Delacroix’s journal is one of the great artist’s notebooks.

It is not a tidy memoir, but a long-running record of work, appetite, irritation, discipline, beauty, illness, reading, weather, money, salons, commissions, friends, enemies and the daily mess of making art. He writes on painting, music, literature, nature, travel, politics and the problem of turning sensation into form without killing it on the table.

This Phaidon selection gathers entries from 1822 to 1863, following Delacroix from early ambition through to late reflection. It is especially good for readers interested in Romanticism, nineteenth-century art, the private mechanics of taste, or the strangely modern pleasure of watching a brilliant person complain, observe, contradict himself, and then produce something magnificent anyway. Less “great man of history,” more restless mind with a paintbrush and a headache.

Phaidon Press paperback, third edition, 2004 reprint. Edited and introduced by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton. Very good condition, with light general shelf and handling wear.