Eugène Delacroix - Portrait of George Sand 1838

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Portrait of George Sand 1838

Portrait of George Sand 1838
78x56cm oil/canvas
Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark

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From Ordrupgaard Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark:
The picture shows us the French author George Sand (pseudonym of Aurore Dupin).
It is one of few portraits painted by Delacroix, and a fragment of a larger, now lost composition – a kind of “romance portrait” – of the lovers George Sand and the composer Frèdèric Chopin. Delacroix probably gathered his two friends around a piano in his studio. Why, when and how the picture was split up is uncertain, but the portrait of Chopin is now in the Louvre in Paris.
The painting is unfinished, but thereby simply underscores an idiom that was already strongly sensual and romantically conceived. George Sand’s body stands out with a radiant presence from the indefinite dark background. The contour is soft and suggestively invites the observer to imagine the shape of the body.