Delacroix

May 11th, 2018

We spent last Saturday morning, before Lucas and Jackson arrived, at the Louvre.  Our plan was to focus our time on a temporary Delacroix exhibit.  Delacroix was an important figure in 19th century France, both artistically and politically.  He is also one of Kate's favorites:  she chose him for a school presentation she had to do in the fall (her first presentation in French), we visited his former apartment and studio turned museum near us, and we have seen his spectacular paintings in the side chapel at Saint Sulpice many times.  Also, her favorite gallery at the Louvre is the Apollo Gallery, whose ceiling he painted.    

The exhibit seemed an uncanny encapsulation of so many of the  recurring motifs of the year for us:  Morocco, courtyards, perspective in painting and photography, the rendering of fabric in painting, French history, revolution, sketching techniques, and, of course, Delacroix.  Here is a lesser-known work, painted after a trip he took to Morocco, that struck me as capturing many of those motifs.

Below is a detail of a garment from a painting.

And a study he did while preparing for his ceiling mural in the Apollo Gallery.

The exhibit featured his most famous painting, "Liberty Leading the People," commemorating France's 1830 revolution which toppled Charles X.  I include a stock photo of it here because I did not get a good picture of it, and I think it's really cool.    

He also did lithography, and many of his lithographs with sketches in the margins were displayed.  

Below is a detail I photographed during an earlier visit to Saint Sulpice.  It is from one of his paintings there, not in the Louvre exhibit.  (We learned that they are not frescoes, which do not fare well in the Parisian climate, but rather were painted on canvas with tinted wax.)  

Finally, here is his blog of his time in Morocco.

(The Delacroix exhibit discussed the important influences on his art, particularly Rubens.  That reminded Glenn that there was a gallery elsewhere in the Louvre featuring 24 monumental Rubens paintings of Marie de Medicis that we had been meaning to see.  So we decided to tack that on the end.  We were amazed to be joined by only one other person in the gallery while we were there!  The paintings are, of course, masterpieces, but I also found them completely absurd.  It is difficult for me to imagine the kind of person who would commission such works:  angels present at her birth, Henri IV gazing longingly at her portrait, her tutors admiring her genius, etc.  (pause)  Oh, never mind.  I take that back.  In any case, I highly recommend a visit to see them.)