Strength and Fragility in Late Figure Drawings by Eugene Delacroix

A group of Delacroix’s late drawings of the human figure share a preoccupation with muscular physiques, coupled with poses and gestures antithetical to physical strength. Their production corresponds to the final phase of an ongoing health crisis that plagued the painter from his early forties in the 1840s until his death in 1863. This study argues that the artist’s health crisis and efforts to cope with it provide an appropriate frame of reference for interpreting a new level of meaning for the drawings. © 2019, Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art (AHNCA). All rights reserved.