Musee Delacroix

After the d'Orsay, we walked up the river, turned a droite, weaved in and out a bit, and eventually arrived at 6 rue de Furstenberg,* the Musee Delacroix. Delacroix is one of the most revered of French painters, by the French anyway. Fantin-Latour's Homage a Delacroix, one of my favorite group portraits, gives evidence of this, and we have seen plenty of Delacroix's work, at the Louvre and elsewhere (e.g., Saint-Sulpice), and especially at the wonderful exposition on "Romantic Paris" we saw at Petit Palais in 2019. Everything quickened in the 19th century...not that the preceding centuries were dull and uneventful. Art was no exception, and went through at least as many "periods" as the French had governments...neo-classicism, Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism, post-Impressionism, etc. Delacroix was the acknowledged leader of the Romanticists, although in later life he was a supporter also of Courbet and the Realists. In any case, his admirers bought his last apartment, studio, and garden, on rue de Furstenberg to save it from destruction, maintained it as a museum for many years, then handed it over to the Louvre, which manages it today. We'd walked passed it many times, never entered it, but finally went for it, for European Heritage Days. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. If you get my drift.

Entrance to the house, which is pretty undistinguished on the outside

Delacroix is most famous for Liberty Leading the People, 
celebrating the 1830 revolution (not the American revolution),
which, like its predecessor, succeeded in simply replacing one
monarchy with another; Liberty resides at the Louvre, where
we've seen it and will see it again; we've also seen it at the
Louvre outpost in Lens, where it lived 2012-2014

The Musee Delacroix has this small sketch...

Also his Seated Nude, aka Madamoiselle Rose,
1820

Also his Education of the Virgin, 1842

His palette

Mirabeau before Dreux-Breze (23 June, 1789), 1830; patriotic
stuff, especially if you're not a monarchist; for the actual paintings,
that's about it; granted, Delacroix's most famous stuff is in 
museums around the world, in French state buildings, churches,
etc....but we'd hoped for rather more; oh yes, there was a video 
loop playing of some of the other paintings...

Delacroix lived into the 1860s and is thus

one of the few "old masters" of whom there

is a photograph; looks pretty much like the bust

(thanks, Wikipedia)

Outside, in the garden, looking back at his studio

All in all, we were happy to have done this one for free

*If you're really missing Thailand, the Jim Thompson store is just a door down the rue...