George Sand's Garden at Nohant

During the early 1840s Eugene Delacroix, best known for his stormy scenes of battle and revolt, spent several summers in the calm of central France, at Nohant, the country house of his friend the novelist Aurore Dudevant, who published under the man's name George Sand. In those same years she shared the house with the composer Frederic Chopin, whose piano would have carried through the rooms while Delacroix set up outdoors. This shaded corner of the garden, with its simple stone table under the trees, is one of the very few pure landscapes he ever made. There is no drama in it, no lions and no dying heroes, only green light on an ordinary afternoon. He painted it as a gift for his hostess and never put it on public show.