Frederic Chopin and Eugene Delacroix

Picture Fryderyk Chopin’s face. Chances are your mind’s eye is recalling a painting by Eugène Delacroix. There are actually plenty of Chopin portraits left to us, but it’s Delacroix’s image that demands attention. It captures “the image of the Romantic hero at its purest,” as art historian H.W. Janson put it. It’s also an image of Chopin as seen by one of his closest friends.

Delacroix was 12 years older than Chopin and already famous, thanks to his dynamic, richly colored painting “The Massacre of Chios” from 1824. It established Delacroix as a leading Romantic artist.

Chopin’s lover, George Sand, introduced the painter to the pianist not long before Delacroix began his iconic portrait of Chopin in 1838. (He included both Chopin and Sand in the painting, which he never completed, but after his death the two depictions were cut apart and sold separately.)

Chopin and Delacroix became fast friends. Frequenters of the Paris salons, they shared an interest in fashion, cultivating the image of a “dandy.” Most of all, they shared a passion for music. Sand once described Delacroix standing alongside the piano as Chopin played: “He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops. ‘Go on, go on,’ exclaims Delacroix, ‘That’s not the end!’ ‘It’s not even a beginning…. I’m trying to find the right color, but I can’t even get the form. You won’t find the one without the other….'”

Chopin was genuinely touched by his friend’s appreciation of his art. But, similar to his relationships with other composers, he did not seem capable of returning the favor. To quote Sand once more: “Chopin does not understand Delacroix. He has esteem, affection and respect for the man, but he detests the artist…. He has much wit, tact and malice, but he understands nothing of pictures or statuary.”

If Delacroix knew how Chopin felt, he didn’t let on. After the composer’s death in 1849, Delacroix inscribed a sketch with the words “Dear Chopin.” Delacroix’s final tribute to his friend, the great poet of the piano. [x]

Frederic Chopin and Robert Schumann

They were two pillars of the Romantic Generation, born three months and 400 miles apart. One was a Polish exile who made his fortune in Paris; the other, a German, eventually betrayed by his own imagination.

As a young music critic, Robert Schumann introduced the 21-year-old Chopin to Europe with the famous words, “Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!” Schumann was also the one who wrote, “The works of Chopin are cannons concealed amongst flowers.“ And this: “He plays just like he composes, in other words in his own unique way.”

That’s not to say Schumann was unfailingly positive about his Polish contemporary. He noted “blemishes” in Chopin’s Op. 25 Etudes, and famously wrote that in his Piano Sonata No. 2 Chopin had “yoked together his four maddest children.”

Chopin seems to have had far less to say about Schumann. For one thing, he was not a critic. For another, he did not admire Schumann (or many other composers, for that matter). Typical was his reaction to Schumann’s “Carnaval.” According to a second-hand account, Chopin told his publisher it was not music at all.

On the other hand, Chopin did dedicate his Ballade No. 2 to Schumann. And different though their music and their opinions of each other may have been, posterity has yoked Chopin and Schumann together. As critic Harold Schonberg put it, their innovations demonstrated that “a small but perfect form, one that captured and exploited a single idea, could be its own aesthetic justification.” [x]

Victorian Hairstyles for Women

Curly hair was meant to indicate a sweeter temperament, while straight-haired girls were considered reserved or even awkward. A woman’s hair was profoundly important to the overall effect she was able to make. Reaching the age when the hair could be put up was a rite of passage in her life, and often there were several interim stages, where a plait would be loosely put up with a ribbon, to signify the coming event. [x]

The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, 1888