![]() ![]() What the visitor sees at the climax of their visit is not where most of Moreau’s work was produced (in poky garrets), but museum galleries in the guise of studios, in whose vast expanses he wanted posterity to imagine him. Gustave Moreau bequeathed his house as a museum in 1897, only two years after he had installed the studios upstairs. But these attractive interiors are also often contrivances. First opened to the public in 1932, its preservation was an early indication that artists’ studios were becoming part of the patrimony of Paris. There’s not much that is orgiastic about Delacroix’s last studio, on rue de Furstemberg: now a museum in a quiet corner of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, it retains the calm he valued in later life. Delacroix’s building had been a gymnasium, and Baudelaire imagined him locked in athletic combat with the obdurate canvas. Rather than the fashionable clutter, there reigned ‘a sober solemnity … a softened and subdued light illumined self-communion’. Rapture was only achieved through unrelenting physical effort, to the point of exhaustion, expressive less of passion than of rage. While other men craved privacy for vice, he wrote, Delacroix demanded it for ‘drunken orgies of work’. After much effort Baudelaire breached the threshold and was able to ‘penetrate the fortifications of that studio’. Yet this withdrawal only incited more publicity and pressure for access. The door was guarded by his ‘sentinel’ and housekeeper, Jenny Le Guillou. Delacroix ‘loved only his studio’, Maxime du Camp said, ‘and it was there he preferred to live.’ Delacroix once described it as a ‘crucible’, in which base substances underwent transformation and mysteries were revealed, ‘in which human genius, at the peak of its development, brings back into question everything that exists’.ĭelacroix’s move to rue Notre-Dame de Lorette in 1844 had heralded a period of increased seclusion. ‘I enjoy the last moments available to me to feel myself still in this place which has seen me for so many years and in which was spent the great part of the latter period of my youth.’ He had spent thirteen years there. ‘My ambition is bounded by these walls,’ he wrote in his journal. ![]() ![]() Doing nothing was unbearable for Vincent., Eugène Delacroix recorded his thoughts on seeing his studio on rue Notre-Dame de Lorette being dismantled. Painting was the best remedy for his psychiatric disorder, but he couldn’t work during attacks and indeed wasn’t allowed to. Sometimes, he painted the garden as a whole, sometimes he created close-ups of flowers, plants, and all kinds of small creatures he found there. He often worked there, producing the most beautiful drawings and paintings. Vincent’s studio overlooked the garden of the institution. He used another cell as his studio, and when he felt well enough, he was allowed to work outside the hospital. Initially, the rhythm and structure of life at the psychiatric hospital calmed Vincent down. ‘Mr Vincent was perfectly calm and explained his illness to the director himself.’ Dr Peyron entered Vincent’s information and his diagnosis in the admissions register. In May 1889, he voluntarily had himself admitted to the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy.Īccompanied by the Reverend Fréderic Salles, Vincent arrived at the psychiatric hospital on 8 May 1889. ![]() Vincent wanted to stay in Arles, but no longer dared to live on his own. But he knew things couldn’t go on like this. Vincent recovered, eventually, making a compulsory admission unnecessary. Vincent was very sad about this: ‘At least I have not harmed anyone and I am not dangerous to anyone,’ he told the Reverend Fréderic Salles. In the petition, they declared he was 'not of sound mind, and is the subject of fear of all the residents of the neighbourhood'. They started a petition to ensure that Vincent was locked up in a psychiatric hospital. His friends and family were worried, his neighbours had even become afraid of him. This affected not only him, but also the people around him. During the attacks, Vincent was utterly confused and had no idea what he was saying or doing. More crises and hospitalisations followed. Unfortunately, Vincent’s situation soon deteriorated again. ![]()
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