It was in 1838 when Eugene Delacroix was already considered an influential and talented artist, admired and envied just the same. Some of the young painters looked at him as a model, while some considered him to be too much of an academic painter, who didn't stay in touch with the new tendencies and ideas. He was a name which seemed destined to remain in art history, and as such he had a lot of friends and protectors, both among the fellow artists and the literary world. Also, what is little known about Delacroix is that he was one of the few French painters who was fascinated by English art and literature. So much, that he not only learned English but was also an avid reader of Shakespeare and Byron among others.
He had already met George Sand in 1834, and was impressed by the inteligence of the writer, one of the very first women who dared to challenge the rules and conventions of her time. Maybe her life was shocking and even scandalous for her time, her books were often criticized for the wrong reasons, but she was surely an interesting character. Delacroix was also an admirer and close friend of Frederic Chopin, and would often say that he was one of the very few composers that the painters deemed worthy of his respect and admiration. So we could say that Delacroix was happy when the two of them began a stormy relationship.
And in 1838 he even painted a portrait of the two, with a sad and fragile Chopin playing the piano, and George Sand simply sitting there and sewing, a domestic and touching scene, which presented the two as regular people and not mythical artists (especially true when it came to Chopin). Unfortunatelly, somewhere between 1868-1872 the painting was cut in two and the characters were separated, seemingly forever. Who did it? Why? Nobody really knows. Was it a gift for the two? Was it the idea of Sand or that of Delacroix? What is known is that Delacroix never completed the work to his liking (he actually never got to painting the piano).
This is how the completed painting would have looked like
Nowadays Chopin's portrait can be admired at the Louvre Museum, while the other half is at the Ordrupgaard Museum in Copenhague. Maybe someday the two will once again be reunited. Who knows?
Photo: wikipedia.org
