eugene delacroix
Liberty Leading the People
[1830]
THE FRENCH ARTIST Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) was the most famous and influential of the Romantic painters, who rejected the balanced, moderate images of the preceding Neoclassical period and emphasized passion and imagination in the creation of beauty. The Romantic movement swept across Europe during the first part of the nineteenth century and included, along with artists such as Delacroix, great writers, composers, architects, and philosophers. Important figures such as William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel are all associated with European Romanticism.
While Delacroix's paintings depicted contemporary or historical events, they also drew on literature and myth. Stylistically, Delacroix was a transitional figure in European art. He was heavily influenced by Renaissance art, which he studied passionately, but he also drew on impressionism, the painting style of, for example, Monet and Renoir, which dominated the last part of the nineteenth century. The French poet Charles Baudelaire famously referred to Delacroix as "the last of the great artists of the Renaissance and the first of the moderns."
Delacroix's best-known painting, Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830, was created to celebrate the July 1830 Revolution, which forced France's King Charles X to abdicate in favor of the much more popular and democratic King Louis-Phillippe. However, the painting has become indelibly associated with the French Revolution of 1789, which overthrew the old aristocracy of France and became one of the chief inspirations of European Romanticism. Liberty is allegorically portrayed in Delacroix's painting as a partially nude woman who is striding through a battlefield wearing a Phrygian cap (a hat traditionally associated with liberty in both classical times and during the French Revolution), carrying a musket in one hand and a French flag in the other.
Initial reactions to the painting were mixed. Some people, like Alexandre Dumas, author of such novels as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, thought that Delacroix had portrayed the crowd accompanying liberty as too rough and unruly. Others thought that his personification of liberty as a fighting woman was commonplace and vulgar. Having gained in popularity throughout the nineteenth century, the painting is now a recognizable symbol of the idealism behind the French Revolution and of the proposition that freedom must sometimes be won through armed conflict. From 1979 through 1994, the image was featured on the back of France's hundred-franc note.
eugene delacroix
Liberty Leading the People, 28 July 1830, 1830 (oil on canvas) Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman Art Library
See p. C-8 in the color insert for a full-color reproduction of this image.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
How would you describe the relationship between the actual scene that the painting depicts and the allegory that it represents?
What is the significance of Delacroix's representing liberty as a woman with her breasts exposed? Why might Delacroix have chosen to portray Liberty in this way?
What argument about war does the juxtaposition of the items in Liberty's hands make?
What kind of social argument might be contained in the depictions of the people accompanying Liberty? (What does their dress indicate about their class status? Do
all the people in the picture appear to be from the same social class?) How would you make this argument in words rather than a picture?
5. What do the lifeless bodies in the foreground of the painting symbolize? Why are they given such a prominent position in the painting?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Compare the figure of Liberty with the sculptures of women's clothing in the Women of World War II Monument. How does each artwork represent the role of women during war time?
How do the dead bodies in the foreground of Liberty Leading the People compare with the tortured human figures in Guernica (p. 497)? How do Delacroix and Picasso view the human costs of war?
How does Liberty Leading the People make the same point as Orwell's "Pacifism and the War" (p. 508)—that freedom sometimes must be won through violence? Does the painting or the essay argue more effectively? How so? What does this effectiveness suggest about rhetoric?
Which writers in this chapter might disagree with Delacroix's and Orwell's point (see #3)? Why?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Interpret Liberty Leading the People, focusing on Delacroix's attitude toward war.
Write an essay examining the representation of liberty as a woman. What qualities of liberty could plausibly be described as feminine?
Research the overall characteristics of European Romanticism and discuss Liberty Leading the People as a Romantic painting.
pablo picasso
Guernica [1937]
IN A CAREER SPANNING more than seventy-five years, the Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) produced thousands of paintings and was affiliated with dozens of artistic movements and media. His reputation, already highly esteemed during his life, continued to grow after his death, and he is now seen as one of the most influential artists who ever lived. In May of 2004, one of Picasso's early works, Boy with a Pipe, sold at auction for $104.1 million, then the highest price ever paid for a single painting.
In 1907, after more than ten years of painting realistic works, Picasso began working with the French artist Georges Braque (1882-1963) to develop a new artistic style that would eventually be called "cubism." The artistic theory behind cubism holds that an object must be seen from multiple perspectives to be truly understood. Thus, a cubist painting presents its subject from multiple perspectives—front view, side view, back view—all shown at once as part of the same image. Though cubism is only one of the many styles that Picasso used in his paintings, it is the one with which he is most often associated. And it is a style clearly evident in his 1937 masterpiece Guernica, which many critics consider his finest painting.
Though Picasso generally did not approve of overtly political art, Guernica is perhaps the most famous political statement by any artist in any age. An 11% x 25% foot mural commissioned by the Spanish Republican government for the 1937 Paris World's Fair, the painting depicts the bombing of Guernica, a Basque town in northern Spain, by German and Italian forces allied with General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The German leader, Adolf Hitler, saw the unprovoked bombing raid against an unarmed civilian population as a way to test the destructive capability of his air force. As a result, an entire town was destroyed, and more than sixteen hundred people were killed. Devastated by the senseless destruction, Picasso created Guernica as a response to the brutality of the bombing and the senselessness of war.
pablo picasso Guernica, 1937 (oil on canvas).
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain / Bridgeman Art Library.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
What is the immediate visual effect of Guernica? What is the overall emotional effect? What elements of the painting elicit these reactions?
Notice the similarity between the woman holding the baby on the left side of the picture and the woman screaming on the right side. What is the significance of their likeness? Why are both of their heads facing upward at ninety-degree angles from their bodies?