The Cambridge Companion to Delacroix, edited by Beth S. Wright, comprises ten scholarly essays, examining various aspects of the life and work of the French artist, Eugene Delacroix, and also his writings on art and their relation to the literature and popular culture of the day. Together these essays provide an introduction to this prolific, influential and complex artist.
Delacroix is considered to be the greatest French painter of the romantic movement. Although he entered the studio of Pierre Guérin, his basic artistic education came from studying French masters at the Louvre. In 1832 he visited Morocco and from this experience acquired a fund of rich and exotic visual imagery which informed his later work. After his death, executors found more than 9,000 paintings, pastels and drawings in his studio. He was also very much a man of letters and as a writer had a voluminous output. He kept a personal diary from 1822 to 1824 and again from 1847 until his death in 1863.
Beth S. Wright provides an introductory essay to this collection, looking at the great range of technique, subject matter, genre and media used by Delacroix. Other scholars survey particular aspects of his work: for example, Delacroix and Romanticism; the impact of his visits to Egypt and Syria at the age of 24; Delacroix’s relationship with the French classical tradition; and the impact of his writings on art. This companion very adequately provides an overview of Delacroix’s artistic achievement, also setting his life within the political and cultural context of the day. The notes to the text and bibliography of further reading are very full and direct students to other sources of information. There is also a very full and useful chronology of Delacroix’s life set in a historical context. A total of 11 plates introduce the book and there are a number of illustrations throughout the text.
This book is likely to become a key for students studying Delacroix and should find a place at all undergraduate and postgraduate level collections. The placing of his life within the culture of its day also makes it a useful resource for students of French nineteenth‐century cultural history and literature.
