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AP®︎/College Art History
Course: AP®︎/College Art History > Unit 6
Lesson 1: Enlightenment and revolution- Cabrera, Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- Wright of Derby, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery
- Fragonard, The Swing
- Thomas Jefferson, Monticello
- David, Oath of the Horatii
- David, Oath of the Horatii
- Jean-Antoine Houdon, George Washington
- Vigée Le Brun, Self-Portrait
- Goya, And there's nothing to be done (from the Disasters of War)
- Painting colonial culture: Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque
- Ingres, La Grande Odalisque
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
- Thomas Cole, The Oxbow
- Thomas Cole, The Oxbow
- Early Photography: Niépce, Talbot and Muybridge
- Turner, Slave Ship
- Charles Barry and A.W.N. Pugin, Palace of Westminster (Houses of Parliament)
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Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People
Delacroix's painting, Liberty Leading the People, captures the 1830 French Revolution. It features Liberty, an allegorical figure, leading diverse classes of people over a barricade. The artwork showcases chaos, energy, and the cost of revolution, while using vibrant colors and loose brushwork, breaking traditional art rules. Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, oil on canvas, 2.6 x 3.25m, 1830 (Musée du Louvre, Paris) Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Is there any reference to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables? As I have read that there is a reference to the Gavroche, not just the revolution.(4 votes)
- Victor Hugo was actually inspired by Liberty Leading the People. Gavroche is inspired by the boy holding up the pistol next to Liberty(10 votes)
- What are the romantic aspects within this painting?(4 votes)
- The feeling is what really makes it Romantic. It as painted not to make people rationally think about revolution, but feel the frenzy and power that revolution has. This purpose is seen in a few places. The composition of the figures in a pyramid shape gives a feeling of movement and, with it, emotion. The contrasts in the colors also is very emotive. Also, the kind of in-your-face-ness is very Romantic. The cropping at the bottom and the feeling that it is in the viewer's space leads to more emotion and that Romantic feel. A lot of what makes it feel Barque is what makes it Romantic, but the real signs of Romanticism are the things about the painting that make you feel something, because that is the unifying idea behind all Romanic art.(8 votes)
- How does "Liberty leading the People" show the influence of baroque art?(2 votes)
- I would consider this painting to be a reaction to Baroque art. This was about a popular, democratic revolution, where baroque are catered to the elite and powerful. The baroque was about idealized things, and natural beauty, and this is about a mythic person in the middle of urban, revolutionary combat. On the other hand, you can see similar techical aspects to baroque: lighting, and the amount of detail are what jump out at me.(4 votes)
- Who was the patron of this artwork?(1 vote)
- According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People it looks like he painted it out of his own passion, and only sold it after it was finished.
The French government bought the painting in 1831 for 3,000 francs with the intention of displaying it in the throne room of the Palais du Luxembourg as a reminder to the "citizen-king"
Delacroix painted his work in the autumn of 1830. In a letter to his brother dated 21 October, he wrote: "My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I’ve embarked on a modern subject—a barricade. And if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her." The painting was first exhibited at the official Salon of 1831.
Louis-Philippe of the July Revolution, through which he had come to power. This plan did not come to fruition and the canvas hung in the palace's museum gallery for a few months, before being removed due to its inflammatory political message. After the June Rebellion of 1832, it was returned to the artist. According to Albert Boime,(5 votes)
- Why is this in the Romanticism section?(2 votes)
- Delacroix is a romanticist painter and this work is typically considered a romanticist work(2 votes)
- was it unusual at this time for something like liberty and freedom to be expressed as a woman?(1 vote)
- From the author:The was a fairly common type of personification in the 19th century. Think of the Statue of Liberty.(4 votes)
- why is liberty portrayed as a woman?(2 votes)
- Liberty is also the Greek goddess Nike. At this point in art history the Greek gods and goddesses were very recognized symbols and figures.(3 votes)
- Is this seen as a Romantic painting because of the passion shown through the middle and lower class to come together to overthrow the King? Or how else is it seen as Romantic(2 votes)
- This is a political painting, which expresses the artist's solidarity with a social movement or a political position. This type of painting is typical for Romanticism.(1 vote)
- Is there any specific reason why Delacroix made this piece?(2 votes)
- Delacroix painted his work in the autumn of 1830. In a letter to his brother dated 21 October, he wrote: "My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I’ve embarked on a modern subject—a barricade. And if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People(1 vote)
- Why is liberty symbolized as a woman in this piece, and not a man or an animal instead?(1 vote)
- The artist is referencing ancient Greece and Rome in this painting. Since the Greek goddess Nike represents victory and liberty, it is likely that he chose a female figure to symbolize the Liberty.(3 votes)
Video transcript
(jazz piano) - [Dr. Zucker] We're
in the Louvre in Paris looking at large canvas by Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People. This painting dates to 1830. This is Romanticism. - [Dr. Harris] It
depicts an event of 1830. This is a contemporary subject. It's important to remember
that large paintings like this were generally reserved
for history paintings, at least according to
the rules of the Academy. But here, like Gericault before him, Delacroix is taking on
a contemporary subject. This is something that
people in Paris experienced in July of 1830. - [Dr. Zucker] This was the revolution that ousted the
reactionary king Charles X, and installed on the throne
the more moderate king, Louis-Philippe. - [Dr. Harris] But we're seeing a moment where the outcome of the
Revolution is not sure. We're seeing fighting
on the streets of Paris. We see the very recognizable
Cathedral of Notre Dame in the background. - [Dr. Zucker] Notre Dame
was a symbol of the monarchy. It was a symbol of conservativism and yet Delacroix represents
at the top of one of its towers the tricolor, the flag
of the revolutionaries. - [Dr. Harris] Liberty
is an allegorical figure. She is a symbol of an idea
that led the revolutionaries, many of them to give up their
lives to oust a conservative and reactionary monarch. - [Dr. Zucker] One might just think of the Statue of Liberty. That's not an actual person,
it's a personification of an idea and here, too, this
woman is a personification of the idea of liberty,
the idea of freedom. The fact that her breasts
are visible is a reference to antiquity, to the birth of
democracy, to Ancient Greece and the Roman republican tradition. - [Dr. Harris] Liberty
strides across the barricade, this barrier that has been set
up in the streets of Paris. - [Dr. Zucker] Paris was
still a medieval city with narrow, winding streets. The grand boulevards of
the later 19th century had not yet been built, and so
what the revolutionaries did is they dug up the cobblestones
that paved the streets and they piled them up and
erected these barricades that were both defensive positions, but also impeded the movements
of the Royalist troops. - [Dr. Harris] But
what's fascinating to me is this call by Liberty to
climb over the barricade, to trespass that barrier,
and to move forward, to continue to fight
even more aggressively for these ideals. - [Dr. Zucker] Liberty's face is shown in a perfect classical profile, recalling Ancient Greek and
Roman images, but in doing so, she's also turning around
to call the rebels forward and we can see this throng of people moving into the distance. But in the foreground, we see
two very particular figures. We see a man with a pistol in his waist. He wears his shirt with no jacket. He's a member of the lower
class but the pin in his hat expresses that he's got
revolutionary sympathies. - [Dr. Harris] Delacroix's
clearly giving us this idea of people of all classes coming together because the figure
right next to the worker is more nicely dressed. He's got a top hat on, a jacket, a vest. He holds a hunting rifle
instead of a pistol. - [Dr. Zucker] And so this revolution is not only for the poor. It's also for the middle classes. - [Dr. Harris] Which is what makes it so profoundly dangerous. This is not one class against another. These are the people coming together. - [Dr. Zucker] On the right
side of the canvas is a boy who holds not one but two
pistols and seems rather wild. He's a schoolboy and you know that from the velvet cap he wears and from the satchel at his side. - [Dr. Harris] Below
him, we see two soldiers who have fallen, and so it's not just that Delacroix's giving
us this sense of victory, of Liberty striding forward, but also the terrible costs of revolution. - [Dr. Zucker] Best summed up for me by the man in the lower left who's wearing a nightshirt
as if he's been dragged from his bed and murdered
by Royalist soldiers. He's only wearing one sock. His shirt is drawn up and so
he's nude from the waist down. - [Dr. Harris] And his shirt is bloody and he's incredibly close to us. In fact, his right arm is foreshortened and moves into our space. But the figures in the
foreground of the dead and the dying and the
wounded are all in our space. This is a painting much like
Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, or Gros' Pest House in Jaffa, that puts forward the violence
in an unidealized way. - [Dr. Zucker] The entire
scene is one of chaos, one of energy. It is filled with diagonals,
with smoke, with movement, and yet Delacroix has also
contrived a classicizing pyramid to organize all of these figures,
creating a sense of order within the chaos. One of the reasons the
painting feels so energetic is because of the loose brushwork and because of the brilliant
colors that Delacroix uses. The tricolor, the blues in the sky, the red sash of the figure
that looks up to Liberty, all stand out and are in stark contrast to the more muted colors
that were traditional at this moment. - [Dr. Harris] Delacroix is
violating so many of the rules of the Academy. This is not a painting
with perfect finish. In other words, we easily
see the hand of the artist, the brushwork. This is not a painting where
we see a careful attention to line and contour. Rather, we have a sense of
the openness of contours, of the looseness of the
handling of the paint. - [Dr. Zucker] And the contingency
of each of these figures that if we waited just a moment, they would all have shifted position. - [Dr. Harris] This painting was purchased by King Louis-Philippe to
show that he was a champion of republican values and by republican, we mean the ideals of democracy. But, before the decade was over, in 1839, the painting was returned to Delacroix because it was perceived as dangerous. This was an image that
showed people coming together to overthrow a king, after all. But in 1848, at the time
of the next Revolution when Louis-Philippe is ousted, this painting is returned
to the museum once again. This is a good reminder of just
how politicized art could be in the 19th century in France. (jazz piano)