Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix is ​​a French painter born in 1798 in Charenton-Saint-Maurice and died in 1863 in Paris. Noticed at the Salon in 1824, he produced in the following years works inspired by historical or literary anecdotes as well as contemporary events or a trip to the Maghreb. At forty, his reputation is sufficiently established to receive large orders from the state.

In the French painting of the nineteenth century, Delacroix is ​​considered the principal representative of romanticism, whose vigor corresponds to the extent of his career. He painted on canvas and decorated the walls and ceilings of public monuments. He also left engravings and lithographs, several articles written for magazines and a Journal published shortly after his death and several times reissued.

Eugène Delacroix, the fourth child of Victoire Œben (1758-1814) and Charles-François Delacroix (1741-1805), was born in 1798 at 2 rue de Paris in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, near Paris, in a large mansion Of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which still exists.

Charles-François Delacroix first secretary of Turgot in Limoges, followed him to Paris in 1 Deputy of the Marne 3 of September of 1792, under the Convention, it votes the death of the king. Three years later, he became Minister of External Affairs from 4 November 1795 to 18 July 1797, and then Minister in Holland from 6 November 1797 to June 1. He was appointed Rte of the Empire and appointed Prefect of Marseilles on 2 March 1800, Then three years later, on April 23, 1803 (3 Floréal, Year XI), prefect of the Gironde where he died on November 4, 1805 and where he rests, in the cemetery of the Chartreuse

Victoire Œben, seventeen years younger than her husband, comes from a family of renowned cabinetmakers, the Œben. At the death in 1763 of his father Jean-François Œben, famous cabinetmaker of Louis XV, Victoire is five years old. Three years later, in 1766, his mother Françoise Vandercruse, sister of the cabinetmaker Roger Vandercruse, remarried with the cabinetmaker Jean-Henri Riesener, a pupil of his first husband. This second union was born on 6 August 1767 Henri-François Riesener, painter, half-brother of Victoire and uncle of Eugène Delacroix who will have a son, the painter Léon Riesener, of his union with Félicité Longrois.

Charles-Henri Delacroix, the eldest of the children of Victoire and Charles-Francois Delacroix, was born on January 9th. He had a fine career in the Imperial armies. Promoted to an honorary field marshal in 1815, he was demobilized with the rank of general (but half-pay)

Henriette was born on 4 January 1782 and died on 6 April. She married on 1 December 1797 Raymond de Verninac-Saint-Maur (1762-1822) 6, a diplomat of whom she had a son, Charles de Verninac (1803-1834) , The future nephew of Eugene. At the request of her husband, David made his portrait (Musée du Louvre), in 1799, in a genre he develops during the last years of the Revolution, the model seated, cut to the knees, Also to the sculptor Joseph Chinard (1756-1813) his bust in Diane huntress preparing his features (1808, museum of the Louvre)

Henri, born in 1784, was killed at the age of 23 on June 14, 1807, at the Battle of Friedland.

Victoire Œben dies on 3 September 1 The settlement of the maternal succession ruins the Delacroix family. This disaster swallowed up all the fortunes of the children; A property that the artist's mother had bought to cover a debt must be sold at a loss. The Verninac collect the young Eugene who remained in a great destitution

Noting that the painter's father suffered from a voluminous testicular tumor for fourteen years and up to a few months before the birth of Eugene, some authors inferred that his father would have been another man, Talleyrand, credited with many connections Who replaced Charles-François Delacroix in External Affairs on July 16, 1797b. This opinion is vigorously disputed.

In December 1797, the military surgeon Ange-Bernard Imbert-Delonnes (1747-1818) published a brochure about the ablation of this sarcocele on 13 September 1797. This was a medical first. The bulletin, communicated to the Institute, indicates that the operation was successful and that Citizen Charles Delacroix was completely restored after sixty days. Eugène Delacroix was born seven months after the intervention. However, for A. Camelin, Charles Delacroix's tumor was not necessarily an obstacle to procreation

If there are serious reasons for believing that Charles-Francois Delacroix could not be his father, those who make the artist a natural son of Talleyrand are less solid. Caroline Jaubert evokes in 1880 this rumor in the description of a salon scene that would have taken place around 1840d. For several historians like Raymond Escholier "between the mask of the prince of Beneventum and that of Delacroix there is an astonishing resemblance the features of Delacroix do not recall those of his brother the general, nor those of his sister Henrietta, Eugene Delacroix was one of those sons of love, so often endowed with prestigious gifts

Talleyrand, however, was blond and pale, while Baudelaire, describing their friend Eugene Delacroix with black hair, very black, speaks of a "complexion of Peruvian" and Théophile Gautier with an air of "maharadjah."

Emmanuel de Waresquiel recalls the absence of serious sources for this supposed paternity and concludes: "All those who have loved to force the trait of their character, have allowed themselves to be tempted, without worrying about the rest, or especially about the sources or rather the Lack of sources. Once and for all, Talleyrand is not the father of Eugene Delacroix. We only lend to the rich…

Talleyrand is in any case a close relation of the Delacroix family and one of the occult protectors of the artist It would have facilitated the purchase by Baron Gérard of the Massacres of Scio, presented at the Salon of 1824 and today in the museum of the Louvre), for a sum of 6,000 francs. Talleyrand's grandson, the Duc de Morny, president of the legislative body and uterine half-brother of Napoleon III, made Delacroix the official painter of the Second Empire, Emperor preferred Winterhalter and Meissonnier The tutelary shadow of Talleyrand extends through Adolphe Thiers, of which he is the mentor. Thiers' support seems to have helped Delacroix obtain several important orders, notably the decoration of the Salon du Roi, at the Palais Bourbon, and part of the decoration of the Senate Library, at the Palais du Luxembourg.

This protection does not establish a natural paternity, and Maurice Sérullaze avoids to pronounce on this subject while many others refuse this hypothesis, the border between a real resemblance and the phenomenon of paréidolie being tenuous

Beyond the interest of curiosity, opinions in this controversy reflect the importance that commentators want to attribute to individual talent and character, to social and family relations, or even to heredity, to success From Delacroix.

At the death of his father, Eugene is only 7 years old. The mother and the son left Bordeaux for Paris In January 1806, they lived at 50 rue de Grenelle6, in the apartment of Henriette and Raymond de Verninac From October 1806 to the summer of 1815, Delacroix attended an elite establishment , The Lycée Impérial (now the Lycée Louis-le-Grand) where he received a good education.

His readings are classic: Horace, Virgil, but also Racine, Corneille and Voltaire. He learned Greek and Latin. The many drawings and sketches scribbled on his notebooks already attest to his artistic gifts. He met at the Imperial High School his first confidants: Jean-Baptiste Pierret (1795-1854), Louis (1790-1865) and Félix (1796-1842) Guillemardet, and Achille Piron (1798-1865) They shared his bohemian life Remained faithful until the end of his life.

He also received an early musical education, taking lessons with an old organist, who loved Mozart. This music master, who has noticed the child's talents, recommends his mother to make a musician. But the death of his father in 1805 put an end to this possibility. Paganini played the violin (1831, Philipps Collection of Washington), and he continued to participate in the musical life of Paris, seeking the company of composers, singers and instrumentalists.

In 1815, his uncle, Henri-François Riesener, brought him into the workshop of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, where he had as his fellow-students Paul Huet, Léon Cogniet, Ary and Henry Scheffer, and Charles-Henri de Callande de Champmartin The knowledge of Théodore Géricault, seven years his elder, who had a capital influence on his art Guérin's teaching is both classical and liberal. He teaches the neo-classical principle of the primacy of drawing on color, the return to the Ancient dear to the German Winckelmann, but is not closed to new ideas.
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