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The painter Eugène Delacroix wrote: “I have begun a painting with a modern theme, a barricade… and, if I have not fought for the country, at least I will paint for it.” On my last trip to Paris I visited the artist’s former workshop, located at number 6 of the beautiful and romantic Place Furstenberg, converted into the Eugène Delacroix National Museum since 1971, where works and memories of the author are preserved, such as The Magdalene in the desert (1845).
One of his most emblematic works, Liberty Leading the People (1830) is on display at the Louvre Museum. He was a friend of the poets Baudelaire and Victor Hugo. He decorated the Des Saints Anges chapel of the Saint-Sulpice church. He left us a diary with interesting and valuable information regarding his life and times.
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), a prominent figure among romantic painters, began his artistic studies in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century. He was fascinated by the freedom of Goya’s work, the baroque classics such as Rubens, Velázquez or Rembrandt.
He felt that art did not have to be so rational. As Baudelaire, a great friend of the painter, says, “romanticism does not lie precisely in the choice of themes, nor in the exact truth, but in the way of feeling. It has been sought outside, when it can only be found inside.”
His trips were also an influence: the first to England, where he met the landscape painter Constable and where he discovered that technique and color can cause psychic effects in the viewer. The second, to North Africa, to Morocco and Algeria, being dazzled by the light and also by the exoticism of its people, with all their sensuality and mystery. There is a diary of these trips with wonderful notes and high-quality sketches.
He is the author of such famous paintings as Dante’s Boat. The first great synthesis of the painter, of poetic inspiration, which deals metaphorically with the universal destiny of the artist and which traverses the dark regions of the unconscious. It is an oil painting made in 1822, in which characters from hell appear from Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Dante’s descent into hell and purgatory accompanied by Virgil.
As a theme, Delacroix chose Dante’s eighth canto of hell, a sinister and symbolic theme, where the poet Virgil appears in the company of Dante, while the rower Phlegias directs the boat towards the infernal city. The condemned emerge from the muddy waters of the lake, desperately trying to hold on to the boat. The scene takes place in the Styx lagoon that they must cross to reach hell.
The writer is represented in Hell, a place of eternal suffering where the choleric must suffer. In the background, hell represented by the burning city.
Dante appears dressed in a white tunic that is covered with a greenish cape and his head covered with a red garment. His face shows repulsion when he sees the condemned Florentines who pay for their guilt with eternal suffering. Virgil dressed in a brown tunic and on his head he wears a laurel wreath; The whole of the famous boat is completed by the figure of Charon who tries to prevent the condemned from getting on the boat. It is precisely in these condemned men that
Delacroix shows the great mastery of his painting. Characters with great muscles and great dramatic strength. Expressiveness comes to life in Delacroix’s brushes. Currently, the work is in the Louvre.
His arrival in Morocco in 1832 marks the beginning of his second trip. A stylistic period in which Moroccan themes abound due to their exotic character and the use of color that takes on great prominence.
The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) is an epic drama of passion and destruction. This painting represents the last moment of the Assyrian king Sardanapalus, whose capital is besieged, with no hope of freedom and decides to commit suicide.
Delacroix represents the last, dramatic and tragic moment with a vibrant color palette and a romantic style that made him an influential figure of romanticism. The work reflects Delacroix’s characteristic technical mastery and emotional approach. It is believed that the painter was inspired by a poem by Lord Byron. It is exhibited in the Louvre Museum.
In Romanticism, Charles Baudelaire saw the expression of beauty. Stendhal considered beauty as the expression of a way of seeking happiness and Baudelaire declared: “There are as many beauties as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.”
Baudelaire observed that his friend Delacroix was ardently in love with passion and determined to seek the means of expressing passion in the most visible way.
Charles Baudelaire (9-4-1821-Paris, 31-8-1867, Paris), poet, essayist, translator and art critic, is included among the “cursed poets” of the 19th century in France. He is the author of The Flowers of Evil, a set of poems prepared over eight years. The collection of poems was presented on June 25, 1857 and unleashed a violent controversy. The most important influences he had were Théofile Gautier and Edgar Allan Poe, whom he translated. He is credited with coining the term “modernity.”
The Flowers of Evil is considered one of the most provocative and revolutionary works of the 19th century. It proclaims a different, disturbing beauty. It sings of the ephemeral, that which decomposes, of the urban and its anonymous inhabitants, of the ambiguous morality that wonders about remorse. The poet recreates the concept of the devil, violence and perversity and their multiple ways of manifesting themselves. He considers love a way to get out of himself.
“Freedom is philosophy, reason; in art, inspiration; in politics, law,” said Victor Hugo (02-26-1802, Besançon – 05-22-1885, Paris), poet, playwright and French novelist who developed the theory of romantic, political and intellectual drama that was committed and influential in the history of his country. He became a member of the French Academy in 1941. In 1876 he was elected senator of Paris. His remains rest in The Panthéon.
In the preface to his drama Cromwell (1827), he rejected the rules of neoclassical theater, proclaimed the principle of “freedom in art.” He was seconded by Alphonse de Lamartine, Alfred Musset, Alfred Vigny. The presentation of the drama Hernani (1830) at the Comédie Française marked a milestone in literature for its break with the rigid norms of French tragedy. He also wrote some collections of poems such as Autumn Leaves (1831) and The Twilight Songs (1835).
In 1830 he began a phase of great literary fertility, highlighting his first great novel, Our Lady of Paris, which consisted of 11 books. Set in the 15th century, the writer tells us the sad story of the little gypsy Esmeralda and her eternal love for the hunchbacked Quasimodo bell ringer of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Each face, each stone of this venerable building is a page, not only in the history of the country, but also in history. of science and art.
In 1831, with the edition of his work, he launched a plea from its pages, in the face of the decline of the temple, to enhance all its artistic and heritage value.
Another of his great works, Les Misérables (1862), presents in its plot a discussion about good and evil, about law, politics, ethics, justice and religion. The author confessed that he had been inspired by Vidocq, a French detective, writer and criminal who became the first director of National Security.
Furthermore, the author analyzes the stereotypes of that time and shows his opposition to the death penalty. The end of the novel is a defense of the oppressed, regardless of the place or socio-historical situation they live in. It shows an excellent study of the society of that time, as well as the passions, acts that take place there, and the value of forgiveness.
Delacroix set up his painter’s studio on the charming Fustemberg Square at the end of 1857 so that he could be close to the church of Saint Sulpice, where he was decorating a chapel with three large frescoes. He would not abandon him until his death. “My home is definitely charming…The sight of my little garden and the cheerful appearance of my workshop always give me a feeling of pleasure,” Delacroix would say.
The studio designed by the artist with a beautiful garden that he arranged like a hermitage in the heart of Paris. The museum brings together a collection of the artist’s works, paintings, sketches, drawings, engravings, lithographs, his color palettes, letters from his personal correspondence.
An interesting painting, The Madeleine in the Desert, which he presented at the Salon in 1845, caught Baudeleire’s attention (“here is the famous head of Madeleine inverted, with a strange and mysterious smile and so naturally that one does not know if it is haloed by death, or embellished by the fading of divine love.”
Also, The Education of the Virgin, which Delacroix painted in 1842, when he visited George Sand at his castle in Nohant.
In his atelier he painted Liberty Leading the People in 1830. It is an allegorical painting about a historical event, the revolution of July 1830 that occurred in Paris, the Three Glorious Days, as history would know them. A barricade scene. In a letter to her brother he said: “I have started a painting with a modern theme, a barricade… and, if I have not fought for the country, at least I will paint for it.”
Freedom is represented by the allegory of a woman, the French Marianne, dressed in a yellow tunic cinched at the waist, the upper part of which has been torn in the fight. Her head wears a Phrygian cap, a symbol of the militants of the French Revolution, used in ancient times to distinguish freed slaves.
In this work, representatives of French society appear: bourgeois with top hats, beggars in rags, children with weapons… in the background a crowd of anonymous people fight between smoke and explosions.
A pyramid structure is seen, with the dead for freedom at the base. Delacroix’s light brush and the luminous force of his colors exalt the vitality of his paintings. Color for Delacroix has its own emotional meaning, with which he tried to show the feeling on the canvas. In the background you can see the stormy sky of Paris, another characteristic of romanticism. He uses pale colors with ocher tones and loose brushstrokes highlighting the blue, red and white of the French tricolor flag.
The figure of freedom suggests the Venus de Milo and for others the Victory of Samothrace. It carries two revolutionary symbols, the Phrygian cap and the tricolor flag. In the background, we find Notre-Dame de Paris, on one of whose towers the revolutionary flag flies, perhaps to affirm the submission of the church.
“When I paint a picture, I do not write a thought,” said Eugène Delacroix, who questioned the need for subject matter in painting. According to him, what provoked emotion in a canvas were its plastic values—matter, light, color—beyond the scenes that were represented.
The last years of his life Delacroix decorated the chapel of the Holy Angels of the church of Saint Sulpice, in the right main nave, between 1851 – 1861.
To illustrate this theme he chose three scenes of battles with warrior angels: Heliodorus expelled from the temple, on the wall in front of Jacob; Saint Michael killing the dragon, on the ceiling, and Jacob’s fight, which is considered one of the painter’s last masterpieces.
Delacroix was particularly involved in this project and wrote on January 1, 1861 in his diary: “Painting harasses and torments me in a thousand ways indeed, like the most demanding lover; for four months now I flee at dawn and run towards this charming work, as at the feet of the most beloved mistress; what seemed easy to overcome, presents me with horrible and incessant difficulties.
Heliodorus expelled from the temple made in oil on wax on the wall, and also four triangular paintings with figures of angels for the pendentives. The composition is divided into two parts, on the right a broken arch with a balustrade and on the left a large staircase. At the top we find the priests and the curious who observe the scene below in astonishment. In the main scene, a winged angel appears riding a horse alongside two figures suspended in the air through exuberant foreshortening, stopping Heliodorus as he falls violently to the ground.
The architectural motifs that make up the temple have an oriental touch, as can be seen in the columns adorned with a series of borders inspired by Eastern architecture. At the same time, we found objects that are reminiscent of the work The Death of Sardanapalus. The prominence of the painting is given by the great dynamism achieved by the unstable postures of the figures, and it can also be said that the location of the staircase itself causes a visual cascade that increases the movement of the event.
The Fight between Jacob and the angel represents a hand-to-hand battle between two characters, forming a philosophical conception that obsessed Delacroix throughout his life (the fight between two antagonistic forces: good and evil, matter and spirit or thought. ). The three paintings were restored in 2015 and 2016.
I sit on a bench in Furstemberg Square and listen to the song of the sunset. An aroma of different flowers reaches me with the breeze that stirs the leaves and in the sky between clouds the French Marienne emerges raising freedom.
