New Exhibition

A Passion for Delacroix
The Karen B. Cohen collection
December 16, 2009 - April 5, 2010

 

Even though the Eugène Delacroix Museum was created on the initiative of artists and collectors, this is the first time it has exhibited a private collection. It must be said that the ensemble of Delacroix's drawings and oil sketches amassed by Karen B. Cohen in fewer than thirty years is exceptional, not only because of its quality and variety but also for the passion shown by the author in hunting down and bringing together so many works from New York. Not only did she indulge in exclusive purchases in public sales, but our great art lover concurrently acquired more modestly-priced works, preparatory works, sketch-books, manuscripts, or copies of Old Masters. From religious compositions to scenes illustrating Shakespeare or George Sand, from combats of wild animals to flamboyant Moroccan scenes, this very complete panorama of the artist's career constitutes a kind of imaginary museum. Later, for the most part, it will join the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, an institution of which Karen B. Cohen is an Honorary Trustee.

At the present time, a selection of ninety works from this collection have exceptionally returned to the walls on which most of them figured until the sale of Delacroix's studio in 1864. They thus offer a digest of the artist's career seen through the prism of an unusual collection, enriched with comparative works borrowed from the Musée du Louvre (Département des Arts graphiques), from the Musée de la Vie romantique and the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Dijon, as well as from the private collection of Louis-Antoine and Véronique Prat.

 

 

Exhibition of British paintings showcasing the portraits of two friends: Delacroix and Fielding

The Musée Eugène Delacroix has recently acquired two paintings that are small in size but outstanding in terms of quality, rarity, and emotional impact: the portrait of Thales Fielding by Delacroix and of Eugène Delacroix by Thales Fielding, both painted in about 1825. To celebrate their arrival, the Louvre's Department of Paintings has loaned a number of British paintings to the Musée Delacroix: several landscapes by John Constable, most of the Louvre's works by Richard Parkes Bonington, and various other paintings by William Etty, Edwin Landseer, and Thomas Lawrence. These works are now on display in the intimate setting of Delacroix's apartment and studio.

Although Eugène Delacroix requires no introduction, his friend and fellow painter Thales Fielding is less well known. Readers of Delacroix's Journal or letters may nonetheless recognize the name from the master's many references to the Fielding brothers. The five Fielding brothers were the sons of painter Theodore Nathan Fielding, who chose evocative names for his offspring: Theodore like himself for the eldest, Frederick Raffael Fielding, Copley Antony Van Dyck Fielding, Newton Fielding, and finally Thales Angelo Vernet Fielding-the object of our interest here. They settled in Paris from 1820 onward at the instigation of Swiss publisher Jean-François d'Ostervald, who was looking for landscape painters to join the team of artists (the best known of whom is the English painter Richard Parkes Bonington) who contributed to his albums of picturesque lithographs. They worked together on the collection entitled Excursions sur les côtes et dans les ports de Normandie.

The Fieldings played a major role in teaching Delacroix the watercolor technique. At the Salon of 1824, Stendhal expressed particular admiration for a small watercolor by Thales Fielding entitled Macbeth Meeting the Witches. Thales returned to London the same year, leaving his studio at 20 rue Jacob to Delacroix. On October 11, Delacroix wrote to his friend Soulier: "We saw the good Thales leave on Saturday, which grieved me; I shall miss him, as will you. I now find myself far from both of you, and in the very place where I was accustomed to see you." Thales Fielding was instrumental in Delacroix's decision to visit England in 1825; he found accommodation for his French friend, and acted as his guide in the capital. Fielding himself had a somewhat muted career: he exhibited regularly at the Royal Society of Watercolour Painters (to which he was elected in 1829), and ended his days as a teacher at the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich. Few of his works are currently located, though some of his prints and watercolors are exhibited in a number of British museums.

These two paintings attest to the warmth of the friendship between Delacroix and Thales Fielding; rather than exchanging self-portraits (an exercise that Delacroix detested), each friend painted a portrait of the other before Fielding returned to England after more than three years in Paris. The fate of the portraits also testifies to the two artists' enduring friendship: Fielding exhibited his Portrait of Delacroix at the Royal Academy in 1827-a tribute to an artist whose fame had yet to spread to England-and when Delacroix was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1831, Fielding added the medal to his painting; as for Delacroix, he kept his vibrant Portrait of Fielding all his life, as it is mentioned among the items in his apartment on Place de Furstenberg when the latter went on sale in 1864.

So although these two portraits form a remarkable pair, they are not true companion pieces. They differ in both format and style: the flesh tints, bright eyes, and even the gray background in the Portrait of Thales Fielding reflect Delacroix's sensitivity of touch; the Portrait of Delacroix is less skillful in execution-Thales Fielding's specialties were lithographs and watercolor landscapes-but it is a charming and very rare image of Delacroix in his youth.