View of the mountains in Eaux-Bonnes

In 1845, Delacroix spent the Summer months in the spa town of Eaux-Bonnes in the Pyrenees, enjoying walks in the mountainous surroundings and producing a series of wonderfully evocative landscapes as well as figure and costume studies. In addition to an intact sketchbook, recently acquired by the Louvre (inv. RF 52997; see M.-P. Salé, Eugène Delacroix, Carnet ‘des Pyrénées’, Paris, 2016), a number of loose sheets survive, of which the present work is an attractive example. Others can also be found at the Louvre (see M. Sérullaz, Musée du Louvre, Cabinet des dessins. Inventaire général des dessins. École française. Dessins d’Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863, Paris, 1984, I, nos. 654-659, 1186-1192, ill.); one is a landscape given in 2002 to the Morgan Library and Museum in honor of Eugene Victor Thaw (inv. 2002.2; see Salé, op. cit., I, p. 21, fig. 11; for more sheets from this group in public and private collections, see ibid., pp. 72-73, n. 39).