Delacroix’s Head of A Greek Woman shadowing ProfValFranco at the Met. (Photo- ProfValFranco, Lighting courtesy of the Met)
Since it’s way too rainy to head out into flooded roads and cranky drivers for a museum visit today, I thought I’d revisit past exhibs at the Metropolitan’s exhibit in Delacroix from a few years back.
In 1824 Delacroix began work on his massive painting Scenes from the Massacre at Chios. He was going to enter it for exhibition at the Salon in Paris that year.
The image in back of me is the study he did for the matriarch in the group. He painted her from a model who posed in his studio, but the grouping of figures in the final work also pictured others, including a dead mother with her infant.
Notice the intensity of her gaze, so fearful as she looks off into the distance, the atrocities of the massacre all around her.
Head of a Greek Woman, Eugene Delacroix, 1824, courtesy of the Musee Des Beaux-Arts, Orleans photo by ProfValFranco
Delacroix’s study is done in the vein of a long tradition of creating expressive heads. This was a very important practice in formal French academic painting since it’s development as an alternative to the guild system in the mid-1600s. The Academie’s official Salon Exhibitions began in 1667 in Paris, and were held every 6 or twelve months. Inclusion in the field led to important commissions, as well as an increase in reputation and stature in the French art world ( and arguably the world at large…)
By 1748 and at least through to 1890 it was considered to be the greatest art exhibition in the Western world, even as the Impressionists were fighting against the academic style and the Academie’s control in the art world with their own counter-culture exhibitions beginning in 1874.
Consensus is that there were two studies that Delacroix exhibited alongside the larger painting, the other being Orphaned Girl at Cemetery.
Orphaned Girl at Cemetery, Eugene Delacroix, 1824, courtesy of the Musee Du Louvre
A visual interpretation of the events in Chios that began April 12, 1822 and lasted for several months, the images presented in the massive Massacre at Chios (it’s almost fourteen feet by just under twelve feet) are quite overwhelming. The invading Ottoman troops killed over 20,000 Greeks and took the survivors ( numbered at almost seventy thousand) as slaves.
This emotional masterpiece was actually quite scandalous for several reasons: the scale of the violence it depicted, as well as the purposeful lack of unity regarding the narratives & composition. Notice how there is no suggestion of hope in this image – just death, despair and ruin.
Scenes from the Massacre at Chios, Eugene Delacroix, 1824, courtesy of the Musee du Louvre
There’s no heroic figure to act as a contrast to the Ottoman soldiers, one most notably in a very dominant, strong position on horseback, rearing up in the right mid-ground, as his victims, are strewn about the ground, either dead or waiting to be taken as prisoners into slavery.
This image was meant to secure the 26 year old Delacroix’s reputation as a formidable talent. Regardless of the controversy surrounding the painting and the mixed responses it provoked, it was recognized as a work worthy of purchase by the director of the royal museums at the time, the Comte de Forbin. He was so intrigued by it that he risked his career by purchasing the painting against protocol without securing King Louis XVIII’s official approval first.
The painting continued to provoke controversy well into the TwentyFirst Century when the Greek government removed a copy of the painting from a museum in Chios in the autumn of 2009. Their action was meant to be interpreted as a token of “good faith“ that would lead to improved relations between the Greek and the Turkish governments. Public sentiment was so vehement against this move that the copy was reinstalled in the museum.
Art often archives the world around us, whether the actions are admirable or unconscionable. Think of events occurring today on the world stage. How would an artist like Delacroix present them in his work?
What is your reaction to the two studies and to the finished painting at large?
Until next time….
ProfValFranco
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