Christ on the Sea of Galilee

1854

Oil on canvas, 59.8 × 73.3 cm. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Wind and waves toss a small boat while frightened disciples fight the sail and their teacher sleeps, a story told in the Gospels. Religious subjects took up much of Delacroix's late career.

It belongs to a group of versions from 1853–54, a time when French Catholic taste favored this episode.
Look at the haloed figure asleep at the left, the only still point in a boat heeled over by the swell.
Signed at the lower right with his name and the short date 54.
The critic Roger Kimball, in a 1998 lecture at the New York Studio School, links the stormy sky in this series to the disciples' crisis of faith. Sea and clouds set the emotional pitch.
William T. Walters bought it through the agent George A. Lucas in 1886; it reached the museum with his son Henry's bequest in 1931.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain (PD-Art)