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Delacroix
1969. No Edition Remarks. Unpaginated. Illustrated jacket over cloth. Colour plates to rear. Pages and plates remain bright and clear. Pages and binding are presentable with no major defects. Minor issues present such as mild cracking, inscriptions, inserts, light foxing, tanning and thumb marking. Overall a good condition item. Boards have mild shelf wear with light rubbing and corner bumping. Some light marking and sunning. Unclipped jacket has light edge-wear with minor tears and chipping. Mild rubbing and marking.
90 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1969
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December 4, 2024
4 stars - Excellent array of reproductions with good color. Descriptions of pictures and the color "plates" appear separately, necessitating much page turning to see what is being described. The text is highly academic, reads like a transcript of a lecture to knowledgeable art historians. A multitude of references to other painters is provided, telling who influenced Delacroix most in terms of style, and those others he honored by the subjects and compositions he chose. A few notes, in turn, mention specific painters he influenced.
He was a Salon painter, educated in an "orthodox, rational and classical" tradition, yet he also had "many qualities in common with his Romantic contemporaries – his melancholy, his love of solitude and the countryside, the fascination which he felt for violence and bloodshed."
Delacroix was called a "literary" painter, perhaps because some works extrapolate scenes from Byron's poetry, and others portray scenes from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Goethe's "Faust"; he also painted vivid historic scenes, along with sedate portraits. He was given commissions to paint large murals, and earned awards from the French government.
His paintings display the slaughtering of vast crowds, and terror; they show female and male nudes in improbable places; there are some formal interior scenes, and sometimes figures in resplendent repose. His colors are dominated by red, brown and orange offset by abrupt white areas or creamy-pinkish "flesh tones." Settings appear very staged, often with massive crowds, stark walls, angular corners and grandiose stairways. Usually subjects are strongly lit as if by a lot of candles or a nearby pyre. A trip to Morocco, Tangier, Cadiz and Seville influenced his use of light, and accounts for the stark walls in some pictures. The trip also offered opportunities to sketch North African scenes, and paint formal crowd scenes with potentates, and women in domestic settings.
Delacroix credited Rembrandt for the latter's "dense shadows," along with a certain "vagueness," an "unfinished quality." He admired Rubens's "stormy colors." He utilized the "light open-air effects of Veronese." Poole briskly notes an important link between Delacroix and Tintoretto (1518-1594), a painter of the Italian Renaissance, but unfortunately does not explain the connection.
A good portion of Poole's text suggests a complex genealogy of influences but also describes his association with an intriguing cast of contemporaries, most prominently Baudelaire, Chopin, George Sand, Victor Hugo and Stéphane Mallarmé.
Of most interest to me were the references to later painters who credit Delacroix with stylistic breakthroughs that they could use in their own work. "He valued energy, conflict and force more than 18th century subtlety and grace. It was the movement and excitement in Delacroix which appealed to Cézanne and Van Gogh after the cool impersonality of the Impressionists." Poole notes that some paintings by Delacroix were copied by Courbet, Manet, Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin, inferring an influence on post-Impressionist artists.
If you are not daunted by the plethora of references to other painters the text will provide a substantial introduction to Delacroix's changing styles and his major works. A more recent book about him would probably streamline the number of influences while explaining their significance in more detail. Likewise, the social context of his literary associations would be given much more attention. And his influence on subsequent painters would be made more clear.
He was a Salon painter, educated in an "orthodox, rational and classical" tradition, yet he also had "many qualities in common with his Romantic contemporaries – his melancholy, his love of solitude and the countryside, the fascination which he felt for violence and bloodshed."
Delacroix was called a "literary" painter, perhaps because some works extrapolate scenes from Byron's poetry, and others portray scenes from Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Goethe's "Faust"; he also painted vivid historic scenes, along with sedate portraits. He was given commissions to paint large murals, and earned awards from the French government.
His paintings display the slaughtering of vast crowds, and terror; they show female and male nudes in improbable places; there are some formal interior scenes, and sometimes figures in resplendent repose. His colors are dominated by red, brown and orange offset by abrupt white areas or creamy-pinkish "flesh tones." Settings appear very staged, often with massive crowds, stark walls, angular corners and grandiose stairways. Usually subjects are strongly lit as if by a lot of candles or a nearby pyre. A trip to Morocco, Tangier, Cadiz and Seville influenced his use of light, and accounts for the stark walls in some pictures. The trip also offered opportunities to sketch North African scenes, and paint formal crowd scenes with potentates, and women in domestic settings.
Delacroix credited Rembrandt for the latter's "dense shadows," along with a certain "vagueness," an "unfinished quality." He admired Rubens's "stormy colors." He utilized the "light open-air effects of Veronese." Poole briskly notes an important link between Delacroix and Tintoretto (1518-1594), a painter of the Italian Renaissance, but unfortunately does not explain the connection.
A good portion of Poole's text suggests a complex genealogy of influences but also describes his association with an intriguing cast of contemporaries, most prominently Baudelaire, Chopin, George Sand, Victor Hugo and Stéphane Mallarmé.
Of most interest to me were the references to later painters who credit Delacroix with stylistic breakthroughs that they could use in their own work. "He valued energy, conflict and force more than 18th century subtlety and grace. It was the movement and excitement in Delacroix which appealed to Cézanne and Van Gogh after the cool impersonality of the Impressionists." Poole notes that some paintings by Delacroix were copied by Courbet, Manet, Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin, inferring an influence on post-Impressionist artists.
If you are not daunted by the plethora of references to other painters the text will provide a substantial introduction to Delacroix's changing styles and his major works. A more recent book about him would probably streamline the number of influences while explaining their significance in more detail. Likewise, the social context of his literary associations would be given much more attention. And his influence on subsequent painters would be made more clear.
Displaying 1 of 1 review