Eugène Delacroix  

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Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic painter regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.

Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott, and the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He was a member of the Club des Hashischins and is best remembered for his 1827 painting The Death of Sardanapalus. To 19th century Parisians Delacroix was the founder of modern art. "The majority of the public," wrote Charles Baudelaire in his 1846 review of the salon (published posthumously in Curiosités esthétiques) "have long since, indeed from his very first work, dubbed him leader of the modern school."

Baudelaire on Delacroix

Baudelaire worshipped Delacroix as a dark god and wrote in Les Phares: "Delacroix, lake of blood, haunted by evil angels"

Baudelaire considered Delacroix as the originator of modern art and he wrote in his review of the Paris Salon of 1846: "The majority of the public have long since, indeed from his very first work, dubbed him leader of the modern school." --Charles Baudelaire in Curiosités esthétiques.

Maurice Barrés on Delacroix

Mario Praz notes in The Romantic Agony that "Delacroix [was] the object of a veritable cult on the part of Maurice Barrès. "Du sang, de la volupté, de la mort" might well be the motto of his work," he adds.

List of works

Mademoiselle Rose, (1817-1824), the Louvre

• The Barque of Dante, 1822, the Louvre
• Orphan Girl at the Cemetery, 1823
• Head of a Woman, 1823
• Louis of Orléans Unveiling his Mistress, c1825–26, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Madrid
• Mephistopheles flying over Wittenberg, 1828
• A Young Tiger Playing with its Mother, 1830
• The Women of Algiers, 1834, the Louvre
• The Natchez, 1835
• Delacroix, Salon du Roi, Palais Bourbon, Paris, 1833–37
• Frédéric Chopin, 1838, the Louvre
• George Sand, 1838, Ordrupgaard-Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark
• Fanatics of Tangier, 1838, Minneapolis Institute of Arts
• Columbus and His Son at La Rábida, 1838, National Gallery of Art
• Jewish Wedding in Morocco, c1839, the Louvre
• Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople, 1840, the Louvre
• Hamlet with Guildenstern (Act III, Scene II), 1835–43
• Last Words of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, 1844, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon
• Apollo slaying Python, 1851, the Louvre
• Christ on the Sea of Galilee, 1854
• Clorinda Rescues Olindo und Sophronia, 1856
• Bride of Abydos, 1857
• The Death of Desdemona, 1858
• The Justice of Trajan, 1858, oil on canvas, Honolulu Academy of Arts
• Ovid among the Scythians, oil on cavas, 1859
• Arab Horses Fighting in a Stable, 1860
• Lion Hunt, 1861, Art Institute of Chicago

Famous paintings

• The Death of Sardanapalus
• Liberty Leading the People

See also

• Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, the name given to at least three different major paintings, including one (1861) by Eugène Delacroix.
• Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu, friend, colleague, and photographer
• Musée national Eugène Delacroix, his last apartment in Paris