LES FALAISES D'ÉTRETAT PEINTES PAR EUGÈNE DELACROIX

EUGENE DELACROIX (1798-1863)
Les Falaises d'Etretat (70 à 90 m)
France (Normandie)


In Vue de la plage et des falaises d'Etretat, aquarelle sur traits à la mine de plomb, 15x19 cm,           Musée Fabre, Montpellier

A propos de cette œuvre
Delacroix découvrit les beautés de la côte normande grâce à ses nombreux passages chez son cousin Bataille à Valmont, près de Fécamp. "Séjour de paix et d'oubli du monde entier", cette retraite offrait à l'artiste un lieu idéal pour se reposer de Paris et élaborer ses grandes commandes officielles. Au cours de cette villégiature, il eut à maintes occasions l’opportunité d'admirer le paysage des falaises d'Etretat ; sans doute séduit par cette âpre et grandiose architecture de craie, il devait en donner plusieurs études et aquarelles. Cette vue prise de la porte d'Amont, à marée basse, ne peut être datée avec certitude mais un passage du Journal de l’artiste du 18 octobre 1849 relate une excursion en mer au large de Fécamp et situe, si ce n'est la chronologie de cette œuvre, du moins l'état d'esprit et les sentiments de l'artiste devant ce paysage : « Le sol sous cette arche étonnante, semblait sillonné par les roues des chars et semblait les ruines d'une ville antique. Ce sol est ce blanc calcaire dont les falaises sont entièrement faites. Il y a des parties sur les rocs qui sont d'un brun de terre d'ombre, des parties très vertes et quelques-unes ocreuses. » Explorant la décomposition chromatique du paysage, Delacroix donne ici une aquarelle où palpite la densité de l’air et de l’eau et, avec cette manière très libre d’un dessin pris sur le vif, il témoigne de sa sensibilité pour ces vues de la nature qui annoncent déjà la peinture impressionniste. Ami de l’artiste, le critique Théophile Sylvestre conseilla en 1874 à Alfred Bruyas l’acquisition de cette oeuvre qui lui inspira ces réflexions : « Dans le ciel solitaire, d’une pureté absolue et d’une légèreté sans fonds, on entendrait non seulement l’aile d’une mouette mais le bourdonnement d’un insecte [...]. L’effusion lumineuse n’a même pas de soubresauts tout le long de cette falaise abrupte, dont la croûte terrestre et le gazon rôti semblent à la fois un chaume de cabane et une peau de bête fauve. »

 

Les falaises
Les Falaises d'Etretat  sont constituées d'une stratigraphie complexe de craies du Turonien et du Coniacien. Certaines falaises atteignent 90 mètres. Etretat est surtout connue pour ses falaises de craie, dont trois arches naturelles et une formation pointue appelée L'Aiguille (l'Aiguille), qui s'élève à 70 m au-dessus de la mer et L'Arche. Une rivière souterraine, puis l'érosion marine ont formé une arche naturelle et une aiguille d'une hauteur estimée de 55 mètres à 70 mètres, relique de la falaise. Ses falaises de craie blanche et ses plages de galets grisâtres en ont fait un des lieux du tourisme international avec plus de trois millions de visiteurs par an1, exposé aux même risques que d'autres grands sites mondiaux, avec trois chutes mortelles en 2022. Le tourisme de masse dégradant le site. Des peintres comme Albert Marquet, Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin ou encore Claude Monet ont contribué alors à sa publicité, tout en en immortalisant la spécificité. Des écrivains normands comme Maupassant et Gustave Flaubert furent des fidèles du lieu. Maurice Leblanc, qui y vécut, contribua au mythe entourant le site entretenu dans une aventure d'Arsène Lupin intitulée L'Aiguille creuse(1909). Il les décrit en ces termes : « Un énorme gardon, haut de plus de quatre-vingts mètres, obélisque colossal, d'aplomb sur son socle de granit. » A son époque, le site attirait déjà de nombreux touristes parmi eu xdes "lupinophiles" admirateurs d'Arsène Lupin des  étudiants américains venaient chercher la clé de la grotte, où le "gentleman cambrioleur" avait trouvé le trésor des rois de France.

Le peintre
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix était un artiste romantique français considéré dès le début de sa carrière comme le chef de file de l'école romantique française. L'utilisation par Delacroix de coups de pinceau expressifs et ses études sur les effets optiques de la couleur ont profondément façonné le travail des impressionnistes, alrors que sa passion pour l'exotisme a inspiré les artistes du mouvement symboliste. Fin lithographe, Delacroix a illustré diverses œuvres (William Shakespeare, Walter Scott et  Goethe notamment).
Contrairement au perfectionnisme néoclassique de son principal rival Ingres, Delacroix s'est inspiré de l'art de Rubens et des peintres de la Renaissance vénitienne, en mettant l'accent sur la couleur et le mouvement plutôt que sur la clarté des contours et la forme soigneusement modelée. Le contenu dramatique et romantique caractérise les thèmes centraux de sa maturité et le conduit non pas vers les modèles classiques de l'art grec et romain, mais plutôt vers les voyages en Afrique du Nord à la recherche de l'exotisme. Ami et héritier spirituel de Théodore Géricault, Delacroix s'inspire également de Lord Byron, avec qui il partage une forte identification aux « forces du sublime », et aux actions de la nature, souvent violente.
Cependant, Delacroix n'était enclin ni à la sentimentalité ni à l'emphase, et son romantisme était celui d'un individualiste. Selon les mots de Baudelaire : « Delacroix était passionnément amoureux de la passion, mais froidement déterminé à exprimer sa passion le plus clairement possible ».
En 1832, Delacroix se rend en Espagne et en Afrique du Nord, dans le cadre d'une mission diplomatique au Maroc peu après la conquête de l'Algérie par la France. Il n'y est pas allé pour étudier l'art, mais pour échapper au parisianisme dans l'espoir d'approcher une culture plus primitive. Il a produit plus de 100 peintures et dessins de scènes tirées ou basées sur la vie des peuples d'Afrique du Nord, et a ajouté un nouveau chapitre très personnel à l'intérêt général porté alors à l'orientalisme. Delacroix était fasciné par les gens et les costumes, et le voyage allait éclairer le sujet d'un grand nombre de ses futurs tableaux. Il pensait que les Nord-Africains, dans leurs vêtements et leurs attitudes, fournissaient un équivalent visuel aux peuples de la Rome et de la Grèce classiques : « Les Grecs et les Romains sont ici à ma porte, chez les Arabes qui s'enveloppent dans une couverture blanche et regardent comme Caton ou Brutus..."
Il réussit à dessiner secrètement quelques femmes à Alger, comme dans le tableau Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement (1834), mais il rencontra généralement des difficultés à trouver des femmes musulmanes prêtes à poser pour lui en raison des règles musulmanes exigeant que les femmes soient couvertes. La peinture des femmes juives d’Afrique du Nord, comme sujets du Mariage juif au Maroc (1837-1841), pose moins de problèmes.
À Tanger, Delacroix réalise de nombreux croquis des gens et de la ville, sujets sur lesquels il reviendra jusqu'à la fin de sa vie. Les animaux, incarnation de la passion romantique, ont été incorporés dans des peintures telles que Chevaux arabes se battant dans une écurie (1860), La Chasse au lion (dont il existe de nombreuses versions, peintes entre 1856 et 1861) et Arabe sellant son cheval (1855). .

_________________________________________

2024 - Wandering Vertexes ....
Gravir les montagnes en peinture
Un blog de Francis Rousseau

MONTE PERDIDO BY EUGÈNE DELACROIX

 

EUGÈNE  DELACROIX  (1798-1863)

 Monte Perdido / Mont Perdu  (3,355 m -11,007ft)
Spain

In Album Pyrénées 1845, watercolor,  Musée du Louvre, Paris

The mountain
Monte Perdido (3,355 m -11,007ft), Mont Perdu in French, located in Spain, near the French-Spanish border, is the highest summit above sea level on the ridge separating the canyons of Ordesa and Pineta in the Pyrénées. This is the central peak of Tres Hermanas (Spanish) consist of the cylinder Marboré, the Soum de Ramond, and Monte Perdido itself.
Observable from the peaks popular at the time (including the Pic du Midi de Bigorre), Mount Perdido is no longer visible from the French valleys, as located behind the watershed line between France and Spain.
The limestone, rich in fossils are marine sedimentary origin. These sediments occupying a shallow sea were raised during the formation of the Pyrenees there are 40 million years (see article Geology of the Pyrénées).The summit a form of typical pyramidal peak of erosion by glaciers time of glaciation, he is still on the northeast side of the mountain the Monte Perdido glacier.
Ramond Carbonnières, is the firstpersonn to have discover Mount Perdu. Since his first stay in Barèges, in 1787, he was fascinated by the "massive limestone" of Marboré. In 1796, convinced that the nature of the limestone Marboré is "ordinary" Ramond determines an access route to the summit: the Estaubé Valley.

The painter
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.
However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture. He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism. Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).

___________________________________________
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

JEBEL BOU NACEUR BY EUGENE DELACROIX

EUGENE  DELACROIX  (1798-1863)

Jebel Bou Naceur (3,356 m - 11,010 ft)

Morocco

 In  Album d'Afrique du Nord et d'Espagne - Environs de Meknès, 1832, watercolour on paper 

The mountain 

Jebel Bou Naceur (3,356 m)  or Adrar Bou Nacer, in Morocco is the highest peak of the Middle Eastern  Atlas, located in its very heart. It is covered with neonates during three quarters of the year, but  despite of that is subject to a typical Mediterranean climate.

The cities of Meknes and Fes are the closest from this summit.

The painter 
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.
However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture.  He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism.  Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).

___________________________________________
2018 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau 

LA MONTAGNE VERTE PAR EUGENE DELACROIX

EUGENE  DELACROIX (1798-1863)

 La Montagne Verte (1,190 m - 3,901 ft)

France  (Pyrenees)

In  La montagne Verte - montagne par temps sombre, Pyrénées, 1845 

Musée du Louvre Paris. 

The mountain 

La Montagne Verte (1,190 m - 3,901 ft)  is a mountain located between Laruns and the Col d'Aubisque, in the french side of Pyrenees. It is really a mountain of green color! It is a grassy plateau, curled, dotted with barns, as picturesque as easy to find, on foot or by mountain bike, thanks to the abundance of tracks and paths. In spite of its modest altitudes, this stroll in Vallée d'Ossau offers, especially in the spring, splendid views on the high Pyrenees massifs surrounding long for snow.

The painter 
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.
However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture.  He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism.  Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).

CAP SPARTEL PAINTED BY EUGENE DELACROIX

EUGENE  DELACROIX (1798-1863)

Cap Spartel (315 m - 1, 050 ft) 

Morocco

In View of Tangier from the seashore, Oil on canvas, Private Collection  

The mountain 

Cap Spartel (315 m - 1, 050 ft) or Ras Spartel (in Arabic: رأس سبارتيل) is a promontory of the coast of Morocco, located at the southern entrance of the Strait of Gibraltar, 14 kilometers west of Tangier. Facing Cape Spartel, 44 km to the north, Cape Trafalgar marks the northern entrance to the strait on the Spanish coast. Cape Spartel is often mistakenly indicated as the northernmost point of Africa.

The promontory benefits from a strong rainfall favorable to the vegetation. In ancient times Cape Spartel was called Cape Ampelusium, or Cap of Vineyards.  Under the promontory, the waves of the Atlantic Ocean have dug caves, where the inhabitants of the region used to carve millstones. Today, these spectacular "Hercules caves" are a tourist attraction.
On Cape Spartel, 110 meters above sea level, there is a lighthouse, which began operating on October 15, 1864. Its construction was ordered by Sultan Mohammed IV ben Abderrahman at the request of the consular representatives of the European powers alarmed by the Many shipwrecks occurring off the coast. The light from the lighthouse is visible 30 nautical miles (55.6 km).
Off Cape Spartel is the Spartel Bank, a shoal, some of which wanted to make the legendary island of Atlantis.

The painter 
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school. As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible."
In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Spain and North Africa, as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco shortly after the French conquered Algeria. He went not primarily to study art, but to escape from the civilization of Paris, in hopes of seeing a more primitive culture.  He eventually produced over 100 paintings and drawings of scenes from or based on the life of the people of North Africa, and added a new and personal chapter to the interest in Orientalism.  Delacroix was entranced by the people and the costumes, and the trip would inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings. He believed that the North Africans, in their attire and their attitudes, provided a visual equivalent to the people of Classical Rome and Greece: "The Greeks and Romans are here at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus…"
He managed to sketch some women secretly in Algiers, as in the painting Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834), but generally he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as subjects for the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1837–41).
While in Tangier, Delacroix made many sketches of the people and the city (see painting above), subjects to which he would return until the end of his life. Animals—the embodiment of romantic passion—were incorporated into paintings such as Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable (1860), The Lion Hunt (of which there exist many versions, painted between 1856 and 1861), and Arab Saddling his Horse (1855).