Delacroix and Photography opens at Musee National Eugene-Delacroix

Written by Jamie Noblitt Saturday, 13 November 2010 22:12

PARIS - Musée National Eugène-Delacroix presents Delacroix and Photography, on view through March 2, 2009. Photographs of nude models who posed for Delacroix, and whose pictures were taken at the painter’s request by Eugène Durieu in1854, form the core of the exhibition. These unique prints are shown with the drawings that Delacroix executed either at the same time or based on the photographs. The exhibition was curated by Christophe Leribault.

Far from seeing photography as a potential rival to painting, Delacroix took a keen interest in the development of this new medium, following its technical progress with sufficient curiosity to become a founding member of the Heliographic Society in 1851. He amassed a considerable photographic collection of frescoes by Raphael, paintings by Rubens, and cathedral sculptures. Moreover, although he did not use a camera himself, a series of male and female nude models were photographed at his request by Eugène Durieu, in 1854.

We know from his diary and letters that he sometimes used these photographs to practice drawing when no live models were available. Almost all the photographs and the drawings done from them (together with a number of paintings) have been assembled for the first time at the Musée Delacroix, with the generous support of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and other collections. The exhibition also features a surprising series of photographic portraits of Delacroix himself, ranging from the precious intimate daguerreotypes of the 1840s to the more posed and strikingly dignified pictures taken by Carjat or Nadar toward the end of his life-many of which images the great man himself would rather have had destroyed.

Frommer's Review
This museum is for Delacroix groupies, among whom we include ourselves. If you want to see where he lived, worked, and died, this is worth at least an hour. Delacroix (1798-1863) is something of an enigma to art historians. Even his parentage is a mystery. Baudelaire called him "a volcanic crater artistically concealed beneath bouquets of flowers." The museum is on one of the Left Bank's most charming squares, with a romantic garden. A large arch on a courtyard leads to Delacroix's studio -- no poor artist's studio, but the creation of a solidly established man. Sketches, lithographs, watercolors, and oils are hung throughout.

Catalogue: co-edited by the Musée du Louvre and Editions du Passage, with texts by Sylvie Aubenas, Françoise Heilbrun, Fiona Le Boucher, Christophe Leribault, and Sabine Slanina.  Visit : http://www.musee-delacroix.fr/

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