Eugène DELACROIX – Autograph manuscript – Salon de la Paix.

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)

Autograph manuscript – Peace Room.

Three octavo pages. Collector's stamp.

No place of issue. [Paris. Spring 1854]

,  borne on clouds, brings back abundance and the procession of muses .

A remarkable manuscript by Eugène Delacroix explaining the iconographic and symbolic development of a work that has now disappeared: the Salon de la Paix of the Hôtel de Ville in Paris.

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Peace Salon

The grieving Earth raises , seeking an end to its woes. It is surrounded by ruins : nearby , a soldier extinguishes a torch beneath his foot. Friends and relatives reunite and embrace ; weeping , they gather the bodies of the sorrowful victims.

Peace, borne on clouds, brings back abundance and the retinue of the muses. Ceres repels the dreadful Mars and the furies: discord flees roaring and plunges back into the abyss , while Jupiter , from the top of his cloud throne, turns again menacingly towards the malevolent deities who are enemies of the peace of men.

Eleven subjects from the life of Hercules . We followed destroyer of monsters and avenger of the oppressed – we followed in the order of the paintings, rather the suitability of the lines and the effect than the chronological order .

1° Hercules, exposed after his birth, is taken in by Juno and Minerva. The latter holds him in her arms and presents him to Juno, who prepares to nurse him.

2. Hercules, having raised his famous pillars to the ends of the earth, rests from his labors. The sun, at the end of its course plunges back into the sea.

3° He brings Alceste back from hell and returns her to Admetus, her husband.

4° He kills the Centaur.

5° He chains Nereus, god of the sea, to force him to reveal the future.

6° He seizes the baldric of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons.

7° He is suffocating Antaeus . Mother , the mother of this titan, tries in vain to come to his aid.

8° He rescues Hesione, daughter of Laomedon, who was left to be devoured by a sea monster.

9° I Nemean lion with his hands to take its skin.

10° Hercules, still young, caught between vice and voluptuousness.

11. He carries back on his shoulders, alive, the Erymanthian boar he had caught in a chase

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This manuscript by Eugène Delacroix offers invaluable insights into the design of the Salon de la Paix, commissioned from the painter in December 1851 for the Paris City Hall. Executed between 1852 and 1854, the artist's paintings were destroyed in the fires of the Commune on May 24, 1871. Today, we know of only a few sketches and descriptions from that period, such as the one provided by the artist himself in this manuscript.

It is interesting to note that this text – with numerous variations – was published by Gustave Planche in the Revue des Deux Mondes (April 15, 1854 – pp. 305-321). A long-time art critic sympathetic to Romanticism and to Delacroix in particular, Planche regularly commented on the painter's works, both public commissions and submissions to the Salon.

It is therefore highly likely that these handwritten notes by Delacroix were intended for Planche, to guide him in writing his article and to shed light on the artist's symbolic intent. The correspondence between Delacroix and Planche is well established. This revised text can be found in A. Ferrier's * Notice sur l'Hôtel de Ville de Paris*

Finally, we should note Delacroix's amusing slip of the tongue, for whom Hercules hesitates between Vice and Voluptuousness , and not, as History would have it, between vice and virtue.