Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix was celebrated by his contemporaries almost exclusively as a painter, as he was reluctant to part with his drawings, which were not meant either for public display or for collectors. He kept his sketches and studies in his studio, which thus became publicly known only after his death. One of the rare exceptions is one of his most dramatic works, Horse Frightened by Lightning, which, soon after its completion, he gave as a present to a friend, portrait and landscape painter Louis-Auguste Schwiter, in gratitude for the casts of a collection of antique medals, from which Delacroix made lithographs.
The horse played a special role in the art of Delacroix in the 1820s. This was so because while preparing the monumental oil painting, Massacre at Chios, he realized he needed a thorough knowledge of the horse's anatomy if he was to paint historical scenes. Théodore Géricault's romantically impassioned horse representations were a decisive influence for him, but he did not fail to incorporate the experiences of his 1825 trip to London in his art. He devoted much time to studying the rearing horses of the Parthenon Marbles in the British Museum, of which he later made lithographs.
In this watercolor, Delacroix perfectly synthesizes the emotive power of a landscape and that of an animal representation. The plane stretching into the distance and the stormy sky that seems to be its extension provide a background for the frightened, rearing horse, as if for a sculpture. The lighting that crosses the almost unrealistically deep blue sky throws a sharp light on the alarmed animal. The red of its eye and distended nostrils intensifies the panic into a vision. The vehemence of its motion and the gust of the storm ruffle its mane, while its tail is raised in the opposite direction. Delacroix's watercolor shows all that the horse stood for in the eyes of the Romantics: power, nobility, untamed passion, and intensified emotions.
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