On October 27, 2013, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will present Delacroix and the Matter of Finish, the first exhibition in the U.S. to focus on the French Romantic artist in over a decade. The show will include 27 paintings and 18 works on paper as well as a previously unknown and unpublished version of Eugène Delacroix’s masterpiece, The Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which surfaced in a Santa Barbara private collection. After several years of scholarly and technical study, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s Assistant Director and Chief Curator, Eik Kahng, authenticated the painting.
Delacroix is often referred to as the father of French Romanticism, the movement that dominated French painting in the first half of the 19th century. However, the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue by Kahng explore Delacroix’s relationship to Neoclassicism, Romanticism’s alleged antithesis, due to the artist’s allegiance to classical subjects and his admiration for the art of the past. The exhibition also suggests that Delacroix, with his fiery palette and loose brushwork, was something of a forefather to Impressionism.
Delacroix and the Matter of Finish features works from 27 international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Musée national Eugène Delacroix in Paris and the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid. After it closes at the Santa Barbara Museum on April 20, 2014, the exhibition will travel to the Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama.
