Listening to Art

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Listening to Art, by William Denton.

Volume twelve, number three: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Heliodorus Driven from the Temple by Eugène Delacroix.

Hello, and welcome to Listening to Art. I’m William Denton.

This recording was first heard in volume five number ten, published 01 October 2019, as the last in a series of four works by the great French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, who lived from 1798 to 1863. I highly recommend Delacroix’s Journal, a personal diary he kept for a few years in the 1820s and then again from 1847 to his death. In it he often writes about his work on these paintings, done on the walls in the side chapel of the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. I quote from two entries in the Phaidon Press edition, edited by Hubert Wellington and translated by Lucy Norton.

On 06 April 1860 Delacroix had some trouble with an assistant:

Went to Saint-Sulpice, today. Boulangé had done nothing, and had not understood one word of what I wanted. I seized a paintbrush and, in a fury, gave him the idea for the grisaille frames and the festoon. It is most extraordinary; although I was tired when I reached home, my nerves were not on edge. I believe that this is the first real sign of returning health after so many setbacks.

The next day, 07 April 1860, he wrote:

Went to Saint-Sulpice. Boulangé was not there to meet me. The unspeakable rascal never turns up, does no work, and puts down the delays to my changeableness. He actually was not there! I came home in a rage and have written to him about it.

My evening walks are doing me good.

These are paintings, oil and wax on plaster, each 485 cm wide by 781 cm high.

Now let’s listen to Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Heliodorus Driven from the Temple by Eugène Delacroix, recorded at the Church of Saint-Sulpice, in Paris, on 19 July 2019.

That was Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Heliodorus Driven from the Temple by Eugène Delacroix. I hope you enjoyed listening to them as much as I did.

For more information and links to things I’ve mentioned, please visit listeningtoart.org.

Listening to Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Bibliography

All web sites accessed as of date of publication.