Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix was highly influential in the 19th-century Romanticism art movement and is considered by many art historians to be the most important of the Romantic painters. Delacroix is often attributed with refining Romanticism, not only aesthetically but philosophically, as his work influenced not only art, but also literature. One of Delacroix’s best-known paintings, completed in 1830 and on the cover of this book, is Liberty Leading the People, which represents the Parisian people in their search for liberty, fraternity, and equality, a subject of great importance to the French nation on the heels of their revolution, which in turn followed closely and was inspired by the American Revolution. In 1832, Delacroix traveled to North Africa and Spain as part of a diplomatic mission to Morocco after the French acquisition of Algiers. He sought artistic inspiration, as well as an escape from stifling Parisian society. Delacroix wished to immerse himself in a more primitive—socially and physically—environment in order to find new energy and subjects from which to create art. He produced over 100 works based on his experience in Morocco, furthering a new trend in art called Orientalism. Much of his work remains in French institutions. The Museum Eugène Delacroix is housed in a small building attached to the Musée du Louvre in Paris.