Head of a Woman

Eugène Delacroix painted this Head of a Woman in 1824, the same year he exhibited The Massacre at Chios at the Salon and established himself as the leading voice of French Romanticism. This intimate study demonstrates Delacroix's commitment to painting from the model even amid his major exhibition ambitions. His practice of making oil studies of heads and figures from life provided a reservoir of observed reality that he drew upon for his large compositions, and these studies are now prized for their immediacy and painterly vitality.

The study reveals Delacroix's vigorous, direct painting technique, with visible brushstrokes building the form through color rather than line. The warm flesh tones are set against a neutral background with confident, rapid execution that captures the model's features with remarkable economy, demonstrating the coloristic fluency that distinguished Delacroix from the linear tradition of Ingres.