(In the Louvre)
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.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.--DANTE AND VIRGIL]
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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 L87 in 1852 and for
L1160 in 1858, rose to L1940 at a sale held in 1869, and finally found
a purchaser for L3800 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" (now extensively restored) 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 L160. 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.
V
The decoration of the Salon du Roi, which occupied Delacroix from 1833
to 1838, and for which he received the niggardly pay of L1200, was the
first great task of this kind entrusted to him. Nevertheless he knew
how to adapt design and colour to the architectural conditions in a
manner that could scarcely have been bettered by life-long experience.
And these conditions were by no means favourable for pictorial
decoration, since the walls of the square room are pierced all round by
real and blind windows and doors, and the lighting is about as bad as
could be. Delacroix's scheme consists of eight large single figures in
grisaille for the pilasters; a continuous band, with figure
compositions, connecting the spandrils and forming a kind of frieze
which is painted in delicate, tender tones, suggestive of faded
tapestry, that lead up to the rich colouring of the eight panels in the
ceiling and the surround of the skylight. Unfortunately the ceiling is
not domed, so that the strong light filtering through the round glazing
does not reach the panels and only serves to dazzle one's eyes. It is
only by shutting out this central light and by the use of mirrors that
it is possible to appreciate the noble, reposeful allegorical groups of
_Justice_, _Agriculture_, _Industry_, and _War_, which fill the four
oblong panels, and the four graceful Cupids carrying the corresponding
attributes in the corners. The frieze, which is divided from the
moulding of the ceiling by an ornamental band with appropriate Latin
inscriptions, is remarkable for the masterly skill with which the
design of the figures and groups is adapted to the awkward shape of the
spandrils between the semi-circular arches, and for the lucid clearness
of the allegorical representations, the subjects on each wall being
closely connected with those on the corresponding panels of the
ceiling. Thus under the "Justice" panel are to be seen Truth and
Wisdom inspiring a greybeard composing the laws, Meditation
interpreting the law, Strength with a tamed lion at the foot of three
judges, and the Avenging Angel pursuing two culprits. "Agriculture" is
illustrated by a Bacchanalian Vintage Festival, a Harvest scene, and
Arcadian figures. "Industry" by allegorical scenes of Commerce,
Navigation, and Silk-growing; and "War" by the Manufacture of Arms, and
a group of fettered women being taken into captivity. The heroic
figures in grisaille on the pilasters are personifications of the
Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and the six principal rivers of France,
namely the Garonne, the Saone, the Loire, the Rhine (which then
belonged to France as much as to Germany), the Seine, and the Rhone.
Before Delacroix had completed the paintings in the Salon du Roi, that
is to say in 1837, he was entrusted with the even more important
commission for the decoration of the Libraries of the Chamber of
Deputies at the Palais Bourbon, and of the Senate at the Luxembourg;
three years earlier, in 1834, he had experimented in the technique of
fresco painting, which he found more congenial than distemper, when
executing three overdoor panels of Leda, Anacreon, and Bacchus, at
Valmont, where they still remain _in situ_ in all their pristine
freshness.
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" (Orpheus bringing Civilisation to Greece) and
"War" (Attila bringing Barbarism back to Italy), 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 (Dante presented to Homer by Virgil, a
group of Greek philosophers, Orpheus charming the beasts, and
illustrious Romans), and four pendentives, St. Jerome, Cicero, Orpheus,
and the Muse of Aristoteles.
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