Eugène Delacroix, et al.

Angelica and the wounded Medoro circa 1860

For all his modernity and originality, Picasso continually looked to artists of the past, especially later in his career when he made a series of paintings that re-worked French and Spanish masterpieces, including Delacroix’s 1834 work The women of Algiers, which is in the Musée du Louvre. Picasso’s versions played upon Delacroix’s exuberant colour and expressive, painterly handling. In 1947, the director of the museums of France took the radical step of exhibiting Picasso’s works next to some of the old masters in the Louvre for the purpose of comparison. When Picasso saw his work next to Delacroix’s, he cheekily declared, ‘That bastard. He’s really good.’

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