30 December 2021
Delacroix’s studio
“Draftsmen may be made, but colourists are born.” Eugène Delacroix, from his diary
I used to visit Eugene Delacroix’s studio whenever I was in Paris. It became a ritual for me in the olden days when it had been a small museum run by the city of Paris and when it functioned in its own quirky way. But sometime in the 1990’s it was pulled into the Réseau des Musées which now includes 1,220 museums all over France, a system basically designed to facilitate the smooth operation between all the museums and to allow for national funding from Paris. It was also a clever way to pillage certain smaller museums of works which it wanted for the larger ones in Paris. But hey!
The buildings in those days had a worn feeling as did almost all of the city in the 1970’s. Indeed, the patina in Paris even had its own patina! But I liked it infinitely more than the contemporary museum of today which can sometimes feel like a sleek airport terminal. But frankly, all of Paris in the 1970’s looked a tad gloomy, the ornate buildings had not yet been pressure-cleaned so there was a brackish-looking shadow everywhere even on sunny days. It still looked like the city I imagine it might have been right after the war, but the grit to it really came afterward from the coal-fired plants surrounding it. Buildings in New York too, where I grew up in the fifties and sixties, also wore a veil of darkness around their own edgy eaves. And Venice too, had a feel of distant seraphic neglect which gave it a lugubrious mystery in the foggy dusk light. But I liked all three cities even in their states of natural decline as it were. Is this because they were part of my youthful memories which many of us either come to love or hate as we age?
In any event, today, their bridges and palaces have been polished up to welcome the modern tourist who brings in s decent revenue, and why not? Cruising the Seine on a Bateau Mouches at twilight, which I did a few years back was magical and Paris never looked more enchanting.
But Delacroix’s museum in the small chic Place Von Furstemburg, a cute compact square behind Le Cafe des Deux Magots, where the Americans go to sit on the sunny terrace in contrast to most Parisians, who only go to Cafe Flore, just a block West on Blvd St. Germain. When I first discovered the studio back then, all of Paris ressembled those faded black and white postcards from an even older verson of itself. Entering the shabby anodyne lobby one would note only the small sign indicating the Atelier Delacroix in deep blue ink attached to the side of the door. It was a discreet entrance so much like the man himself. Once inside the entrance, the aroma of Sauerkraut or Potato Onion Soup hit you immediately, and it would quickly guide you up to the 1st floor landing after climbing the stairway in a circular fashion. One stepped out onto the narrow second floor where a woman, the concierge, sold the visitor a small ticket with an orange stripe at one end from an old-styled ticket stall of yesteryear like at a carnival. Behind her was the Potato Onion soup or something similar cooking on a stove in an even tinier space. Like most places in those days, it closed during lunch hours but the aromas persisted all day long and wandered evenly throughout the small building.
Aside from a new coat paint and a general swished-up feeling to it, it hasn’t really changed much on the inside. The wooden floors still creak like thay always have. One went through part of the house, then to an outdoor walkway into the studio and down a stairway. But what a treat when one arrived; this fellow lived well after all! The studio space was sumptuous, and painted a deep flat red and full of the artist’s paraphernalia. Everything one might imagine in a Parisian studio was there: paints and palettes in glass cabinets, assorted drawings, watercolours, and paintings from his voyages hung randomly around the walls, glass-lockers that housed drawing pads and miscellenious materials, inks, brushes, etc, etc. For a young student of art from America, it was like Alibaba’s cave. And for some reason I usually found myself there at mid-morning in order to enjoy it before it closed at noon.
For a time, I went through a period of extreme obsession with Delacroix. I read his diary twice through and searched him out in every museum I could, I even followed him to North Africa, though Matisse and Marquet, by then had also played a large part in this travel bug. His discreet bachelorhood in Paris I’m sure even had an influence upon my own inchoate solitary lifestyle already back then.
It was irrational, now that I look back on that part of my life. But don’t we all look back on`our early life with a raised eyebrow? My peers in the Art world of that period were all out either in LA carving up cars and making sculptures from them or were downtown in New York where Punk prowled around each night and where painters worked in poorly-lit lofts with layers of dark paint and preparing for the boom of the 1980’s. But there I was in France in the 1970’s, and being both a social and cultural orphan, I easily dove into life there like it was a swimming pool full of red wine.
Delacroix’s studio overlooked a large garden which was accessed by a stairway off to the side of the studio. Once down there, one can sit and ponder the 19th century in any season because a few benches have been added.
The museum now is a very contemporary space, clean and sober, and very different to what it was like in the 1970’s. I read in John Rewald’s wonderful History of Impressionism that both Renoir and Monet would climb up the wall from the neighbour’s place next door to watch Delacroix work through the huge window. He was a giant to this young generation of nascent painters who would soon become Impressionists and giants themselves with even larger shadows. All this, one can still dream about while sitting on a bench in this small garden on any day of the week.
I remember that on my first day ever in Paris! You describe it beautifully
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