Eugene Delacroix

 

 

            Eugene Delacroix, who lived from 1798-1863, was the leader of the Romantic movement in French painting.  His work is typified by bold colors, bold brushwork, and very emotional themes.  He was born the fourth child of Charles Delacroix, Foreign Minister under the Directory and Prefecture of Marseilles.  Orphaned by the age of 16, he began his artistic training in 1816.  He became a master of tragic subjects, and his paintings show intense feeling unknown in the works of his time.  Many classical painters condemned his work, because he disregarded established traditions. 

 

The Barque of Dante(1822)

            This painting was the first success achieved by the artist.  It was based on an episode in Dante’s poem Inferno, and shows Dante and the Roman poet Virgil crossing a lake in hell as the drowning damned clutch at their boat. A technique used in this work—many unblended colors forming what at a distance looks like a unified whole—would later be used by the impressionists.

 

 

The Massacre at Chios (1824)

            This work uses strong emotion and vivid colors to depict an incident in which 20,000 Greeks were killed by the Turks on the island of Chios.  It is a person reactions to the genocide practiced by Sublime Porte, the Turkish leader.

 

The Death of Sardanapal (1827)

            In this work, we see great similarity with the themes of The Massacre At Chios.Charles Baudelaire, an unconditional admirer, puts it thus in his Eugene Delacroix, Work and Life: Everywhere we see " ... desolation, massacres and fire, everything testifies to the eternal and incorrigible barbarity of mankind. Smoke rises from cities razed to the ground, the throats of victims are cut, women are raped, and children hurled beneath horses' hooves or pierced by the daggers of their raving mothers; this entire corpus is a hymn in praise of suffering inevitable and unrelieved".

 

 

Liberty Leading the People (1830)

            The French revolution of 1830 against Charles X (King of France from 1824-1830) inspired this famous painting, the last of Delacroix’s paintings that fully embodied the romantic ideal.  As a result of this uprising, the new ‘citizen king’ Louis Phillippe was elected and his power was restricted.  Delacroix wrote to his brother, “Since I have not fought and conquered for the fatherland, I can at least paint on its behalf.”  The new king Louis-Phillippe purchased the work for 3,000 francs, but never exhibited it.

 

 

            The boy with the pistols on the right of Liberty was perhaps the inspiration for the character of Gavroche in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. 

 

 

            The man wearing a top hat on the left of Liberty is Delacroix himself, perhaps presented in art fighting for France as Delacroix wished he could have done in real life.

 

Algerian Women in Their Apartments
1834

            After he took a trip to Morocco in 1832, Delacroix’s subjects often dealt with lion hunts, harem subjects, and other aspects of Arab life. 

Self- Portrait

1837

Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople on 12 April 1204
1840

 

 

The Sea of Galilee(1854)

 

 

Sources

“Eugene Delacroix, Biography”, Olga’s Gallery. www.abcgallery.com/D/delacroix/delacroixbio.html

“Delacroix, Eugene,” WebMuseum, Paris. http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/delacroix/

“Delacroix, Ferdinand Victor Eugene,” World Book Encyclopedia, Chicago:  Field Enterprises Educational Corporation

            1967.

“Eugene Delacroix,” Hardin Artchive, http://artchive.com/artchive/D/delacroix.html