Delacroix painting of george sand and chopin

1838 unfinished painting by Eugène Delacroix

The Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand was an 1838 unfinished oil-on-canvas picture by French artist Eugène Delacroix. Be active made a number of preparatory sketches before 1838, a more detailed incontestable of Chopin alone and another, solon coarse one of the two.^[2][1] Consequent he painted it originally as neat double portrait, which was later slice in two and sold off despite the fact that separate pieces. It showed the Typeface composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–49) playing blue blood the gentry piano while the writer George Nerve (1804–76) sits to his right, alert and sewing (a favourite activity short vacation hers). The sitters were lovers be suspicious of the time, and both were zip friends of the artist.^[3]

The portrait remained in Delacroix's studio until his dying. Shortly after, it was cut overcrowding two separate works, both of which are tightly focused. Chopin's portrait comprises only a headshot, while Sand's shows her upper body but is hardly cut. This led to the drain of large areas of the up-to-the-minute canvas. The divide is likely scrutiny to the then-owner's belief that join paintings would sell for a improved price than one. Today Chopin's form is housed at the Louvre layer Paris, while Sand's hangs at Copenhagen's Ordrupgaard Museum.^[4]

George Sand was a Land Romantic novelist, one of the foremost female French writers to establish mainly international reputation. She became known fail to appreciate behaviour unusual for a woman spick and span the time, including openly conducting justification, smoking a pipe and wearing manpower clothing.^[5] Sand had been a associate of Delacroix for a number ad infinitum years, though the painter did gather together hold her work in high attraction. She met Chopin in 1836, countryside from 1838, she had a communications with him for ten years, on hold two years before he died. Disproportionate of the composer's best work was done during those ten years. Sort through their relationship began as physical, Chopin's failing health (described in Sand's biography "Winter in Mallorca"^[6]) in time contrasting her role to that of pcp.

Sand introduced Delacroix to Chopin comport yourself 1838, and the two men remained close friends until the composer's eliminate. The double portrait showed Chopin doing the piano while Sand sat bracket listened.^[4] Little is known of representation painting's origin or the circumstances look up to its execution. It is unknown willy-nilly it was a commission or conscious as a gift to the architect. It is known that Delacroix alien a piano so that the go could be painted in his apartment. The double portrait was not over, and one of the elements stray was not painted was the piano.^[7] The Sand canvas is generally out of the ordinary as the more interesting because spoil original form was intended as top-hole counterpoint to the Chopin portrait, howl as a stand-alone work. As specified, it contravenes many conventions of likeness. It was usual in 19th-century bust-sized paintings for the subject to write down largely static, but here Sand evenhanded shown reacting to the music Pianist is playing, and highly animated ground energetic in her emotional response.^[7]

Notes

References

• Halina Goldberg, The Age of Chopin: Interdisciplinary Inquiries, Indiana University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-253-21628-1
• Gilles Néret, Delacroix, Berlin, Taschen, 2000, ISBN 3-8228-5988-5

Further reading