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Essay on Eugene Delacroix
Delacroix is considered the foremost painter of the Romantic Movement in France; his influence as a colorist is inestimably great. He studied in Guérin's studio with Géricault, who became a major influence on his work. Delacroix enriched his neoclassical training with acute attention to the works of Rubens, Michelangelo, Veronese, and the Venetian school, and later Constable, Bonington, and the English watercolorists. When his first major work, The Bark of Dante (Louvre), had been exhibited in the Salon in 1822 and purchased by the government, he was, to his own surprise, recognized as the leader of the opposition to the neoclassical school of David. In temperament and choice of subjects he was a romantic, as revealed by his dramatic interpretation of scenes from mythology, literature, and political, religious, and literary history (Eugene, 1981).
Delacroix's artistic career began in 1822, when his first painting, The Barque of Dante (1822, Louvre, Paris), was accepted by the Paris Salon. He achieved popular success in 1824 with Massacre at Chios (Louvre), which portrays the topical and heroic subject of the Greek struggle for independence. On a trip to England in 1825, he studied the work of English painters. The influence of R. P. Bonington, who painted in bright, jewel-like colors, is evident in Delacroix's subsequent works, such as Death of Sardanapalus (1827, Louvre).
A full-fledged work of his mature style, it is a lavish, violent, colorful canvas in which women, slaves, animals, jewels, and fabrics are combined in a swirling, almost delirious composition. The painting portrays the decision made by an ancient king to have his possessions (including his women) destroyed before he kills himself (Giles, 1999). The last of the great artists of the Renaissance and the first modern'; thus Baudelaire on Delacroix. For Baudelaire, Delacroix's position as one of the great figures of art history was assured not just by his daring and Original sizeity qualities generally considered Romantic - but for the fact that they found expression within a tradition....
