De/From Reviews (ADR) by Arthur D. Rypinski:
Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) was one the greatest of the
French romantic painters of the first half of the 19th century, and a
lifelong friend of Alexandre Dumas. Like Dumas, Delacroix was a outspoken
republican and a participant in the July (1830) revolution, which Delacroix
comemorated in his painting Liberty Leading the People. (In this
painting, Delacroix added himself to the picture (on the left, wearing a
top hat).
In 1838, Delacroix traveled to North Africa, and made a series of now
famous paintings. In Dumas' travel book Tangier a Tunis, he recounts "I
suddenly recalled a
lovely painting of a Jewess that I had seen in the
study of Delacroix after his return from Morocco, and I thought what a
treat it would be to my companions to have a similar model." Dumas
recounts how he found the woman whom Delacroix painted, now a young matron,
and persuaded her to pose for his artist-traveling companion, Louis
Boulanger.
Dumas biographer
F. W. J. Hemmings indicates that Dumas owned at least two
paintings by Delacroix,
Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard, and
Torquato Tasso in the Insane Asylum, which hung in the
Chateau Monte Cristo, and which he was able to take to
Belgium with him in 1851. The Hamlet painting must have been especially
close to Dumas' heart, since Dumas
translated and adapted Hamlet for the
French stage.
