I started reading Delacroix’s Journal before going to France again and now I’m almost done and I need to get down some thoughts before I forget. 

What I’ve come away with is this:  Delacroix had reached a point in his life where he instinctively felt it was coming to an end, and he felt it was time to move on; he was bored and in lousy health and felt he did not have much to live for.

When he was elected to Academy in 1857, Delacroix was pretty sick with a cold and it took a long time to recover; when he did recover he was stuck with a commission to finish set of murals at St. Sulpice that no one really wanted anymore.  

In fact, when I went to see the Murals, I could not appreciate them in the setting they were in or even see them that well.  The execution looked forced, abrupt and dry because his heart was not in it.  Also he had to move to a new place, now the Musee national Eugene Delacroix located at 6, rue de Furstenberg near the Saint-Germain-Des-Pres station and the church of St. Sulpice.

The smart thing to do would have been to back out of the St. Sulpice commission - let it be finished by another artist - and not even have to move to where he ended up dying.

What’s surprising to me is that he’d write some of his feelings down in a way that is frank and honest:

“This afternoon I went for a walk along the road to Epinal.  I made some enchanting discoveries; rocks and woods and best of all, water - water of which I never grow tired; I feel a continual longing to plunge into it, to be a a bird, a tree whose roots are steeped in it, to be anything, except an unhappy, sick, bored old man”.

Journal, 14 July 1858.

And just as Impressionism was beginning to happen, and was literally, right in front of him, he missed it (it often takes considerable insight to see what’s right in front of you - and that’s true of anyone living in any time - sometimes the “next thing” is right in front of you …but you can’t see it because your too close to it):

“…The other morning as I was standing on my balcony in the sunshine, I noticed the prismatic effect of the thousands of tiny hairs in the cloth of my gray jacket.  They were sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow, like little pieces of crystal or diamond.  Each separate hair being glossy, it reflected the most brilliant colours, which changed whenever I moved.  We only notice this effect in sunshine…”

Journal - Paris, November 4, 1857

What would have been interesting - had Delacroix, instead of moving ahead with a boring commission for the St. Sulpice murals,  changed his style somewhat, and started painting those atmospheric effects more often - or even the things he saw in his own garden.

I think, as we get older, our minds becomes more fixed, more closed and less able to appreciate new opportunities as they come up.

Most of Delacroix’s late work is hard to get really enthusiastic about because the artist, himself, was board with what he was doing - he knew he needed to change course - but he did not know how to change.

And that kind of insight and courage is something almost no one has - I think - to see that what your doing in your life does needs to change - and know what the change needs to be …and then going ahead and doing it… it’s tough (and there was no therapy in 1857 .. no one to talk to - no one to really work though issues with ..other than your friends - who hardly can provide an objective opinion).

Plus, more and more of those “friends” were dying off, there were not many people left he’d even want to talk to or share with - creating further isolation.

But it makes me wonder how open anyone is to change ….when you see it right in fount of you .. do you recognize it and know what to do with the opportunities you have?  Do you even see the opportunities?