Delacroix: The Romantic Sensibility Visualized through the Poetry of Shakespeare

Though there were many paintings and graphics based on subjects from Shakespeare and Byron to come out of Europe as the 19th century progressed, none of them reached the quality or had the impact of those executed by Delacroix. His impressive output in quantity and importance has the virtue of being the least literal and most imaginative compliment in art to the genius of the Elizabethan dramatist and the Romantic poet. Within this study I have identified and isolated the body of work created by Delacroix relating to the poetry and dramas of Shakespeare and Byron, the intellectual and emotional reasons for his preferences, and finally I've described and discussed the art in relation to the literature that inspired it. The works are grouped first by subject, and then by date, because I believe that the development and consistency of a theme takes precedence over a strictly chronological reading and this avoids the confusion of sheer multiplicity of subject. In discussing a particular work at hand, I have related it not only to its sources in theme and design, but also to other works the artist was involved in contemporaneously. A chronological and subject listing of the works by Delacroix and other artists who exhibited Shakespeare and Byron subjects in the Salon appear in the appendices. Delacroix's energy, color composition, and dramatic presentation tends to obscure the importance of his imagery as the visual embodiment of the Romantic experience. His protagonists are the same double-edged beings seen in Byron and the Byronically interpreted Shakespeare of the 19th century: the man of thought who also acts. Throughout their works the protagonists of Shakespeare, Byron, and Delacroix embody a special approach to life, that of shipwrecked men who have looked into the abyss. This philosophical outlook is supported by an examination of their works; in the case of Delacroix, I have supported this proposition by a visual analysis of his paintings, prints, and drawings in relation to the two English poets that most inspired him. In the process I have examined Delacroix's Anglophilia, not only in its literary context, but also in the impact left on him by its art and artists. These not only enriched his painterly technique, but also expanded his imagery. Delacroix was the last important painter whose oeuvre centered on subjects and themes from history, religion, and literature and the last to convince the viewer of his ultimate seriousness in their importance as subjects for art. He understood that man is shipwrecked. His art epitomizes this state of being. From that philosophical shore, he created a visual poetry, a pictorial analogy to great literature. Delacroix forged his Romantic sensibility of the heroic survivor with the concepts of the Beautiful and the Universal; thus like his idols, Shakespeare and Byron, he became the great poet he was destined to be, but in his own art.