The Santa Barbara Museum of Art presents Delacroix and the Matter of Finish an exhibition on view October 27, 2013 – January 26, 2014. Featuring 27 paintings and 18 works on paper, the exhibition also showcases a previously unknown and unpublished version of Delacroix’s dramatic masterpiece, The Last Words of Marcus Aurelius, which recently surfaced in a Santa Barbara private collection. After several years of scholarly and technical study, the painting has now been authenticated by Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) Assistant Director and Chief Curator, Eik Kahng.
Delacroix is typically associated with Romanticism and thought of as its primary exponent ― i.e. the leader of an art movement that dominated French painting in the first half of the 19th century, characterized by the representation of extreme states of emotion through an expressive use of bold color in dynamic compositions. The artist’s most beloved images include the so-called “Orientalist” pictures, featuring exotic subjects such as The Fanatics of Tangier , featured in the exhibition, as well as his more overtly political allegories, the most famous of which is Liberty On the Barricades (1830–31, Musée du Louvre). Yet the artist was also drawn to dramatic moments in Greek and Roman history, and demonstrated a life- long fascination with the Stoic Roman philosopher-emperor, Marcus Aurelius.
Delacroix’s allegiance to classical subjects was the consequence of his deep admiration for the greatest art of the past, which the ambitious artist strove to surpass, especially in his public, large-scale decorations. At the same time, his restless search for the technical means to convey the vividness of the hallucinatory scenes of human drama played out in his mind’s inner eye―whether plucked from the pages of history, Homer, or the poetry of Lord Byron―make him one of the most innovative artists of the 19th century.
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