Eugène Delacroix- Virtual Tour

A Virtual Tour of Eugène Delacroix

Liberty Leading the People
The Massacre at Chios
The Death of Sardanapalus
The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan
Ovid among the Scythians
Jewish Wedding in Morocco
Women of Algiers
Desdemona Cursed by her Father

Highlights of Eugène Delacroix’s Art

The Death of Sardanapalus

“The Death of Sardanapalus” by Eugène Delacroix depicts the tale of Sardanapalus, a king of Assyria, who, according to an ancient story, exceeded all previous rulers in sloth and decadence.

He spent his whole life in self-indulgence, and when he wrote his epitaph, he stated that physical gratification is the only purpose of life.

His debauchery caused dissatisfaction within the Assyrian empire, allowing conspiracies against him to develop.

Sardanapalus failed to defeat the rebels, and then enemies of the empire join the battle against him.

When Sardanapalus’ last defenses collapsed and to avoid falling into the hands of his enemies, Sardanapalus ordered a huge funeral pyre for himself. On the Pyre was piled all his gold and valuables.

He ordered that his eunuchs and concubines be boxed in inside the pyre to burn them and himself to death. The king’s act of destroying his valued possessions, including people and goods, in a funerary pyre, demonstrates his final depravity.

Museum: Philadelphia Museum of Art and Louvre Museum

Liberty Leading the People

“Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix commemorates the July Revolution of 1830 in France.

A woman wearing the Phrygian cap of liberty, personifying the concept of Liberty leads the people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution in one hand and a bayonetted musket with the other.

Delacroix depicted Liberty as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a woman of the people. The corpses at her feet act as a pedestal, from which Liberty strides, barefoot, and bare-breasted.

This painting is seen as a marker to the end of the Age of Enlightenment and the start of the Romantic Era.

The fighters depicted as following Liberty, represent the range of French society from the bourgeoisie represented by the man in a top hat, a student from a prestigious Paris school wearing the traditional bicorne and the revolutionary urban worker, in the form of the boy holding pistols.

They all have a fierceness and determination in their eyes. In the background is the city of Paris with a Tricolore flag that can be seen in the distance on the towers of Notre Dame on the right. Museum: Louvre Museum

The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan

“The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan” by Eugène Delacroix depicts a scene from Lord Byron’s 1813 poem “The Giaour.”

Giaour ambushed and killed Hassan, the Pasha because Giaour had fallen in love with Leila, a slave in Hassan’s harem, but Hassan had discovered this and had her killed.

In 1824, Delacroix read “The Giaour” in its French translation and was captivated by the story as he produced three works with the title “The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan.” The works are distinguished by their dates of 1826, 1835 and 1856. Museum: Art Institute of Chicago and Petit Palais

Ovid among the Scythians

“Ovid among the Scythians” by Eugène Delacroix depicts the imagined circumstances in the life of the Ancient Roman poet Ovid who was exiled by Emperor Augustus to the Black Sea port of Tomis.

Tomis was at that time part of Scythia, and it is where Ovid spent his last eight years writing his last poems.

The Scythians were an ancient Iranian people whose way of life was described by Herodotus as “nomadic” and Ovid himself called them a “wild tribe.”

The theme of civilization confronted with barbarity imagines the life of one of Rome’s most cultured men amongst the barbarous people. In this portrayal, Delacroix shows the Scythians treating the poet with sympathy and curiosity. Museum: Metropolitan Museum of Art and National Gallery, London

Jewish Wedding in Morocco

“Jewish Wedding in Morocco” by Eugène Delacroix depicts a scene the artist had experienced as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco in the 1830s.

This composition was based on his memories, details that were written down in his books on Morocco. This painting depicts the celebration after the formal wedding ceremony.

Dancing is a significant feature of Jewish weddings as it is customary for the guests to dance and entertain the couple. The musicians are at the center of the composition.

Women are generally on one side of the room and the men in the main on the other side of the room. The women are starting the dance.

The people and the costumes entranced Delacroix, and his trip to North Africa inform the subject matter of a great many of his future paintings.

He managed to sketch some women secretly, but generally, he encountered difficulty in finding Muslim women to pose for him because of Muslim rules requiring that women be covered. Less problematic was the painting of Jewish women in North Africa, as in this example. Museum: Louvre Museum

The Massacre at Chios

“The Massacre at Chios” by Eugène Delacroix is a massive painting showing the horror and destruction visited on the Island of Chios. A display of suffering, military might, ornate costumes, terror, and death in a scene of widespread desolation.

There is no heroic figure to counterbalance the massacre and the hopelessness of the victims, and there is no suggestion of hope among the ruin and despair.

The painting reflects the reality of the Chios massacre. It represents the killing of twenty thousand citizens and the forced deportation into slavery for almost all the surviving seventy thousand inhabitants by Ottoman troops during the Greek War of Independence in 1822.

Ottoman soldiers were ordered to kill all infants under three years old, all men 12 years and older, and all women 40 and older, except those willing to convert to Islam.

The wholesale massacre provoked international outrage and led to increasing international support for the Greek cause for Independence. Museum: The Louvre

Women of Algiers

“Women of Algiers” or the more extended title “Women of Algiers in their Apartment” is the title of two paintings by Eugène Delacroix. Delacroix’s first version of Women of Algiers was painted in Paris in 1834.

This second work was painted about fifteen years later. Both works depict the same scene, but the two paintings evoke different moods by depicting the women.

Delacroix’s previous work created a separation between the women and the viewer. The second painting invites the viewer into the scene through the warm, inviting gaze of the woman and the subdued lighting.

In this composition, the women are depicted as smaller figures and fade back into the background. The melody of warm tones blends to create a dreamlike abstraction.

The barely visible black slave is now lifting away the curtain to reveal the seated women to the viewer. The woman on the left wears a lower plunging neckline showing her low neckline and cleavage. She stares softly at the viewer with an alluring gaze. Museum: Louvre Museum

Desdemona Cursed by her Father

“Desdemona Cursed by her Father” by Eugène Delacroix depicts two characters from William Shakespeare’s play Othello. Shakespeare’s Desdemona is a Venetian beauty who enrages her father, a Venetian senator when she elopes with Othello, a Moorish man several years her senior.

In the play’s first act, Desdemona enrages her father by eloping with Othello, a Moor in the Venetian Republic’s service. Later, before the Duke of Venice, his councilmen, and her father, she proclaims her love for Othello and defends her choice.

Delacroix portrays Desdemona on her knees, begging for her father’s acceptance; instead, he raises his hand and curses her. The name “Disdemona” derives from Greek, which means “ill-fated, unfortunate.”

When Othello is deployed to Cyprus in the service of the Republic of Venice, Desdemona accompanies him. His ensign then manipulates her husband into believing she is an adulteress. Museum: Brooklyn Museum

Eugène Delacroix

Name: Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix
Born: 1798 – Charenton-Saint-Maurice, Île-de-France, France
Died: 1863 (aged 65) – Paris, France
Nationality: French
Movement: Romanticism

A Tour of Artists and their Art

Sandro Botticelli (1445 – 1510)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)
Albrecht Durer (1471 – 1528)
Michelangelo (1475 – 1564)
Raphael (1483 – 1520)
Titian (1488 – 1576)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525 – 1569)
El Greco (1541 – 1614)
Caravaggio (1571 – 1610)
Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640)
Diego Velázquez (1599 – 1660)
Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675)
Canaletto (1697 – 1768)
Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828)
Caspar David Friedrich (1774 – 1840)
J.M.W. Turner (1775 – 1851)
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780 – 1867)
Eugène Delacroix (1798 – 1863)
John Everett Millais (1829 – 1896)
Frederic Leighton (1830 – 1896)
Edgar Degas (1834 – 1917)
Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906)
Claude Monet (1840 – 1926)
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919)
Henri Rousseau (1844 – 1910)
Mary Cassatt (1844 – 1926)
John William Waterhouse (1849 – 1917)
Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890)
John Singer Sargent (1856 – 1925)
Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918)
Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944)
Rupert Bunny (1864 – 1947)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944)
Franz Marc (1880 – 1916)
Goyō Hashiguchi (1880 – 1921)
Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920)
Artists and their Art

Quotes by Eugène Delacroix

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“What moves those of genius, what inspires their work is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”

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“The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing.”

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“Men of genius are made not by new ideas, but by an idea which possesses them, namely, that what has been said has not yet been sufficiently said.”

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“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.”

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“Nature creates unity even in the parts of a whole.”

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“The source of genius is imagination alone, . . . the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.”

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“Each of the beings necessary to our existence who disappears takes away with him a whole world of feelings that no other relationship can revive.”

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“Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of a good way of life.”

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“Draftsmen may be made, but colorists are born.”

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“A taste for simplicity cannot endure for long.”

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“Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.”

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“When all is said, and done scholars can do no more than find in nature what is already there.”

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“If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess nothing; everything goes through us.”

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“Of which beauty will you speak? There are many: there are a thousand: there is one for every look, for every spirit, adapted to each taste, to each particular constitution.”

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“Experience has two things to teach. The first is that we must correct a great deal, and the second, that we must not correct too much.”

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“What makes men of genius, or rather, what they make, is not new ideas, it is that idea – possessing them – that what has been said has still not been said enough.”

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“What drives men of genius is their obsession with the idea that what has already been done is not good enough.”

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“The Natural History Museum is open to the public on Tuesdays and Fridays. Elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, extraordinary animals! Rubens rendered them marvelously. I had a feeling of happiness as soon as I entered the place, and the further I went, the stronger it grew. I felt my whole being rise above commonplaces and trivialities and the petty worries of my daily life. What an immense variety of animals and species of different shapes and functions!”

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