For the last half of his life "the land of lions and leather" molded Eugene Delacroix's imagination and provided inspiration for more than 100 paintings. No one from France had ever been allowed inside Meknes, the capital of Morroco, when Delacroix's...
[more]For the last half of his life "the land of lions and leather" molded Eugene Delacroix's imagination and provided inspiration for more than 100 paintings. No one from France had ever been allowed inside Meknes, the capital of Morroco, when Delacroix's group, complete with bodyguards, accomplished the strenuous journey. For the short time he was there, Delacroix ate up the exoticism that would become a high-sought commodity among Paris art collectors. He wrote that "at every step" the slave markets, hookahs, and ornately clad Jewish women presented "ready-made paintings which would make the fame and fortune of 20 generations of painters." Indeed Delacroix was the first conqueror on this early modernist quest -- one free of politically-correct restrictions. Artists of all types would follow Delacroix's sandal-tracks in search of the "fresh" and the "pure." As Matisse claimed, "I have found landscapes in Morocco exactly as they are described in Delacroix's paintings."
Before the muse of Morocco fluttered about Delacroix's heart it was the luxuriant style of Peter Paul Rubens and Paolo Veronese that profoundly influenced him; he ingested the spirit of Theodore Gericault, an artist of Delacroix's own sensibility who cherished liberty and romanticism. Delacroix had completed some of his more famous works such as "Liberty Leading the People," an allegorical glorification of liberty, and "The Massacres at Chios," a political piece with an "oriental" subject.
But in Morocco Delacroix exposed within himself the sense of antiquity needed to set French Romanticism on a new path. The figures in his Morroco-inspired works are reminiscent of the ancient Greeks and Romans: barefooted, clothed in blinding white, draped in sashes. The women and their harems especially provoked Delacroix to express an other-worldliness lacking in Western art. He vigorously recorded in journals the details: shadowed eyes, flower decorated hair, heavy stoned jewelry, round supple hands. He desired to bring the chipped white walls, indestructible stallions, and bold blue skies back to France.
His paintings also speak of Delacroix's position within a foreign culture. In "Street in Meknes" the figures mutually gaze out at the audience as the audience curiously looks in. They seem to beckon as well as question a hastily accepted intruder. It is clear that much more than a canvas separated Delacroix and his patrons from the "antique" people he was so enamored with. However compared to earlier more "fictional" works such as "Massacre at Chios" where the viewer struggles with accepting the human experience as authentic, Delacroix's Moroccan works solidified his legacy, hold questionable figures in a real time, a believable background, and true light.
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