Christ on the Sea of Galilee

Louis-Napoleon had made himself emperor in December 1852, and part of the new regime's appeal was a loud return to the Church, so religious pictures sold. Delacroix, in his mid-fifties, was spending his working days on an enormous ceiling for the Paris city hall, and around them he took up this subject again for the private market, painting it at least half a dozen times across the 1840s and 50s. The story is a squall on the Sea of Galilee, the disciples rowing hard, Christ asleep in the stern. The city hall ceiling burned with the building in 1871. This canvas, 60 by 73 centimetres, was bought in April 1950 by Emil Buehrle, a Zurich arms manufacturer, and his collection now hangs in the Kunsthaus Zuerich.