Customer Reviews

Delacroix In Morocco

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This book has a wonderful overview of Eugene Delacroix's work as it relates to his study of Morocco. The selection of sketches, drawings, watercolors, and oils are well chosen and beautifully arranged. Although a translation, the language is clear and appropriate. For an in-depth appreciation of one of Europe's masters of the 19th century, this book in a perfect choice. Also an excellent gift idea for any art lover!

19th Century French artist Eugene Delacroix was already the premier 'history' painter in France when he was selected to accompany a diplomatic mission to Morocco in 1832. On this trip, the artist found a new world of images and new inspirations for imaginings. He kept wonderful sketch notebooks with many watercolor sketches of the people and the place as he saw it at a set point in time. These notebooks are a wonder in themselves and can be seen in a video presentation on the official Delacroix web site. After his return to France, these sketch diaries provided the basis for many widely acclaimed major paintings.

In the autumn of 1994, the Paris-based Institut du Monde Arabe mounted a large exhibition of Delacroix's north African works and this book represents an enlarged catalog of that exhibit. Flammarian Press, with offices in Paris and New York, has done a fine job of bringing out an English language version of this book. Colors are true and plates are of usable size, with major works getting larger plates and even 'lesser' works given viewable treatment. Selected pages from the sketch books are included as full-page plates. For Europeans at the time, the Arab world was a little-known place, differing in religion, landscape, matters of dress and family life and cuisine. Through his work, Delacroix made this world available to the West. To some fashionable extent, he romanticized the reality he saw with the result that basic understanding led to 'drifting and dreaming' about 'another world.'

I have lived in large and small places in an Arab country and 150 years after Delacroix's visit I can still recognize the validity of some of what he presents. The landscape itself verges on the eternal and architectural traditions are still respected in many places. I find this book to be both a fine travelogue and a wonderful window into a major group of people and their traditions. Through this book we can travel in time and revisit it.