Os Natchez

Delacroix began this around 1823, then set the canvas aside for roughly a decade before finishing it for the Paris Salon of 1835. The subject comes from a hugely popular novel of the day, Chateaubriand's Atala, and from the history behind it, the near-destruction of the Natchez people of the lower Mississippi by French colonial forces in the 1730s. Delacroix paints a young couple who have fled up the river, the last of their nation. The woman has just given birth on the bank, and the father cradles the newborn as both parents look down at the child. Around them Delacroix lingers on the tools and ornaments they carried, even while the story he illustrates has left them with almost nothing.