(P/B) THE JOURNAL OF EUGENE DELACROIX

Παρουσίαση

Eugene Delacroix is a very great name in the history of French painting: it evokes an image of the most distinguished and generously gifted figure among French artists since the Revolution. Violently attacked and enthusiastically acclaimed in his own lifetime, there was no attempt to celebrate the centenary of his birth in 1898 by an exhibition. But Delacroix received a special kind of national homage in 1930. When the French Government decided to celebrate the centenary of the Romantic Movement in that year, it was agreed that a comprehensive exhibition of his work in the Musee du Louvre would best symbolize all that was vital in the art inspired by that movement. Nearly nine hundred paintings, drawings and prints were displayed in the great galleries of the national museum; this was indeed "La Gloire" - and to Delacroix, Glory was no vain or trivial word.
But Eugene Delacroix is still, as he ever was, a disturbing artist, arousing the most varied and complicated responses even in his admirers. He was an outstanding individual creator, a remarkable writer as well as painter, who transcended the Romantic Movement whose spirit he truly symbolized in his youth; an innovator with a deep sense of tradition, he was learning and growing to the end of his days.
The Journal of Delacroix has become almost as famous as his paintings. I have heard it said - and by a French artist - 'I don't really care for Delacroix's pictures, but as a writer of memoirs he is great and will be remembered.' This is perverse, and one can imagine the wrath and disdain that such an attitude would have provoked in the great artist. The Journal is indeed a fascinating and unique production; no one can afford to neglect it who wishes to understand Delacroix, his psychological make-up, his struggles and difficulties, his weaknesses and his implacable will. It consists of notes, scraps, fragments, hastily set down by a man whose life quickly found its vocation and was absorbed in a prodigious output of pictures large and small; it is a by-product of that life which gains an importance of its own from the quality of mind and spirit in its author. He used it as an experimental laboratory for the discovery of himself. [...] (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Preface
Introduction
PART I: 1822 - 1824; 1832
PART II: 1847 - 1863
Notes
The Plates
Notes on the Plates
Chronological Table
Short Bibliography
Index