p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was one of the towering figures to emerge in France in the wake of Napoleon. No other artist of the nineteenth century balanced a reverence for the past with such a strong ambition and spirit of innovation. Distinguishing himself from many other talented young artists in Paris, he gained renown in the 1820s for his novel subject matter, theatrical sense of composition, vibrant palette, and vigorous painterly technique. His vast production—including some eight hundred paintings, prints in a variety of media, and thousands of drawings and pages of writing—won the admiration of countless writers and artists, including Charles Baudelaire, Paul Cèzanne, and Pablo Picasso. This comprehensive monograph closely examines the full breadth of Delacroix’s career, including his engagement with the work of his predecessors, his fascination with the natural world, his interest in Lord Byron and the Greek War of Independence, and the profound influence of his voyage to North Africa in 1832. It brings to life his relationships with his contemporaries, ranging from the painters Pierre Narcisse Guèrin and Antoine Jean Gros to Gustave Courbet, as well as his exploration of literary, historical, and biblical themes, his writing in personal journals, and his triumphant exhibition at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Richly illustrated and encompassing the entire range and diversity of his art, from grand paintings to intimate drawings, Delacroix illuminates how this intrepid figure changed the course of European painting by heeding “a call for the liberty of art.”

At Delacroix' studio sale, held six months after his death in 1864, crowds and critics were astonished at both the abundance and the multi-disciplinary nature of the work on display, the life's vision of a man praised by Baudelaire for being the last great artist of the Renaissance period and the first of the Modern. But Delacroix himself was well aware of the position he wanted to occupy. Taking his cue from Rubens in both lifestyle and visual inventiveness, he took the order of classical composition and allied it to a universally appreciated symbolic and allegorical intent, producing from that marriage works of unmatched integrity and sensuality. From the spectacular Salon reception in 1824 to a work such as the major Scenes from the Chios Massacre (when the term Romantique was first applied to his style) through to the liberating and controversial carnality of The Agony in the Garden, Delacroix' genius in graphic design, in the liberation and reinvention of colour, and in the portrayal of bodies was never in doubt. His numerous sketchbooks attest to a personality committed to the most truthful results, in both his Goyaesque fantasias of horror, cruelty and sacrifice and in his huge historical canvases. Excessive, monumental, Byronic even, this Victor Hugo of the art world has proved profoundly influential, his technique studied by movements as diverse as Impressionism, Expressionism and the Abstract painters of mid-century. Leaving the self-indulgence of the Romantics far behind, the nobility of Delacroix' spirit will continue to speak to any and every age.

Michel Delacroix's quietly timeless paintings of the Paris of his childhood are collected here as both tribute to and portrait of that city, as well as an impressive retrospective of this prolific and popular artist's body of work. 130 color illustrations. 152 pp, with one fold-out spread.

In this new monograph, part of Phaidon’s Art & Ideas series, Simon Lee, Senior Lecturer in the History of Art the University of Reading, examines the work of Delacroix within the framework of his turbulent times, as France experienced the upheavals of the Napoleonic era. Written in a lively and accessible style, and incorporating the latest scholarship on the artist, Lee provides fresh analyses into the life and times of Delacroix and uncovers the creative process behind his most famous works.

"Issued in conjunction with the exhibition ... held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from April 10, 1991, through June 16, 1991"--T.p. verso.

Notions of civilization and barbarism were intrinsic to Eugène Delacroix’s artistic practice: he wrote regularly about these concepts in his journal, and the tensions between the two were the subject of numerous paintings, including his most ambitious mural project, the ceiling of the Library of the Chamber of Deputies in the Palais Bourbon. Exiled in Modernity delves deeply into these themes, revealing why Delacroix’s disillusionment with modernity increasingly led him to seek spiritual release or epiphany in the sensual qualities of painting. While civilization implied a degree of control and the constraint of natural impulses for Delacroix, barbarism evoked something uncontrolled and impulsive. Seeing himself as part of a grand tradition extending back to ancient Greece, Delacroix was profoundly aware of the wealth and power that set nineteenth-century Europe apart from the rest of the world. Yet he was fascinated by civilization’s chaotic underbelly. In analyzing Delacroix’s art and prose, David O’Brien illuminates the artist’s effort to reconcile the erudite, tradition-bound aspects of painting with a desire to reach viewers in a more direct, unrestrained manner. Focusing chiefly on Delacroix’s musings about civilization in his famous journal, his major mural projects on the theme of civilization, and the place of civilization in his paintings of North Africa and of animals, O’Brien links Delacroix’s increasingly pessimistic view of modernity to his desire to use his art to provide access to a more fulfilling experience. With more than one hundred illustrations, this original, astute analysis of Delacroix and his work explains why he became an inspiration for modernist painters over the half-century following his death. Art historians and scholars of modernism especially will find great value in O’Brien’s work.