THE BEST OF 2004

MUSEUMS AND EXHIBITIONS REVIEWS

The Must See Exhibitions

From Delacroix to Matisse: Drawings from the Algiers Museum of Art
 

Photo: Painting of the Tepidarium by Théodore Chassériau,1853. Musée d'Orsay, Paris

The Algiers Museum of Fine Arts houses a collection of  8,000 works, dating from the 14th to the 20th century,  including a Print Department with nearly 1,750 drawings and engravings. A selection of around 60 French drawings, from the 19th and early 20th centuries, will give the public an  idea of the wealth and diversity of this collection that is little-known in France. On the one hand, the exhibition will present works by “Orientalist” artists such as Chassériau, Decamps, Delacroix and Fromentin, on the other, it will focus on some of the key figures in French drawing: Degas, Derain, Millet, Puvis de Chavannes and Seurat. It will be complemented by a section on the history of the museum and the restoration carried out for the exhibition. Chassériau, Théodore (1819-56). French painter. He was the most gifted pupil of Ingres  whose studio in Rome in entered when he was 11, but in the 1840s he conceived an admiration for Delacroix and attempted, with considerable success, to combine Ingres's classical  linear grace with Delacroix's romantic  color. His chief work was the decoration of the Cour des Comptes in the Palais d'Orsay, Paris, with allegorical scenes of Peace and War (1844-48), but these were almost completely destroyed by fire. There are other examples of his decorative work, however, in various churches in Paris. Chassériau was also an outstanding portraitist and painted nudes and North African scenes (he made a visit there in 1846).

Photo: Painting of Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople on 12 April 1204 , by Delacroix, 1840 (240 Kb); Canvas, 411 x 497 cm (162 x 195 1/2 in); Musée du Louvre, Paris .

Ferdinand-Victor- Eugène Delacroix was born on April 26, 1798, in Charenton-St-Maurice, France, and died on August 13, 1863 in Paris, France. In 1815 he became the pupil of the French painter Pierre-Narcisse Guerin and began a career that would produce more than 850 paintings and great numbers of drawings, murals, and other works. In 1822 Delacroix submitted his first picture to the important Paris Salon exhibition: Dante and Virgil in Hell. A technique used in this work--many unblended colors forming what at a distance looks like a unified whole--would later be used by the impressionists. His next Salon entry was in 1824: Massacre at Chios.

 

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