Dear crustaceans,
This article marks the first of a series aimed at understanding our favourite decapod through art history. There hardly seems a more apt way to make a memorable first impression than by championing the Anglo-French relations which are so dear to the magazine’s editors. And so we come to Delacroix…
Like the lobster itself, Delacroix’s paintings are best observed in secretive environments. It is on the upper floors of the Louvre, in the rooms housing French paintings of the nineteenth century, that visitors may hope to detect the subtle rattling of claws along the seabed. Here, they will be welcomed by a work whose fittingly autumnal tones invite reflections on the ties uniting England and France at the dawn of the nineteenth century.
The piece in question is Delacroix’s Nature morte au homard.
For the non-zoologists among us, it seems important firstly to identify the species in this painting. The two superb humarus gamarus outshine, in the title of the piece, the other elements of this still life. Yet we find an extensive and eclectic grouping of small game here. It is dominated by a brown hare whose fur melts both into the gun’s stock and the ground on which he rests. Budding ornithologists may notice an oak jay embracing a golden pheasant at his feet; this species had been recently imported in south-western Scotland. The maritime components of the piece, represented by the two proud lobsters – of which one defiantly faces the jay head-on – confidently oppose the terrestrial ones. The gun’s counterpart, the fishing net, is also present here and adds greater harmony to the marriage of sea and earth.
At the forefront, a perplexed wall lizard (podarcis muralis) observes the scene. The most attentive ecologists will note Delacroix’s error in this respect for such lizards are nowhere to be found in Britain. Yet the subdued equilibrium which this touch adds easily redeems such an inconsistency.
Nature morte is symptomatic of the English attraction which characterised the French Restoration. The return of the Bourbons enabled that of those exiled in England. In 1824, John Constable made a notable appearance on the continent as he unveiled his Hay Wain. Delacroix, immediately seduced, crossed the Channel in a quest to discover England and her Masters. At his return, in 1826, he sat down (we presume) to paint this rather lovely meeting of creatures. With Nature morte, the 29-year-old Romantic artist sided with England rather than Italy. In a snub to classical conventions, it is to Constable, Gainsborough, and Reynolds – rather than Raphael – that he turns.
The essence of this painting boils down to its colours. Delacroix limits his palette to red, shades of brown, dark green, and touches of blue and yellow. The fleshy red, we should note, is not reserved for the lobsters only. We find it also in the textiles of the piece: in the forefront, with an elegant tartan beret, and further afar, as the huntsmen’s dashing liveries cement the ‘Britishness’ of the scene. Gradually, these dashes of red draw our gaze to the uppermost part of the painting: the peaceful marshland succumbing to menacing clouds. There may be some relief to the right, where a patch of blue makes a tentative entrance; will it succeed in rolling out the darkness? Would we want it to? It would risk breaking the mystifying charm of these secluded moors, and after all, it is a British landscape we face, not an Italianate one.
Thus Delacroix exposes his romantic enchantment, both through his unbridled sensitivity to the Britain’s nature and in his Rubenesque palette. He affiliates himself with a dominating current of celestial observations, echoing Constable’s sky sketches.
One might be jarred by the artificiality of the scene; the still life seems rather clumsily placed within a foreign landscape. Similarly, the credibility of the connection between creatures of sea and land is tenuous. A closer look at the origins of the painting might enlighten us on such incongruities… Nature morte was commissioned by General Charles Coëtlosquet for his dining room. Any Francophile will recognise the surname as unmistakably ‘Breton’; hence the need to champion the lobster. The curious mix of creatures also reflects the diversity of dishes which would be served in a dining room, which had only recently become a distinct feature of French households.
This, Delacroix’s only still life, is essential to understanding his formative years. It also reflects Romanticism’s rapidly shifting fashions, for although this painting reflects Delacroix’s independence and unconventionality as an artist, it is with the Middle East that he finds assured recognition. The same year, Delacroix presented his Death of Sardanapalus, a piece emblematic of a new shift in exotic quests for romantic spirits; this time away from the marshes of Yorkshire and towards the sandy dunes of the East. As with most matters touching Franco-British relations, it seems, admiration for the other is at best fleeting.
Upon leaving the Louvre, continue your scavenge at the nearby church of Saint Paul-Saint Louis. There, you will be met with Delacroix’s final and most majestic piece from the Salon of 1827: Christ in the Garden of Olives. No lobsters to be found, sadly.
