After his return from North Africa, and his first successful Orientalist painting drawn from that experience, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) wasn’t short of work. In addition to a steady stream of private commissions, he also had a major public commitment for decorating the Salon du Roi in the Palais Bourbon.

This Arab Fantasy from 1833 is one of several he painted as he worked up his watercolours from North Africa.

Delacroix had started work on a painting based on Chateaubriand’s 1801 novel Atala, telling the story of a First Nation family on the banks of the Mississippi in French Colonial Louisiana. He then abandoned the canvas in favour of the Massacre of Chios, only to return and complete it for the Salon of 1835, as The Natchez. This shows the young couple with their newborn infant after they had fled from a massacre, against a desolate plain reminiscent of that in Chios.

In 1835, Delacroix returned to Byron’s Orientalist tale of the Giaour, and painted this version of the Combat of the Giaour and Hassan. This time he had the benefit of watching Moroccan cavalry manoeuvres, and a commission from the Comte de Mornay, who had led that diplomatic mission. The resulting composition is radically different from his earlier version, and although Mornay seems to have been pleased with the result, the critics were less impressed.

Delacroix had been commissioned in 1833 to decorate the Salon du Roi of the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the French legislature, by providing a series of ceiling and wall panels with allegorical themes. Over the following four years, the artist was busy preparing drawings and preparatory studies for those, as he painted the finished panels using an unusual combination of oil and wax. I show here just two examples of his completed work.

Although Delacroix made some huge and highly ambitious wall and ceiling paintings, he wasn’t a technical expert by any means and usually relied on his colourmen for their expertise. Shortly after receiving this commission, he tried out fresco painting for the first and only time in his career, and wasn’t impressed with the results. For these particular sections of frieze, he wanted to achieve a matte surface similar to that of a glue distemper. That he achieved using a combination of oil paint with virgin wax dissolved in turpentine, in effect a form of encaustic paint.

Justice is seen with her sceptre reaching out over everyone, young and old, as the supreme power. She appears over the location of the king’s throne in the room.

War is shown wearing a helmet decorated with the laurel of victory, with an aegis on her breastplate, and holding flags. Weeping women flee from around her as their menfolk fall in defence of their country.

When his work was revealed to the public and critics, Delacroix was given highest praise. Whatever lingering doubts might have remained over his easel paintings, when it came to decorative work he was supreme, and went on to tackle further major commissions in the Palais Bourbon and elsewhere.

In 1834, Delacroix was commissioned to paint the Battle of Taillebourg for the Museum of the History of France in Versailles.

The Battle of Taillebourg, 21st July 1242 (1837) shows an episode in French history only too familiar to most of those who were to see it. On that day, the English army under King Henry III were guarding the strategically important Taillebourg Bridge over the River Charente when King Saint Louis (Louis IX of France) tried to cross it. His forces rushed to his aid, many swimming the river, and not only free their king, but turn his bold attack into French victory.

The king is seen wearing his crown and mounted on a white charger in the centre, as his troops rush the bridge behind him, and swarm up the bank of the river. While not a straightforward composition, Delacroix succeeds in conveying the spirit of battle, and most critics were generous in their praise when it was exhibited at the Salon of 1837.

When he had been in Tangier, Delacroix had encountered and sketched members of a Sufi brotherhood who converged on their founder’s monument in Meknès each August. Tucked away in the safety of an attic, the artist had produced a watercolour, since lost, and in 1837 started to paint his finished oil version of The Fanatics of Tangier (1837-38). It proved controversial when exhibited at the Salon in 1838, although some critics, and later Georges Seurat, considered his brushwork and colour caught the movement of the crowd admirably.

Delacroix had also been invited to attend a Jewish wedding held in Tangier, from which he painted several watercolour studies.

This of a Courtyard in Tangier became the setting.

Sadly he didn’t use this wonderful watercolour of a Jewish Bride in Tangier in his finished oil painting.

Delacroix started to paint the Jewish Wedding in Morocco in 1837, apparently as a commission, and completed it in time for the 1841 Salon. The viewer is given the opportunity to see one of the women dancing in honour of the bride, in a ceremony clearly intended to be very private.

At the time his Orientalist paintings were rapidly rising in value, and the artist found the heir to the French throne, Ferdinand-Philippe, the Duke of Orléans, was willing to pay substantially more for the painting. The Duke quickly donated it to the Musée du Luxembourg, and it has since been transferred to the Louvre. In about 1875, Renoir made a faithful copy for the Delacroix collector and industrialist Jean Dollfus.

By the time that this had been sold, Delacroix had started to tell some of William Shakespeare’s stories in paint and print.

References

Wikipedia

Barthélémy Jobert (2018) Delacroix, new and expanded edn, Princeton UP. ISBN 978 0 691 18236 0.
Patrick Noon and Christopher Riopelle (2015) Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, National Gallery and Yale UP. ISBN 978 1 857 09575 3.
Lucy Norton (translator) (1995) The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, 3rd edn, Phaedon. ISBN 978 0 7148 3359 0.
Arlette Sérullaz (2004) Delacroix, Louvre Drawing Gallery, 5 Continents. ISBN 978 8 874 39105 9.
Beth S Wright (editor) (2001) The Cambridge Companion to Delacroix, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 65077 1.