CCXXX On Delacroix
Delacroix (except in two pictures, which show a kind of savage genius) is a perfect beast, though almost worshipped here.
Rossetti (1849).
CCXXXI
Delacroix is one of the mighty ones of the earth, and Ingres misses being so creditably.
Rossetti (1856).
CCXXXII On Delacroix
Must I say that I prefer Delacroix with his exaggerations, his mistakes, his obvious falls, because he belongs to no one but himself, because he represents the spirit, the time, and the idiom of his time? Sickly, too highly strung, perhaps, since his art has the melodies of our generation, since in the strained note of his lamentations as in his resounding triumphs, there is always a gasp of the breath, a cry, a fever that are alike our own and his.
We are no longer in the Olympian Age, like Raphael, Veronese, and Rubens; and Delacroix’s art is powerful, as a voice from Dante’s Inferno.
Rousseau.