The
enchanting and minuscule Place de Furstenberg was the location chosen by Eugene
Delacroix for his abode and studio just five years before his death in 1873. Among
chic French textile stores and expensive antique dealers, the spot exudes an
air of coziness and prosperity as befits the area between the rue Jacob and the
boulevard St. Germain. It is here that the museum carrying his name was
created in 1971 after the crusading efforts of the Société des Amis d’Eugène
Delacroix that until then kept the flame –and the premises-alive.
The
present exhibition centers around a canvass on loan from the Musée d’Orsay and
painted by Fantin-Latour in 1864 a year after the artist's death and entitled: “Hommage
à Delacroix”. Superbly composed and
probably inspired by the Regents’ paintings of Frans Hals that Fantin-Latour
was then discovering, its irresistible seduction remains unabated. An internal
energy seems to emanate from each of the ten artists and writers that fill the
canvas on both sides of a portrait of the master in spite of their solemnity
and dignified allure. “Hommage” may well be, as some critics and the title of
the canvas indicates, but the honored guests were far from sharing any
ideological and aesthetic convictions. Champfleury and Duranty, champions of
realism appear next to Whistler and Manet who could not care less about it and
to Baudelaire who simply considered the word an abomination. They all came
together to protest at the manner in which the authorities of the time handled
the demise of the artist. The interpersonal dynamics of the characters in view
and those invited that fail to appear are woven in the narrative of the
exhibition through letters, invitations and press cuttings. The sketches and
proofs of Fantin’s previous attempts to compose his homage illustrate the
creative rearrangements that the project underwent. With some extra knowledge
of the oeuvre of those involved, the viewer can understand the dramatic
significance that the true homage represents: a profound turn in the manner of
painting, the admiration by a new generation of artists of a pioneering
precursor and the divergent paths followed by those looking at the viewer from
the painting.
As
might be expected both Delacroix and Fantin-Latour remain secondary actors in
the historic vortex that the exhibition so adeptly illuminates. It is a forgivable shortcoming but it is
particularly deplored on the side of Fantin-Latour whose creativity oscillated
between his dreams of the ideal and the more austere and rigorous view of
reality that was at the bottom of his personality. He deserves a reexamination.
http://www.musee-delacroix.fr/
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