Eugène Delacroix

M. Cachardy (sale: 8 December 1862, lot 12)
Marquis de Lambertye (sale: 4 February 1865, lot 13)
M. Premsel, Paris (sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 12 April 1886, lot 3)
Galerie Georges Petit, Paris (purchased at the above sale)
M. Herz
Julius Böhler, Munich
Samuel Untermeyer, New York (sale: Parke Bernet, New York, 4 May 1940, lot 16)
Irene Myers Richter, New York (her sale: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 2 May 1973, lot 62)
Sale: Christie's, London, 15 April 1975, lot 19
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Adolphe Moreau, Eugène Delacroix et son oeuvre, Paris, 1873, p. 272, catalogued
Alfred Robaut, L'Oeuvre complet d'Eugène Delacroix, Paris, 1885, p. 345, no. 1292
Luigina Rossi Bartolatto, L'opera pittorica completa di Delacroix, Milan, 1972, no. 731
Lee Johnson, The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix. A Critical Catalogue. 1832-1863, Oxford, 1986, vol. III, p. 206, no. 409, catalogued & discussed; vol. IV, pl. 220, illustrated

This condition report has been provided by Hamish Dewar, Hamish Dewar Ltd. Fine Art Conservation, 14 Masons Yard, Duke Street, St James's, London SW1Y 6BU. Structural Condition The cradled panel is secure and stable and the structural arrangement of oil on paper laid onto panel is providing a sound support. The horizontal addition, which is a 3 cm band, on the upper horizontal framing edge would appear to be a later addition rather than an artist's addition, although pigment analysis is not conclusive. Paint surface The paint surface has a discoloured varnish layer and should respond well to cleaning and revarnishing. No retouchings are visible under ultra-violet light but pigment analysis has suggested that retouchings may have been applied and are perhaps disguised beneath the discoloured varnish layers. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good and stable condition and should respond very well to cleaning and revarnishing.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Painted circa 1856-58, this highly focused tableau, brimming with energy, epitomises Delacroix's dynamic North African subjects, blending his first-hand experience of Morocco and his own romantic vision. Leaning from his rearing horse, its eyes shining and harness and stirrups glistening, a cloaked combatant takes two attackers, lying in ambush, by surprise. One lies wounded on the ground, the other cowers in defence as his opponent takes aim with his musket. The rider's mounted companion, ahead of him, turns his head back towards the action.

Delacroix was already an established artist, with Salon successes to show for it, when, at the age of thirty, he was invited to join a diplomatic delegation to Morocco led by Charles de Mornay, who had been summoned by the king, Louis-Philippe, to appear before the Sultan of Morocco, Moulay Abd er-Rahman. The journey,  taking in Tangiers, Meknes, Oran, and Algiers, lasted six months, from January to July 1832. Delacroix, who was not directly involved in the negotiations, took full advantage of his freedom, hungrily recording his impressions as drawings and sketches, often with painstaking precision, for fear of not remembering every detail after returning home. 

The North African journey proved thrilling to Delacroix and heralded a whole new departure in his work. First and foremost Morocco would provide an endless array of subjects that would dominate his work for the rest of his career.  'The picturesque is here in abundance. At every step one sees ready-made pictures, which would bring fame and fortune to twenty generations of painters,' he wrote in a letter to Armand Bertin written from Meknes on 2 April 1832 (Jean Stewart, ed. and trans., Eugène Delacroix. Selected Letters 1813-1863, New York, 1971, p. 192, translated from A. Joubin, ed., Correspondence générale d'Eugène Delacroix, Plon, Paris, 1935-38). Between 1834 and 1859 he showed some 14 North African subjects at the Paris Salon, beginning with Les Femmes d'Alger in 1834.

Another lesson drawn from Delacroix's experiences in North Africa and which fed his romantic imagination was his discovery of the unique light and colours of the south. 'Come to Barbary,' he wrote to Villot on 29 February, 'you will experience the exquisite and extraordinary influence of the sun, which gives penetrating life to everything' (Stewart, p. 186).  The sumptuous palette in Le Combat is itself symbolic of the fundamental 'otherness' of the scene and the setting.

Notwithstanding their North African costumes, the pyramidal form of riders and horses is a quintessentially classical construct, borrowed from the Venetian Renaissance. And this is key to perhaps the most important legacy of the North Africa trip: it allowed Delacroix to synthesise classical tradition, the basis of his artistic training, with a new-found exoticism that so touched his romantic temperament. Unlike David or Corot, Delacroix never went to Rome to complete his education; for him the Africa trip was as formative as Rome was for them.

It is paradoxical, given Delacroix's close affinity with the Orient, that as his career progressed, he placed less and less importance on factual accuracy, and ever greater emphasis on his idea that 'Le Beau est le Vrai idéalisé'. Le Combat, painted over twenty years after his return from Morocco, may evoke the atmosphere of the place, but much of the painstaking detail he recorded in his drawings is now absent. More important for Delacroix was the creation of an aesthetic vision. Increasingly, he eshewed in the work of later Orientalist painters the very verisimilitude to which he himself had attached so much importance during his journey. 

By the time he painted the present work, Delacroix let his imagination take the lead, even declaring: 'I began to make something tolerable of my African journey only when I had forgotten the trivial details and remembered nothing but the striking and poetic side of the subject. Up to that time, I had been haunted by this passion for accuracy that most people mistake for truth,' Delacroix wrote in his Journal on 17 October 1853 (Hubert Wellington, ed., Lucy Norton, trans., The Journal of Eugène Delacroix: A Selection, London, 1951, p. 198).

As Lee Johnson points out, the original composition has been extended vertically by about 3 cm at the top, sometime after 1886 (in the sales up until 1886 through which the work passed, the dimensions were given as 23 by 35 cm.). A line across the sky marks the end of the paper and the beginning of the painted gesso strip, pointing to the sheet having been laid down, possibly as late as the early twentieth century, and the excess panel painted in.