Full Name: Delécluze, E. J.
Other Names:
- Étienne Jean Delécluze
Gender: male
Date Born: 1781
Date Died: 1863
Place Born: Paris, Île-de-France, France
Place Died: Versailles, Île-de-France, France
Home Country/ies: France
Career(s): art critics
Overview
Anti-Romanticism art critic; author a book on David and histories of art. Delécluze was born to the architect Jean-Baptiste Delécluze. He apprenticed in the studio of the painter Charles Moreau (1762-1810) in 1796 where he met Jacques-Louis David. Delécluze exhibited at the Salons between 1808 and 1814 where his works were based on the principles of the French Academy. In 1815 Delécluze started writing art criticism. His initial work was for the Lycée français newspaper, but by 1822 he was reviewing the Salon of for the Moniteur universel. He also contributed to the Journal des débats around that time (including an obituary of Antonio Canova). In 1831 articles began appearing in L’Artiste (through 1840), as well as in the Revue des deux mondes, Revue française, Revue de Paris and after 1858, the Gazette des beaux-arts. In 1855 his monograph on David appeared. He was working on a history of the middle ages, a period he had little affinity for, at the time of his death. He was the uncle of architect and Gothic revivalist Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.Delécluze’s art histories and theory reflect the neo-Platonic notions and idealism of Antoine Quatremère de Quincy, T.-B. Éméric-David and Victor Cousin (1792-1867). Like these authors, his concept of art assumed antique art as its standard. Painting’s goal was a moral elevation, and to that extent architecture and sculpture were lesser media than painting. Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was his ideal and the works of romantic artists such as Eugène Delacroix were deprecated. He termed writing of Stendhal, who was more accepting of the Romantics, “the Koran of the so-called Romantic artists.”
Selected Bibliography
[complete bibliography:] “Bibliographie.” Baschet, Robert. E.-J. Dele´cluze: te´moin de son temps 1781-1863. Paris: Boivin et Cie, 1942, pp. 443-496; “un discorso sul genio italiano per opera.” in, Zirardini, Giuseppe. L’Italia letteraria ed artistica: galleria di cento ritratti de’ poeti, prosatori, scultori, architetti e musici piu illustri, con cenni storici. Paris: Baudry, 1851; Louis David: son école et son temps: souvenirs. Paris: Didier, 1855; L’he´micycle du Palais des beaux-arts, peinture murale par Paul Delaroche et grave´e au burin par Henriquel-Dupont. Paris: Goupil et cie., 1857; Les Beaux-arts dans les deux mondes en 1855: Architecture, sculpture, peinture, gravure. Paris: Charpentier, 1856; Pre´cis d’un traite´ de peinture, contenant les principes du dessin, du modele´ et du coloris, et leur application à l’imitation des objets et à la composition; pre´ce´de´ d’une introduction historique, et suivi d’une biographie des plus ce´lèbres peintres, d’une bibliographie et d’un vocabulaire analytique des termes techniques. Paris: Au bureau de l’Encyclope´die portative, 1828; Précis historique sur les Beaux-Arts en France, volume 28 (1836) of, Duckett, William. Dictionnaire de la conservation et de la lecture. 52 vols. Paris: Belin-Mandar, 1832-39.
Sources
Dele´cluze, E´tienne Jean. Souvenirs de soixante anne´es. Paris: M. Levy, 1862; Baschet, Robert, ed. Journal de Dele´cluze: 1824 – 1828. Paris: Grasset, 1948; Baschet, Robert. E.-J. Dele´cluze, te´moin de son temps 1781-1863. Paris: Boivin et Cie, 1942; Boime, Albert. The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. London: Phaidon, 1971, pp. 89-91; Wakefield, David. “Stendhal and Delécluze at the Salon of 1824.” in, The Artist and the Writer in France: Essays in Honour of Jean Seznec. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 76-85; E. S. “Delécluze, Etienne-Jean.” Allgemeine Künstler-Lexikon (Saur) 25: 420-21.