in 1883 in the Parisian home of the novelist Dumas and many painter friends had arranged to decorate the walls of the rooms in this accommodation. It was the last to arrive Eugène Delacroix, who with his quick stroke and with a charcoal drew a horse, riders and a landscape full of figures on the bottom. Then he continued with brushes, and painted a bleeding knight bent over his lance and with his feet out of the stirrup on a horse that could hardly stand.
Delacroix possessed an extraordinary speed of execution and at the same time a great versatility. His oeuvre often includes scenes of great luminosity and others richer in shadow reminiscent of Rembrandt. But he also made portraits, flowers, battles and evocative interiors.
Delacroix paved the way for modern painting: Van Gogh went to Paris to see the "Pietà” of the master who copied and copied, Cézanne seems to have kept only one painting in his studio, and it was his copy of a Delacroix. Manet, Matisse, Degas, Renoir, Roualt owe much to his example.
The famous Guernica of Picasso, looking closely, takes us back to the picture that Delacroix painted as a protest against the massacre of 20 Greeks on the island of Chios.
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born in a suburb of Paris in 1798, nine years after the start of the French Revolution. Very probably son of the prince of Talleyrand, the diplomat – even if he passed for being the son of the ambassador in Holland -. He was left without parents at the age of sixteen and had to face life alone with his own resources, he had learned to paint and despite the physical and economic difficulties, he always tried to exploit this passion of his.
He exhibited for the first time at the age of 24 at the Paris Salon, but he was too poor to frame at his own expense the painting he had decided to bring, a canvas two and a half meters wide. Thanks to a benefactor who paid for the frame, Delacroix managed to exhibit the painting entitled Dante and Virgil, represented the two poets in Hell amidst the bodies of the damned, today the work is in the Louvre.
He himself wanted to be present at the exhibition to hear the comments, but was disappointed by the long laughter of the critics. However, the minister of commerce, Adolphe Thieres, also intervened and supported him, thus giving the young man the opportunity to make the public forget the adverse criticisms.
From this moment on, his life changed, he painted non-stop from sunrise to sunset and when he felt emptied of all emotion he sought refreshment in reading poetry.
At that time when photography did not yet exist, historical painting and portraits were in great demand. Delacroix and painted so many and with that light that they would have made him immortal.
From that time even the government was always ready to pay for the decoration of public buildings, and that's how it is Delacroix went from poverty to wealth, becoming one of the first painters of modern times who made a living from his painting.
Delacroix worked on his for months Massacre of Chios, then he loaded the thirteen square meter painting of canvas and carried it all over Paris, up to the Salon, three days before the inauguration. It is said that, on his way home, he wanted to see a John Constable exhibition. The Englishman's painting was a revelation to Delacroix. He returned to the Salon and resumed the work at home, here he decided to modify the sky inspired by Constable's skies and clouds. He took the canvas back to the exhibit two days later.
It is well known that he had poor health but despite his fragility he painted scenes of the greatest violence, such as “The Massacre” or “Liberty Leading the People”.
Delacroix was also among the first to portray scenes and costumes from North Africa, where he stayed there for several months trying to gather ideas and inspirations. In Algiers he obtained the possibility of entering a harem, and to that visit we owe the famous Women of Algiers, considered by many critics to be his masterpiece.
Besides painting, Delacroix also has another title to immortality, his diary, that detailed and soulful account of his forties, in three volumes. Its pages parade the celebrities of the time: George Sand, Victor Hugo, Chopin, Dumas.
Delacroix was greatly liked by women, had ardent admirers, and was often not insensitive to their flattery. Josephin de Forget was her great love, but he never managed to marry her due to her poor health.
Despite his artistic success, he was never admitted into the inner circles of high society and the critics of the old guard remained hostile to him, almost to the end.
He died on August 13, 1863 at the age of 63.
