Eugène Delacroix

Biography of Eugène Delacroix ( 1798-1863 )

Born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, in the Val-de-Marne, Eugène Delacroix grew up in a well-to-do family. The son of an ambassador, he received a solid education at the Lycée Impérial in Paris between 1806 and 1815, where he displayed early talent for drawing while developing a strong literary and musical culture that would profoundly shape his imagination. After the death of his father in 1805 the family moved to Paris, and when his mother died in 1814 he was left an orphan and taken in by his sister Henriette de Verninac. Encouraged by his uncle, the painter Henri Riesener, he entered the private studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin in 1815 while also attending classes at the École des Beaux-Arts. Guérin, a leading Neoclassical painter and future director of the Villa Medici in Rome, transmitted to him an approach that was both classical and liberal, emphasizing the primacy of drawing over colour.

In Guérin’s studio, Delacroix met Théodore Géricault, whose influence proved decisive. He was also deeply impressed by the work of Antoine-Jean Gros. The new impetus given to painting by these artists profoundly inspired the young painter: from Géricault in particular he adopted a dramatic treatment of light, strong contrasts, careful modelling of figures, and a shared fascination with the depiction of horses.

After producing several early decorative and religious works, Delacroix came to public attention at the Salon of 1822 with The Barque of Dante, which was purchased by the French State. He firmly established his reputation two years later with The Massacres of Chios, exhibited at the Salon of 1824, which made him one of the leading figures of the emerging Romantic school.

In 1825, a stay in England further broadened his artistic horizons: there he discovered Shakespeare, English watercolour painting, and the work of John Constable. Upon his return to France he continued an ambitious artistic production and notably presented The Death of Sardanapalus, inspired by Byron’s tragedy, exhibited at the Salon of 1827–1828.

In 1830 Delacroix painted one of his most famous works, Liberty Leading the People, exhibited at the Salon of 1831 and soon elevated to the status of a political icon. His growing reputation earned him important public commissions from the early years of the July Monarchy. The year 1832 marked a decisive turning point in his career: he accompanied the diplomatic mission of the Count Charles de Mornay to the Sultan of Morocco and undertook a long journey that took him from Toulon to Tangier, then through Morocco, Algeria and Spain. Over the course of six months he filled notebooks and letters with sketches and observations. This discovery of North Africa—its light, colours, costumes and attitudes—would have a lasting impact on his work and inspire numerous Orientalist compositions, including Women of Algiers in Their Apartment (1834) and The Sultan of Morocco (1845). Regarded as one of the principal representatives of Romanticism, Delacroix brought back from his travels a wealth of Orientalist sketches and studies.

A highly accomplished draughtsman, he produced numerous studies in black chalk, graphite, charcoal and ink, using a vigorous and expressive line capable of conveying movement with great intensity. Some of these drawings served as preparatory studies for more ambitious compositions, such as the Arab Horseman, related to the painting Moroccan Saddling His Horse, now in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

From 1833 onward, beginning with his first major commission for the Salon du Roi at the Palais Bourbon, Delacroix became one of the leading decorative painters of his time. He subsequently executed the decorations of the library of the Chamber of Deputies (1838–1847), the Luxembourg Library (1840–1846), the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre (1850), and finally the vast cycle for the Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice (1849–1861), considered one of the spiritual culminations of his career.

Admired by Charles Baudelaire and long supported by Adolphe Thiers, Delacroix was celebrated at the Exposition Universelle of 1855, where a retrospective of thirty-five works was dedicated to him. The same year he was made Commander of the Legion of Honour, and in 1857 he was finally elected to the Institut de France after several unsuccessful attempts.

Until the end of his life, despite increasingly fragile health, Delacroix pursued an extraordinarily diverse body of work that encompassed history painting, religious subjects, Orientalist scenes, landscapes and floral still lifes. He also wrote critical texts and kept the pages of his Journal, which remain one of the most valuable testimonies on nineteenth-century art. He died in Paris in 1863 in his studio on the rue de Furstenberg, now a museum. Through the freedom of his colour, the power of his imagination and the depth of his literary sensibility, he remains one of the major painters of Romanticism and a central figure in the renewal of French painting in the nineteenth century.