The work of an enigmatic Master, whose inner world of ambiguity and concealment continues to mystify, is explored in a series of exhibitions across France

By BRIGID O'HARA-FORSTER /PARIS

orn into national turmoil and familial ambiguity, Eugene Delacroix embodied paradox in his life as well as in his art. Hailed as France's leading Romantic painter, Delacroix proclaimed himself a pure classicist and Charles Baudelaire, the poet who first championed his work, believed him to be "a unique artist, without a forerunner, probably without a successor."

Difficult to assess in his own time, Delacroix continues to challenge. To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of this protean artist, France has mounted a whole series of exhibitions across the country to explore his diversity, foremost among which is the one focusing on Delacroix's last years at the Grand Palais in Paris (until July 20, then in Philadelphia between Sept. 10 and Jan. 3, 1999). Some have argued that it would have been better to stage a single retrospective built around the masterpieces in the Louvre, as was done on the centenary of the artist's death in 1963. That great exhibition was the work of Maurice Serullaz, the late husband of the general curator of the Louvre's graphic arts department, Arlette Serullaz, who jointly created the current exhibition. But she points out that, in addition to financial constraints, the big Louvre pictures cannot be moved and an encompassing retrospective would be impossible without them. Besides, says Serullaz, "I really wanted to focus on this last period because Delacroix was making a synthesis between what he had made in the past, his Romantic period, and his desire to be considered as a classicist."

By staging a cycle ranging from the later period to the show in Rouen, entitled "The Birth of a New Romanticism," as well as smaller exhibits in Chantilly, Tours, Bayonne and Versailles, the organizers have constructed visual essays leading the viewer back to the masterpieces with an expanded sense of their creator.

Delacroix was born as France was turning from the turmoil of revolution toward the imperial adventurism of Napoleon. The fourth child of Charles Delacroix, a 57-year-old state official who had been among the signatories of Louis XVI's death warrant and the 40-year-old Victoire, Delacroix had siblings ranging in age from 19 to 14. No additions had been expected after Charles developed a testicular tumor, but on Sept. 14, 1797, after hosting a luncheon party, he underwent a 2 1/2 hour operation, without benefit of anesthetic, to remove the tumor. Two months later the couple publicly declared the operation a success, but nonetheless Eugene's birth on April 26, 1798 (7 Floreal, VI in the revolutionary calendar) was surrounded by rumor. His real father is widely believed to be Talleyrand, the master statesman-diplomat who served revolutionaries, emperors and kings with flexible acumen. Although Delacroix himself made no known comment on the question, the resemblance between the two was strong.

His childhood was soon to be cruelly seamed with loss. The nine years after his seventh birthday saw the deaths of his father, brother and beloved mother. With the family fortunes in disarray, Delacroix took refuge with his married sister.

During a training steeped in the classical traditions that had prevailed under David, Delacroix had been stirred by the work of Gericault, whose influence appeared in his first major painting, The Bark of Dante (currently in the Rouen show). This work, his first submission to the Salon in 1822, shows a laurel-crowned Virgil guiding Dante through the underworld as doomed souls surround them. The unique and sensuous use of color for which Delacroix was later to be famous already appears in the glowing reds of the poets' robes and the fierce hellfire smoking in the background. Tiny slashes of complementary colors form glistening water beads on the woman's torso. While some critics flinched at this image, others announced the arrival of a new genius. The state promptly bought the painting, and his next Salon submission as well.

So solid credentials backed his 1828 entry to the Salon, The Death of Sardanapalus, based on a play by Europe's cult hero, Lord Byron, about the fiery end of an Assyrian king. Sardanapalus appears as a remote figure reclining in the background, emanating detachment from the scenes of violence that dominate the canvas. The work produced an outcry when it was shown and still provokes questions about the extent to which the erotically impassive king represents the painful disassociation of an artist whose inner world had been fractured by disorder and loss. Art critic and novelist Anita Brookner has noted in Delacroix an "extraordinary and pervasive torment that he tried so scrupulously to conceal."

Whatever the nature of that private world, the outer Delacroix epitomized the worldly Parisian, a dandy whirling from opera to salon to romantic encounter. But despite a succession of affairs and close friendships with women, Delacroix never married. The most constant female presence in his life was Jenny Le Guillou. The Breton woman who became his housekeeper in 1835 was his closest confidante and companion until she sat alone at his deathbed.

In 1832, Delacroix traveled to Morocco and Algeria, a journey that infused his work with new passion. The light and the colors he discovered then continued to nourish his imagination in later years. He returned compulsively to scenes peopled by the Arabs he had met, the horses and costumes he had never forgotten.

Delacroix's vast output--some 6,000 paintings, drawings and sketches at his death--ranged in every direction. Although he did few portraits and was not a landscape painter, the Grand Palais show reveals delicate watercolors, pastels and lithographs. They often convey a delicacy and intimacy absent from the array of monumental public commissions of his middle years. The exhibit also reflects his fascination with the totemic figures of the big cats, lions and tigers, whose violent and predatory confrontations he explored compulsively.

The breadth of Delacroix's culture emerges compellingly in his Journals, which stand alongside his paintings as artistic contributions. He wrote eloquently on music, painting and the great masters, but also on the writers he loved and so often turned to for inspiration: Goethe, Shakespeare and Byron.

As he got older, his innate conservatism distanced him from the events of his time, and although he was to have a considerable effect on the Impressionists waiting in the wings, the differences are profound. The enthusiasm that Monet or Pissaro showed for the new aspects of a world spawned by the Industrial Revolution was not shared by Delacroix: "Soon we shall be unable to go five miles without coming across those fiendish contraptions, railway trains." Unlike the hope and excitement spilling from the Impressionists, the pessimism and tragic temperament of their forerunner more often disturbs and even distresses.

His last years were blighted by failing health that contributed to an increasing turn toward solitude, but in 1856 he began work on the last great public commission of his life: decorating the walls and ceiling of the Chapel of the Holy Angels in Paris' Saint Sulpice. It was a harrowing endeavor for a sick man, working, often on scaffolding, in the vast and lofty spaces of the chill, damp church. Still Delacroix worked relentlessly. He even moved his home into a nearby apartment and studio that is now the Delacroix Museum. His depictions of the confrontation between good and evil, although now hard to appreciate in their grimy, dimly lit setting, have a sense of culmination and still retain the glow of his wondrous colors. Even as his body collapsed, he still burned creatively. "I have work ahead for another 400 years," he lamented.

While it is true that Delacroix founded no school of successors, his influence on artists from Van Gogh to Picasso was significant. One tribute came from Cezanne, who called him "the greatest palette of France...no one beneath our skies possessed to a greater extent than he both the serene and pathetic vibration of color. We all paint through him."