The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, after Delacroix

Description

Jean Messagier is one of France’s second generation of lyrical abstraction painters, a style which seeks to seduce viewers into a mood of contemplation. Messagier, who is both an artist and an art historian, frequently reinterprets paintings by masters that he admires. In this work, Messagier uses thinly applied swaths of paint and bold, almost frantic, gestural work to create his version of a masterpiece by Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863), "The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople on 12 April 1204" (1840), which hangs in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Although Delacroix’s canvas cites a specific historical event, he may have been more intrigued by the poetic truth of the Crusaders’ campaign entry rather than a literal representation of the historical involved. Delacroix used vivid color and lush sensuous forms to overwhelm viewers with a spectacle of splendor. It is this effect that Messagier successfully captures in "The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople, after Delacroix."
(A. Dixon, 20th Century Gallery installation, June 1999)