Eugène Delacroix is one of the most quoted, most copied and most debated painters in the entire history of French art. His trajectory, from the scandals of the 1822 Salon to the triumph of the 1855 Universal Exhibition, is among the richest of the nineteenth century. More than the figurehead of a school, he stands in retrospect as the essential link between the great traditions of European painting and the formal revolutions of modernity. What strikes any reader of his Journal is the extraordinary lucidity with which he observed his own work: Delacroix was not merely a painter of genius, but a rigorous intellectual, a sensitive musician and a writer of the first order.
Training an Exceptional Painter (1798-1821)
Eugène Delacroix was born on 26 April 1798 in Charenton-Saint-Maurice into a cultivated upper-bourgeois family. His father, a diplomat and prefect, and his mother, granddaughter of the celebrated cabinetmaker Jean-François Oeben, instilled in him from an early age a demanding relationship with the arts and ideas. The death of his father in 1805, then of his mother in 1814, created lasting financial difficulties that help explain the persistence with which the future painter would seek official commissions throughout his career.
In 1815, his uncle Henri-François Riesener secured him a place in the studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, a prominent Neoclassical painter. It was there that he met Théodore Géricault, whose violent and innovative work would prove a decisive influence. VMuseum has examined one of Géricault’s most revealing paintings, the Trumpeter of the Hussars, which reflects this shared impulse toward a painting of force and movement. Alongside his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts, Delacroix broadened his palette through watercolour and deep engagement with the Flemish and Venetian colourists, Rubens above all.
The Years of Scandal: Forging an Identity (1822-1831)
Delacroix’s public career opened with a shock. In 1822, The Barque of Dante, inspired by Dante Alighieri’s Inferno, made its entrance at the Paris Salon. The young journalist Adolphe Thiers hailed the talent of a future great painter; Baron Gros described him as “a chastened Rubens”. The State acquired the work. Two years later, Scenes from the Massacres at Chios confirmed his commitment to contemporary causes. The free composition, the audacious colour, the drama of the bodies: everything signals that Delacroix was refusing the rhetorical conventions of traditional history painting.
The Death of Sardanapalus, shown at the Salon of 1827-1828, provoked widespread hostility. I see in this painting the pictorial manifesto of French Romanticism: the diagonal composition, the profusion of bodies and silks, the incandescent palette constitute a break so radical with official art that it may be compared to what Hernani would represent for the theatre.
In 1831, Liberty Leading the People gathered all these impulses into a single work. In a letter to his brother, Delacroix wrote that he wished to “serve his country with his brushes, since he had not fought for her with arms”. The canvas unites, with uncommon mastery, the realism of bodies fallen on the barricade and the solemn allegory of the female figure raising the tricolour flag. The government of Louis-Philippe acquired it, then promptly withdrew it from the Musée du Luxembourg, judging it too subversive for permanent display.
The Journey to Morocco: An Aesthetic Revolution (1832)
In January 1832, Delacroix joined at his own expense the diplomatic mission of the Comte de Mornay to the Sultan of Morocco. This seven-month journey through Spain, Morocco and Algeria was, by his own account, the most transformative experience of his artistic life.
What he found was not the fantasised Orient of Parisian drawing rooms, but a living civilisation with its own light, its own proportions, its own silences. In his notebooks, preserved at the Louvre, he recorded with precision and wonder the costumes, the architecture and the play of Mediterranean light. In Algiers, he obtained the rare permission to enter a private household, an experience that would give rise to Women of Algiers in their Apartment (1834). The journey sustained more than eighty Orientalist paintings, including Jewish Wedding in Morocco (1841) and The Sultan of Morocco (1845).
The Giaour and the Pasha: Delacroix at His Most Romantically Violent
Among the works examined by VMuseum, The Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha (1835) holds a singular place. Inspired by Lord Byron’s poem of the same name, this canvas concentrates everything that defines Delacroix’s genius: the spiralling composition, the horsemen swept up in a shared frenzy of violence, the colours applied with a freedom that directly anticipates the Impressionists. The painting is also a lesson in how Delacroix absorbed his literary sources. Byron did not supply a “subject” in the academic sense; he offered a tension, an atmosphere, a moral stakes. The rest belonged to the painter.
Monumental Decoration and Final Recognition (1833-1863)
From 1833, Delacroix entered a new phase: the great official commissions. Thiers entrusted him with the decoration of the Salon du Roi at the Palais Bourbon, completed in 1838. This was followed by the library of the Palais Bourbon (1838-1847), the Senate library at the Luxembourg (1840-1846), and the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre (1850). The culmination was the Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice, begun in 1849 and completed only in 1861: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Saint Michael Defeating the Dragon and Heliodorus Driven from the Temple represent the fullest synthesis of his art, a religious painting charged with dramatic energy that his contemporaries would only fully appreciate after his death.
His private life unfolded between the sociability that commissions required and a restorative solitude. A lifelong bachelor by temperament, he maintained a lasting relationship with Joséphine de Forget, who remained devoted to him until the end. Jenny Le Guillou, his housekeeper from around 1834-1835, ran his household with absolute dedication. From 1844, he retreated regularly to Champrosay, which he purchased in 1858, to paint intimate landscapes and care for a tuberculosis that was advancing inexorably.
The 1855 Universal Exhibition finally gave him the retrospective he had never had: thirty-five paintings, the grand medal of honour, the rank of Commander of the Légion d’honneur. He was fifty-seven years old. On 10 January 1857, after seven unsuccessful candidacies, he was elected to the Institut de France, despite the persistent opposition of Ingres. He died on 13 August 1863 in his apartment on the rue de Furstemberg, with Jenny Le Guillou at his side.
A Legacy That Has Never Stopped Resonating
Delacroix’s influence on successive generations was both immediate and lasting. In 1864, Henri Fantin-Latour brought together the figures of the Parisian avant-garde in his Homage to Delacroix, gathered around the master’s portrait. Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas all claimed, in different degrees, his freedom of colour and handling. Paul Signac presented him, in “From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism” (1899), as the direct forerunner of Divisionism. Vincent van Gogh copied several of his canvases and regarded him as a spiritual master. In the twentieth century, Picasso drew on the Women of Algiers to produce a series of fifteen variations between 1954 and 1955.
What I find most compelling about Delacroix is precisely this impossibility of reducing him to a formula. Romantic without sentimentality, classical without academicism, modern without being a revolutionary: he is one of those artists who elude all categories, and that is precisely why they endure across centuries.
Explore all our analyses in our Romanticism section and in our biography catalogue.
FAQ: Eugène Delacroix
Who was Eugène Delacroix?
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is the foremost representative of Romanticism in French painting. Born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, he is the author of Liberty Leading the People (1830) and the frescoes of the Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice. His body of work, encompassing history painting, Orientalist subjects and monumental decoration, exercised a determining influence on Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso.
What is Delacroix’s most famous painting?
Liberty Leading the People (1830, Musée du Louvre) is his most universally known work. This allegorical canvas, created in the wake of the July 1830 revolution, depicts a female figure embodying Liberty, leading the Parisian people across the barricades. It is today one of the most reproduced works in the world.
Why is Delacroix considered the father of French Romanticism?
His works from the period 1822-1831 constitute the most fully realised manifestos of French pictorial Romanticism: the primacy of colour over drawing, dramatic expressiveness, freedom of composition, and engagement with contemporary and literary subjects. Delacroix never claimed leadership of a school, but his painting imposed that status on him in the eyes of his contemporaries.
What is the connection between Delacroix and the Impressionists?
Delacroix does not belong to Impressionism, but he is one of its essential forerunners. His practice of applying colour in free, distinct touches, his treatment of light and his rejection of rigid outline directly influenced Monet, Manet and Degas. Paul Signac theorised this lineage in his essay “From Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism” (1899).
What did the journey to Morocco change in Delacroix’s painting?
The 1832 journey revealed to him an intense Mediterranean light and colour harmonies that no studio could have produced. In his notebooks he described what he found as a “living Antiquity”. The journey transformed his palette and sustained more than eighty Orientalist paintings for the rest of his career.
Where can Delacroix’s works be seen today?
The largest collection is held by the Musée du Louvre in Paris, which includes Liberty Leading the People and Women of Algiers. The Musée Eugène-Delacroix, installed in his former apartment and studio on the rue de Furstemberg, preserves documents, sketches and personal effects. The Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice houses his monumental frescoes and is freely accessible to visitors.
What was the relationship between Delacroix and Baudelaire?
Charles Baudelaire was one of Delacroix’s most perceptive critical defenders. In his Salon reviews of 1845 and 1846, and in his essay “The Work and Life of Eugène Delacroix” (1863), he analysed the painter’s genius with rare depth, calling him “the most original painter of ancient and modern times”. Baudelaire saw in Delacroix the very expression of “modern beauty”, combining melancholy, passion and technical mastery.
Bibliographical Sources
Delacroix’s Writings
- Delacroix, Eugène. Writings on Art, Séguier, Paris, 1988.
- Delacroix, Eugène. Journal, 1822-1863, ed. A. Joubin, 3 vols., Plon, Paris, 1931-1932. Rev. ed. R. Labourdette, Plon, Paris, 1980.
- Delacroix, Eugène. General Correspondence, ed. A. Joubin, 5 vols., Plon, Paris, 1936-1938.
- Delacroix, Eugène. Recollections of a Journey to Morocco, Gallimard, Paris, 1999.
Monographs and Studies
- Daguerre de Hureaux, Alain. Delacroix, Hazan, Paris, 1993.
- Jobert, Barthélémy. Delacroix, Gallimard, Paris, 1997.
- Johnson, Lee. The Paintings of Eugène Delacroix. A Critical Catalogue, 6 vols., Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981-1989.
- Sérullaz, Maurice. Drawings by Eugène Delacroix, 2 vols., Réunion des musées nationaux, Paris, 1984.
Exhibition Catalogues
- Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863, exh. cat., Louvre, Paris, 1963.
- Delacroix: The Late Work, exh. cat., Grand Palais, Paris, 1998.
- Delacroix: The Journey to Morocco, exh. cat., Institut du monde arabe, Flammarion, Paris, 1994.
To go further
Explore all our analyses of Delacroix’s works with high-resolution images and detailed notes here.
Editorial note: this biography draws on the academic sources cited at the end of this article, in particular the Journal of Delacroix edited by André Joubin (Plon, 1932) and the critical catalogue by Lee Johnson (Oxford, 1981-1989). The analysis of individual works is aligned with VMuseum’s dedicated publications on Delacroix.
