Two Horses Fighting in a Stormy Landscape

c. 1828

With its freely applied brushstrokes and stormy sky, this image of fighting horses has an ominous, dreamlike character. Delacroix, who is among the most significant artists associated with the Romantic movement in early nineteenth-century European art, sometimes used animals in his paintings to evoke elemental aspects of human nature. Here, the halo effect of the pale horse’s mane and the violence of the dark horse’s lunge evoke a conflict between the forces of good and evil.

Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	14 1/2 x 18 1/16 in. (36.8 x 45.9 cm)
Object Number	2006.1
Acquisition	Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts. Gift of Halleck and Sarah Barney Lefferts (by exchange), 2006
Status	On View

Image Caption

Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix, Two Horses Fighting in a Stormy Landscape, c. 1828, oil on canvas. Clark Art Institute, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts gift of Halleck and Sarah Barney Lefferts by exchange, 2006.1

Select Bibliography

Goldstein, Doris. "100 Top Treasures" Art and America. 11/2006:70. Johnson, Lee. The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix. Oxford. 1981. Robaut, Alfred. L'oeuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix. Paris: Charavay. 1885. . Chevaux et cavalier. Galerie Charpentier, Paris. 1948. . Eugène Delacroix. École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. 1885. Georgel, P. and L. Rossi Bortolatto. Tout l'oeuvre peint d'Euène Delacroix. Paris. 1975. . Paisir de France. Paris. 1948. Lees, Sarah, ed. Nineteenth-Century European Paintings at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Williamstown, MA: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; New Haven and London: distributed by Yale University Press, 2012.

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Provenance

The artist, his posthumous sale, Drouot, Paris, 17–19 Feb. 1864, no. 81, as Deux chevaux jouant dans la campagne, sold to Verdé-Delisle; Paul Verdé-Delisle, Paris (from 1864); Pierre Verdé-Delisle, his grandson, by descent (by 1929–d. about 1960); nephew of Pierre Verdé-Delisle (after 1960); [Étienne Breton, Paris, sold to the Clark, 2006]; Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2006.