Frederic Chopin

The composer Frederic Chopin gazes off with dark, intense eyes, his face emerging from loose, impassioned brushwork, the very image of the Romantic artist absorbed in feeling. Delacroix painted his close friend with deep sympathy; the work was originally part of a double portrait showing Chopin at the piano with the writer George Sand listening, but the canvas was later cut in two. Now in the Louvre, this surviving fragment is among the most moving artist's portraits of the age - one great Romantic capturing the soul of another in a few ardent strokes.