Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist who was regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school.
Paintings by Eugène Delacroix
The Death of Sardanapalus (1827)
The Death of Sardanapalus (La Mort de Sardanapale) is an 1827 oil painting on canvas by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris. A smaller replica he made in 1844 is in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is a work of Romanticism based on the tale of Sardanapalus, a king of Assyria, from Greek historian Diodorus Siculus's library. It uses rich, vivid and warm colours and broad brushstrokes, was inspired by Lord Byron's play Sardanapalus (1821) and inspired a Hector Berlioz cantata, Sardanapale (1830), and an unfinished Franz Liszt opera, Sardanapalo (1845–1852).
The main focus of Death of Sardanapalus is a large bed draped in rich red fabric. On it lies a man with a disinterested eye overseeing a scene of chaos. He is dressed in flowing white fabrics and sumptuous gold around his neck and head. A woman lies dead at his feet, prone across the lower half of the large bed. She is one of six in the scene, all in various shades of undress, and all in assorted throes of death by the hands of the half dozen men in the scene.
The Barque of Dante (1822)
The Barque of Dante (French: La Barque de Dante), also Dante and Virgil in Hell (Dante et Virgile aux enfers), is the first major painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, and is a work signalling the shift in the character of narrative painting, from Neo-Classicism towards Romanticism. The painting loosely depicts events narrated in canto eight of Dante's Inferno; a leaden, smoky mist and the blazing City of Dis form the backdrop against which the poet Dante fearfully endures his crossing of the River Styx. As his barque ploughs through waters heaving with tormented souls, Dante is steadied by Virgil, the learned poet of Classical antiquity.
Pictorially, the arrangement of a group of central, upright figures, and the rational arrangement of subsidiary figures in studied poses, all in horizontal planes, complies with the tenets of the cool and reflective Neo-Classicism that had dominated French painting for nearly four decades. The Barque of Dante was completed for the opening of the Salon of 1822, and currently hangs in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
The Massacre at Chios (1824)
Scenes from the Massacre at Chios (French: Scènes des massacres de Scio) is the second major oil painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix. The work is more than four meters tall, and shows some of the horror of the wartime destruction visited on the northern Aegean Sea island of Chios in the 1822 Chios massacre. A frieze-like display of suffering characters, military might, ornate and colourful costumes, terror, disease and death is shown in front of a scene of widespread desolation.
Unusual for a painting of civil ruin during this period, The Massacre at Chios has no heroic figure to counterbalance the crushed victims, and there is little to suggest hope among the ruin and despair. The vigour with which the aggressor is painted, contrasted with the dismal rendition of the victims, has drawn comment since the work was first hung, and some critics have charged that Delacroix might have tried to show some sympathy with the brutal occupiers. The painting was completed and displayed at the Salon of 1824 and hangs at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.
Liberty Leading the People (1830)
Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple [la libɛʁte ɡidɑ̃ lə pœpl]) is a painting of the Romantic era by the French artist Eugène Delacroix, commemorating the July Revolution of 1830 that toppled King Charles X (r. 1824–1830). A bare-breasted "woman of the people" with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept and Goddess of Liberty, accompanied by a young boy brandishing a pistol in each hand, leads a group of various people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen while holding aloft the flag of the French Revolution—the tricolour, which again became France's national flag after these events—in one hand, and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne. The painting is sometimes wrongly thought to depict the French Revolution of 1789.
By the time Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People, he was already the acknowledged driving force of the Romantic school in French painting. Delacroix, who was born as the Age of Enlightenment was giving way to the ideas and style of romanticism, rejected the emphasis on precise drawing that characterised the academic art of his time, and instead gave a new prominence to freely brushed colour.
Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (1826)
Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi (French: La Grèce sur les ruines de Missolonghi) is an 1826 oil painting by French painter Eugène Delacroix, now preserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux. It was first exhibited at the Galerie Lebrun in 1826 with later exhibitions at Hobday's Gallery in London in 1828 and the Musée Colbert in Paris in 1829. It is likely that the painting was finished between the middle of June and the middle of August of 1826, although the exact date is unknown.
The painting serves as an allegorical painting of Greece's struggle for independence and resistance against the Ottomans, specifically the fall of Missolonghi after the Turks besieged the town.
Women of Algiers (1834)
Women of Algiers in their Apartment (French: Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement) is the title of two oil on canvas paintings by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.
Delacroix's first version of Women of Algiers was painted in Paris in 1834 and is located in the Louvre, Paris, France. The second work, painted fifteen years later between 1847 and 1849, is located at the Musée Fabre, Montpellier, France. The two works both depict the same scene of four women together in an enclosed room. Despite the similar setting, the two paintings evoke completely different moods through the depiction of the women. Delacroix's earlier 1834 work captures the separation between the women and the viewer. The second painting instead invites the viewer into the scene through the warm inviting gaze of the women.
Orphan Girl at the Cemetery (1824)
The Orphan Girl at the cemetery (also known as Young Orphan Girl in the Cemetery; French: Jeune orpheline au cimetière) (c. 1823 or 1824) is a painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
Believed to be a preparatory work in oil for the artist's later Massacre at Chios, Orphan Girl at the Cemetery is nevertheless considered a masterpiece in its own right. An air of sorrow and fearfulness emanates from the picture, and tears well from the eyes of the grief-stricken girl as she looks apprehensively upward. The dimness of the sky and the abandoned laying-ground are consonant with her expression of melancholy. The girl's body language and clothing evoke tragedy and vulnerability: the dress drooping down from her shoulder, a hand laid weakly on her thigh, the shadows above the nape of her neck, the darkness at her left side, and the cold and pale coloring of her attire. All these are combined to emphasize a sense of loss, of unreachable hope, her isolation, and the absence of any means of help.
Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople (1840)
The Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople (Entrée des Croisés à Constantinople) or The Crusaders Entering Constantinople is a large painting by the French painter Eugène Delacroix. It was commissioned by Louis-Philippe in 1838, and completed in 1840. It was exhibited at the Salon of 1841. Painted in oil on canvas, it is in the collection of the Louvre, in Paris.
Delacroix's painting depicts a brutal episode of the armed expedition known as Fourth Crusade (12 April 1204), in which a Crusaders army abandoned their plan to invade Muslim Egypt and Jerusalem, and instead sacked the Christian (Eastern Orthodox) city of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. The painting shows Baldwin I of Constantinople at the head of a procession through the streets of the city following the assault; on all sides are the city's inhabitants who beg for mercy or have been murdered.
Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand (1837)
The Portrait of Frédéric Chopin and George Sand was an 1838 unfinished oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Eugène Delacroix. He made a number of preparatory sketches before 1838, a more detailed one of Chopin alone and another, more coarse one of the two. Later he painted it originally as a double portrait, which was later cut in two and sold off as separate pieces. It showed the Polish composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–49) playing the piano while the writer George Sand (1804–76) sits to his right, listening and sewing (a favourite activity of hers). The sitters were lovers at the time, and both were close friends of the artist.
The portrait remained in Delacroix's studio until his death. Shortly after, it was cut into two separate works, both of which are tightly focused. Chopin's portrait comprises only a headshot, while Sand's shows her upper body but is narrowly cut. This led to the loss of large areas of the original canvas. The divide is likely due to the then-owner's belief that two paintings would sell for a higher price than one. Today Chopin's portrait is housed at the Louvre in Paris, while Sand's hangs at Copenhagen's Ordrupgaard Museum.
Woman Stroking a Parrot (1827)
Woman Stroking a Parrot (French - Femme caressant un perroquet) or Woman with a Parrot (Femme au perroquet or Femme avec un perroquet) is an 1827 Orientalist oil-on-canvas painting by Eugène Delacroix. Several art historians have linked the work to Lambert Sustris's Venus and Cupid. In 1897 the painting was given by Couturier de Royas to the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, where it still hangs.
Delacroix had suffered a sentimental or sensual crisis between 1825 and 1827 which led him to paint many more or less erotic works – according to his private journal from the time, completing the paintings was thus intertwined with the sexual satisfaction before the young model went away.
Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1839)
Jewish Wedding in Morocco (French: Noce juive dans le Maroc) is an 1839 genre painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix. It depicts a Jewish wedding taking place in the Sultanate of Morocco. A leading figure of the Romantic movement, Delacroix visited North Africa and produced a number of Orientalist pictures inspired by his travels.Delacroix had witnessed a wedding ceremony and sketched Moroccan Jews while in Tangier in 1832.
The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1841 held at the Louvre in Paris. It is in the collection of the Louvre, having been acquired by the heir to the French throne Philippe, Duke of Orléans the same year. Around 1875 the Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir produced a copy of the painting for the industrialist Jean Dollfus. Renoir was regarded by many, including himself, as a natural successor to Delacroix.
Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (1844)
Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius is an 1844 painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix. Multiple versions of the painting are known to exist, the best-known of which is now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. A preliminary sketch by Delacroix is also kept at the museum. The work was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1845. The painting depicts the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius on his deathbed, as he prepares to give his son Commodus over to his councilors and officers. The work is exemplary of Delacroix's embrace of more austere subject matter, and it is representative of his increased attachment to the classical tradition. Delacroix had a complicated relationship with the work, as demonstrated in the writings of his journal and in his management of the painting's exhibitions and sale.
Delacroix had considered depicting the subject of Marcus Aurelius' death as early as 1824, but did not until the 1840s. The painting was begun in 1843 by Delacroix himself, and then was worked on by Louis de Planet according to instructions laid out by Delacroix. Planet was Delacroix's student and frequent collaborator, and for this work he laid in the underlying sketch and the foundational glazes, following Delacroix's instructions. Delacroix resumed working on the painting in January 1844, and finished it in the autumn of that same year. Delacroix produced several versions of the painting, with the one on display in Lyon being the largest, and with there being several differences in composition and coloring between that version and the "Santa Barbara" version, an easel-sized variant. The work followed in the tradition of neoclassicism's treatment of heroism and death, and Delacroix drew inspiration particularly from Poussin's The Testament of Eudamidas and The Death of Germanicus. In the creation of this work, along with other works exhibited in 1845, Delacroix was suffering from an illness, which contributed to the somberness of the work. Additionally, the work was part of a stylistic moment in Delacroix's oeuvre where he focused on "great men of virtue and sacrifice", along with other themes, like the tension between temporal and spiritual power, and explored those subjects in the works he produced throughout the 1830s and 1840s.