EUGÈNE DELACROIX

We do not know what was behind Delacroix's original decision to present five flower paintings at the Salon of 1849. In the end, however, he exhibited only two, keeping a more sizable shipment for the Exposition Universelle of 1855. Undoubtedly, he was predisposed to paint flowers by a passion for flower gardens and gardening, which he shared with his acquaintance George Sand and his great friend Josephine de Forget--in whose company the artist "prowled around rose bushes." Vincent Pomarède, from Delacroix: The Late Work (1998), p. 127.