This book, published to accompany the exhibition "A Passion for Delacroix" (Musée Delacroix, December 16, 2009 to April 5, 2010), presents a beautiful collection of Delacroix's drawings and sketches put together over several decades by the great American collector Karen B. Cohen. These works, destined for the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, will thus be temporarily returned to the walls of the studio they graced until 1864.

The interest of the collection lies in the fact that it is not limited to the most obvious aspects of Delacroix's genius, but covers every field: sketchbooks, large sheets, copies from antiquity or from Rubens, preparatory studies for his large mural decorations, human anatomy, wild animals fighting, cloudy Norman skies, and dazzling souvenirs of Morocco, providing an overview of the artist's career. The book is also an opportunity to enrich this extraordinary exhibition with comparison pieces from the Louvre or other French collections.