Eugène Delacroix

The artist's posthumous sale, Paris, Hôtel Drouot, 29 February 1864, part of lot 664 (lot of 27 albums and sketchbooks);

Alfred Robaut (1830-1909), Paris;

probably offered by the above to Adrien Demont (1851-1928),

Virginie Demont-Breton (1859-1935) and Adrien Demont Collection,

thence by descent,

sale, Paris, Sotheby's, 21 June 2018, lot 112,

where acquired

"The grey of the clouds in the evenings verges on blue; the clear parts of the sky are bright yellow or orange….The greater the contrast, the more brilliant the effect." This highly evocative observation was made by the French Romantic artist, Eugène Delacroix, in a journal he kept around 1849-50.

It was at this moment, reasonably late in his career and in declining health, that Delacroix became captivated by the challenge of capturing the light effects of cloud formations and, due in part to the speed with which he could work with pastel, chose this media to convey his impressions.

This sense of light and atmosphere is finely captured in this beautiful work which was previously in the collection of the 19^th century Delacroix scholar, Alfred Robaut, before passing into the collection of the painter and son-in-law to Jules Breton, Adrien Demont.

Although a number of these sky studies in pastel survive, few remain in private hands with other comparable examples found in institutional collections, including the Musée du Louvre, Paris,¹ The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York² and The British Museum, London.³

Whilst Delacroix is likely to have made works of this nature as simple artistic exercises, he also noted making such a drawing "with an eye to my ceiling," likely referring to his recent commission for the Apollo Gallery in the Louvre, which ultimately featured radiating sunbeams surrounding the central figure.

^1.Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no. RF 9770

^2.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 2014.732.4

^3.The British Museum, London, inv. no. 1975,0301.34