The Natchez  1835

In 1823, Delacroix began to paint this scene from Chateaubriand’s widely read Romantic novel Atala, which narrates the fate of the Natchez tribe in the wake of the French and Indian War (1754–63). After putting the canvas aside for about a decade, he finally completed the picture for the Paris Salon of 1835. In the catalogue, Delacroix provided this explanatory note: "Flee...