Eugène DELACROIX
1798 - 1863
Sketch Sheet
1826
Original lithograph
210 × 335 mm, margins 265 × 385 mm
Very fine and rare impression of the only state on cream-colored laid paper
Provenance: P. Burty (Lugt 413) and A. Beurdeley (L. 421)
Reference: Delteil 53, Strauber 53
Strauber only knows of three impressions of the subject (respectively belonging to the French National Library, Alfred Beurdeley and the Art Institute of Chicago).
Philippe Burty’s almost complete collection of prints by Delacroix was sold on March 4th and 5th, 1891, and entered thereafter the collection of Alfred Beurdeley (which would afterwards be scattered during Beurdeley’s estate sale of November 5th and 6th, 1920).
The two portraits in the lower right show Frédéric Soulier (whom Delacroix taught watercolour painting to, a technique hardly mastered in France, which Delacroix had himself learnt from his friend Copley Fielding) and Horace Raison (man of letters, journalist and colleague of Soulier)