A Lioness and a Caricature of Ingres

Eugène Delacroix

1850s · Pen and brown ink on laid paper · Drawings and Prints

This drawing likely dates from a period in which tensions between Delacroix and his rival Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres were particularly high. In the 1840s, critics increasingly cast the two artists as adversaries with opposing styles, and their respective solo exhibitions at the 1855 Exposition Universelle in Paris amplified the sense of competition. Delacroix also blamed Ingres for blocking his election to the Institut de France, the nation’s premier learned society—a post he eventually achieved in 1857. Here, he inserts at left an acerbic caricature of Ingres in profile, demonstrating the incisiveness he could achieve in pen and ink.

Artist

Eugène Delacroix

Date

1850s

Medium

Pen and brown ink on laid paper

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift from the Karen B. Cohen Collection of Eugène Delacroix, in honor of Eric Carlson, 2015