Eugène Delacroix in 10 Paintings: Poetry, Passion, and Power

1. Self-Portrait of a Romantic

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) was a prolific artist, producing thousands of works from church commissions to prints, over a long career. He was not primarily known for his portraits – and those he did paint tended to be of his friends or of people he admired, most famously the violinist, Nicolo Paganini. Like this self-portrait, these were character studies which focused not on the dress, surroundings, or attributes of the individual but on their presence and psychology.

There is nothing showy about Delacroix here: his dress is careless, his hair seems unbrushed. Nothing suggests who he is or what he does, unlike previous artist self-portraits which showed them with brushes in hand. The artist is not trying to elevate his social status; nor is there any idealization in the grimy shadows which darken the flesh. There is no background or detail to distract the viewer, although the rough brushwork surrounding the figure generates an emotional response. We feel the restless energy of it. Above all, however, we focus on the haughtiness of the stare, the slightly raised chin, the furrow of the brow which suggests some internal conflict. This is Delacroix presenting himself as a Romantic hero.

2. Romantic Revolution

Delacroix grew up in the shadow of the French Revolution, through the turbulent years of the Napoleonic Wars. Like many Romantic artists and writers, ideas of democracy, freedom, and national self-determination appealed to him. In his early career, works like the Massacre at Chios (1824) and Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi showed his sympathy for the Greek War of Independence from Ottoman rule. It was a cause close to the heart of his hero, the English poet, Lord Byron, who died fighting in Greece, and so there was a personal as well as a political dynamic to these works.

Using an allegorical female figure in national costume to represent Greece, Delacroix shows the aftermath of the third siege of Missolonghi which had led to the destruction of the town and the mass slaughter and enslavement of its inhabitants. The foreground shows a gruesome, dead arm protruding from the rubble, whilst a victorious Ottoman raises a flag in the distance. Greece stares into the distance, her palms out in a questioning gesture – how could this happen? The blue of her robe and the position of her hands associate her with Mary after the death of Christ. Yet she remains heroic, and the dominant white of her dress suggests hope.

3. Politics and Power

In 1830, Delacroix revisited the idea of an allegorical female figure with his image of Marianne, a symbol of France, in Liberty Leading the People. The painting shows a dramatic scene on the barricades of Paris, with the whole of society united under the flag, from a top-hatted bourgeoise to the Gavroche-style street urchin. Again, Delacroix was responding to contemporary events, but the 1830 Revolution which replaced the Bourbon monarchy with King Louis Philippe was less radical than he suggests and the painting was removed from public view for being too incendiary.

Liberty is quite uncharacteristic of Delacroix’s work: there is a brightness to the palette, dominated by the colors of the French flag, and a crispness of line focused on the central thrusting pyramid. It is as if he is deliberately using a more Academic style to create an archetypal modern history painting. Equally, he is referencing The Raft of the Medusa by his hero Théodore Géricault: it employed a similar composition, topped by a waving cloth, and foreground piled with semi-nude bodies to also reference contemporary politics.

4. Painting and Poetry

Delacroix frequently turned to literature for his inspiration: his first Academy success in 1822 was the Barque of Dante, depicting a scene from The Inferno. His enthusiasm for Byron led to a whole series of works including the Giaour and the Pasha (1835) and the Shipwreck of Don Juan  (1840) based on the Englishman’s poetry. Like many artists, he raided Greek tragedy for inspiration, most famously in Medea About to Kill her Children (1838). Many of these literary sources provided a vehicle to explore the dramatic, violent, and often exotic themes which can be seen throughout Delacroix’s work.

The Murder of the Bishop of Liège depicts a historical event through the lens of Walter Scott’s fictionalized version in his novel Quentin Durward. It is a cast of thousands, high drama scene but on a smaller scale than one might expect from a history painting – only a little over a meter across. The dramatic architectural diagonal of the composition and exaggerated chiaroscuro show how varied Delacroix could be. It is more reminiscent of Tintoretto than of Peter Paul Rubens, whom he often sought to emulate. Yet, like many of his works, it was initially controversial, with critics complaining of its ‘bloodthirsty bestiality’.

5. Quiet Passion

Delacroix was also interested in painting quieter, more intense, moments from literature. In his many scenes from Shakespearean plays like Hamlet, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, he tries to express the inner turmoil of the characters involved rather than the external drama. In Cleopatra and the Peasant, the Egyptian Queen is looking at the asp which she will use to kill herself. The shadows close in and the coarse features of the man underline the brutality of the choice she has to make and of the patriarchal violence which has led her to this position. She is calm, resigned and there is also a tender closeness between the two figures: ultimately the snake will allow her to be reunited with her lover.

6. Romanticism and Religion

Religion was not as common a subject for 19th-century artists as it had been, but Delacroix painted his fair share of Biblical narratives. In part, this was because he liked to measure himself against the great artists of the past whom he admired. Equally, he had a genuine faith. However, he sought out religious scenes which reflected with his other interests, those showing human suffering and psychological insight, or dramatic natural events. He painted versions of the Crucifixion and Entombment, (including a copy of a Titian) and represented Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.

Christ on the Sea of Galilee was a subject he returned to at least six times. The New Testament miracle related how Jesus, out fishing with his disciples, remained calm in the face of a storm, told them not to be afraid and brought the violent weather to an end. Delacroix loved representing the turbulence of stormy seas and the whole canvas surface is a maelstrom of movement, emphasized by the lack of depth with the boat tilting towards us on a wall of water. Christ, illuminated in the darkness, sleeps peacefully. Charles Baudelaire, the French poet, admired Delacroix’s ability to portray sadness and there is something deeply moving about the small, still, isolation of the figure of Jesus.

7. Animal Passion

For the Romantics, emotion was a natural state held in check by civilization and education. Some painters focused on landscape to represent the power of nature and the intense emotions which it could generate and Delacroix himself was inspired by British artists like John Constable, whose Haywain had been exhibited in Paris in 1824. However, Delacroix was no landscapist and instead focused on animals – horses, lions, tigers – to represent the power and passion of the natural world.

Lion Hunt was one of a series of graphically violent paintings which showed man and nature in conflict. Delacroix had visited North Africa in 1832, so the heat and barrenness of the landscape was something he had experienced, but the event is fantasy. He had only seen lions in a zoo. Delacroix was not the first artist to show this type of scene. George Stubbs painted a series showing horses attacked by wild animals in the late 18th century and Rubens had painted a Tiger Hunt (1615-1616). However, the swirling looseness of the brushwork here, the spinning lack of compositional focus, and the brutality of man and beast outstrips anything which had come before.

8. The Exotic

Delacroix was deeply inspired by the six months he spent in North Africa in 1832. Like many 19th-century artists, he was seduced by the costume, the architecture, the patterns and colors of a world which seemed very alien. For the Romantics, North Africa became idealized and exoticized as a place less restrained by civilization, more natural, more passionate and less modern. Delacroix was often guilty of this in his dramatic representations of traditionally dressed horsemen, but he also went out of his way to record what he saw. He kept journals full of detailed descriptions and sketched in the street, and these became the inspiration for paintings over the next decade.

Jewish Wedding in Morocco records an actual marriage which Delacroix was invited to by his interpreter guide and the details of the painting match almost exactly the diary entry he wrote about the occasion. The architecture, costumes, and instruments are accurate, but it is the mood which is so effectively conveyed. The heavy shadows created by the awning which keeps off the worst of the heat, the enclosed sense of community, the sounds of chatter and music.

9. The Erotic

So-called Orientalist subjects, like North African scenes, also appealed to 19th-century artists because of their eroticism. Delacroix’s great artistic rival, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was well known for painting odalisques – sexually available nudes in an exotic harem setting – and this is an early attempt by Delacroix to produce the same. Ingres exploited his draughtsmanship skills to produce precisely rendered details of pattern and fabric texture, and rich color to create a sensual, visual feast.

Delacroix himself would later produce more subtly erotic works like Women of Algiers (1834) in which the languid sexuality is expressed by the lush patterns and claustrophobic atmosphere rather than nudity. However, in Odalisque Reclining on a Divan, the eroticism is pretty blatant. The sprawling pose, vacant eyes, and slightly parted lips, the rumpled bed and threatening shadows leave a disturbing impression, whilst the sense of an enclosed world and the hookah in the foreground position this firmly in a Middle Eastern harem.

10. The Most Romantic of Them All

In 1827 Delacroix exhibited the Death of Sardanapalus, the painting which has come to define him and to define 19th-century Romanticism. The subject was an imagined scene based on a poem by Byron: the Assyrian ruler Sardanapalus, faced with defeat, orders all his possessions, including horses and women, to be destroyed on his funeral pyre. Delacroix crams his huge canvas (nearly five meters across) with a chaotic mass of writhing figures and without any compositional or coloristic focus, the viewer feels discombobulated and overwhelmed in the face of this orgy of destruction.

You can see many of the characteristics of Delacroix’s art in Sardanapalus but it does not tell the full story. Delacroix was a quiet, thoughtful painter. His works were often small-scale studies of human emotion; he observed, he read, he felt deeply, and he tried to find ways to express what he felt on canvas, through color, brushwork, and composition. It is that search for emotional expression which makes him the greatest Romantic artist of all.