Delacroix’s six-month voyage to North Africa in 1832—facilitated by the French invasion of Algeria—fueled his imagination for the remainder of his career. This signed, finished pastel, a rarity in the artist’s oeuvre, stages a suspenseful scene in a landscape inspired by the Atlas Mountains. In the foreground, a hunter crouches on a rocky outcrop. With poised tension, he watches a lion, who appears ready to disappear over the ridge in the distance at any moment. The echo between their four-legged postures invites comparison between man and his prey. The expressive pose as well as the execution, which integrated Delacroix’s technique as a draftsman with painterly layering of color, surely appealed to the former owner of this work, the artist Edgar Degas.
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Credit Line:Purchase, The Derald H. Ruttenberg Foundation Gift, in honor of Nadine M. Orenstein, Karen B. Cohen Fund, and C. Jay Moorhead Foundation Gift, 2023
Object Number:2023.476
Signature: Signed in charcoal lower left: EugDelacroix
Count C, Paris(his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, April 30, 1898, lot 74, for 1,000 francs to Degas); Edgar Degas (French), Paris(until d. 1917; his sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 16-27, 1918, lot 110, ill., for 8,100 francs to Vildrac); Charles Vildrac (French), Paris; Mr. Kunze, Weimar (from late 1920s); Arno and Greta Wenzing (neé Kunze); Private Collection, Helmsdorf (1981-2022); Julian Schmitz-Avila, Bad Breisig; Marco Pesarese, Munich
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Private Collection of Edgar Degas," October 1, 1997–January 11, 1998.
Paris. Musée du Louvre. "Delacroix, 1798–1863," March 29–July 23, 2018.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Delacroix," September 17, 2018–January 6, 2019.
Edgar Degas "American Art News" Degas Sale in Paris. 16, April 27, 1918, p. 6.
Raymond Bouyer, Edgar Degas "Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, supplément à la Gazette des beaux-arts" Mouvement des arts: La Collection Edgar Degas. [March] 1918, p. 86.
Lee Johnson The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: A Critical Catalogue. Clarendon Press, 3, Oxford, 1986, p. 14.
Lee Johnson Delacroix Pastels. London, 1995, cat. no. xi, pp. 19 and 175, ill.
Ann Dumas, Mark Polizzotti, Edgar Degas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Private Collection of Edgar Degas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997, pp. 307, 312, 318-319, and 324.
Colta Ives, Edgar Degas, The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Private Collection of Edgar Degas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1997, cat. no. 207, p. 29, ill.
Michèle Hannoosh Eugène Delacroix: Journal. José Corti, Paris, 2009, p. 459.
Sébastien Allard, Côme Fabre, Sébastien Allard, Côme Fabre, Musée du Louvre Delacroix. Hazan, Paris, 2018, p. 373, n. 47.
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