Figure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon

Figure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Delacroix’s first state commission for a major decorative scheme, a mural program for the Salon du Roi in the Palais Bourbon (seat of the French National Assembly) in Paris, he devised a plan based on four "life-forces" of the state: Justice, Agriculture, Industry, and War. Generating ideas to fill the space required prolific drawing. On this sheet, the artist invented with fluid pen strokes figures entangled in combat, full of torque and energy, as potential personifications of war.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Figure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais BourbonFigure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais BourbonFigure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais BourbonFigure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais BourbonFigure Studies for the Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.