28 Works, Today, April 26th. is artist Eugène Delacroix’s day, his story, illustrated with footnotes #115

Liberty Leading the People commemorates the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled King Charles X of France. A woman of the people with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept of Liberty leads a varied group of people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution — the tricolour, which again became France’s national flag after these events — in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty is also viewed as a symbol of France and the French Republic known as Marianne. The painting is often confused for depicting the French Revolution. More on this painting

Delacroix seems to be trying to convey the will and character of the people, rather than glorifying the actual event, the 1830 revolution against Charles X, which did little other than bring a different king, Louis-Philippe, to power. The warriors lying dead in the foreground offer poignant counterpoint to the symbolic female figure, who is illuminated triumphantly against a background of smoke.

The boy holding a pistol aloft on the right is sometimes thought to be an inspiration for the Gavroche character in Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, Les Misérables.

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

Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the “forces of the sublime”, of nature in often violent action…

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