Delacroix 2018

From Reality to Dream, Eugène Delacroix, An Exceptional Artist Arlette Sérullaz

“Delacroix ascribed, and not without reason, the highest value to the content of his portfolios, works which he had made only for his students or for his closest friends. He never sold the contents for profit. He hoped that after his death they would be considered a solemn defense against the incessant reproaches for improvisation and facility that were made against him, and prove that the capacity to express an idea without the security of a painstaking prior study was a phenomenon without parallel in the history of art,” so proclaimed Philippe Burty in his preface to the catalogue for the sale of Delacroix’s studio that took place from February 17–27, 1864. 1 By demanding that his work be dispersed in this public manner, Delacroix was right. Assigned the task by his friend of making a definitive inventory for the purpose of the sale of approximately 6000 drawings, pastels, and watercolors, Burty was certainly impressed, and astonished by the public rushing in the day before the sale. The critic Théophile Sylvestre, who was also present, observed the fervor of the crowd: “A steamy, tubercular atmosphere deterred neither men nor women (. . .) In four hours, not a soul exited; and in any event it was impossible: the adjacent halls and the side corridors were packed.” On the evening of the February 22, having attentively followed the first bids on the drawings, Sylvestre added: “What really amazed everyone at this public sale of watercolors, drawings, and sketches by Delacroix was the inexhaustible abundance of the master, the variety of his motifs, and the furious determination with which he rendered in all forms the subjects that had inspired him. We recognize here the man who ceaselessly produced in order to lift his spirit and his heart, and who had condemned his (own) hand to perpetual activity.” 2

11