Eugène Delacroix, the leader of the Romantic Movement was born on April 26 in 1798. His use of color and light was unnerving to the French artists when he first began but he went on to inspire the Impressionists.
Born to Victoire Œben who came from a line of cabinetmakers on both sides of her family. Her father Jean-Francois Œben was the favorite cabinetmaker to Louis XV, XVI, and Marie Antoinette. Lawyer and politician Charles Delacroix moved the family from outside of Paris to Bordeaux where he served as Prefect until his early death in 1805.
Eugène, the family's fourth child, would be just five when he lost his father. Older sister Henriette was born in 1782, brother Charles Henri was born in 1779, and another brother, Henri, was killed at 23 in Napoleon’s Battle of Friedland. After the early death of his father young Eugène and his mother moved to Paris to live with his sister who had married Raymond de Verninac, a Swedish diplomat who later sat for Jacques-Louis David.
Eugène attended the Lycee Imperial in Paris, now named the Lycee Louis-le-Grand in the Latin Quarter. His cousin and artist Henri Riesener introduced him to Neo-classical artist Pierre Narcisse Guerin in 1815 who he began to study under. Alongside artists Ary & Henry Scheffer, Léon Cogniet and Théodore Géricault. The next year in March 1816 he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, still studying under Guerin and also as a copiest in the Musée du Louvre.
Not the most patient of artists when it came time to wait for the paint to dry before applying the varnish he was often criticized by most of the serious artists of the time. In 1825 a visit to England opened up his creativity with the inspiration of the stage and the written word. Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Faust’s Goethe as well as Lord Byron found their way into his art and even gave him opportunities to illustrate books and sheet music.
While he may have been trained by a Neo-Classical artist he retained little of the values of the style and forged his own path that was also inspired by Géricault, the first king of the Romantic period.
When Delacroix saw Géricault’s masterpiece Raft of the Medus and even posed for one of the figures he ran through the streets yelling in excitement at what he had seen. It was 1918 and at just 20 years old he had a long career ahead of him. Ingres who was holding the reins of the Academy tightly clashed with Delacroix and these artists with these nutty ideas that were starting to spread through Paris. Although Romanticism was seen long ago in the 16th century and influenced by Ruebens.
Like Géricault, Delacroix was painting horses in the 1920s although his paintings of large wild cats are more well-known now. In 1824 his first painting to be submitted to the Salon was a scene of the April 1822 Scene of the Massacre of Scio of the Turks killing the inhabitants of Scio and a major moment in the fight for Greek independence. Since he had not been there he spent his time in the National Library researching Greek costumes to set the scene as accurately as possible.
His most recognized painting is La Liberté Guidant le Peuple, painted in 1830 for the Salon of 1831 and is now proudly on display in the Musée du Louvre. But let’s rewind quite a bit and see what this painting is all about.
The timeline of France is marked by more than one Revolution. Most know of the big one that resulted in the beheading of Marie Antoinette & Louis XVI which began in 1789. Four decades later the people would rise up again against the brother of Louis XVI. Charles X had taken the throne after the death of his brother Louis XVIII on September 16, 1824. Things would get worse for Charles in 1830 when on March 18 he dissolved the Parliament and as the press spoke up against him he censored them on July 25.
On Monday, July 26 more than 50 newspapers were forced to stop the presses. The next morning the owners gathered and vowed to fight back. As the police arrived at the offices of the newspapers to take their presses and newspapers they found the workers waiting and screaming. By the afternoon one by one the editors, owners, journalists, and printers began to march into the center of Paris. The Place Vendome, Place de la Bastille, and the Place du Carrousel saw large crowds of outraged citizens whom the police were no match for.
On July 28 in front of the Hotel de Ville, the Garde Royal were quickly outnumbered. The angry crowd gathered every cobblestone and projectile to build barricades and also tossed them at the police force. It was at this moment that 32-year-old Eugene Delacroix was just down the way at his studio at 15 Quai Voltaire and was moved to capture this penultimate moment of the Trois Glorieuses Jours.
Delacroix’s good friend Théodore Gericault just three years earlier painted the monument Raft of the Medusa. The current event painting won plenty of fans and skeptics. History paintings in the lexicon of art were deemed the pinnacle of all art styles but rarely were painted so close to the moment of the event. Delacroix said “If I can’t fight for my country, I will paint for it”, and he did just that.
For three months he sketched and painted from September 20 to mid-December 1830. An astonishingly quick period to create such a large piece and brought the entire moment to life. Displayed in the Salon of 1831, under the title Scenes de Barricades, it was met with a wide mix of criticism. Many thought the allegorical woman was dirty, displaying her hairy armpit and filthy feet while the nude man and his visible pubic hair were right at eye level.
The entire scene was one of the lower and upper classes as well as men of all ages united. This was exactly why the Three-day Revolution is marked as such a defining moment in French history as told in art and also remembered by the July Column in the Place de la Bastille. It was the mix of all classes that stood up against the monarchy. While the first Revolution began with the poor vs the monarchy, the July Revolution saw all classes in arms together.
At the Salon of 1831, the painting was purchased by the State for 3000 francs but it was only briefly displayed in the Musée du Luxembourg. Adolphe Thiers was worried it would inspire another uprising and had it removed and returned to Delacroix in 1832. The painting hid away in the Val d’Oise with his aunt Felicité Riesener until 1848 when it returned to the Luxembourg but hidden away until the 1855 Universal Exhibition when he also had to darken her cap. Special permission had to be obtained for the exhibition and after the painting went back into storage. In 1863 when it was finally returned to the public it was too late for the master to see it hung, the father of the Romantic movement was gone. In 1874 it finally moved to the Salle Mollier of the Louvre where you can still see it today.
One day another artist, Frederic Bartholdi visited the Louvre and saw our lovely Delacroix Liberty which inspired the design of his very own. Today Delacroix’s well-known painting has been copied onto clothes, reimagined in billboards, inspired other artists to adopt it as their own, and projected onto the side of a plane, and even my beloved Swatch watch. She is brought out every 14 juillet and any other moment of immense French pride and I always smile when I see her.
In 1832, Delacroix was one of the very few artists invited to visit Morocco and Northern Africa where he had a chance to see firsthand the Orient that would inspire his next period. Most artists were recreating the stories on canvas without every setting foot on the continent but Delacroix was able to even be invited into a harem to sketch the scene few men were able to see. He filed numerous journals and created over 80 paintings including the Women of Algiers in the Apartment that hangs in the Louvre. Picasso went on to coping it numerous times.
Well known for his large murals in churches, and government buildings he believed artists should devote their time to the large tableaux in public places as that was the way to be remembered. His frescos would be added to the Assemblie National, Palais du Luxembourg, and of course Eglise Saint Sulpice.
In 1850 architect Félix Duban who was restoring the Galerie d’Apollon asked Delacroix to paint the center of this grand room. At the time, the only way for an artist to hang in the Louvre was ten years after their death. Delacroix loved the Louvre and dreamed of seeing his paintings hung there; with the paintings of the Galerie d’Apollon, he would fulfill that wish. Friend and author Charles Baudelaire said, “Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible” after seeing his finished painting on the ceiling in the Louvre.
In 1849 he was commissioned to paint the baptismal chapel of Saint Sulpice, before he even started it was changed to the Chapel of the Angels, and given free rein to paint anything he wanted as long as it included angels. The two frescos were painted with the addition of wax added in so that the colors would remain vibrant even a hundred years later. On the left of the chapel Jacob Wrestling the Angel and on the right is Heliodore Expelled from the Temple each was painted directly on the wall and took over ten years to complete from the time it was commissioned. High above is Saint Michel painted on a canvas and added when the frescos were complete.
Delacroix was never married but he did have a few relationships with married women over the years, many of which were also artists including Eugenie Daltin and Elisa Boulanger. He did have a loyal companion and friend Jenny Le Guillon who he hired in 1835 and she would remain with him until the end of his life. Cooking, cleaning, and caring for the artist who was happiest in front of his easel.
While painting the frescoes of Saint Sulpice he sent a letter to a friend saying this project would kill him. Sadly he would die after a long illness within two years on August 13, 1863. His funeral was held on 17 August at the St-Germain des Pres church and buried at Père-Lachaise.
In his will he asked to be buried in the heights of Père-Lachaise in a place somewhat removed, “there will be neither emblem, bust or statue”. The subtle dark volcanic tomb in the shape of a sarcophagus, like the one of Scipio the Roman general and bearing only his name, is understated much like the man.
In the Jardin du Luxembourg under the shade of the trees pull up one of those green chairs to Jules Dalou’s Monument a Eugene Delacroix dedicated by his supporters in 1890. Topped with a bust of the great artist a short walk from his beautiful work in Saint Sulpice.
