Christ Asleep during the Tempest

Delacroix painted this small storm in 1853, in his mid-50s, the ageing champion of French Romantic painting, for whom colour did the work that clean drawing did for his rivals. He took the Gospel episode of Christ asleep in a boat while a squall terrifies the disciples, and he came back to it at least six times. Christ lies calm in the stern while the little bark pitches on green and violet water under a bruised sky, the whole thing built from restless flecks of colour rather than smooth finish. Years later, in 1886, the young Van Gogh saw this version in Paris and wrote to his brother about the boat, singling out its blue and green and the touch of lemon yellow around Christ's halo.