Delacroix

Delacroix drew incessantly throughout his life. The importance the artist attached to this aspect of his work is born out by the thousands of sheets that were dispersed at the time of the sale following his death. The Louvre collection, featuring over three thousand drawings owing particularly to the generosity of a great collector, Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, illustrates by itself the complexity of a versatile genius whose style evolved over the years toward an ever more intense lyricism and a clear synthesis of forms refashioned by his imagination. Whether he would call upon the inexhaustible "dictionary" nature offered him, draw from memory or sheer invention or again, as was often the case, respond to a literary text, Delacroix was a paradoxical draughtsman, heedful of tradition but constantly overstepping it. He made use of almost every graphic technique alternately or combined: charcoal, red chalk, pastel, graphite pencil, pen, watercolour or wash, carrying them to the height of achievement or even to their breaking point.

Arlette Serullaz is General Curator in the Graphic Arts Department and Director of the Musee Delacroix since 1984.