Provenance
Estate of the artist; sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, February 22-27, 1864, Delacroix estate sale, to Isidore Pils (1813/15-1875) [inscription inside front cover]; sold, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, March 20, 1876, lot 1121, as Soixante-huit dessins et aquarelles. Louis Becq de Fouquières (1831-1887) [Joachim 1978]. Sold by Bernard Lorenceau, Paris, after 1966, to Marianne Feilchenfeldt, Zürich [letter from Walter Feilchenfeldt dated January 5, 2004 in curatorial file]; sold to the Art Institute, 1970.
Accession Number
33786
Medium
Graphite and watercolor on paper
Dimensions
11.6 × 18.5 cm (4 5/8 × 7 5/16 in.)
Classification
sketchbook
Credit Line
Clarence Buckingham Collection
Background & Context
Background Story
This sketchbook, compiled between 1855 and 1859 during Eugène Delacroix's travels through Germany, is one of the most important surviving documents of the artist's working process, containing rapid graphite notations and watercolor impressions of landscapes, architecture, and encounters along the Rhine. Delacroix was already in his late fifties—an established master whose "Liberty Leading the People" hung in the Louvre—and these private sketches reveal the restless curiosity that sustained his creativity into old age. The pages show a range of subjects from Gothic cathedrals to village inns, executed with the economy of an artist who knew exactly what information he needed to preserve for future studio work. The graphite drawings are particularly revealing: Delacroix used swift contour lines to capture essential forms, then added watercolor washes to note atmospheric effects that black and white could not record. This two-stage method—drawing for structure, color for mood—was characteristic of his practice and influenced the plein-air procedures of the Impressionists who admired him. The sketchbook also documents Delacroix's cultural tourism: Germany represented the Northern tradition that complemented his Mediterranean orientation, offering Gothic verticality as an alternative to classical harmony. Art historians have linked specific pages to finished paintings and murals executed decades later, proving that Delacroix's memory was capacious enough to store sketchbook impressions for years before transforming them into major compositions. The physical object itself—a bound book of cream paper with the discolorations of travel—carries the aura of the artist's hand in a way that finished canvases cannot.
Cultural Impact
This travel sketchbook preserved Delacroix's restless late-career curiosity, documenting the two-stage graphite-and-wash method that influenced Impressionist plein-air practice.
Why It Matters
It matters as a master's private notebook—proof that even Delacroix needed to sketch a cathedral quickly before the light changed.
