Delacroix and the Romantic Image

This installation features a collection of twenty-five works on paper by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and several other French artists, all made between 1824 and 1854 at the height of the Romantic Era.

Drawn from the Museum's own collection of prints and drawings, works on view include a selection of lithographs created by Delacroix as illustrations to texts by two authors revered by the Romantic generation, Goethe (Faust, 1828) and Shakespeare (Hamlet, 1843). Moderately priced albums of illustrations such as these began to be popular in France in the decades following the establishment of the first lithography workshops in Paris in 1816.

A contemporary reaction to the high drama of Delacroix's imagery is provided by a rare album of six satircal lithographs, Romanticism(1829), by Antoine-Jean-Baptiste Thomas (1791–1834). Timed to coincide with the major exhibition of Delacroix's later paintings in the Dorrance Galleries, this collection also includes three drawings by Delacroix.