Delacroix 2018

Accused from his very first appearances at the Salon of being incapable of drawing accurately, Delacroix did not seek in his lifetime to refute the attacks reiterated by his detractors. In his journal, at least, he barely wrote of his drawings or of drawing as such, while he tirelessly returned to questions about color and luminosity. No specific entry about drawing is found in the draft of his Fine Arts Dictionary, which he began in 1857, only this one pithy statement: “Dessin par les milieux ou par le contour.” 3 Three years earlier, however, during a visit to Champrosay in April 1854, the artist did record in his journal a passionate defense for what was, according to him, one of the most lively forms of drawing, le croquis (quick sketch) insisting in particular on one aspect that was fundamental in his view: “The first idea, the sketch—the egg or embryo of the idea, so to speak—is nearly always far from complete; everything is there, if you like, but this everything has to be released, which simply means joining up the various parts. The precise quality that renders the sketch the highest expression of the idea is not the suppression of details, but their subordination to the great sweeping lines that come before everything else in making the impression. (. . .) With the great masters, the sketch is no dream or remote vision; it is something much more than a collection of scarcely distinguishable outlines; great artists alone are clear about what they set out to do, and what is so hard for them is to keep to the first bure expression throughout the execution of the work, whether this be prolonged or rapid. Can a mediocre artist, wholly occupied with questions of technique, ever achieve this result by means of a highly skillful handling of details with obscure the idea instead of bringing it to light?” 4 In revisiting the comments that were inspired by Delacroix in the treatise of his student and friend Elisabeth Cavé “Le Dessin sans maître,” it is altogether evident that the artist was not indifferent to problems of drawing: “Dessiner n’est pas reproduire un objet tel qu’il est, ceci est la besogne du sculpteur, mais tel qu’il paraît, et ceci est celle du dessinateur et du peintre; ce dernier achève, au moyen de la

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