The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan
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The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan is the title of three works by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix, produced in 1826, 1835 and 1856. They all show a scene from Lord Byron's 1813 poem The Giaour, with the Giaour ambushing and killing Hassan, the Pasha, before retiring to a monastery.[1] Giaour had fallen in love with Leila, a slave in Hassan's harem, but Hassan had discovered this and had her killed.
1826 version
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In 1824, Delacroix recorded in his diary his experience of reading The Giaour and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage,[3][4][5] probably in their 1819–1824 French translations by Amédée Pichot.[1] In 1826, Delacroix completed his first painting of the combat of Giaour and Hassan, showing the two on horseback, fighting in a gorge.[6] A Turk escorting Hassan kneels beside the Giaour's horse, trying to cut its legs with his knife.[6]
This version was acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1962.[7]
1835 version
[edit]Now in the Petit Palais in Paris, the second version.[1] Unlike the 1825 version, it focuses entirely on the two riders.[1][8]
1856 version
[edit]This work is a variant of the two previous versions.[9]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d (in French) Jean-Pierre Digard (ed.), Chevaux et cavaliers arabes dans les arts d'Orient et d'Occident, Éditions Gallimard et Institut du monde arabe, 27 November 2002, p. 261. (ISBN 2-07-011743-X)
- ^ "The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan".
- ^ Roger J. Porter, 'A serpent in the coils of a pythoness : conflicts and self-dramatization in Delacroix's journal', in Autobiography, Historiography, Rhetoric: A Festschrift in Honor of Frank Paul Bowman, Rodopi, 1994. (ISBN 9051835760 et 9789051835762)
- ^ (in French) Edmond Estève, Byron et le romantisme français, Slatkine, 1973, p. 196.
- ^ "Combat : The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan".
- ^ a b (in French) Chenou, Notice sur l'exposition des produits de l'industrie et des arts qui a eu lieu à Douai en 1827, Wagrez ainé, 1827, pp. 83–84.
- ^ Allard, Sébastien; Fabre, Côme; Korchane, Mehdi (2018). Delacroix. New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 279. ISBN 978-1-58839-651-8.
- ^ (in French) Yves Sjöberg, Pour comprendre Delacroix, vol. 3 de Collection Beauchesne, Éditions Beauchesne, 1963, p. 127
- ^ (in French) Alfred Robaut, Ernest Chesneau and Fernand Calmettes, L'œuvre complet de Eugène Delacroix: peintures, dessins, gravures, lithographies, Charavay Frères, 1885, p. 346
