“Liberty leading the People”

EUGÈNE DELACROIX

1830
oil on canvas, 260- 325 cm. - Paris , Louvre.

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Eugène Delacroix is the French romanticist painter par excellence and one of the most important names in the European painting in the first half of the 19th century. Although his sources of inspiration are clearly baroque, Delacroix evolved his Art towards an audacious antirealism, a style that was admired by many impressionist painter decades later.

“Liberty leading the People” is a work filled with symbolism. The Liberty, a feminine figure with nude breasts, holding a French flag and wearing a Phrygian cap, leads the people, and among them we can identify famous names as Gavroche or Fréderic Villot, curator at the Louvre and Delacroix's close friend. Technically, it's also an extraordinary work, in which an earlier romantic masterpiece (Gericault's impressive “the raft of the medusa”) is present in the composition, which is finished with Delacroix's fast and agile brushstroke. Immediately associated with the French Revolution, “Liberty leading the People” demonstrates the capacity of Painting to become the symbol of an age.

Text by G. Fernández, www.theartwolf.com

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