Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we take a massive
collection of sources and distill them into the
must -know facts, the unexpected history, and,
well, the absolute best stories. And today, we're
tackling a real giant of 19th century French
art, Ferdinand Victor, Eugène Delacroix, acknowledged
leader, though often, you know, fiercely debated
of the French Romantic school. Just a huge force.
Yeah, the amount of material is almost overwhelming.
We're talking, what, over 9 ,000 works linked
to him by the end? Exactly. So our mission today
is pretty clear. Cut through all that. Find the
essential context, the really dramatic works,
those surprising influences that defined him.
And position him, really, as this crucial link,
you know, bridging the old masters and what became
modern art. To really get Delacroix, though,
you first have to understand the... The artistic
battleground he stepped onto. His whole identity
was almost forged in opposition to his great
rival, Ingres. Ah, Ingres. Yeah, that was the
clash in Paris at the time, wasn't it? Absolutely.
If you were serious about painting then, you
kind of had to pick a side. Team Angris. Neoclassicism.
Right. Champion in clarity, line, careful form.
Looking back to Raphael. Line over color, essentially.
Gandela Croix. He went the complete opposite
direction, looked further back, beyond the French
school even, to the Venetians, Titian, Veronese,
and especially Rubens. So for him, it was color
first. Color, definitely. Yeah. And movement,
explosive energy, intense drama. Ingres wanted
structure, that static perfection. Delacroix
wanted, well. Passion, violence, nature, action.
But it wasn't just one -out emotion, was it?
There was calculation there. I love that quote
from Baudelaire. Oh, the Baudelaire quote is
perfect. Passionately in love with passion, but
coldly determined to express passion as clearly
as possible. Coldly determined. That's the key,
isn't it? It really is. It implies his rational
mind controlling the explosion. He wasn't just,
you know, throwing paint around. He was engineering
an emotional response using really sophisticated
techniques. Color theory, composition. That intellectual
control. It stops it from just being melodrama.
Precisely. Okay, so let's dig into the man himself.
His origins are, well, they're pretty interesting,
even a bit mysterious. Born 1798 near Paris.
Came from a good background initially, educated,
but tragedy hit early. His legal father, Charles
Francois Delacroix, died in 1805. And then his
mother in 1814, so he was orphaned at 16. Yeah,
quite young. But the real intrigue, the shadow
over his birth, is who his biological father
might have been. This is the Talleyrand connection,
right? Exactly. The sources strongly suggest
that his legal father, Charles Francois, couldn't
have actually conceived him at the time. Medical
reasons. So the finger points squarely at Charles
Maurice de Talleyrand Paragor, diplomatic extraordinaire.
Family friend. And the man who actually took
over from Charles François as Minister of Foreign
Affairs. It's quite the connection. Delacroix
himself probably suspected it. And there's more
than just suspicion, right? People noted the
resemblance later on. Oh, yeah. Apparently the
physical similarity between the adult Eugene
and Talleyrand was striking. But it goes beyond
looks. The practical support. That's crucial.
Talleyrand provided support throughout Delacroix's
career. often through what are described as these
numerous anonymous commissions. Which, for a
young artist trying to break the mold, must have
been vital, especially going up against the neoclassical
establishment. Absolutely essential. Think about
it. You're young, maybe struggling financially,
and you're deliberately provoking the powerful
academy. You need a patron. Someone with influence.
And Telerand, a master political operator, could
offer both money and, just as importantly, protection.
It kind of reframes his early ability to withstand
criticism. Makes sense. Despite all this potential
drama behind the scenes, his formal training
was very conventional, wasn't it? Oh, completely.
Studied classics, L 'Essai Louis Le Grand. Then,
from 1815, trained with Pierre Narcisse Caron.
Who was a disciple of Jacques Louis David. So
pure neoclassical style. Right. And his early
pieces, like The Virgin of the Harvest from 1819,
show he could do it perfectly well. That refined
Raphael -esque drawing. The skill was there.
But the passion wasn't quite unleashed yet. Not
yet. That needed a catalyst. And the catalyst
was his friend, Theta Doverico. And specifically,
Jericho's painting, The Raft of the Medusa. Oh,
The Raft. That painting just exploded onto the
scene. High drama, contemporary disaster, raw
human suffering on a massive scale. It was romanticism
announcing itself with force. And Delacroix saw
it and thought, okay, that's the way forward.
Seems like it. His immediate big response was
the bark of Dante in 1822. Dante and Virgil crossing
the sticks, the damn souls clinging to the boat.
It debuted at the Paris Salon. Caused a huge
stir. Huge, yeah. And mostly negative from the
establishment critics. They were shocked. Why,
what? The energy, the color. All of it. The frenzied
movement, what they saw as an unfinished look,
the vibrant, almost jarring colors. It was a
direct challenge to neoclassical restraint. But
interestingly, the state still bought it for
the Luxembourg galleries. Right. And that set
the pattern for his whole career, didn't it?
Widespread official opposition, but then support
from powerful, often more forward -thinking patrons
or state figures. He learned early on how to
navigate that system, how to find support outside
the Academy's approval. He definitely did. He
knew he was picking a fight. So this controversial
but successful debut launched him right into
engaging with current events, which takes us
nicely into our next section. political passion,
and the grand scale of suffering. Yeah, he moved
quickly from literary or religious themes to
real -time political crises, specifically the
Greek War of Independence against the Ottomans.
A cause celeb across Europe at the time, right?
Fueled partly by Lord Byron. Hugely. Byron was
this embodiment of romantic ideals, the passionate
artist involved in revolutionary action. Delacroix
admired him enormously. And Delacroix wades in
with the massacre at Chios in 18 - 1824, which
wasn't your typical heroic battle scene. Not
at all. That's what made it so radical. It showed
Greek civilians being rounded up for death or
slavery by the Turks. No heroism, no comfort,
just disaster. That must have really provoked
the establishment. History painting was supposed
to be uplifting, moral. Exactly. Think of David's
oath of the Heratia noble sacrifice, clear moral
choice. Chios offered none of that. Just apathy,
despair, suffering. I remember that quote from
Antoine Jean Gros, another artist, he called
it. A massacre of art. Yeah. They hated it. If
you're going to paint on that scale, show us
virtue, show us heroism, or at least give us
a clean line. Delacroix gave them raw suffering
and this landscape that looked almost messy.
That messy quality, though, that's technically
important, isn't it? Something changed in his
technique around then. Oh, massively. While he
was working on Chios, he saw paintings by English
landscape artists. John Constable, Richard Parks
Bonington. And they were focused on light and
color in a different way. Completely different.
Studying nature directly, trying to capture the
effects of light. So Delacroix, inspired by this,
apparently went back to Chios and made huge changes.
To the sky and background. Yeah, painting them
much more freely. And crucially, he started experimenting
with putting dabs of pure, complementary color
side by side. Optical mixing. Letting the viewer's
eye blend the colors from a distance. Precisely.
Instead of mixing green on the palette. Put down
yellow next to blue. Small, broken brush strokes.
It's a technique that directly points towards
impressionism decades later. Wow. So a revolutionary
technique to depict a politically charged tragedy
that the Academy probably didn't even think was
a suitable subject for high art. That sums it
up pretty well. A total rupture. And he followed
this up two years later, still on the Greek theme,
with Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi, 1826.
Right. This was a direct response to another
horrific event, the siege of Missolonghi in 1825,
where the Greek defenders, rather than surrender
to the Turks, basically chose mass suicide. Blew
themselves up. So the painting is more allegorical.
A monument. Yes, very much a monument. You have
this central figure, a woman in Greek dress,
breast bared, standing amidst the rubble. She's
liberty or Greece personified. Arms raised imploringly.
Yes, a really dramatic gesture. It's clearly
symbolizing freedom against tyranny. Using that
female figure as the sort of soul of the nation.
And the timing again. Byron had died at Missolonghi
just the year before. Exactly. Sealing that tragic
romantic connection between the cause, the place,
and the poet Delacroix admired so much. So these
early works really cemented his reputation. Not
just a painter, but someone reacting powerfully,
maybe even violently, to the world around him.
Using color, scale, movement to express these
huge emotions. And that search for intense feeling,
for drama, leads us right into his next phase.
violence, sensuality, and the literary imagination.
That trip to England in 1825 seems important
here, too. Seeing Constable in Bonington wasn't
just about landscape, was it? No, it reinforced
his whole approach to color. He visited portraitists
like Thomas Lawrence, too. It solidified his
move away from strict linearity. You can really
see that in the portrait of Louis Goss Schwider,
can't you? Painted around 1826 -30, it's quite
elegant, but the color handling is so rich in
one of his few full -length portraits. It is
beautiful. But beyond portraits, he really dives
into literature for inspiration, especially authors
dealing with passion, darkness, history. And
he wasn't just painting based on them. He was
a lithographer, too. A very fine one, yes. hugely
prolific, illustrating Shakespeare thinks the
death of Ophelia, Hamlet scenes Goethe's Faust,
Walter Scott's historical novels. He's visually
interpreting the great romantic narratives. But
the painting that really combines literature,
violence and sensuality in the most extreme way
has to be the death of Sardanapalus from 1827
-28. Oh, Sardanapalus. Yeah, that is peak dark
romanticism right there. A massive, overwhelming
canvas. Based on a play by Byron again, right?
But Delacroix really amps it up. He takes the
story of the doomed Assyrian king, Sardanapalus,
who, facing defeat, orders everything he values
destroyed before the enemy arrives. Servants,
concubines, horses, treasures. And he turns it
into this opulent nightmare. The king sits on
his own funeral pyre, watching it all unfold.
Watching with his terrifying, calm detachment
as chaos erupts around him. Silk, gold, jewels,
blood, slaughter. The shock valley must have
been immense. It's so visually rich, exotic colors,
sensual figures, but then, just like horror.
Absolute horror. Look at the foreground. That
struggling nude woman about to have her throat
cut. Jewels scattered around. Dying animals.
The whole composition is this whirlwind of diagonals.
The dying horse, the victims, all angled dramatically.
Exactly. Fighting against the static central
figure of the impassive king. It's visual anarchy,
barely contained. But wasn't he criticized for
just exploiting the violence and nudity? Using
a literary source as an excuse for pure sensation.
Oh, absolutely. Critics were appalled. They saw
the gore, the chaos, the eroticism. But for Delacroix
and for romanticism, this was about the sublime,
that mix of terror and beauty, pushing passion
to its absolute limit. And the king's detachment,
is that part of the romantic ideal? It's often
interpreted that way, yeah. Transcending the
physical horror through willpower or indifference.
But yeah, the official reaction was overwhelmingly
negative. The painting was so disturbing, it
wasn't shown again for ages. So a huge swing
from the political suffering of Chios to this
theatrical, self -inflicted, almost eroticized
violence. Same energy, different subject. He
kept exploring that dark historical vein. In
1829, the murder of the Bishop of Liège, inspired
by Walter Scott. Another medieval scene. Very
dramatic. And technically impressive too, right?
The use of light and shadow. The chiaroscuro,
yeah, it's fantastic. We know he based the setting,
that huge vaulted hall, on sketches he'd made
of places like the Palais de Justice in Rouen
and maybe even Westminster Hall. So bringing
architectural realism into these historical fantasies.
Right. And the brushwork itself had that characteristic
energy. There's a great quote from a critic in
1855 describing it. What did they say? Something
like, less finished than a painting, more finished
than a sketch. Left by the painter at that supreme
moment when one more stroke of the brush would
have ruined everything. Capturing that perfect
moment of spontaneity, that really sums up his
appeal, doesn't it? It does. And that energy
absolutely explodes in his most famous work.
Which brings us to the next big moment. Liberty,
legacy, and political explosiveness. We have
to talk about liberty leading the people, 1830.
The definitive image of the Romantic movement,
maybe. You can definitely argue that. Painted
right after the July Revolution of 1830, the
three glorious days that kicked out King Charles
X. It's such a powerful image. Part real, part
allegory. Completely dominated by liberty herself,
right? The symbolic, powerful figure marching
over the barricade, holding the tricolor flag.
She embodies the will of the people. And the
people around her are so specific, not just generic
figures. No, you've got the street kid with the
pistols, Gavroche -like figure, the factory worker,
the bourgeois guy in the top hat. All classes
united in that moment of uprising. But then grounded
by the reality of the foreground. Yes, that's
the crucial counterpoint. The dead soldiers,
the cost of the revolution lying right there
at Liberty's feet. It's triumph mixed with sacrifice.
So the new government, Louis -Felix regime, they
bought the painting. They did. But then they
almost immediately got cold feet. Too inflammatory,
even though it celebrated the revolution that
brought them to power. Exactly. They realized
pretty quickly that glorifying street revolution
could be, well, dangerous for any government,
even the one that just benefited from it. By
1832, it was taken down. deemed too inflammatory
for public view. Wow. That says a lot about its
power. The government was literally scared of
the art it owned. It really does. It stayed hidden
away for years. Until when? Wasn't put back on
proper display until after the next revolution,
the one in 1848 under Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon
III. Then its status as the symbol of French
republicanism was locked in. And that connection
to Le Miserable. The boy -inspiring Gavroche?
Widely believed, yeah, though maybe more speculation
than proven fact. But it shows how the painting
entered the cultural imagination. So liberty
ties together revolution, myth, literature, and
his signature style. Color, movement, passion.
Where do you even go after creating something
like that? Well, Delacroix went somewhere completely
different, personally and artistically, which
leads us to phase five, the exotic escape and
North African travel. The trip in 1832 with the
diplomatic mission. That's the one. With Charles
Edgar de Mornay. They traveled through Spain,
then into North Africa, Morocco mainly. This
was just after France had conquered Algeria.
So it was a politically charged region, too.
And his reason for going wasn't just artistic
tourism. He wanted to get away. He explicitly
said so. He wanted to escape the constraints
of Paris, find something more primitive, more
authentic, as he saw it, away from European conventions.
And this trip becomes foundational for the whole
Orientalist movement in art, right? Though maybe
his version was a bit different. It was. Yes,
it fed into Orientalism, this fascination with
the East. But Delacroix wasn't just looking for
exoticism for its own sake. He was looking for
a connection to the classical past. How so? He
was absolutely captivated by the people he saw,
their clothes, their bearing. He felt they had
a dignity. a way of moving and dressing that
was closer to ancient Romans and Greeks than
anything he saw in modern Paris. Didn't he write
something about that in his journal? He did.
Something like, the Greeks and Romans are here
at my door, in the Arabs who wrap themselves
in a white blanket and look like Cato or Brutus.
So he saw North Africa not just as other, but
as a living link to the classical world he admired.
Exactly. He was synthesizing. Seeing classical
dignity through the lens of vibrant real -world
color and light, not through the cold white marble
of neoclassicism, it was almost a critique of
his own society. Combining classical ideals with
romantic execution. That's a good way to put
it. And the trip unleashed a torrent of work.
Over a hundred paintings and drawings came out
of it. But he ran into difficulties, didn't he?
Especially trying to paint women. Big time. Religious
and cultural norms meant Muslim women were largely
inaccessible to a male European artist. They
had to remain covered and secluded. But he managed
somehow for that famous painting, Women of Algiers.
Yes, he got special, discreet permission to sketch
some women in a private home in Algiers. That
resulted in Women of Algiers in their apartment,
1834. It's incredible, so intimate, glowing with
color, a real contrast to the violence of some
earlier works. A moment of quiet observation.
Definitely. He had less trouble painting subjects
from the Jewish communities, though. That led
to works like The Jewish Wedding in Morocco from
1839. And the trip also seemed to boost his interest
in painting animals. Horses, lions. Oh, absolutely.
For romantics, powerful animals often embodied
pure, untamed passion. Nature's energy, free
from civilization's constraints. So horses fighting,
lions hunting, these became major themes. Yeah,
think of Arab horses fighting in a stable, 1860,
or the various versions of the lion hunt. They're
all about that raw, dynamic energy. The animal
is a symbol of primal force. It feels like as
he got older, his focus shifted slightly. Less
reaction to immediate events, more towards these
sustained, large -scale projects. Which brings
us to religious works, musical inspirations,
and those huge monumental commissions. It's true.
Despite the sometimes scandalous or violent nature
of his famous works, he had a lifelong engagement
with Christian themes, hundreds of religious
paintings. Which seems a bit paradoxical, given
that some sources suggest he wasn't conventionally
religious, maybe agnostic. It is fascinating.
But for Delacroix, the stories of Christianity,
the suffering, the redemption, the miracles,
offered perfect vehicles for exploring profound
human emotion on a grand scale. So works like
Christ on the Sea of Galilee, he did multiple
versions. Yes, exploring that theme of faith
tested by natural chaos. And his interpretations
had power. His Pieta Mary Mourning Christ was
later copied by Van Gogh. That shows the emotional
resonance. And alongside painting, music remained
incredibly important to him, didn't it? Absolutely
essential. He wrote about needing it constantly.
Said something like, nothing can be compared
with the emotion caused by music. that have put
him in a state of exaltation needed for creation.
Did he connect specific composers to his work?
Beethoven seems to have been a major inspiration,
that sense of scale, drama, emotional intensity.
And he was close friends with Chopin. Ah, the
double portrait with George Sand that got cut
up. Sadly, yes. We only have the fragments now.
But you can imagine him responding to the rhythm,
the harmonies, the emotional arcs in music, and
trying to translate that feeling into color and
composition. And this energy, fueled by music
perhaps, helped him tackle these enormous public
commissions later in his career. Definitely.
Starting around 1833, he began receiving major
government contracts to decorate public buildings.
This was a chance to work on the kind of architectural
scale he admired in the old masters. Like Veronese,
Tintoretto, Rubens, the great decorators. Exactly.
It was a lifelong ambition. But it required a
different kind of discipline than studio painting.
Years of sustained effort. We're talking huge
projects. The Salon du Roi at the Palais Bourbon,
libraries in the Palais Bourbon, and the Luxembourg,
the ceiling of the Galerie de Poulain in the
Louvre. Monumental undertakings and incredibly
demanding physically. Imagine spending years
up on scaffolding, dealing with fresco techniques
or painting on dry plaster, trying to make your
colors work across vast, often curved surfaces.
It's a world away from the perceived spontaneity
of some of his other work. It really is. It shows
incredible range and discipline. And the culmination
of all this was his final major commission. The
Chapel at Saint -Sulpice. The Chapelle des Anges
at Saint -Sulpice, yes. Completed between 1857
and 1861. It's considered his masterpiece in
mural painting. Featuring two massive, incredibly
dynamic scenes. Jacob wrestling with the angel
and the expulsion of Heliodorus from the temple.
They have this amazing energy, dramatic lighting.
Art historians often call it the finest mural
painting of his time. It must have taken a tremendous
toll on him physically. It did. His health was
already fragile, and the years of labor on these
murals really wore him down. And this is where
his housekeeper becomes important. Jenny? Jean
-Marie Le Guillaume, yes. Yeah. Jenny. She was
incredibly devoted, fiercely protective of his
privacy in his later years, managed everything
for him. Many credit her care with allowing him
to keep working as long as he did. A touching
detail. The great public artist needing that
private support. It humanizes him, doesn't it?
It does. Which brings us to his final legacy
and those unusual final instructions. First,
just the sheer volume of work he left. That 1864
sale. Over 9 ,000 items. It's just staggering.
About 850 paintings, over 1 ,500 pastels and
watercolors, and get this, over 6 ,600 drawings.
Wow. All that drawing really underlines his own
quote, doesn't it? Color always occupies me,
but drawing preoccupies me, yes. For all his
fame as a colorist, the foundation was constant,
obsessive drawing. And his impact on the artists
who followed. Immense. Foundational for modernism,
really. His expressive brushwork, his ideas about
color, especially how shadows aren't just black
but contain color that directly influenced the
Impressionists. Manet, Renoir, they copied his
works. Obsessively. Trying to figure out how
he did it. And someone like Degas bought the
portrait of Baron Schweider for his own collection.
They knew he was the key figure. The direct line
runs through him. Absolutely. From the old masters
through Romanticism, pointing directly to Impressionism
and beyond. And we also have his journal. Which
gives us insight into his thinking. A fantastic
resource. His thoughts on art, life, politics.
Very eloquent, very revealing. Which makes his
final instruction even more striking. He died
August 13, 1863. But his will contains something
quite specific. Extremely specific and unusual.
He put in a clause expressly forbidding any representation
of his features after his death. No death mask,
no drawings, no photographs. Nothing. I forbid
it expressly, he wrote. That's quite something.
For an artist who spent his life creating unforgettable
images of human drama, liberty, the Greeks, Sardanapalus,
to then demand his own image be erased. It's
a profound final act, almost a contradiction.
The master image maker wanting his own physical
form to vanish from the record. So wrapping this
up, Delacroix. The romantic who fused politics,
literature, exoticism, classicism, all through
color and movement, paving the way for modern
art. Yet ending with this command for anonymity,
it really makes you think about the man versus
the work, doesn't it? Why would he do that? After
being, as Baudelaire said, passionately in love
with passion, but coldly determined to express
it, why erase the expressor? Perhaps he wanted
the art, the energy, the color, the emotion he
engineered to be his sole legacy, not the frail
human appearance. The work transcends the man.
And the work certainly endures. Its themes feel
incredibly current sometimes. If you want proof,
you should look up how a contemporary artist
like Yu Minjun reinterpreted the massacre at
Chios. That sense of suffering, political commentary,
it still resonates. It really does. And it's
a final powerful irony, isn't it? The ultimate
master of visual drama ending with an act of
deliberate visual erasure. A perfectly calculated
final provocation.