by Jon Lackman | 5 September 2006 | Modern
We take belated notice of the death of Delacroix scholar Lee Johnson, reported here in the Times of London: “He produced several monographs, exhibitions and dozens of articles, most of which can be seen in retrospect as stages in the formation of his formidable catalogue raisonné of Delacroix’s work which appeared in seven volumes between 1981 and 2002 … For some time Johnson sensed that French scholars did not always give his scholarship its due. It must be said that the dry wit which made him perfect company and a wonderful host sometimes pricked the sensibilities of fellow scholars. He did not like carelessness and he had no time for much of the speculative writing of amateur psychologists, deconstuctionists and theorists of most kinds, whom he qualified as ‘dishonest’. “
