Delacroix ─ The Late Work

This year marks the bicentennial of the birth of EugAne Delacroix (1798-1863), the great French Romantic painter. A pivotal figure in the history of nineteenth-century art, Delacroix stands both at the culmination of the great painterly tradition of Titian, Veronese, Rubens, and Rembrandt and at the beginning of something quite new and modern, as witnessed by the reverence given him by artists of following generations who were so profoundly influenced by his work: Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, and Matisse. This publication, accompanying an international exhibition that begins in Paris and travels to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, presents in glorious color subjects ranging from saints and warriors to mythical goddesses, from Arab hunting scenes and tigers to sumptuous bouquets of flowers. Delacroix's late work reveals a deepening spiritual intensity and has more to do with aesthetic reflection and recollection than with the expansive narrative that characterized his grand public commissions. Focusing on the artist's last works allows further insight into this most remarkable and protean figure in the history of art.