Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a French painter whose expressive color, energetic brushwork, and dramatic subjects made him a leading figure of Romanticism.

Liberty Leading the People: Delacroix’s 1830 painting depicts Liberty leading Parisians during the July Revolution. Its barricades and allegorical heroine became his most recognizable image of political upheaval.
Color theory: Color theory describes how colors relate, combine, and affect visual perception. Delacroix studied color relationships to intensify contrasts and create luminous effects.
French Romanticism: French Romanticism was a nineteenth-century movement that favored emotion, imagination, and dramatic subjects over classical restraint. Delacroix became its leading painter through works centered on intense feeling and conflict.
Charles Baudelaire: Charles Baudelaire was a French poet and critic who became a major interpreter of modern art. His essays championed Delacroix as the painter who best embodied Romantic sensibility.
Impressionism: Impressionism was a nineteenth-century art movement focused on transient light, modern life, and visible brushwork. Impressionist painters found precedents in Delacroix’s color contrasts and increasingly loose handling.
The Death of Sardanapalus: Delacroix’s 1827 painting depicts the Assyrian king ordering the destruction of his possessions and concubines. Its saturated color and chaotic violence epitomize his audacious Romantic style.
Complementary colors: Complementary colors lie opposite each other on a color wheel and heighten each other’s perceived intensity. His juxtapositions of opposing hues helped make painted surfaces vibrate with energy.
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin: Pierre-Narcisse Guérin was a French Neoclassical painter and teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts. Delacroix studied in Guérin’s atelier, where he encountered both academic discipline and emerging Romantic ideas.
George Sand: George Sand was a French novelist whose works and public persona challenged social conventions. Delacroix moved in Sand’s artistic circle and painted her portrait with Frédéric Chopin.
Paul Cézanne: Paul Cézanne was a French painter whose structured approach to color helped shape modern art. Cézanne admired Delacroix and treated him as a model for making color carry pictorial structure.

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