Eugène Delacroix

Artist's studio; Sale: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 17-29, 1864, lot 152
Sourigues (acquired at the above sale and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 28, 1881, lot 13)
Haro et Fils (and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 30, 1892, lot 78, illustrated)
Haro père (acquired at the above sale and sold: Paris, Hôtel Drouot, April 2, 1897, lot 120)
Edouard Aynard (and sold: Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, December 1, 1913, lot 7)
Schoeller
Chabral (acquired in 1913)
Private Collection
Thence by descent

Paris, Galerie Martinet, Eugène Delacroix, 1864, no. 309
Paris, École des Beaux-Arts, Exposition Eugène Delacroix, 1885, no. 98

T. Sylvestre, "Delacroix," in Histoire des artistes vivants; Études d'après nature, Paris, 1855, p. 83
T. Sylvestre, Eugène Delacroix; Documents nouveaux, Paris, 1864, p. 20
A. Piron, Eugène Delacroix, sa vie et ses oeuvres, Paris, 1865, p. 53.
J. Gigoux, Causeries sur les artistes de mon temps, Paris, 1885, p. 64
A. Robaut, L'Oeuvre complet d'Eugène Delacroix, Paris, 1885, no. 24
A. Houssaye, "L'Exposition des oeuvres d'Eugène Delacroix à l'École des Beaux-Arts," Revue des deux mondes, Paris, 1885, p. 67
R. Huyghe, Delacroix, ou le combat solitaire, Paris, 1964, p. 13.
S. Lichtenstein, "Delacroix's Copies after Raphael; Part I," Burlington Magazine, CXIII (1971), p. 530, fig. 37; "Part II," pp. 593, 599, no. 1
L. Bortolatto, L'Opera pittorica completa di Delacroix, Milan, 1972, no. 866.
L. Johnson, The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix, Oxford, 1981, vol. 1, no. 11; vol. II, pl. 8 (illustrated with heliogravure of 1892 sale).
Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Raphael et l'art français, Paris, 1983 discussed under no. 68
Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall, Delacroix: peintures et dessins d'inspiration religieuse, Nice, 1986, discussed under no. 1 

The Christ Child Standing, a very unusually cropped copy after one of Raphaël's most famous Madonnas, was painted by Eugène Delacroix as he set out on his first significant commission, a command for an altarpiece of the Virgin and Child for a village church.  Painted on the same scale as Raphaël's original, which Delacroix studied in the galleries of the Louvre, The Christ Child Standing provided the young artist with the principal model for his own Christ figure.  The rediscovery of the fragmentary copy, after a disappearance of nearly one hundred years, is a touching reminder of Delacroix's lifelong admiration for the Renaissance master as well as a fascinating measure of the impressive skills with which he launched his career.
                                                            
Delacroix was a young artist finishing four years of study at the École des Beaux-Arts, as he desperately sought to establish himself in 1819.  As he later told a friend and biographer, he was 'quite beaten down and beginning to despair, when a benefactor fell from the sky,' requesting that he paint a Virgin and Child composition for a small rural church outside Rambouillet.  That painting, which has come to be known as The Virgin of the Harvest (La Vierge des Moissons, Orcemont, parish church of Saint-Europe) depicts an elegant Virgin seated on a brick wall, with the young Christ standing on one foot, his left leg behind his right knee, just as in Raphaël's Virgin and Child with Saint John (popularly known as La Belle Jardinière, Musée du Louvre). 
                 
That Delacroix should have turned to Raphaël as inspiration at this critical moment is no surprise, since the great Florentine was probably the most revered old master within the academic system that trained Delacroix.  But so much controversy throughout Delacroix's brilliantly rebellious career, and the deep-seated animosity directed toward him as the academic establishment coalesced around his principal rival, J.A.D. Ingres, has overly simplified Delacroix's achievement.  Much art history, celebrating Delacroix's warm colors and bold brushwork, presents him as the obviously Rubensian opposition to the cooler, linear mastery of an Ingres deeply loyal to Raphaël's example. Ingres himself was forced to recognize the irony of that over-simplification when he stumbled over The Christ Child Standing in the studio of Haro (a restorer and art supplier whom both Delacroix and Ingres employed).  Ingres expressed great admiration for the beauty of the copy and demanded to know its author, initially refusing to accept that the picture could have been made by his rival. Ingres could only sputter, "The poor devil!  And now he paints as he does!"