EUGÈNE DELACROIX (1798-1863)

TWO STUDIES OF WILD FELINES
Bears artist's studio stamp l.r. [L.838a]
Bears collector's stamp l.r. [L.911]
Pen & ink on wove paper
10.3 x 13 cm
 
PROVENANCE:
The artist's studio sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 17-29 February 1864, lot 496 (Études de Tigres...) (part of lot, sold for 466fr.) [Lugt 838a];
Where acquired by Gustave Arosa (1818-1883), Paris;
His sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, Me P. Chevallier, 27-28 February 1884, lot 165 (an album containing many sketches...) (part of lot);
Where acquired by Emile Wauters (1846-1933), Paris [Lugt 911];
His sale, Frederick Muller & Cie, Amserdam, 15-16.06.1926, lot 54 (part of lot when presented together, 'Etudes de quatre léopards sur trois feuilles. A la plume. — Haut. de chaque feuille 1o, larg I3 cent. Monogrammées E. D., marque de la vente après décès du maître.');
Where acquired by Frits Lugt (1884-1970), Paris;
By whom sold either to the dealers Jacques Mathey (Paris) or 'Neuville' [Galerie Neuville & Vivien, Paris], 1947 or afterwards; (1)
Private collection, Basel
 
LITERATURE:
A. Robaut & E. Chesneau, L’œuvre Complet De Eugène Delacroix: Peintures, Dessins, gravures, lithographies, Paris (1885), Supplement, p.459, no. 1858 (Études de Tigres);
Frederic Lees, The Art of the Great Masters, London (1913), p.164, fig. 184;
J.F. Heijbroek, Frits Lugt 1884-1970: Living for Art, Paris (2012), p.199 (not repr.)
 
 
 
 
 
'What artist has displayed bolder and surer pen-work than he who drew these studies of panthers, whose fierce growling we can almost imagine we hear. How well he has depicted the animals' muscling and their movements! Ingres might have drawn these wild beasts with a clearer, more impeccable line, but assuredly he would not have imparted to them that intense animation which Delacroix knew how to render with his hasty yet genial pen-work. The only artist who attained his perfection in this branch of art was Rembrandt...in these studies of panthers we can read the entire life of a master who has never for a moment ceased to admire and to scrutinise nature.'
 
(Lees, op. cit., pp.161-162)
 
 
 
“Les tigres, les panthères, les jaguars, les lions, etc. D’où vient le mouvement que la vue de tout cela a produit chez moi: de ce que je suis sorti de mesidées de tous les jours qui sont tout mon monde, de ma rue qui est mon univers. Combien il estnécessaire de me secouer de temps en temps . . . ”
 
“Tigers, panthers, jaguars, lions, etc. Why is it that these things have stirred me so much? Can it be because I have gone outside the everyday thoughts that are my world; away from the street that is my entire universe? How necessary it is to give oneself a shake from time to time. . . ”
 
(Eugène Delacroix, Journal entry for January 19, 1847)
 
 
 
 
 
The present drawing is one of a group of studies of wild felines (variously identified as tigers and panthers throughout their sale history) by Delacroix which were once presented together on a single sheet, with each study of identical dimensions. These were acquired by Frits Lugt in 1926 at the posthumous sale of the Belgian painter Emile Wauters, and Lugt went on to sell the present sheet some years after after the War. Intriguingly, despite the clear description in Wauters' sale catalogue of 'Four studies of Tigers on three sheets', Lugt noted that there were in fact four sheets, as two were glued together, and so he was able to sell two sheets off and keep the remaining two. This was not an uncommon practice for Lugt, who played both the roles of collector and dealer throughout much of his life, often financing the former through the latter. 
 
 
The two drawings which Lugt kept from the group are now held by the Fondation Custodia, Paris (inv. nos. 2507A & B), and when they were exhibited at the Frick in 2010 they were tentatively dated to the second half of the 1840s, when Delacroix resumed his earlier practice of regularly visiting and sketching the animals of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. (2) 
 
 
We are grateful to Dr Stijn Alsteen of the Fondation Custodia for his invaluable assistance in establishing the history of the drawing during Frits Lugt's ownership of it.