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The Cover
Eugène
Delacroix (1798-1863). "Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable." 1860.
Oil on canvas. Photo: Gerar Blot. Copyright Réunion
des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, NY
Louvre,
Paris, France
From his early years, Delacroix, like his contemporary Théodore
Gericault, was attracted to the savagery of wild animals. In a note written
in Morocco, Delacroix mentions a scene of fighting horses. Among the precedents
for this kind of wild-animal imagery was the antique group "Lion
Attacking a Horse" (Rome, Mus. Conserv.), which was said to have
been particularly admired by Michelangelo and which was copied in stone
by Peter Scheemakers (1740; Rousham Park, Oxon). George Stubbs used the
wild-animal theme within naturalistic settings in several paintings, for
example, in "Horse Attacked by a Lion," (1770; London, Tate),
of which Gericault made at least one copy (1820/21; Paris, Louvre).
In "Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable," his version of the subject,
Delacroix was able to synthesize the classical with the exotic, with his
studies of ecorché (French for flayed bodies), with the example
of English art, and with the work of Rubens—Delacroix owned Pieter Claesz
Soutman's engravings of Rubens' paintings of hunts. In 1847, Delacroix
described two of these engravings in detail, indicating how highly he
valued the elements of movement, variety, and unity. Of Delacroix' three
great lion hunts, three have survived, a fragment (1855, now in Bordeaux,
France) and two complete paintings: one from 1858 (now in Boston, Massachusetts)
and one from 1861 (now in Chicago, Illinois); the latter is the most spacious
and free in its handling of circular, dancelike movements that suggest
a perpetual struggle—one of the underlying themes in which form and content
are inseparable.
From The Dictionary of Art, Macmillan, NY, NY, 1996.
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