Full Answer
Liberty Leading the People, oil painting (1830) by French artist Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution in Paris that removed Charles X, the restored Bourbon king, from the throne. The extravagantly heroic scene of rebellion was initially received with mixed reviews,...
Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime ", of nature in often violent action. However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist.
Eugene Delacroix was one of the first artists to bring this era into his paintings using color and emotion to bring them across. Eugene Delacroix was a person that believed highly in using the imagination in most everything that was done. He was partial to drawings of violence from contemporary life, and medieval and ancient history.
The same is true of Delacroix’s painted Liberty. But if the female figure represents an allegory, those who surround her represent different types of people. The man on the far left holds a briquet (an infantry saber commonly used during the Napoleonic Wars).
For this painting, Delacroix was inspired by the Venus of Milo (which is also in the Louvre), and by showing Liberty's breasts, he signals to us that she is partly a goddess. However, at the same time, Liberty represents a person fighting in the revolution.
Delacroix depicted Liberty as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people. The mound of corpses and wreckage acts as a kind of pedestal from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer.
Delacroix drew inspiration from many sources over his career, such as the literary works of William Shakespeare and Lord Byron, and the artistry of Michelangelo.
Liberty Leading the People shows a woman, in the centre of a mass of soldiers and a group of men who may be either dead or dying. The woman in the painting represents freedom. The symbol is that of the goddess of liberty and is also found in the Statue of Liberty, which was given to America by people of France in 1886.
RomanticismLiberty Leading the People / PeriodRomanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Wikipedia
He was influenced early in his career by French Romantic artists like Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835) and Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), as well as English landscapists such as John Constable (1776-1837) and Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-28), and portraitists like William Hogarth.
RomanticismEugène Delacroix / Period
Delacroix was a prominent source of inspiration for the impressionist movement. He worked to manipulate light and colour in his works, drawing out the emotion of every scene. The Impressionists built on his concepts, adapting and shaping them to create their own artistic vocabulary.
The leading French Romanticist Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born on April 26, 1798, and died on August 13, 1863. He was born in Paris at C...
Eugène Delacroix, one of the leading figures in French Romanticism, painted the famous French revolution painting titled Liberty Leading the People...
The Liberty Leading the People (1830) painting is about the July Revolution in France in 1830. The revolution overthrew the then King Charles X. It...
The woman in the Liberty Leading the People (1830) painting is not based on a real woman from history, but she is a symbol of freedom. She is often...
Delacroix started painting after witnessing the violent escalation of protests against a set of restrictive ordinances that Charles X issued on July 26, 1830. For three days, later known as les Trois Glorieuses (July 27–29), working- and middle-class citizens set up barricades in the Paris streets and fought the royal army. Unable to contain the insurrection, Charles X soon abdicated. Louis-Philippe, the so-called Citizen King, took the throne and created a constitutional monarchy. Historians speculate that Delacroix’s dependence on royal commissions prevented him from taking part in the rebellion outright, but he was nonetheless moved when he saw insurgents raise the Tricolor, the French national flag, on Notre Dame, a turning point in the rebellion.
Yet Delacroix, by combining realism and idealism and by applying his characteristically expressive brushwork, created a more modern scene that contrasted with those of his competitors. Contemporary critics and viewers were nonetheless divided on whether the painting was heroic or distasteful.
The cathedral is the only structure Delacroix included in an arrangement of churning human bodies, but he subdued the chaos of the scene by using a pyramidal composition and fairly muted colours.
Delacroix finished the painting in three months , and it was shown with 23 other revolution-inspired works at the 1831 Salon, an annual exhibition of French art held at the Louvre. Yet Delacroix, by combining realism and idealism and by applying his characteristically expressive brushwork, created a more modern scene that contrasted with those of his competitors. Contemporary critics and viewers were nonetheless divided on whether the painting was heroic or distasteful.
While on loan to the Louvre-Lens, an extension of the Louvre in northern France, the painting was vandalized in 2013. A woman reportedly used a marker to write “AE911,” a cipher associated with a September 11 conspiracy theory, near the bottom of the canvas. Conservators fully restored the piece shortly afterward.
Liberty Leading the People, oil on canvas by Eugène Delacroix, 1830; in the Louvre, Paris.
The painting was purchased by the government of the July Monarchy and shown briefly at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, then a museum for living artists, but it quickly lost favour under the new government and was taken down. It spent the next years in storage and was later returned to the artist before being exhibited again at the Luxembourg. In 1874 it was finally transferred to the Louvre, and over time it became one of Delacroix’s most popular works. It has been appropriated many times, most visibly as the cover art for the British rock band Coldplay ’s 2008 album, Viva La Vida. While on loan to the Louvre-Lens, an extension of the Louvre in northern France, the painting was vandalized in 2013. A woman reportedly used a marker to write “AE911,” a cipher associated with a September 11 conspiracy theory, near the bottom of the canvas. Conservators fully restored the piece shortly afterward.
Delacroix 1830.”. Backstory: This painting commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 in France. During this revolution, King Charles X of France was brought down. Delacroix wrote in a letter to his brother that if he could not fight for his country, he could at least paint for his country. This painting served as a political poster for ...
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) was born in a small village close to Paris. He has made many large-scale paintings about contemporary subjects, which was a successful strategy to earn money around that time. His work was usually dramatic and romantic, and he knew how to express emotions in a painting.
Liberty is depicted in a victorious pose, and she is showing her breasts to the people. Liberty is surrounded by a mix of people from the French society. On her right is a child brandishing a pair of guns. At her feet is a day laborer from the countryside wearing a blue jacket (notice the red, white, and blue pattern in his clothes).
Symbolism: The woman holding the tricolor represents the goddess of Liberty. The tricolor was the flag of liberty and is now the French national flag (do you also see the tricolor on top of the Notre Dame?). For this painting, Delacroix was inspired by the Venus of Milo (which is also in the Louvre ), and by showing Liberty’s breasts, ...
It took Delacroix about two months to complete the painting. The next he year he sold the painting to the government for three thousand French francs and, in addition, they awarded him a Legion of Honour, the highest French order for merits by military and civilians which was introduced by Napoleon Bonaparte.
However, Delacroix thought that the expressive potential of colors was much more important. He liked to depict moments of extreme emotions as you can see in this painting. .
This painting represents what a revolution feels like for the people involved. The woman in the center, referred to as Liberty, is holding the French flag. She is standing on top of a barricade, which you can recognize by the pieces of wood and the cobblestones in the foreground. Liberty represents the struggle of the common people for freedom, ...
If Jacques-Louis David is the most perfect example of French Neoclassicism, and his most accomplished pupil Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, represents a transitional figure between Neoclassicism and Romanticism, then Eugène Delacroix stands (with, perhaps, Theodore Gericault) as the most representative painter of French romanticism.
Less than a decade later, Delacroix’s career was clearly on the rise. In 1824, for example, Delacroix exhibited his monumental Massacres at Chios at the annual French Salon. This painting serves as an excellent example of what what Delacroix hoped romanticism could become.
Many of these same concepts can be seen in what many regard as Delacroix’s masterpiece, Liberty Leading the People (1830). Although Delacroix completed this painting during same year in which the event occurred, it is, at its core, a history painting.
Delacroix’s painting, Liberty Leading the People, at first seems to be overpowered by chaos, but on closer inspection, it is a composition filled with subtle order. The first thing a viewer may notice is the monumental—and nude to the waist—female figure.
But if the female figure represents an allegory, those who surround her represent different types of people. The man on the far left holds a briquet (an infantry saber commonly used during the Napoleonic Wars).
With no less than five guns and three blades among these six primary figures, it is not surprising that the ground is littered with the dead. Some are members of the military, note the uniform decorated with shoulder epaulettes on the figure in the lower right, while others are likely revolutionaries.
Delacroix fine-tuned Romanticism, incorporating the influences of Michelangelo and Peter Paul Rubens. He developed his personal style, with an affinity for showing pain and suffering in his work through brightly coloured canvases.
According to Charles Baudelaire, Delacroix was a curious mixture of scepticism, politeness, dandyism, willpower, cleverness, despotism, and finally, a kind of individual goodness and tenderness.
He wears loose-fitting trousers and an artisan's red flannel belt and carries a double-barrelled hunting gun. The wounded man raising himself up at the sight of Liberty wears a knotted yellowish scarf, echoing the colour of the heroine's dress; his peasant's smock and red flannel belt suggest the temporary workers of Paris. The blue jacket, red belt, and white shirt echo the colours of the flag.
The images of hats play a crucial role in the painting. This seemingly minor detail conveys an important aspect of what is being communicated in Liberty Leading the People - except for the monarchy, all social classes participated in the revolt, as telegraphed by the hats worn by the fighters.
She is on the front cover of the band, Coldplay’s Viva la Vida album . Liberty Leading the People has inspired many over the decades and centuries.
Now, Liberty is justifiably considered one of the most famous paintings by Delacroix. However, it received a mixed reception in France. The art establishment was appalled. But the French government bought it as a sign of its commitment to liberal values. It was exhibited briefly in 1848 after the Republic was restored in the revolution of that year, and then in the Salon of 1855. In 1874, the painting entered the collection of Louvre in Paris.
In her raised right hand is the red, white, and blue flag , a symbol of the struggle that unfurls toward the light like a flame.
Through his paintings, he brought romanticism, feelings, and realism to everyone that viewed them. “Liberty Leading the People ” was to be no different in the way it brought emotion and political meaning to its viewers. This was to be one his most famous paintings and one of the last in the romantic era.
Eugene Delacroix believed that the use of color gave life to a painting. He thought that without color, it was not a painting, but an illumination. Delacroix used dark colors to bring about violence and realism to many of his paintings. His use of color brought a wide range of emotion and romanticism to his paintings.
Eugene Delacroix said, “Strange as it may seem, the great majority of people are devoid of imagination.” (Fiero, pp.358).
In the painting Delacroix has a woman that portrays Liberty. She leads people over fallen bodies as she holds the flag of the French Revolution in one hand and a bayonet musket in the other. This was a portrayal of the struggle of human freedom (Fiero, pp.358).