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PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR, CONNECTICUT

FRENCH, 1798 - 1863
THE STAGE OF ARCHDUCHESS ISABELLA (AFTER RUBENS)

measurements
9 by 9 3/4 in.

alternate measurements
23 by 25 cm

oil on paper mounted on canvas

PROVENANCE

Léon Riesener, Paris (and sold: Petit, Pillet, Paris, April 10, 1879, lot 224)
Victor Chocquet, Paris
Marie Chocquet, Paris (by descent from the above and sold: Mannheim, Petit, Chevallier, etc., Paris, July 1, 1899, lot 64)
Julie Manet, Paris
Ernest Rouart, Paris
Thence by descent to relatives of the above, Zurich (by 1939)
Thence by descent

EXHIBITED

Basel, Kunsthalle, Eugène Delacroix, 1939, no. 241
Bordeaux, Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Delacroix, ses Maîtres, ses Amis, ses Elèves, 1963, no. 60

LITERATURE

Genevieve Viallefond, Le Peintre Léon Riesener, Paris, 1955, pp. 13 f
B.E. White, "Delacroix's painted copies after Rubens," The Art Bulletin, 49, 1967, p. 39, no. 50
Luigina Rossi Bortolatto, L'opera pittorica completa di Delacroix, Milan, 1972, p. 136, no. 889
Lee Johnson, The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue, Oxford, 1986 and 1993, vol. III, p. 267, no. L119 (as whereabouts unknown)

NOTE

This lively oil sketch is based on Rubens' architectural design for the Triumphal Entry of Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand into Antwerp. Information on a label, which has survived with the painting (fig. 1), confirms that Delacroix copied it from an etching by Theodoor van Thulden (fig. 2), while he was a guest at his cousin and fellow artist, Léon Riesener's home in Paris sometime after 1846. According to Riesener's biographer, Delacroix painted a copy after Rubens in the studio on the rue Barard, which may very well refer to our painting: "une petite copie de lui [Delacroix], d'après une reproduction de Rubens, a été faite au Cours la Reine' (G. Viallefond, pp. 13 f). Rubens' own oil sketch for the Triumphal Entry was purchased by Catherine II, Empress of Russia in 1779, and was installed in the Hermitage Palace until 1930, before being transferred to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Not only did Delacroix follow in the grand tradition of Rubens by making a series of preparatory oil sketches for his final paintings, he often made oil sketches copied after Rubens' compositions. While en route to a spa in 1850, Delacroix stopped in Antwerp, a city, whose art collections so impressed him that he returned on his way back to Paris. While in Antwerp, he fell under the spell of Rubens. In a letter to his friend, Charles Soulier, he writes: "Neither you nor Villot can begin to imagine what Rubens is about. In Paris, you don't have anything one can really call a masterpiece. Just accept, my fine friend Crillon, that you don't know Rubens, and believe in my love for this madman... Don't you find that I've recaptured my youth? It isn't the spa-it's Rubens who has worked this miracle." (Lee Johnson, Eugène Delacroix: Further Correspondence, 1817-1863, Oxford, 1991, p. 114). Delacroix was obviously seduced by Rubens' strong sense of color, so much so, that he had the ability to project Rubens' color choice into his own artistic personality. It is impossible that Delacroix ever would have seen Rubens' Triumphal Entry. The finished project to commemorate Prince Ferdinand's arrival into Antwerp in 1634 was a temporary spectacle, built to be marveled at and then dismantled, and the oil sketch left for Russia in 1779, which makes the "Rubensian" palette of the present work all the more remarkable. Delacroix has instinctively chosen a range of colors characteristic of Rubens, especially the bright reds and oranges played against black. Interestingly, he drapes the young Prince Ferdinand in a vibrant green mantle, where in the Pushkin oil sketch, it is a brilliant red. One may only guess that Rubens himself would have approved of this color alteration. Equally interesting are the elements Delacroix chose to edit out of the engraving. He abandons the higher perspective in favor of a tighter, more compact figure group, while still remaining true to the movement of the central characters, especially the two striding genii carrying their emblems of peace and war, who almost become the central focus in Delacroix's interpretation of the story.

The provenance of our painting is impressive, and includes some of the most important collectors of the nineteenth century. It originally belonged to Delacroix's cousin, Léon Riesener. It later passed to Victor Chocquet, whose collection included paintings by all of the major French Impressionists, as well as thirty-two works by Cézanne. Manet's niece and Berthe Morisot's daughter, Julie Manet also owned it with her husband, the artist and well-known collector, Ernest Rouart. These were all forward-looking collectors, who must have recognized in Delacroix, the seed that would blossom into modern art.