How strangely Delacroix’s art was misunderstood by his contemporaries who, nurtured on the tinted cartoons of the ruling School, stood aghast before the passionate utterance of the master’s “intoxicated broom,” or, assuming the role of Beckmesser, marked with offensive rap of chalk on the blackboard of the public Press his sins against their dogmatic rules. In their blindness they even went so far as to accuse him of being unable to draw! What seemed altogether to escape their perception, was that the fiery impulse, the tempestuous élan of Delacroix’s romantic imagination was largely controlled by his cool intellectuality. Delacroix was a thinker and a man of profound culture. He had, moreover, the greatest respect for tradition. If, in the actual painting of his pictures, he was carried away by his enthusiasm and worked like one inspired, he never started upon this the final stage without an enormous amount of preparatory sketches for every figure, every detail — never before the idea had taken firm and definite shape in his mind. The sweep of the brush, the vitalising amplifications and elements of movement may have been left to the inspiration of the moment; but chance played no part in the disposition of the design and the arrangement of the colour-scheme.
It was that amplification and exaggeration of forms, by which alone movement can be expressed in art, that led the unthinking to the belief that Delacroix “could not draw.” Of course, the application of Ingres’s standard of classic perfection in drawing might justify the conclusion, but one need only glance at Delacroix’s sketch-books and studies to realise that he was a great draughtsman, if drawing, as it was to him, is considered the means towards an end, and not an end in itself. And his mastery of spontaneous, nervously expressive drawing was as complete as it could be, if mastery can be acquired through the curbing of impetuous genius by half a century’s methodical, steady practice. For Delacroix, from his early student days to his death, never started on his day’s work without having first “got his hand in” by half-an-hour’s practice in sketching or drawing, just as a pianist will first run through his finger exercises and scales, to make sure of his mastery over his instrument.
Thus, by unremitting practice, Delacroix acquired such absolute command of the language of line and form that, in the pictorial expression of his ideas, he used it as an orator uses the language of words — in a steady flow, without doubts and hesitations. His inspiration was not checked and weakened by the struggle for an adequate form of expression. There was nothing in life and in nature that did not stimulate his artistic curiosity, and all his sketches betray the same passionate search for the really essential, the elements of life and movement and mood, which are often to be obtained only by the sacrifice of literal correctness. He never tired of making drawings after Rembrandt’s etchings, and he spent many hours at the Jardin des Plantes, in the company of the animal sculptor Barye, sketching and painting wild beasts from life. Indeed, Delacroix was rarely rivalled, and probably never surpassed, as a painter of animals either in repose or in the very frenzy of movement.
His astonishing rapidity of production has already been exemplified by his painting of the large “Pietà” at St. Dénis-du-Saint-Sacrement in seventeen days. An even more striking instance is afforded by the “King Rodrigo losing his Crown,” now in the Cheramy Collection. A number of artists had agreed to contribute towards the decoration of a room in a villa taken by Alexandre Dumas père in 1830. Delacroix was of their number; and the day agreed for the completion of the pictures was to be celebrated by a ball. When Delacroix arrived at midday of the day in question he found that all the panels were in their proper places, leaving only an unexpectedly large gap for his own contribution. “He had meant only to paint a few flowers. ‘Listen,’ said Dumas, ‘I have just been reading something that will do for you,’ and he described the first canto of the ‘Romancero,’ in which Rodrigo loses his crown. Delacroix began at once, and had painted the whole scene by sunset, in the most unusual colours, a harmony in yellow, unique in his work. Great was the enthusiasm in the evening when the friends saw the picture; Barye, in particular, who had contributed an excellent panel, is said to have been beside himself.”
Delacroix’s life, apart from his struggle for recognition — a struggle which he fought entirely with his brush, leaving the controversial side to others — was singularly uneventful. His only passions were his art, his love of romantic literature, and his staunch friendship. A few journeys and frequent spells of illness were the only events that broke the even tenor of his life. As a writer, Delacroix has left a marvellous “Journal,” which ought to be consulted and carefully studied by every artist, and a number of carefully constructed magazine articles on various æsthetic questions, which only reveal the cool intellectual side of his dual nature. He was a man of great reticence, who rarely allowed himself to be drawn into criticising the art of his contemporaries. In his critical comments on the masters — even on those whose style was diametrically opposed to his own temperament — he always proved himself keenly appreciative of their great qualities. Strangely enough, Delacroix, who is considered the leader, and certainly was one of the main inspirers of the Romanticist movement, not only disliked the application of this term to his own art, but had little sympathy with the Romanticist literature of his own time and country. His attitude towards Victor Hugo almost amounted to hostility; and he always treated Baudelaire, who had espoused his cause with keen enthusiasm, with the most calculated reserve. In music his tastes were severely classical— “he refreshed himself with Mozart, was never quite able to convert himself to Beethoven, abhorred the modern French composers, and was the first to condemn Wagner.”
If Delacroix, except for a very brief period at the beginning of his career, never suffered real poverty, he, on the other hand, never received adequate pecuniary reward for his work. To the very end he was forced to sell his finest pictures at ridiculously inadequate prices; and on some of his large decorative commissions he found himself actually out of pocket. It was probably the conviction that posthumous justice would inevitably be done to his genius, which made him insist in his will upon the sale of his remaining works by public auction. And events proved that he was right. The sale, which was held from February 16-29, 1864, was estimated to produce about £4000, but resulted in a total of close upon £13,500.
The instructions about his burial, left by Delacroix in his will, reflect something of his noble aloofness and his respect for great tradition in art. “My tomb shall be in the cemetery of Père-Lachaise, on the height and in a place a little apart. There shall be placed upon it neither emblem, nor bust, nor statue. My tomb shall be copied very exactly from the antique, or Vignole, or Palladio, with very pronounced projections, contrary to all that is done in the architecture of to-day.”
Julius Meier-Graefe, “Modern Art,” vol. i.