Article
Newsletter: Spring /Summer 1997
In sharp contrast to...highly stylized representations of animals or fantastic, hybrid creatures is the exacting naturalism of the painting [Etude d'apres un chien mort]/Study of a Dead Dog by Eugene Delacroix (French, 1798-1863), acquired through the Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund. The creature does not suggest a stray that one would encounter in Paris and is most certainly a wilddog, possibly a jackal. While Delacroix did sojourn in North Africa the painting has been dated to around 1830, before his travels there in 1832. Todd Porterfield, of the Department of Art and Archaeology, has offered a convincing explanation for the presence of such an exotic creature in Paris. Animals, particularly exotic and ferocious animals such as lions and tigers, are recurring subjects in the oeuvre of this leading master of the Romantic movement. Delacroix had an understanding with Antoine Barye, the great specialist in sculptures and paintings of animals, that if either learned that any of the animals in the Paris zoo, the Jardin des Plantes, had died, he would inform the other so that they could immediately make studies of the dead animal.
The painting is a study rather than a complete composition; while the dog is rendered in extraordinary detail, the background is summarily suggested. One must look beyond the subject to the modesty of the painting and the loving attention paid to the anatomy and the texture of the coat. It is, in fact, a work painted for the artist himself Professor Porterfield has provided another insight into the painting. In the entry on "Beauty" Delacroix prepared for the Dictionaire d'es Arts , the artist offered as an example Gericault's paintings of dismembered limbs; the art of painting transforms and transcends nature in its grimmest aspects.
The painting is a study rather than a complete composition; while the dog is rendered in extraordinary detail, the background is summarily suggested. One must look beyond the subject to the modesty of the painting and the loving attention paid to the anatomy and the texture of the coat. It is, in fact, a work painted for the artist himself Professor Porterfield has provided another insight into the painting. In the entry on "Beauty" Delacroix prepared for the Dictionaire d'es Arts , the artist offered as an example Gericault's paintings of dismembered limbs; the art of painting transforms and transcends nature in its grimmest aspects.
