Romanticism Delacroix

Romanticism: Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is the supreme painter of French Romanticism and one of the most technically audacious colourists in the Western tradition. His work is the visual antithesis of Neoclassicism: where David and Ingres prize clarity, restraint, and the authority of the antique, Delacroix prizes movement, colour, passion, and the irrationality of history and emotion.

Subject and Ambition

Delacroix drew his subjects from Shakespeare (Hamlet series, Romeo and Juliet), Byron (The Death of Sardanapalus, 1827, Louvre -- derived from Byron's 1821 play), Dante (Dante and Virgil Crossing the Styx, 1822, Louvre), Scott, and contemporary historical events. Liberty Leading the People (1830, Louvre) was painted in response to the July Revolution that overthrew Charles X; the allegorical figure of Liberty -- bare-breasted, tricolour raised -- steps over the bodies of the fallen across a smoking Paris barricade. It is simultaneously a historical document, a political painting, and a figure composition of extraordinary power.

The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) is his most extreme work: the Assyrian king, facing defeat, orders the destruction of all his possessions -- horses, servants, and concubines -- from his deathbed. The canvas (392 x 496 cm) is organised as a diagonal tide of bodies, crimson drapery, and gleaming flesh, technically audacious to the point of scandal at the Salon.

Technique and Colour Theory

Delacroix was the first European painter to make extensive notes on colour theory. His journal records observations about simultaneous contrast, shadow colour, and complementary pairs that would directly influence the Impressionists -- particularly Monet, Pissarro, and eventually Seurat. He placed complementary colours in direct adjacency rather than mixing them, pre-figuring Divisionism. His brushwork is loose, gestural, and directional; surfaces vibrate with optically mixed colour.