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?

I spent Saturday afternoon of June 2nd, with Delacroix, or, more accurately speaking, with his studio at 6, rue de Furstenberg,  the last studio he painted and where he also lived (and died).

Had a hard time finding Eugene Delacroix’s studio (the French have a system of “rues” and “avenues” that, as far as I’m concerned, is a rat’s nest to navigate)- I had visited Delacroix’s studio  on my first trip to Paris in 1988 – but whatever I did then, I spent much more quality time last Saturday, then I ever did, 20 years ago.

First, I want to say that I had a sense of the most profound peace while sitting in the garden of Delacroix’s studio; perhaps, I have only felt such peace once or twice in my entire life.

Perhaps I had come home. 

If so, forgive me for spending so much of the video filming the garden and my unsteady hand.  If the footage of the garden is too long – advance past it using the YouTube slider bar.  I also sneaked in some footage of Delacroix’s studio and apartment (it was not allowed); I could not appear to be taking pictures so my camera is not, perhaps, aimed where it ought to have been – but I still got some good footage, anyway.

The tree in the upper left was magnificent and might well have been the inspiration for the large tree in the mural Jacob Wresting with The Angel at the nearby church of Saint-Sulpice in the chapel of the Holy Angels; I also visited Saint-Sulpice after leaving the studio (that visit will be on a different online video clip).

I picked up a copy of Delacroix’s Journal a couple of days ago and started reading it – I’ve read it before, a couple of times, several years ago.

So far, I’ve read maybe 40 pages, if that, mostly the beginning – I have some thoughts about the Journal.

It seems to me that Paris life for an artist in the early 19th century, for Delacroix, was full of sexual encounters with models, some pretty, some not, and the guilt surrounding weather to go with the flow, or to fight it.  There’s also a couple of Mistresses and the pulls and tugs that go with being an artist and being low on money.

But life, on the face of it , sounded not that dissimilar than today – with constant dinner parties, which formed a distraction, at once both welcome and dissipative.

The part I’m reading now covers the period of time when The Massacre at Scio (1824) was painted – and the principles of painting are much the same then as now – if you push something back, what it next to it moves forward and vice versa.  Also “contours” are important in drawing and painting – and those considerations are universal, they exist as much now as they did then.

Interesting that painting is almost as an “idea” that communicates beyond words, and perhaps, beyond awareness.

I guess this is one of getting ready for my Paris Trip soon.  I also ordered The World View of Paul Cezanne – I had one of the original copies of the book but lost it several years ago.  I wondered if I should color my mind with Delacroix and Cezanne writings, ahead of my trip – but decided to do it anyway.

I’ll have more to say about Eugune Delacroix’s Journal later on, as I read more of it.

I did this painting today – it was a struggle to get to the studio at all this week and I took my son Adam with me, he was content, in another part of the Studio, working on his own laptop.

A couple of things were on my mind as I did this work – worried about a health issue my son and I got the answer that it’s all going to be OK.  

Also, I felt as if I was pulling back an old memory of a Delacroix Pastel I looked at several years ago - or perhaps, a memory that goes back to another life.   Something about the pattern in the sky pulled in an old memory.

Eugene Delacroix, Sunset, ca. 1849  Pastel, 190 x 240 mm, Property of the Städelscher Museums-Verein

I really don’t know why I was thinking of the Eugene Delacroix pastel today – I just was – and I can’t swear this was the exact one (above) or if it was a similar one.

What I have learned is to capture feelings quickly.

Tired now, but still have stuff to do; I was speaking to Jared Freeman, or Ancient Shriner, in Second Life about a Metrics Package for Second Life Sims – and that took me the better part of this evening.  Time for bed.  I have a lot of stuff on my plate for the foreseeable future – but at least, I got to pour my feeling out in my painting today – I fought for that and won!

Good Night, my online diary.