Eugene Delacroix: Thoughts of a young artist.

On the choice of occupation: "You remind me that I shall be returning to occupations that I enjoy. That's true: they are delightful, compared with those of a clerk, but for that very reason their charm loses its keenness and one becomes insensitive to it. The thing is a recreation in itself; you see what I'm trying to say. I don't deny that it is very boring to be concerned, as you say, with writs, notifications and injunctions. But unfortunately it's the lot of the vast majority of men to devote their lives to things that mean nothing to them and that have nothing in common with their hearts and minds."

On growing older: "Passionate hearts, and above all those that are filled with the love of one or other of those arts that are the soul's sustenance, souls such as these do not grow old and dessicated."

On writing letters: "Truly, the way people write is a touchstone. The most affected man involuntarily shows himself in his true colours, while another who may seem cold in ordinary life reveals springs of ardent feeling in his letters."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix

"...Eugène Delacroix was born on 26 April 1798 at Charenton-Saint-Maurice in Île-de-France, near Paris. His mother was named Victoire, daughter of the cabinet-maker Jean-François Oeben. He had three much older siblings. Charles-Henri Delacroix (1779–1845) rose to the rank of General in the Napoleonic army. Henriette (1780–1827) married the diplomat Raymond de Verninac Saint-Maur (1762–1822). Henri was born six years later. He was killed at the Battle of Friedland on 14 June 1807.[5]

There is reason to believe that Eugène's father, Charles-François Delacroix, was infertile at the time of Eugène's conception and that his real father was Talleyrand, who was a friend of the family and successor of Charles Delacroix as Minister of Foreign Affairs, and whom the adult Eugène resembled in appearance and character.[6] Throughout his career as a painter, he was protected by Talleyrand, who served successively the Restoration and king Louis-Philippe, and ultimately as ambassador of France in Great Britain, and later by Talleyrand's grandson, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph, duc de Morny, half-brother of Napoleon III and speaker of the French House of Commons. His presumed father, Charles Delacroix, died in 1805, and his mother in 1814, leaving 16-year-old Eugène an orphan.

His early education was at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, and at the Lycée Pierre Corneille in Rouen[7] where he steeped himself in the classics and won awards for drawing. In 1815 he began his training with Pierre-Narcisse Guérin in the neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis David. An early church commission, The Virgin of the Harvest (1819), displays a Raphael-esque influence, but another such commission, The Virgin of the Sacred Heart (1821), evidences a freer interpretation.[8] It precedes the influence of the more colourful and rich style of the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), and fellow French artist Théodore Géricault (1791–1824), whose works marked an introduction to Romanticism in art...."

From "Eugene Delacroix: Selected Letters, 1813-1863 (Artworks) Paperback, by Eugene Delacroix (Author), Jean Stewart (Editor), John Russell (Contributor)

http://www.amazon.com/Eugene-Delacroix-Selected-1813-1863-Artworks/dp/B008SLJ4I2