Perhaps there is no more exciting example of political art than this Liberty leads the people Author: Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863). The painting, which measures approximately 8.5 x 10.5 feet, was completed in 1830 to celebrate France’s July Revolution that year, which overthrew the Bourbon monarch Charles X. free Becoming a universal symbol of the fight for freedom, equality and justice.
Delacroix presented his subject in the most dramatic manner, capturing the moment when the rebels stormed the barricade amid the smoke and fierce fighting. They stretch horizontally across the composition, rushing toward the frame as if about to rush toward the viewer.
The central protagonist is one of the most iconic women in the history of art – “Liberty”, topless and wearing a Phrygian hat, a symbol of the French Revolution. She led the charge through the corpse-strewn area, waving the tricolor and urging her followers forward. To her right is a man with a rifle, wearing the standard bourgeois uniform of a robe and top hat, while to her left is a boy in a waistcoat and workman’s hat, brandishing a pistol in each hand. Blending allegory with realism, Delacroix reaches a climax of righteous violence, achieving an avant-garde cinematic moment that embodies the social and aesthetic turmoil of the time.
The July Revolution overturned the political order established after Napoleon’s defeat, and Louis XVI’s younger brother Louis XVIII ascended to the throne, becoming the first Bourbon monarch since 1789. Louis agreed to implement a constitution called the Charter of 1814, but upon his death in 1824, he was succeeded by his brother Charles X, a hardline reactionary.
Almost immediately after Charles took power, he enacted a law imposing the death penalty for those who desecrated the Catholic Church, violating the official separation of church and state. He also ordered compensation for property confiscated during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rule from anyone deemed an enemy of the state (i.e. a supporter of the Bourbons) – a move seen as an attempt to subvert the 1814 Charter.
Growing criticism eventually led Charles to attempt to permanently change the charter, impose press censorship, and dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, the main body of the French parliament. His actions sparked the Revolt of 1830, which led to his abdication and the establishment of a new constitutional monarchy under King Louis Philippe I of Orleans.
Liberty leads the people It was also a product of another revolution: the Romantic movement. Romanticism swept across Europe in the early nineteenth century, rejecting the rationalism of the Enlightenment and instead embracing the primacy of passion in the creation of art, music, and poetry. more relevant is freeThe theme is the Romantic belief that governance must be sanctioned by the governed, an idea embodied in Delacroix’s masterpiece.
In French painting itself, Romanticism challenged the revival of Greco-Roman art known as Neoclassicism, the style of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes. Long after both ended, Neoclassicism still held sway over the École des Beaux-Arts, the gatekeeper authority for French painting and sculpture. Through the annual Salon, the Academy controlled the artistic career while classifying genres in order of importance, with so-called history paintings (often tributes to the country) at the top of the list.
Through scale and impact indicators, free Similar to a history painting, but it defies the definition of the academy. Delacroix’s disdain for tradition made him the embodiment of the Romantic school, in stark contrast to the embodiment of neoclassicism, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).
Ingres’ approach seems more sculptural than painterly, using clean lines and smooth surfaces to hold figures in place, as if he were using fine sandpaper instead of a paintbrush. He also applied layers of glazes to his subjects until they appeared to be encased in a hard, transparent shell. He also refused to adopt proper anatomical proportions for his own vision, for example, in his “Odalisque” series, painting impossibly long backs on the reclining nudes. In fact, Ingres was both a Mannerist and a neoclassicist, one who valued cold-as-marble sensibility over strict realism.
In contrast, Delacroix used color and large amounts of paint to convey emotion, enhancing both effects through dynamic compositional effects, as opposed to the sublime stillness of Ingres. It’s no wonder, then, that the two men appear in newspaper cartoons, jousting with their favorite tools: a thick brush for Delacroix, a fine brush for Ingres.
Depicting the various social classes that took up arms, free It was a paean to civil unity, despite Delacroix’s own background, which had led him into the upper echelons of French society. His maternal grandfather was a furniture maker who catered to the nobility, while his legitimate father had been foreign minister of the First French Republic. His biological father, on the other hand, was considered the man to succeed him in the position: Talleyrand, Napoleon’s chief diplomat.
free Also included are striking pictorial references, including a nod to a previous work that served as a voice for Romanticism: Géricault’s Raft of Medusa (1818–19). Delacroix placed at the bottom of the work the figure of a young man, naked from the waist down and wearing only a sock on one foot – very similar to the man seen in the foreground. raft. Also in the background is a small portrait of Napoleon (imperial ambitions aside, he remained true to the values of the French Revolution), wearing his familiar marshal’s hat.
After hanging briefly in the palace of Louis-Philippe (known as the “Citizen King”), free It was deemed unfit for a royal residence and was returned to Delacroix, who in turn sent it to his aunt for safekeeping. It appeared in the Salon in 1855 and was acquired by the Louvre in 1874, still as provocative and powerful today as on the day it was unveiled.
