Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix (born April 26, 1798, Charenton–Saint-Maurice, France—died August 13, 1863, Paris) was one of the greatest French Romantic painters, whose use of colour was influential in the development of both Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. His inspiration came chiefly from historical or contemporary events or literature, and a visit to Morocco in 1832 provided him with further subjects.

Early life

Delacroix was the fourth child of Victoire Oeben, a descendant of the Oeben-Riesener family, which had created furniture for the French king and court in the 17th and 18th centuries, and of Charles Delacroix, a government official, who was ambassador to Holland in 1798 and who died in 1805 while prefect of Bordeaux. One theory attributes Eugène’s true paternity to the statesman Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. This belief is strengthened both by Delacroix’s strong physical resemblance to Talleyrand and by the fact that the future painter would consistently receive important patronage from the French government despite the nonconformist character of his art.

Whatever the truth of his parentage, Delacroix’s childhood was untroubled, and he would always maintain great affection and admiration for his father. Up to age 17 he pursued classical studies. Within his distinguished and artistic family, he formed a passion for music and the theatre. In 1815 he became the pupil of a renowned academic painter, Pierre-Narcisse, Baron Guérin. He knew the historical painter Antoine-Jean Gros, and, as a young man, he visited the salon of the royalist and painter Baron François Gérard. As early as 1822 he received the backing of Adolphe Thiers, the statesman and historian who, as interior minister in the 1830s, put Delacroix in charge of architectural decorations.

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A child of his century, Delacroix was affected by the Romanticism of the painter Théodore Géricault and of friends such as the English painter Richard Parkes Bonington, the Polish-born composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin, and the French writer George Sand. He did not, however, take part in the battles of the Romantic movement waged by Victor Hugo, Hector Berlioz, and others.

Development of mature style

Delacroix’s debut at the Paris Salon of 1822, in which he exhibited his first masterpiece, Dante and Virgil in Hell, is one of the landmarks in the development of French 19th-century Romantic painting. Dante and Virgil in Hell was inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, but its tragic feeling and the powerful modeling of its figures are reminiscent of Michelangelo, and its rich colour shows the influence of Peter Paul Rubens. Among Delacroix’s contemporaries, Géricault, who was the young painter’s best friend until his sudden death in 1824, was also important.

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In his subsequent choice of subjects, Delacroix showed an affinity with Lord Byron and other Romantic poets of his time, and he also drew subjects from Dante, William Shakespeare, and medieval history. In 1824, however, he exhibited at the Salon the Massacre at Chios, a large canvas depicting the dramatic contemporary massacre of Greeks by Turks on the island of Chios. The nature of his talent is evident in the unity he achieved in his expression of the haughty pride of the conquerors, the horror as well as despair of the Greeks, and the splendour of a vast sky.

Delacroix had already become interested in the delicate technique of his English painter friends Richard Parkes Bonington and the Fielding brothers (Thales, Copley, Theodore, and Newton), and he also admired the English landscapes of John Constable, which were exhibited in Paris in 1824. Indeed, the luminous tonalities evident in the Massacre at Chios are said to have been inspired by Constable’s style. To round out his technical and cultural education, Delacroix left for London in 1825. There his technique, developed by contact with J.M.W. Turner, Constable, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, acquired the freedom and suppleness that until then he had been admiring in Rubens and striving to achieve for himself.

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Between 1827 and 1832 Delacroix produced masterpieces in quick succession. Chief among them is The Death of Sardanapalus (1826–27), a violent and voluptuous Byronic subject in which women, enslaved persons, animals, jewels, and rich fabrics are combined in a sensuous but somewhat incoherent scene. One of his finest paintings on historical subjects, The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero (1825–26), dates from this period, as do two works on medieval history, The Battle of Nancy and the Death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, January 5, 1477 (1831) and Battle of Poitiers (1830). He also painted the typically Byronic subject of Combat Between the Giaour and the Pasha (1835). Like Géricault, Delacroix explored the newly invented medium of lithography and made a set of 17 lithographs (1827) illustrating a French edition of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust.

In 1830 Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People to commemorate the July Revolution that had just brought Louis-Philippe to the French throne. This large canvas mixes allegory with contemporary realism in a highly successful and monumental manner and is still perhaps the most popular of all Delacroix’s paintings. The relatively subdued manner of Liberty Leading the People also reflects a change in Delacroix’s style, which became somewhat more quiet while still retaining elements of animation and grandeur.

From January to July 1832 Delacroix toured in Algeria, Spain, and Morocco with the comte de Mornay, King Louis-Philippe’s diplomatic representative to the sultan. Morocco proved to be a revelation to Delacroix, who found in its people and way of life the Homeric nobility and beauty that he had never seen in French academic Neoclassicism itself. The sights of exuberant nature and the beauty of the horses, the Arabs and their clothing, would henceforth inspire his visual memory, even in his last works. Delacroix made copious sketches and notes during the trip and used them to good effect upon his return to Paris. After Morocco his drawing and paint handling became freer and his use of colour even more sumptuous. The first fruits of his Moroccan impressions are collected in Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (1834), in which three Arab women and their surroundings are portrayed in a blaze of exquisitely warm colour harmonies. Delacroix’s other recapitulations of his North African experiences include Convulsionists of Tangier (1837–38) and Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1839). He continued to paint Arab subjects almost to the end of his life.