Quatrième de couverture :
Although Eugene Delacroix never exhibited his pastels and regarded them mainly as a private activity, the French Romantic artist exploited pastel for his own creative ends, producing innovative chromatic and textural effects, reveling in Oriental exotica and exploring tonalities of light and color. The 60 pastels reproduced in color in this attractive album and dating from the 1820s through the 1860s embrace the full range of his subject matter--portraits, nudes, North African scenes, tigers in the wild, nature studies, ancient Greek history, mythological and religious scenes as well as preliminary studies for The Death of Sardanapalus and Women of Algiers in Their Apartment. In contrast to his highly dramatic, often violent oils, his pastels reveal his interest in being true to nature, in mastering the structure and tints of skies, flowers, clouds, faces. Professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, Johnson provides commentaries on the plates plus an informal biographical sketch of the impulsive artist, who held a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition.
