GREGOIRE
JEANMONOD
Art and its stories as an inspiration
Eugène Delacroix
Jewish wedding in Morocco
1839
Keep a logbook
For more than twenty years, the painter Eugène Delacroix, considered the figurehead of the French romantic movement, kept a precise diary of his life, his encounters, of his thoughts and projects. By recording every aspect of his daily life in this way, he built up a reserve of ideas and memories capable of fueling his inspiration even years later.
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In 1832, when he was invited to participate in a French diplomatic mission to Morocco, he took with him sketchbooks, brushes and watercolors. On site, for six months, he takes notes on everything around him and makes detailed sketches in color: outfits, customs, architecture, jewelry and objects are the subject of abundant captioned sketches.
utensils are the subject of numerous captioned sketches. From a Jewish wedding from a house in Tangier to the military exercises of Moroccan horsemen, passing through desert landscapes and the interiors of apartments, nothing escapes his sense of observation. Thanks to these notebooks Delacroix was able, even years
later, make
oriental canvases of a
big authenticity,
perfectly rendering
account of the atmosphere-
sphere colors
and characteristic uses
teristics of life
in the Maghreb in the
1830s.
Eugène Delacroix, Sketchbook , 1832
What we can take away:
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Human memory has its limits, and even our most promising ideas - the ones we think we are unlikely to forget - eventually get lost. A diary, whatever its form, preserves the thoughts: by going through it a posteriori, we realize that some of them, whose value we had not immediately measured, are in fact formidable sources of inspiration.
