Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863). "Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable." 1860. (About the cover).Oil on canvas. Photo: Gerard Blot. Copyright Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY Louvre Louvre (l  `vrə), foremost French museum of art, located in Paris. The building was a royal fortress and palace built by Philip II in the late 12th cent. , Paris, France From his early years, Delacroix, like his contemporary Theodore Gericault, was attracted to the savagery of wild animals WILD ANIMALS. Animals in a state of nature; animals ferae naturae. Vide Animals; Ferae naturae. . In a note written in Morocco, Delacroix mentions a scene of fighting horses. Among the precedents for this kind of wild-animal imagery was the antique group "Lion Attacking a Horse" (Rome, Mus. Conserv.), which was said to have been particularly admired by Michelangelo and which was copied in stone by Peter Scheemakers Peter Scheemakers (1691–1781) was a Flemish Roman Catholic sculptor who worked for most of his life in London. Scheemakers studied both classical and baroque styles of sculpture in Rome before settling in London in 1716. (1740; Rousham Park, Oxon). George Stubbs George Stubbs (born in Liverpool on August 25, 1724 – died in London July 10, 1806) was a British painter, best known for his paintings of horses. Stubbs was the son of a currier. used the wild-animal theme within naturalistic settings in several paintings, for example, in "Horse Attacked by a Lion," (1770; London, Tate), of which Gericault made at least one copy (1820/21; Paris, Louvre). In "Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable," his version of the subject, Delacroix was able to synthesize the classical with the exotic, with his studies of ecorche é·cor·ché n. An anatomical representation of all or part of the body with the skin removed so as to display the musculature. [French, from past participle of écorcher, to flay (French for flayed bodies), with the example of English art English art is the body of visual arts originating from the nation of England, in the form of a continuous tradition. Following historical surveys such as Creative Art In England , and with the work of Rubens--Delacroix owned Pieter Claesz Soutman's engravings of Rubens' paintings of hunts. In 1847, Delacroix described two of these engravings in detail, indicating how highly he valued the elements of movement, variety, and unity. Of Delacroix' three great lion hunts, three have survived, a fragment (1855, now in Bordeaux, France) and two complete paintings: one from 1858 (now in Boston, Massachusetts) and one from 1861 (now in Chicago, Illinois); the latter is the most spacious and free in its handling of circular, dancelike movements that suggest a perpetual struggle--one of the underlying themes in which form and content are inseparable. From The Dictionary of Art, Macmillan, NY, NY, 1996. |
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