Delacroix the elder (also known as Delacroix de Contaut) died at Bordeaux when Eugène was seven years of age, and his mother returned to Paris and placed him in the Lycée Napoléon. Afterwards, on his determining to be a painter, he entered the atelier of Baron Guérin, who affected to treat him as an amateur. His fellow-pupil was Ary Scheffer, who was alike by temperament and antecedents the opposite of the bizarre Delacroix, and the two remained antagonistic to the end of life. Delacroix’s acknowledged power and yet want of success with artists and critics—Thiers being his only advocate—perhaps mainly resulted from his bravura and rude dash in the use of the brush, at a time when smooth roundness of surface was general. His first important picture, “Dante and Virgil,” was painted in his own studio; and when Guérin went to see it he flew into a passion, and told him his picture was absurd, detestable, exaggerated. “Why ask me to come and see this? You knew what I must say.” Yet his work was received at the Salon, and produced an enthusiasm of debate (1822). Some said Géricault had worked on it, but all treated it with respect. Still in private his position, even after the larger tragic picture, the “Massacre of Chios,” had been deposited in the Luxembourg by the government (1824), became that of an Ishmaelite. The war for the freedom of Greece then going on moved him deeply, and his next two pictures—“Marino Faliero Decapitated on the Giant’s Staircase of the Ducal Palace” (which has always remained a European success), and “Greece Lamenting on the Ruins of Missolonghi”—with many smaller works, were exhibited for the benefit of the patriots in 1826. This exhibition was much visited by the public, and next year he produced another of his important works, “Sardanapalus,” from Byron’s drama. After this, he says, “I became the abomination of painting, I was refused water and salt,”—but, he adds with singularly happy naïveté, “J’étais enchanté de moi-même!” The patrimony he inherited, or perhaps it should be said, what remained of it, was 10,000 livres de rente, and with economy he lived on this, and continued the expensive process of painting large historical pictures. In 1831 he reappeared in the Salon with six works, and immediately after left for Morocco, where he found much congenial matter. Delacroix never went to Italy; he refused to go on principle, lest the old masters, either in spirit or manner, should impair his originality and self-dependence. His greatest admiration in literature was the poetry of Byron; Shakespeare also attracted him for tragic inspirations; and of course classic subjects had their turn of his easel.
He continued his work indefatigably, having his pictures very seldom favourably received at the Salon. These were sometimes very large, full of incidents, with many figures. “Drawing of Lots in the Boat at Sea,” from Byron’s Don Juan, and the “Taking of Constantinople by the Christians” were of that character, and the former was one of his noblest creations. In 1845 he was employed to decorate the library of the Luxembourg, that of the chamber of deputies in 1847, the ceiling of the gallery of Apollo in the Louvre in 1849 and that of the Salon de la Paix in the hôtel de ville in 1853. He died on the 13th of August 1863, and in August 1864 an exhibition of his works was opened on the Boulevard des Italiens. It contained 174 pictures, many of them of large dimensions, and 303 drawings, showing immense perseverance as well as energy and versatility. As a colourist, and a romantic painter, he now ranks among the greatest of French artists.
See also A. Robaut, Delacroix (1885); E. Dargenty, Delacroix par lui-même (1885); G. Moreau, Delacroix et son œuvre (1893); Dorothy Bussy, Eugène Delacroix (1907).
DE LA GARDIE, MAGNUS GABRIEL, Count (1622-1686), Swedish statesman, the best-known member of an ancient family of French origin (the D’Escouperies of Languedoc) which had been settled in Sweden since the 14th century. After a careful education, completed by the usual grand tour, Magnus learned the art of war under Gustavus Horn, and during the reign of Christina (1644-1654), whose prime favourite he became, though the liaison was innocent enough, he was raised to the highest offices in the state and loaded with distinctions. In 1646 he was sent at the head of an extraordinary mission to France, and on his return married the queen’s cousin Marie Euphrosyne of Zweibrücken, who, being but a poor princess, benefited greatly by her wedding with the richest of the Swedish magnates. Immediately afterwards, De la Gardie was made a senator, governor-general of Saxony during the last stages of the Thirty Years’ War, and, in 1652, lord high treasurer. In 1653 he fell into disgrace and had to withdraw from court. During the reign of Charles X. (1654-1660) he was employed in the Baltic provinces both as a civilian and a soldier, although in the latter capacity he gave the martial king but little satisfaction. Charles X. nevertheless, in his last will, appointed De la Gardie grand-chancellor and a member of the council of regency which ruled Sweden during the minority of Charles XI. (1660-1672). During this period De la Gardie was the ruling spirit of the government and represented the party of warlike adventure as opposed to the party of peace and economy led by Counts Bonde and Brahe (qq.v.). After a severe struggle De la Gardie’s party finally prevailed, and its triumph was marked by that general decline of personal and political morality which has given to this regency its unenviable reputation. It was De la Gardie who first made Sweden the obsequious hireling of the foreign power which had the longest purse. The beginning of this shameful “subsidy policy” was the treaty of Fontainebleau, 1661, by a secret paragraph of which Sweden, in exchange for a considerable sum of money, undertook to support the French candidate on the first vacancy of the Polish throne. It was not, however, till the 14th of April 1672 that Sweden, by the treaty of Stockholm, became a regular “mercenarius Galliae,” pledging herself, in return for 400,000 écus per annum in peace and 600,000 in war time, to attack with 16,000 men those German princes who might be disposed to assist Holland. The early disasters of the unlucky war of 1675-1679 were rightly attributed to the carelessness, extravagance, procrastination and general incompetence of De la Gardie and his high aristocratic colleagues. In 1675 a special commission was appointed to inquire into their conduct, and on the 27th of May 1682 it decided that the regents and the senate were solely responsible for dilapidations of the realm, the compensation due by them to the crown being assessed at 4,000,000 daler or £500,000. De la Gardie was treated with relative leniency, but he “received permission to retire to his estates for the rest of his life” and died there in comparative poverty, a mere shadow of his former magnificent self. The best sides of his character were his brilliant social gifts and his intense devotion to literature and art.
See Martin Veibull, Sveriges Storhetstid (Stockholm, 1881); Sv. Hist. iv.; Robert Nisbet Bain, Scandinavia (Cambridge, 1905).
(R. N. B.)
DELAGOA BAY (Port. for the bay “of the lagoon”), an inlet of the Indian Ocean on the east coast of South Africa, between 25° 40′ and 26° 20′ S., with a length from north to south of over 70 m. and a breadth of about 20 m. The bay is the northern termination of the series of lagoons which line the coast from Saint Lucia Bay. The opening is toward the N.E. The southern part of the bay is formed by a peninsula, called the Inyak peninsula, which on its inner or western side affords safe anchorage. At its N.W. point is Port Melville. North of the peninsula is Inyak Island, and beyond it a smaller island known as Elephant’s Island.
In spite of a bar at the entrance and a number of shallows within, Delagoa Bay forms a valuable harbour, accessible to large vessels at all seasons of the year. The surrounding country is low and very unhealthy, but the island of Inyak has a height of 240 ft., and is used as a sanatorium. A river 12 to 18 ft. deep, known as the Manhissa or Komati, enters the bay at its northern end; several smaller streams, the Matolla, the Umbelozi, and the Tembi, from the Lebombo Mountains, meet towards the middle of the bay in the estuary called by the Portuguese the Espirito Santo, but generally known as the English river; and the Maputa, which has its headwaters in the Drakensberg, enters in the south, as also does the Umfusi river. These rivers are the haunts of the hippopotamus and the crocodile.