Eugène Delacroix

Léon Riesener, Paris (and sold:  Petit, Pillet, Paris, April 10, 1879, lot 224)
Victor Chocquet, Paris
Marie Chocquet, Paris (by descent from the above and sold:  Mannheim, Petit, Chevallier, etc., Paris, July 1, 1899, lot 64)
Julie Manet, Paris
Ernest Rouart, Paris
Zurich (by 1939)
Thence by descent

Basel, Kunsthalle, Eugène Delacroix, 1939, no. 241
Bordeaux, Galerie des Beaux Arts, Delacroix, ses Maîtres, ses Amis, ses Elèves, 1963, no. 60

Genevieve Viallefond, Le Peintre Léon Riesener, Paris, 1955, p. 13F
B.E. White, “Delacroix’s painted copies after Rubens,” The Art Bulletin, vol. 49, 1967, p. 39, no. 50
Luigina Rossi  Bortolatto, L’opera pittorica completa di Delacroix, Milan, 1972, p. 136, no. 889
Lee Johnson, The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix:  A Critical Catalogue, Oxford, 1986 and 1993, vol. III, p. 267, no. L119 (as whereabouts unknown)

The following condition report was kindly provided by Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.: This oil on paper has been lined onto canvas, probably during the artist’s life or shortly after, perhaps by the estate. The painting is clean and retouched. When the paper was mounted, a thin addition on the left edge and in the lower left corner was added, and the curved upper right corner seems to have also been added at this time. Both of these additions could easily be period to the artist. The condition of the work is very good. It is not visibly overcleaned, discolored or stained. Under ultraviolet light, some of the original pigment reads quite strongly, but actual retouches are hard to find. The condition is certainly beautiful, and the work should be hung in its current condition.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This colorful oil sketch is based on Rubens’ architectural design for the Triumphal Entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp.  Information on a label, which has survived with the painting, confirms that Delacroix copied it from an etching by Theodoor van Thulden (fig. 1), while he was a guest at his cousin, and fellow artist, Léon Riesener’s home in Paris sometime after 1846. According to Riesener’s biographer,  Delacroix painted a copy after Rubens in the studio on the rue Barard, which may very well refer to our painting: “une petite copie de lui [Delacroix], d’après une reproduction de Rubens, a été faite au Cours la Reine" (Viallefond,  p. 13F).  Rubens’ own oil sketch for the Triumphal Entry was purchased by Russia's Catherine II, and was installed in the Hermitage Palace until 1930, before being transferred to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. 

Like many of his contemporaries, Delacroix made copies after the Old Masters.  While travelling to a spa in 1850, he stopped in Antwerp, where the art collections so impressed him that he made a return trip on his way back to Paris.  It was during these visits that Delacroix fell under the spell of Rubens.  In a letter to his friend, Charles Soulier, he writes:  “Neither you nor Villot can begin to imagine what Rubens is about.  In Paris, you don’t have anything one can really call a masterpiece.  Just accept, my fine friend Crillon, that you don’t know Rubens, and believe in my love for this madman… don’t you find that I’ve recaptured my youth?  It isn’t the spa - it’s Rubens who has worked this miracle” (Lee Johnson,  Eugène Delacroix:  Further Correspondence, 1817-1863, Oxford, 1991, p. 114). 

Delacroix was clearly seduced by Rubens' strong sense of color, so much so, that he had the ability to project the artist's palette into his own paintings.  It is impossible that Delacroix could have seen Rubens’ Triumphal Entry, which makes the “Rubenesque” palette of the present work all the more remarkable.  Rubens' painting to commemorate Prince Ferdinand’s arrival into Antwerp in 1634 was a temporary spectacle, built to be marveled at and then dismantled, and the oil sketch left for Russia in 1779.  However, Delacroix has instinctively chosen a range of colors characteristic of Rubens, especially the bright reds and oranges played against black.  Interestingly, he drapes the young Prince Ferdinand in a vibrant green mantle, where in the Pushkin oil sketch, it is a brilliant red. One may only guess that Rubens himself would have approved of this color change.  Equally interesting are the elements Delacroix chose to edit out of van Thulden’s engraving.  He abandons the higher perspective in favor of a tighter, more compact figure group, while still remaining true to the movement of the central characters, especially the two striding genii carrying their emblems of peace and war; they now have become the central focus in Delacroix’s interpretation of the scene. 

The provenance of our painting is impressive, and boasts some of the most important and avant-garde collectors of the nineteenth Century.  It originally belonged to Delacroix’s cousin, Léon Riesener.  It later passed to Victor Chocquet, whose collection included paintings by all of the major French Impressionists, as well as thirty-two works by Cézanne.  Manet’s niece and Berthe Morisot’s daughter, Julie Manet, eventually owned it with her husband, the artist and well-known collector, Ernest Rouart.