Frasi di Eugéne Delacroix

„L'uomo è un animale sociale che detesta i suoi simili.“

—  Eugéne Delacroix

„Tiziano è uno di coloro che si avvicinano maggiormente allo spirito degli antichi… in tutti gli altri si direbbe che ci sia un grano di pazzia: lui solo è equilibrato e padrone di sé, della sua esecuzione, della facilità che non lo domina mai e di cui non fa sfoggio…. Egli commuove, credo, non per la profondità delle espressioni, né per una grande comprensione del soggetto, ma per la semplicità e la mancanza di affettazione. In lui le qualità pittoriche sono portate al punto massimo: quel che dipinge, è dipinto: gli occhi guardano e sono animati dal fuoco della vita. Vita e ragione sono presenti ovunque.“

—  Eugéne Delacroix

„Tutta la natura porta un fardello e attende di essere consolata.“

—  Eugéne Delacroix

Origine: Citato in Focus n. 70, p. 130.

„L'avversità restituisce agli uomini tutte le virtù che la prosperità toglie loro.“

—  Eugéne Delacroix

Origine: Da Journal.

„Visto Velázquez […] ecco quel che cercavo da tanti anni, un impasto netto e nello stesso tempo ricco di sfumature.“

—  Eugéne Delacroix

Origine: Da Journal, 1824; citato in Velázquez, I Classici dell'arte, a cura di Elena Ragusa, Rizzoli/Skira, Milano, 2003, pp. 183-188.

„Prende un quadro, lo descrive alla sua maniera, fa lui stesso un quadro che è affascinante, ma non ha fatto un atto di vera critica.“

—  Eugéne Delacroix

„Well! A general invasion: Hamlet rears his hideous head, Othello is preparing his dagger, that essentially murderous weapon, subversive of all good theatrical government. What more, who knows... King Lear is to tear his eyes before a French audience. It should be a point of dignity for the Academy to declare that all imports of this kind are incompatible with public morals. Farewell good taste! In any case, equip yourself with a stout coat of mail under your evening dress. Beware of the Classicist's daggers, or rather, sacrifice yourself valiantly for our barbarian pleasure..“

—  Eugène Delacroix

quote on Hamlet, in a letter to Victor Hugo, 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock -, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

„He [ Michelangelo ] did not know a single one of the feelings of man, not one of his passions. When he was making an arm or a leg, it seems as if he were thinking only of that arm or leg and was not giving the slightest consideration to the way it relates with the action of the figure to which it belongs, much less to the action of the picture as a whole... Therein lies his great merit; he brings a sense of the grand and the terrible into even an isolated limb.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

quote in 1854, on the Italian Renaissance artist [[w:Michelangelo|Michelangelo, as cited in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 235
1831 - 1863

„One has to see a painter in his own place to get an idea of his worth. I went back there [to Corot's studio, after the official exhibition] and I appreciate in a new light the paintings that I had seen in the Museum and that had struck me as middling... He told me to go a bit ahead of myself, abandoning myself to whatever might come; this is how he works most of the time... Corot delves deeply into a subject; ideas come to him and he adds while working; it's the right approach.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

Quote from entry of Delacroix's Journal, 14 March, 1847; as cited in Selected writings on Art and Artists, transl. P. E. Charvet – Cambridge University Press, Archive, 1981, p. 150, note 44
This visit of Delacroix was the beginning of an important friendship
1831 - 1863

„Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

25 February 1852 (p. 152)
1831 - 1863

„I have seen here [in London] a play on Faust, the most diabolic thing imaginable. The Mephistopheles is a masterpiece of caricature and intelligence. It is Goethe's 'Faust', but adapted; the principle features are preserved. They have made it into an opera mixed with comedy and with everything that is most sombre. The scene in the church is given with the priest's chanting and the organ in the distance. Impossible to carry an effect further, in the theater.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

Quote in a letter (written in London, England) to J. B. Pierret, 18 June 1825; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 67
1815 - 1830

„For his contemporaries, Racine was a romantic, but for every age he is classical, that is to say, he is faultless.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

13 January 1857 (p. 337)
1831 - 1863

„In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?“

—  Eugène Delacroix

13 January 1857 (p. 334)
1831 - 1863

„Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

16 January 1860 (p. 391)
1831 - 1863

„Perfect beauty implies perfect simplicity, a quality that at first sight does not arouse the emotions which we feel before gigantic works, objects whose very disproportion constitutes an element of beauty.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

7 September 1854 (p. 252)
1831 - 1863

„I am not doing very much as yet. I am put out by this manner of the Salon. They will end by persuading me that I have produced a veritable fiasco. But I am not yet entirely convinced of it. Some say it is a complete downfall; that the 'Death of Sardanaplus' [Delacroix painted this painting in 1827 after the drama, written by Byron] is that of the Romantics, inasmuch as Romantics do exist; others merely say that I am an 'inganno' [a fraud].... So I say they are all imbeciles, that the picture has its qualities and its defects, and that while there are some things I could wish to be better, there are not a few others that I think myself fortunate to have created, and which I wish them.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend Charles Soulier, 11 March 1828; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 67-68
1815 - 1830

„I have started work on a modern subject, a scene on the barricades… I may not have fought for my country but at least I shall have painted for her.. [quote is referring to his famous painting 'Liberty Leading the People', 1830]“

—  Eugène Delacroix

Quote in an unpublished letter to Delacroix' brother, 18 October 1830, but mentioned by M. Sérullaz; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 13
1815 - 1830

„.. The movement and the rustle of the branches [in the forest, while losing his attention for chasing] delights me. The clouds float past and I lift my head to follow their flight, or think about some madrigal, when a slight sound, which has been going on for a little while, rouses me slowly from my dream.; at least I turn my head and see, to my grief, a little white scut just disappearing into the thicket…“

—  Eugène Delacroix

Quote in a letter to Delacroix' friend Achille Peron - 16 September 1819, Paris; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 51
1815 - 1830

„The more I think about colour, the more convinced I become that this reflected half-tint is the principle that must predominate, because it is this that gives the true tone, the tone that constitutes the value, the thing that matters in giving life and character to the object. Light, to which the schools teach us to attach equal importance and which they place on the canvas at the same time as the half-tint and shadow, is really only an accident. Without grasping this principle, one cannot understand true colour, I mean the colour that gives the feeling of thickness and depth and of that essential difference that distinguishes one object from another.“

—  Eugène Delacroix

29 April 1854 (p. 228)
1831 - 1863