France
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798 to 1863)
Circa 1840s
Graphite on paper
Initialed lower right: ED
Image 7 1/2 x 11 5/8 inches, frame 14 x 19 1/2 inches
Provenance: Private collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico
A sheet of graphite studies of a cat, initialed ED at the lower right and dating to the 1840s, when Delacroix was moving between his Paris studio and the countryside at Champrosay and filling sketchbooks with animals drawn from close observation rather than from other pictures. The handling is quick and exploratory in the way that working drawings of this kind tend to be, with the artist returning to the same subject to record how the body reads from one position to another, and the sheet has been framed for display at a size considerably larger than the drawing itself.
Cats and the larger felines occupied Delacroix throughout his career, from the domestic animals he kept and watched at home to the lions and tigers he drew at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and the observations he gathered in graphite fed directly into the painted hunts and the animal subjects that occupied him from the 1830s onward. Drawings of this type were made for the artist's own use rather than for exhibition, which is why they survive in far smaller numbers than the finished works, and why they carry a directness that the Salon paintings deliberately set aside. The Santa Fe provenance places the sheet in an American private collection.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
France
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798 to 1863)
Circa 1840s
Graphite on paper
Initialed lower right: ED
Image 7 1/2 x 11 5/8 inches, frame 14 x 19 1/2 inches
Provenance: Private collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico
A sheet of graphite studies of a cat, initialed ED at the lower right and dating to the 1840s, when Delacroix was moving between his Paris studio and the countryside at Champrosay and filling sketchbooks with animals drawn from close observation rather than from other pictures. The handling is quick and exploratory in the way that working drawings of this kind tend to be, with the artist returning to the same subject to record how the body reads from one position to another, and the sheet has been framed for display at a size considerably larger than the drawing itself.
Cats and the larger felines occupied Delacroix throughout his career, from the domestic animals he kept and watched at home to the lions and tigers he drew at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and the observations he gathered in graphite fed directly into the painted hunts and the animal subjects that occupied him from the 1830s onward. Drawings of this type were made for the artist's own use rather than for exhibition, which is why they survive in far smaller numbers than the finished works, and why they carry a directness that the Salon paintings deliberately set aside. The Santa Fe provenance places the sheet in an American private collection.
We ship free anywhere in the world, fully insured, packed by hand.
