EUGENE DELACROIX
1798-186 3
THIS IS ONE OF RELATIVELY FEW PRESENTATION DRAW-
ings in pastel by Delacroix. In 183 8 he was commissioned
to decorate the library of the Palais Bourbon, Paris, a
project that was completed in 1847. For one of the pen-
dentives of the cupola concerned with poetry, he painted
this scene, which was repeated in a hexagonal painting in
the Musée Fabre, Montpellier. In 1862 Delacroix painted
a rectangular version of the subject (Paris, private collec-
tion) which was much admired by George Sand. Since
he had other plans for that painting, he made this pastel
for her; it is recorded in a letter to her of May 4, 1862
(Santa Monica, Getty Center for the History of Art and
the Humanities). The letter was discovered by
L.Johnson (1988, p. 29), who pointed out that the pastel
version is organized in a subtly tighter and cleaner man-
ner than the painting. It should also be noted that the fig-
ures are more fully integrated into the landscape than in
any of the other depictions of the scene.140 FRENCH SCHOOL • DELACROIX56 The Education of Achilles
Pastel; H: 30.6 cm (12Vie in.); W: 41.9 cm (lo'Ain.)
86.00.728 (SEE PLATE 8)
MARKS AND INSCRIPTIONS: At bottom left, signed
Eug. Delacroix in white chalk.
PROVENANCE: George Sand (sale, Galerie Georges Petit,
Paris, April 23, 1864, lot 40); Khalil Bey (sale, Hôtel
Drouot, Paris, January 16, 1868, lot 22); Quincy Shaw
McKean, Boston; Richard S. Davis, New York and Lon-
don; John R. Gaines, Lexington, Kentucky (sale, Soth-
eby's, New York, November 17, 1986, lot 29).
EXHIBITIONS: None.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Moreau, E. Delacroix et son oeuvre
(Paris, 1873), p. 323 , no. 277; A. Robaut, L'oeuvre com-
plète de Eugène Delacroix (Paris, 1885), p. 218, no. 841; M.
Sérullaz, Inventaire général des dessins école française: Dessins
d'Eugène Delacroix (Paris, 1984), vol. i, p. 164, under no.
305; C. Somerset, "The Education of Achilles," Two
Worlds (1987), p. 7; L.Johnson, "Eugène Delacroix's Ed-
ucation of Achilles," J. Paul Getty Museum Journal 16
(1988), pp. 25~32;J. Bean and W. Griswold, Eugène De-
lacroix (1798-1863): Paintings, Drawings, and Prints from
North American Collections, exh. cat. (Metropolitan Mu-
seum of Art, New York, 1991), p. 105, under no. 38; L.
Johnson, éd., Eugène Delacroix, Further Correspondence,
1817-1863 (Oxford, 1991), pp. viii, 172.