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Artist or Maker: Delacroix, Eugene-Victor-Ferdinand (1798-1863)
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Provenance: (possibly) Mme Tattet.
(possibly) with Paul Cassirer, Berlin, in 1920s.
Collection Kauffman, London.
Anonymous sale; Phillips, London, 11 July 1983, lot 16.
Subsequently acquired by the present owner.
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Literature: L. Johnson, Delacroix pastels, London, 1995, pp. 110-111, no. 29, illustrated.
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR
This vibrant yet subtle rendition of an Arab fruit seller and his wife is an object of the greatest rarity, described by Lee Johnson (op. cit.) as 'Delacroix's most ambitious figure composition of a North African subject in pastel'. Johnson lists 18 pastels in this category, of which 11 are locatable today. Of the latter, Arab fruit seller is the only one outside a museum collection.
The basic horizontal composition of two figures set against a walled or landscape background is the only variant in pastel of a theme which Delacroix treated often in watercolour (fig. 1), and which he altered by selecting from the motifs which filled the sketchbooks of his 1832 journey to Morocco. However, few works on paper by the artist represent such a summation of the artist's experience: probably executed some 20 years after his return from Morocco, Arab fruit seller works up into a fully finished composition not only elements from his studies, but also from his more finished works. For example, the still life of vegetables of fruit and vegetables recalls a drawing of fruit baskets (A. Robaut, L'oeuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix, no. 388) and his few finished still-lives in oil; the distant vista on the right has the luminosity of the artist's sky studies in pastel (see L. Johnson, op. cit, no. 40); the strikingly handsome fruit seller is similar to other stock types found in the artist's watercolours and in a pastel in the British Museum (fig. 2), while his female companion displays all the langour and grace of the women depicted in his masterpiece, Femmes d'Alger (fig. 3). A simpler composition in oil of the same subject, but without the woman, Arab orange seller, is today in the Kunsthaus, Zürich (see fig. 4).
As the most important colourist of the 19th century, Delacroix was naturally attracted to the chromatic effects of the pastel medium. He explored its various effects across the full range of his subject matter. However, as Johnson points out, 'Delacroix's career fell in a period between two golden ages of pastel' (op. cit., p.9), bridging the gap between masters of the medium such as Maurice Quentin de la Tour in the late 18th century, and Edgar Degas and Odilon Redon a century later. Thus while Delacroix showed an extraordinary aptitude for the medium, he produced only about 100 pastels, a relatively small number for such a prolific draftsman. The medium's fragility means that of these, few finished works still exist.
Despite the art-historical context, the paucity of original works created by Delacroix in the pastel medium is surprising. The artist fully understood the wide possibilities of effect that pastel afforded: its luminosity, and range of texture, line and colour. Thus in the present work Delacroix is simultaneously able to conjure a diaphanous sky and landscape, give form and texture to his still life, whilst sinuously desribing in a few elegant lines the graceful figure on the right.
The pastel medium is perfectly suited to an artist as daring as Delacroix, but one that he preferred to use to largely naturalistic effect: with few exceptions, rather than portraying the elongated, slightly mannered figures that make up the visual whirlwind of his more dramatic canvases, his pastels are more contemplative studies in light and colour. In the present work, for example, the still life on the left gives weight to the composition and balances the more luminous sky, while the man's gentle touch to his wife give the whole a sense of quiet intimacy resonant of the artist's interior subjects.
It is ironic that while Delacroix never fully considered his pastels as finished works of art in their own right, the greatest pastellists of the 19th century -- Edgar Degas and Odilon Redon -- greatly admired their Romantic predecessor. Indeed Degas owned a number of Delacroix's works in the medium. Of the relationship between Delacroix and his two successors, Johnson writes: 'If there can be no doubt that Degas, in a very different way from Redon, went far beyond Delacroix and his two successors in exploiting the potential of pastel, it is equally undeniable that Delacroix's colour technique, in whatever medium, provided a powerful stiumulus for the two masters of the second heyday of pastel.' (op. cit, p. 19).
With the exception of an appearance at auction in London in 1983, where it was mis-catalogued as 'attributed to Eugène Delacroix', the present work has rarely been seen in the public eye. Johnson surmises the link to Mme Tattet given in the early provenance as follows: "Robaut thought that Delacroix might have given the painting, The Arab orange seller of 1852-53 to Madame Tattet, but that is unlikely, as he appears to have sold it to the dealer Weill. Since Delacroix is known to have made a gift of at least two pastels to women, it may be wondered if Robaut was not mistaken in thinking that Mme Tattet owned the painting when, in fact, she had the pastel.' (L. Johnson, op. cit., p. 171).
