Frau mit Papagei

Delacroix made this small nude in 1827, the same year he showed the enormous, scandalous Death of Sardanapalus at the Paris Salon. This one was never meant for a public wall. It is barely a foot wide, painted for a private collector, a woman stretched out on rich drapery, reaching up to stroke a parrot. The Orient is only suggested, in the hangings, a bracelet, the exotic bird. What really interested Delacroix was the colour, the warm flesh against the shimmer of the cloth, worked with the loose, glowing brush that set him apart from the cooler classical painters around him. It stayed in private hands for years before reaching the museum in Lyon.