Landscape with Rocks, Augerville

Delacroix left Paris on May 20, 1854, for a visit to Augerville-la-Rivière, about fifty miles south of Paris, near Malesherbes. The grand seventeenth-century château d’Augerville had been acquired in 1825 by his cousin Pierre-Antoine Berryer (1790–1868), a distinguished lawyer and member of the Académie Française. The writer Amédée Hennequin (1817–1859) and the Dutch cellist Alexandre Batta (1816–1902) accompanied them, and others joined their company over the course of the following week.

Delacroix was enthralled by Augerville’s scenery and took every opportunity to be outdoors. He described the environs as "true countryside" and rhapsodized about the grounds, surrounding landscape, and fine weather. On May 27, he wrote in his journal, "Before lunch, drew the young horses and made sketches of the fantastic figures in the rocks. While making them I recalled the word[s] of Beyle [Marie-Henri Beyle, known as Stendhal]: ‘Neglect nothing at all which could make you great.’" There is a pencil drawing corresponding to this subject and date (it is annotated "samedi," or Saturday) that Delacroix returned to for the composition of the present oil sketch, which he painted afterward, in his studio. Although Delacroix often made careful studies both for pleasure and as aides-mémoire, especially from the 1840s onward, as a rule he did not paint out of doors. (For the drawing, see Maurice Sérullaz et al., Exposition Delacroix, [Tokyo], 1969, no. D-30e, ill.; Hannoosh was the first to identify the drawing as the one described in the artist’s journal: 2009, vol. 1, p. 775; on the significance of landscape painting for Delacroix during this period, see Vincent Pomarède in Delacroix: The Late Work, Philadelphia, 1998, pp. 117–22.)

Photographs of the region suggest that Delacroix emphasized the large scale of the rocks, perhaps in an effort to evoke a vast and untamed landscape, one suitable to a historical composition. Even so, his quotation from Stendhal (which he cited on two other occasions although its source is undetermined) seems at first glance to be rather lofty in the context of so modest a subject. Yet it was characteristic of Delacroix to privilege the spirit of the moment over the precise appearance of the motif. Moreover, his anthropomorphizing of rocks in this instance is directly in line with the widely-known advice of Leonardo da Vinci: "By looking attentively at the old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marbles of various colors, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions, landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. By these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions" (A Treatise on Painting, trans. John Francis Rigaud, London, 1802, p. 84).

That the artist’s aim in the present work was not the faithful reproduction of the thing seen is supported by his written statements on other occasions, and is consistent with his artistic philosophy. It is evident, for example, from his dismissal of Courbet’s Bathers (Musée Fabre, Montpellier), which was exhibited at the Salon of 1853: "When Courbet made the background [for] the bathing woman, he copied it scrupulously from a study that I saw next to his easel. Nothing is colder: it is [like] a work of marquetry" (Journal, October 17, 1853). Just two days before Delacroix made the drawing that eventually served as the basis for the present oil sketch, he left a record of a conversation held with other guests at Augerville, which further illuminates his creative aims in such works: "They believe they will get closer to the truth by struggling with nature for literal truth. The opposite is so: the more literal it is, this imitation, the flatter it is, the more it shows that all rivalry [with nature] is impossible. One can only hope to arrive at [its] equivalent. It is not the thing [itself] one must make, but only the semblance of the thing: it is for the mind and not the eye that one must produce this effect" (Journal, May 25, 1854).

Asher Ethan Miller 2018

the artist, Paris (until d. 1863; his estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 17–29, 1864, probably one of fifteen "études diverses de paysages" under no. 219); Henri Haro, Paris (until d. 1911; his estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 8–9, 1912, no. 5, as "Étude de rochers", for Fr 110); unidentified sale, probably France, January 27, 1923, no. 42, for Fr 380; Dr. Paul Steiner, Berlin, later Rotterdam, still later London (by 1936–at least 1947; placed on deposit with the Steiner collection at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, on March 26, 1936, deposit no. 18–35, and returned in 1947 to Steiner); [Peter Nathan, Zürich, in 1969]; sale, Sotheby's, London, March 20, 1985, no. 101, as "A Rocky Outcrop," for £6,600 to Saban; Natan Saban, Miami Beach, Fla. (1985–97; sale, Christie's, New York, February 14, 1996, no. 54, bought in; sale, Christie's, New York, February 11, 1997, no. 5, for $51,750); Eugene V. Thaw, New York (by 2002–9)

New York. Pierpont Morgan Library. "The Thaw Collection: Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, Acquisitions Since 1994," September 27, 2002–January 19, 2003, no. 87.

Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. "The Romantic Prospect: Plein Air Painters, 1780–1850," June 22–August 15, 2004, no. 47.

Sydney. Art Gallery of New South Wales. "Plein-air Painting in Europe, 1780–1850," September 4–October 31, 2004, no. 47.

Melbourne. National Gallery of Victoria. "Plein-air Painting in Europe, 1780–1850," November 19, 2004–January 16, 2005, no. 47.

New York. Morgan Library & Museum. "Rocks and Mountains: Oil Sketches from the Thaw Collection," July 19, 2016–August 6, 2017, no catalogue.

Lee Johnson. The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue. Vol. 3, Oxford, 1986, p. 255, no. 484, calls it "Landscape with Rocks, Augerville" and dates it 1854; states that it is based on a drawing made in May 1854 (Claude Aubry collection, Paris; see Maurice Serullaz et al., "Exposition Delacroix," exh. cat., [Tokyo, 1969], no. D-30e, ill.) and cites relevant entries in the artist's journal from a visit to the property of his cousin, Pierre Antoine Berryer.

Lee Johnson. The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue. Vol. 4, Oxford, 1986, pl. 286.

Cara Dufour Denison in The Thaw Collection: Master Drawings and Oil Sketches, Acquisitions Since 1994. Exh. cat., Pierpont Morgan Library. New York, 2002, pp. 190–91, no. 87, ill. (color), notes the "characteristic color harmonies" found in this sketch.

Charlotte Gere in Plein-Air Painting in Europe, 1780–1850. Exh. cat., Shizuoka Prefectural Museum of Art. Shizuoka, 2004, pp. 98–99, no. 47, ill. (color).

Asher E. Miller in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 2008–2010." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 68 (Fall 2010), pp. 47, 49, ill. (color).

John House. "Impressionism and the Open-Air Oil Sketch." Studying Nature: Oil Sketches from the Thaw Collection. Ed. Jennifer Tonkovich. New York, 2011, p. 88.

Esther Bell. "Catalogue Raisonné of the Thaw Collection." Studying Nature: Oil Sketches from the Thaw Collection. Ed. Jennifer Tonkovich. New York, 2011, p. 115, no. 41, ill. (color), calls it "Landscape with Rocks, Augerville".

John Elderfield in Cézanne: The Rock and Quarry Paintings. Ed. John Elderfield. Exh. cat., Princeton University Art Museum. Princeton, 2020, p. 24, fig. 16 (color).