Musée national Eugène-Delacroix

On 28 December 1857 Eugène Delacroix, then fifty-nine, left his studio on the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette for an apartment on the rue de Furstenberg, a quiet corner of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The reason was a commission: since the late 1840s he had been charged with painting the Chapel of the Holy Angels in the church of Saint-Sulpice, a few minutes’ walk away, and the daily journey across the Seine had become too much. His friend Étienne Haro helped him find the place.

What decided him was the garden. Behind the building lay a private plot of about 400 square metres, hidden from the street, and there he had a studio built. In the mornings he could cross to Saint-Sulpice; the rest of the time he worked, read, wrote his Journal and received a few friends. The chapel was finished in 1861: Jacob wrestling the angel on one wall, Heliodorus driven from the Temple on the other, Saint Michael overhead. Delacroix died in the apartment on 13 August 1863.

Some seventy years later the garden studio was threatened with demolition. Painters came to its rescue. Under Maurice Denis, a Société des Amis d’Eugène Delacroix was formed at the end of the 1920s, and in 1932 the apartment and studio opened to visitors as the Atelier Delacroix, run by the society. The publication of the Journal in 1893 had already done much to make Delacroix a hero to younger artists, from Signac to Denis himself.

The museum became national in 1971 and has been attached to the Louvre since 2004. The rooms are small and the works mostly sketches, studies, letters and personal objects rather than the great canvases, which is exactly their interest: this is the painter at home and at work. The garden has been replanted more than once, most recently in 2012; a gardening memorandum drawn up for Delacroix in November 1857 survives, though it gives no plan.

What to look for

• The garden studio, reached across the garden from the apartment, with its tall north light.
• The garden itself, invisible from the street, replanted in 2012.
• The place de Furstenberg outside, one of the smallest and quietest squares on the Left Bank.
• Then walk to Saint-Sulpice and find the Chapel of the Holy Angels, with Jacob and the angel on its left wall.

Timeline

1. 1857Delacroix moves to the rue de Furstenberg on 28 December
2. 1861The Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice is completed
3. 1863Delacroix dies in the apartment on 13 August
4. 1932Opening of the Atelier Delacroix, run by the Société des Amis
5. 1971Becomes a national museum
6. 2004Attached to the Musée du Louvre

Works to see here

Art →

Plaques within 250 m

• 6 Place De Furstenberg · 20 m

  FERNAND VICTOR EUGÈNE/DELACROIX/A HABITÉ CETTE MAISON/JUSQU'À LA FIN DE SA VIE/13 AOÛT 1863

• 2 Rue De Furstenberg · 40 m

  LE COMPOSITEUR / ALEXANDRE TCHEREPNINE / 1899 -1977 / HABITA CETTE MAISON / 1983

• 14 Rue Jacob · 60 m

  Richard WAGNER / 1813 - 1883 / A VÉCU ICI / du 30 Octobre 1841 au 7 Avril 1842 / """"LES AMIS DE RICHARD WAGNER"""" / FONDATEUR L.MOLINA

• 3 Rue Jacob · 70 m

  CETTE RUE COMMÉMORE / ISTVÁN KESZEI (1935-1984) / POÈTE HONGROIS. / CE TABLEAU A ÉTÉ POSÉ AU 75ÈME ANNIVERSAIRE / DE SA NAISSANCE PAR SES COMPATRIOTES. / EZ AZ UTCA KESZEI ISTVÂN (1935-1984) / MAGYAR KÖLT?NEK EMLÉKÉT ?RZI. / EMLÉKÉRE, SZÜLETÉSE 75. ÉVFORDULOJÁN

• 28 Rue Jacob · 110 m

  Colette / (1873-1954) / a vécu ici les premières années de sa vie littéraire parisienne / "Sombre, attrayant comme sont certains lieux / qui ont étouffé trop d'âmes... "(Mes apprentissages) / de 1893 à 1896

• 63 Rue De Seine · 120 m

  ADAM MICKIEWICZ / POÈTE NATIONAL DE LA POLOGNE / HABITA ICI QUAND FUT PUBLIÉ À PARIS / SON CHEF D’ŒUVRE PAN TADEUSZ / EN L’ANNÉE / 1834 / ROKU WYDANIA / PANA TADEUSZA TUTAJ MIESZKAL / ADAM MICKEWICZ

• 17 Rue Visconti · 130 m

  DANS CETTE MAISON / BALZAC / AUTEUR DE LA COMÉDIE HUMAINE / ÉTABLIT SON IMPRIMERIE 1826 -1828 / 1930

• 34 Rue Bonaparte · 140 m

  Ici vécut de 1974 à 2009 / Georges WOLINSKI / 1934 - 2015 Dessinateur de Presse / Assassiné Le 7 janvier 2015

Commemorative plaques, Ville de Paris open data (ODbL); transcriptions as published, in French. 42 in all within this radius.

Sources

• Musée national Eugène-Delacroix: From studio to museum
• Ministère de la Culture: Musée national Eugène Delacroix
• Ville de Paris: Delacroix à la chapelle des Saints-Anges de Saint-Sulpice
• Diocèse de Paris: La chapelle des Anges, chef-d’œuvre de Delacroix
• Musée Delacroix: press release, Maurice Denis exhibition (2017)
• Wikidata Q1782606 (coordinates, CC0)
• Base Mérimée PA00088668