Circle of Eugene Delacroix
(French, 1798-1863)

"Shipwreck"

oil on canvas
unsigned. Presented in an impressive giltwood frame.
19" x 42"

Provenance: By repute, William Hearst, Hearst Castle; Marion Davies, Los Angeles, California, ca. 1938; Private collection, Los Angeles; Thence by descent.

Notes: This shipwreck scene bears the keen influence of Eugene Delacroix, the leader of the French Romantic School, whose optical studies of color and expressive brushstroke profoundly shaped future Impressionist works. Though he was trained in the Neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis David by Pierre-Narcisse Guerin, he rejected the academic traditions, privileging emotive expressions of color through bold brush strokes over controlled lines and carefully modeled forms. Though beautifully rendered, classical depictions of historical and mythological scenes invoked a sense of stasis, in which the turmoil of the battle or deluge was lost on the viewer. Inspired by Peter Paul Rubens and the Venetian colorists, Delacroix created a new genre of painting, capturing the primacy of the moment through the rapid application of deep warm colors and exaggerated lighting to convey movement.

"The Storm on the Sea of Galilee", a biblical tale from the Gospel of Mark that multiple artists depicted throughout the 18th and 19th century, was a subject Delacroix visited many times from 1822-1855, as the drama of the miracle performed amid a tempest showcased his bravura of color and movement. In addition to multiple drawings, there are six known paintings of this subject executed between 1850 and 1855 with the attendant focus in the earlier ones on the swells of the sea before Christ awakens and calms them. Three fine examples are the ones conserved in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, New York, the Walters Museum, Baltimore, Maryland and the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Created through swirling greys and greens with white capped sprays, the momentum of the sea as it threatens to swallow the fishing vessel borders on the sublime- the unbounded synergy drawn from the cataclysmic forces of nature. This "Shipwreck" was likely modeled after these paintings; it captures the same emotion of movement through heavy brush strokes executed in the same lurid green-gray palette. The juxtaposition of the crimson red of the survivor's dress, burnt sienna of the mast the figure clings to, and the swatch of a torn blue sail, also mimics the color schema of Delacroix's depictions of the apostles, which are rendered in a rich palette of red, sienna and ultramarine blue suffused with light. This palette and composition is characteristic of Delacroix's "Sea of Galilee" and shipwreck scenes, including "The Shipwreck of Don Juan" in the Louvre Museum in Paris.