Frédéric Chopin

In 1838 Delacroix set out to paint two of his closest friends together. Frédéric Chopin at the piano, and beside him the writer George Sand, listening, a cigar in her hand. The couple had just become lovers, and that winter they would leave for the island of Majorca. Delacroix never finished the picture. It stayed in his studio until he died in 1863, and soon after, someone cut the canvas in two, most likely to sell a pair of portraits for more than a single one would fetch. Sand's half drifted to a museum outside Copenhagen. Chopin's came to the Louvre. What survives here is only his head, tilted and absorbed, his eyes fixed on something past the edge of the frame. The piano he was leaning toward was trimmed away with the rest.