A Choral Group of Five

A Choral Group of Five is a significant drawing created by the French Romantic master Eugène Delacroix in 1840. This work showcases Delacroix’s facility with fluid media, executed using brush and black and brown wash over a foundational layer of graphite. The technique allows the artist to capture the group with immediacy and emotional texture. The rapid application of the washes creates subtle variations in shadow and depth, defining the figures’ forms and expressions while prioritizing the overall visual energy—a hallmark of Delacroix’s expressive draftsmanship.

The subject focuses on five figures grouped tightly together, presumably vocalists engrossed in a score or rehearsal. Though Delacroix is renowned for his large-scale historical and literary canvases, his extensive body of preparatory drawings and genre studies, like this one, provided him the space to explore intimate compositional challenges and light effects. The sketch exemplifies the spontaneous freedom championed by the Romantic movement during its peak, providing critical insight into the artist’s working methods.

This drawing is preserved in the renowned collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it serves as a key example of early nineteenth-century French drawing technique. As a study of composition and gesture, the piece remains highly valued by scholars and enthusiasts. Given the age and classification of this work, high-quality images of A Choral Group of Five are often found circulating in the public domain, allowing collectors and students to obtain art prints of this seminal work by Delacroix for closer examination.