Eugène Delacroix

The artist’s estate (L.838a);

sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 17-29 February 1864, part of lot 587 or lot 604;

possibly with Paul Cassirer & Co., Amsterdam,

from whom acquired on 23 April 1924 for 2500 guilders by Franz Wilhelm Koenigs (1881-1941), Haarlem,

thence by descent until,

sale, London, Christie's, 6 July 2021, lot 25,

where acquired

Washington, National Gallery of Art, and elsewhere, French Drawings. Masterpieces from Five Centuries, 1952-1953, no. 130;

Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Delacroix en Touraine, 1998, no. 19, reproduced (entry by Jacques Olivier Bouffier)

A. Robaut, L’Œuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix, Paris, 1885, part of no. 1672 or 1814;

L. Johnson, Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). Paintings, Drawings and Prints from North American Collections, exhib. cat., New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1991, p. 144, under no. 72;

J.O. Bouffier, ‘The Tours Sketchbook of Eugène Delacroix’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, XXIX, 1994, p. 139, reproduced, fig. 7, p. 140

In this watercolor, which dates to circa 1828, Delacroix stands on high ground overlooking the undulating landscape near Saint-Avertin on the banks of the Cher River, not far from Tours. He had left Paris at the end of October and was staying with this brother, General Charles Delacroix (1779-1845), in the city itself. At first he had been reluctant to travel to this part of France at that time of the year, and had written to a friend, Charles Soulier, saying ‘je suis sur que je vais n'y trouver que l'hiver.’ (I am sure I will find nothing but winter there).¹ Despite this pessimism, he was, in fact, delighted with what he found and before long he was writing to a second friend, Jean-Baptiste Pierret, that ‘Le temps continue a etre charmant. La campagne est bariolee de rubis, d'emeraudes, de topazes’ (The weather continues to be delightful. The countryside is studded with rubies, emeralds, topazes).²

Delacroix stayed with his brother for about a month before returning to Paris. While there he explored the city as well as its environs and recorded the places that interested him in a sketchbook that is now held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.³ A careful pencil study, upon which the present watercolor is based, can be found on page 12. Whereas Delacroix only had time to annotate that work with color notes, here his masterful use of the medium of watercolor has enabled him to record the glorious autumnal weather and colors that so exhilarated him.

^1.Bouffier, op. cit., p. 135

^2.Ibid

^3.Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acc. no. 69.165.2