Delacroix

At the Louvre, Delacroix’s once-scandalous paintings now stand as classics. How did the artist who provoked such fury become a starting point for modern art?

In France, where the Academy prized classical design and line, Eugène Delacroix made color carry the force of feeling—and found himself ranged against the official taste of his age. Paul G. Konody traces the young painter from his uncertain entrance into Guérin’s studio at seventeen to the battles that set him almost alone against Ingres’s powerful school. The conflict was more than a quarrel over technique: it asked whether painting should obey inherited rules or be remade by passion, movement, and bold brushwork. Could one artist loosen the grip of an entire tradition?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.