Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born in 1798 near Paris and became the most important French Romantic painter, leading the revolt against the Neoclassical establishment with paintings of violent emotion, exotic colour, and turbulent movement. Where David and Ingres exalted reason, restraint, and line, Delacroix championed passion, imagination, and colour, drawing inspiration from Shakespeare, Byron, Dante, and the contemporary struggle for Greek independence.
The Massacre at Chios (1824) shocked the Salon with its depiction of Ottoman atrocities, its loosely painted figures writhing in anguish against a lurid sky. The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) went further still: the Assyrian king reclines on a bed watching the destruction of his harem and treasures, the composition a tumbling avalanche of flesh, silk, and violence. Liberty Leading the People (1830), painted in the heat of the July Revolution, is perhaps the most iconic revolutionary image in art — the bare-breasted figure of Liberty striding over barricades, tricolour in hand, became a permanent symbol of popular uprising.
Delacroix’s journal and letters reveal an artist of formidable intellect and culture, and his theoretical insights into colour — particularly the principle of complementary colour contrast — directly influenced the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Cézanne declared, “We all paint through Delacroix,” and Van Gogh studied his colour theories with passionate attention.