero" is unquestionably the finest example of Delacroix's art in England.

Earlier in date than the Library of the Senate is the large mural painting in wax colours of the "Piet?" in the Church of St. D?nis-du-Saint-Sacrement. It bears the date 1843, and is, apart from the passionate intensity of movement and expression, and its linear rhythm, interesting as an instance of the almost incredible rapidity with which Delacroix proceeded upon the actual execution of his paintings, once the scheme had taken definite shape in his mind. According to Moreau, who had this information from the artist himself, the whole painting of about 15 ft. by 11 ft. was finished in seventeen days, each day's progress being marked by Delacroix on the wall.

The decoration of the two Libraries was scarcely finished when two new commissions of equal importance gave him further opportunity for the triumphant display of his decorative genius. A few sketches and engravings are unfortunately all that is left to us of the circular centre, the eight shaped oblong panels and the eleven lunettes which constituted the pictorial decoration of the Salon de la Paix at the old H?tel de Ville, since the building was destroyed by fire in May 1871 in the days of the Commune. Delacroix worked on these designs from 1849 to 1853, and was only paid ?1200 for the whole series.

We have seen that from the time when Delacroix began his work for the Salon du Roi in 1833 until the completion of the Salon de la Paix in 1853, he had no sooner brought any of his monumental decorations to a successful conclusion when some other decorative work was entrusted to him. And so again, in 1853, when he had just finished the H?tel de Ville series, he was made to proceed immediately upon that great fresco decoration of the Chapel of the Saints-Anges at St. Sulpice, which, completed in 1861, was his last work of real importance, and is in many respects the crowning achievement of his great career. Here, for once, Delacroix found himself able to work under conditions similar to those under which the Florentine masters of the quattrocento wrought their marvellous frescoes. Here was no complete scheme of ornate architectural details, no sumptuous framework in which spaces had been left for the addition of painted panels that had to be treated in a more or less florid manner to fit into their rich surroundings. Here everything was left to the painter's free will, checked only by the consideration of the fitness of the subjects for the site and by the architectural proportions of the little chapel. And it is not too much to say that Delacroix solved the problem in more masterly fashion than any painter between the glorious days of the Italian Renaissance and the advent of Puvis de Chavannes, the greatest decorator of modern times.

Like all true fresco decoration, the two large paintings of "Jacob wrestling with the Angel" and "Heliodorus driven from the Temple" do not attempt to give the illusion of plastic life, or of an opening cut through the wall, but duly accentuate the flatness of the surface. The scale of colour adopted for this admirable decoration aims, without the least sense of monotony or dulness, at the exquisiteness of the greens and greys of a fine panel of faded Flemish tapestry, and has nothing in common with the rich, glowing palette which Delacroix had inherited from Rubens and the Venetian colourists. The tapestry-like effect is particularly noticeable in the treatment of the trees which are so important a feature in the composition of "Jacob wrestling with the Angel," the figures being comparatively small in scale, though by no means subordinate to the landscape. Nothing could be more impressive than the contrast of the terrific muscular exertion of Jacob and the easy grace with which it is made ineffective by his invincible supernatural opponent. The group is one of the noblest creations of modern art--worthy of the brush of a Pollaiuolo or a Signorelli.

It was probably during his visit to London in 1825 that Delacroix first realised the pictorial possibilities of Goethe's great drama. His correspondence shows that he was deeply impressed with a performance of "Faust" which he witnessed in London, and which probably suggested to him the series of nineteen lithographs, published by Sautelet in 1828. Goethe himself referred to these lithographs in terms of exaggerated praise. The catalogue of Delacroix's works includes quite a number of paintings illustrative of scenes from "Faust," of which the one in the Wallace Collection is one of the most successful.

The frescoes in the Chapel of the Saints-Anges were the swan-song of Delacroix's genius. In the two years that followed their completion, he still continued to paint and to draw--the practice of his art was for him the very breath of life--but he produced nothing that need be considered in the record of his achievement. In March 1863, the affection of his eyes, of which he had suffered intermittently for years, took a turn for the worse. On the 26th of May he left Paris for Champrosay, but during the journey had a severe attack of hemorrhage of the lungs, which recurred five days later; and he had to be taken back to Paris. His illness became worse and worse, and after a month he was taken back to the country, only to be sent back again to Paris on July 14. His days were counted. He took to his bed immediately upon his arrival, and breathed his last at six o'clock in the morning on August 13, 1863.

It was that amplification and exaggeration of forms, by which alone movement can be expressed in art, that led the unthinking to the belief that Delacroix "could not draw." Of course, the application of Ingres's standard of classic perfection in drawing might justify the conclusion, but one need only glance at Delacroix's sketch-books and studies to realise that he was a great draughtsman, if drawing, as it was to him, is considered the means towards an end, and not an end in itself. And his mastery of spontaneous, nervously expressive drawing was as complete as it could be, if mastery can be acquired through the curbing of impetuous genius by half a century's methodical, steady practice. For Delacroix, from his early student days to his death, never started on his day's work without having first "got his hand in" by half-an-hour's practice in sketching or drawing, just as a pianist will first run through his finger exercises and scales, to make sure of his mastery over his instrument.

Thus, by unremitting practice, Delacroix acquired such absolute command of the language of line and form that, in the pictorial expression of his ideas, he used it as an orator uses the language of words--in a steady flow, without doubts and hesitations. His inspiration was not checked and weakened by the struggle for an adequate form of expression. There was nothing in life and in nature that did not stimulate his artistic curiosity, and all his sketches betray the same passionate search for the really essential, the elements of life and movement and mood, which are often to be obtained only by the sacrifice of literal correctness. He never tired of making drawings after Rembrandt's etchings, and he spent many hours at the Jardin des Plantes, in the company of the animal sculptor Barye, sketching and painting wild beasts from life. Indeed, Delacroix was rarely rivalled, and probably never surpassed, as a painter of animals either in repose or in the very frenzy of movement.

His astonishing rapidity of production has already been exemplified by his painting of the large "Piet?" at St. D?nis-du-Saint-Sacrement in seventeen days. An even more striking instance is afforded by the "King Rodrigo losing his Crown," now in the Cheramy Collection. A number of artists had agreed to contribute towards the decoration of a room in a villa taken by Alexandre Dumas p?re in 1830. Delacroix was of their number; and the day agreed for the completion of the pictures was to be celebrated by a ball. When Delacroix arrived at midday of the day in question he found that all the panels were in their proper places, leaving only an unexpectedly large gap for his own contribution. "He had meant only to paint a few flowers. 'Listen,' said Dumas, 'I have just been reading something that will do for you,' and he described the first canto of the 'Romancero,' in which Rodrigo loses his crown. Delacroix began at once, and had painted the whole scene by sunset, in the most unusual colours, a harmony in yellow, unique in his work. Great was the enthusiasm in the evening when the friends saw the picture; Barye, in particular, who had contributed an excellent panel, is said to have been beside himself."

Delacroix's life, apart from his struggle for recognition--a struggle which he fought entirely with his brush, leaving the controversial side to others--was singularly uneventful. His only passions were his art, his love of romantic literature, and his staunch friendship. A few journeys and frequent spells of illness were the only events that broke the even tenor of his life. As a writer, Delacroix has left a marvellous "Journal," which ought to be consulted and carefully studied by every artist, and a number of carefully constructed magazine articles on various aesthetic questions, which only reveal the cool intellectual side of his dual nature. He was a man of great reticence, who rarely allowed himself to be drawn into criticising the art of his contemporaries. In his critical comments on the masters--even on those whose style was diametrically opposed to his own temperament--he always proved himself keenly appreciative of their great qualities. Strangely enough, Delacroix, who is considered the leader, and certainly was one of the main inspirers of the Romanticist movement, not only disliked the application of this term to his own art, but had little sympathy with the Romanticist literature of his own time and country. His attitude towards Victor Hugo almost amounted to hostility; and he always treated Baudelaire, who had espoused his cause with keen enthusiasm, with the most calculated reserve. In music his tastes were severely classical--"he refreshed himself with Mozart, was never quite able to convert himself to Beethoven, abhorred the modern French composers, and was the first to condemn Wagner."

If Delacroix, except for a very brief period at the beginning of his career, never suffered real poverty, he, on the other hand, never received adequate pecuniary reward for his work. To the very end he was forced to sell his finest pictures at ridiculously inadequate prices; and on some of his large decorative commissions he found himself actually out of pocket. It was probably the conviction that posthumous justice would inevitably be done to his genius, which made him insist in his will upon the sale of his remaining works by public auction. And events proved that he was right. The sale, which was held from February 16-29, 1864, was estimated to produce about ?4000, but resulted in a total of close upon ?13,500.

The instructions about his burial, left by Delacroix in his will, reflect something of his noble aloofness and his respect for great tradition in art. "My tomb shall be in the cemetery of P?re-Lachaise, on the height and in a place a little apart. There shall be placed upon it neither emblem, nor bust, nor statue. My tomb shall be copied very exactly from the antique, or Vignole, or Palladio, with very pronounced projections, contrary to all that is done in the architecture of to-day."

Julius Meier-Graefe, "Modern Art," vol. i.

The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London

The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh

"MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES

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