Delacroix: From Paris to Morocco

In 1832, Eugène Delacroix, the leading light of French Romanticism, journeyed to Africa and discovered a passion for the exotic that would inspire the Symbolist movement. This seminal biography features sumptuous historical reconstructions based faithfully on Delacroix’s own travel diaries and exquisite sketchbooks and reveals for the first time encounters that would enrich his aesthetic repertoire until the end of his life. In Morocco and Algeria, we see him entranced by the people and their attire, which he believed to be the visual equal of classical Rome and Greece. Delacroix is considered one of the last Old Masters of painting who brought new themes back from Africa that would influence Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, and many more.