The _legion d'honneur_ was not the only reward that attended
Delacroix's success at the Salon of 1831. He received permission to
accompany, at the expense of the Government, Count Mornay's mission to
Morocco, which set out in January of the following year. To visit the
East had been the dream of Delacroix's life. Its fulfilment marked an
important step in the evolution of his art. Now at last he was brought
into actual contact with that life and colour of the romantic East
which had for so many years been pictured by his vivid imagination. He
was away altogether about six months, and much of this time was spent
_en route_ and in Spain which he visited on his home journey, so that
it was obviously impossible for him to undertake any works on an
ambitious scale during his sojourn in Africa. But he never interrupted
his feverish activity, and brought back with him a whole series of
sketch-books filled with pictorial and literary notes to which he had
many an occasion to refer when, after his return to the daily routine
of his Paris life, he proceeded upon embodying his new experience of
brilliant light, sumptuous colour, and picturesque life in a long
succession of paintings devoted to Eastern subjects.
Delacroix's Moroccan sketch-books, which are among the treasured
possessions of the Louvre, constitute one of the most interesting
documents ever left by artist's hand. There is always a peculiar
fascination about an artist's self-revelations in moments when his mind
is far away from the public to whom he directs his appeal in his
finished pictures. And these sketch-books were intended for no eyes
but his own. They contain a diary of his progress day by day, vivid
impressions of land and people, interspersed with accounts and notes of
purchases, and through all the pages run his swiftly sketched,
brilliant pictorial notes, set down with the sureness of long
experience and practice--sketches of scenery, life, types of natives
and animals, architectural details and details of costumes, jotted down
with any material that happened to be handy. Some are sketched in pure
colour-washes in bold flat masses, some in pencil or pen and ink
heightened with strong blobs of water-colour, others in pure outline;
and generally they are accompanied by explanatory notes hastily
scribbled in pencil. Throughout is to be noted the same swift
impulsiveness and definiteness of purpose, the utmost expressiveness
obtained by the greatest economy of means. There are some slight
thumb-nail sketches--I can recall one in particular of a galloping
Bedouin Arab--that verge on the miraculous in the sense of life and
movement, the summing up of all the essentials by means of a few
strokes of the pen of almost niggardly paucity.
But infinitely more important in its bearing upon his future work than
all the tangible yield of this fruitful journey, was the retention by
Delacroix's memory of the brilliant colour visions which had met his
delighted eyes in the dazzling light of the East. The result was an
entirely new conception of chromatic effects and an infinitely more
sensuous use of his pigments than is to be found in any of his earlier
works. Before his journey to Morocco, Delacroix, though already
essentially a colourist in his method if compared with the draughtsmen
of the David-Ingres School, paid but little attention to the quality of
paint _per se_. Colour served him to enhance the dramatic
effectiveness of his compositions, and pigment had assumed a vital
function in the building up of forms; but he was still addicted to an
excessive use of bituminous browns and warm glazes and paid little or
no attention to what the modern studio jargon terms the "preciousness
of paint." With the "Algerian Women in their Apartment," which he sent
to the Salon of 1834, he entered upon an entirely new phase. It is
painted in a rich impasto of luminous colours which sparkle in unbroken
strength through an ambient of soft silvery grey atmosphere. The very
choice of subject indicates a significant change. In the place of
dramatic climax or tempestuous movement and passion and violent
emotion, we find here complete repose and the indolent lassitude
engendered by the luxurious comfort and by the strong scent of burning
spices in the Eastern harem. In a subject of this kind the artist
could allow himself to yield completely to the sensuous enjoyment of
the rare and at the time entirely novel harmonies of pure, beautiful
colour evolved by his brush. The superbly painted negress on the right
of the composition undoubtedly owes much to the Spanish masters whom
Delacroix must have studied during his brief visit to the Peninsula;
and there is as little doubt that she in turn became the progenitor of
the wonderful negress in Manet's "Olympia." Indeed, Delacroix at this
stage must be considered Manet's precursor and source of inspiration.
The "Algerian Women" was a State commission for which Delacroix was
paid the absurdly inadequate sum of L120. His indignation was great
when he learnt that a higher value had been put upon a worse than
mediocre picture by Decaisne. He almost refused to deliver the
picture, but was eventually reconciled by the placing with him of a
more important commission, namely, "The Entry of the Crusaders into
Constantinople" for the Gallery of Versailles. He was given the
commission--but he was at the same time informed that the King wanted a
picture which did "not look like a Delacroix"! This picture, which is
now at the Louvre, was first shown at the Salon of 1841, and is
undoubtedly one of the finest works of the master's maturity. One has
only to compare it with "The Massacre of Scio"--in many ways a kindred
subject--to realise the master's prodigious advance during the
intervening years. The earlier picture, in spite of its undeniably
fine qualities, cannot compare with "The Crusaders" as regards subdued
splendour of colour. Delacroix himself admitted that the idea of "The
Massacre" came to him in front of Gros's "The Plague-stricken at
Jaffa." "J'ai mal lave la palette de Gros," was the wording of his own
confession. There is no trace of Gros in the sumptuous scheme of "The
Crusaders," and the violent expression of his youthful sense of the
dramatic is toned down by a note of sympathetic sadness in the
principal figure, accentuated by the unconventional massing of shadow
over the group which occupies the centre of the composition.
In the year after his return from Morocco, Delacroix was, largely
through the influence of M. Thiers, entrusted with the decoration of
the Salon du Roi, at the Palais Bourbon, and thus given the first
opportunity for a display of his decorative genius which, whatever has
been said to the contrary, was generously acknowledged by his
contemporaries, and was given ample scope from 1833 to the time of his
death in 1863. But before discussing his architectural 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:
"Eugene 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!"
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