Portrait de George Sand

In the autumn of 1834 the publisher Francois Buloz asked Delacroix for a portrait of George Sand to be engraved for his review. Sand was the pen name of the novelist Aurore Dupin, who wore men's clothes and cut her hair short, and that is how Delacroix painted her, in a dark coat with the collar open. She had just come out of a wrecked affair with the poet Alfred de Musset when the two met over this commission. It began a friendship that ran for the rest of Delacroix's life, and they wrote each other hundreds of letters. He left the small panel looking half-made, the face worked up and the coat barely more than a few brown passes.