The Romantic Movement In France

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

In this picture, which was the real beginning of his lasting fame, Delacroix proved himself to be one of the world’s great colorists, and laid the foundations of the new handling of color which became the greatest pictorial triumph of the nineteenth century. Color in his hands was no dead thing, it became something alive, scintillating and vibrating; his results were obtained not only by the happy choice of invididual tints, but still more by the science with which he knew how to juxtapose one color against another so as to accentuate the brilliancy of each and secure a glowing harmony.

The art of Delacroix is distinguished by three things—its color, its poetry, and its decorative qualities. He turned naturally to Dante, Shakespeare, and Byron for subjects, not so much because they provided him with good themes to illustrate, as because in their poetry he found those passionate ideals and aspirations which animated his own mind. When actual events aroused a similar intensity of emotion, he painted them also. Though usually he eschewed political subjects, the Revolution of July 1830 moved him to paint his famous picture ‘The Barricade,’ now known as ‘Liberty Guiding the People, a picture which is at once a fragment of actuality and the emodiment of an ideal. For this is a true historical picture in so far as it does represent with fidelity a typical incident during the street fighting of the Revolution; and at the same time the heroine of the barricade, with her Phrygian cap, streaming tricolor, and musket, is an allegory of Libery, liberty for the people and liberty for art. Exhibited in the Salon of 1831 this picture perplexed the authorities, who could neither deny its excellence as a work of art nor altogether approve of its firebrand politics. The Director of Fine Arts temporarily solved the problem by purchasing the picture for the nation, and then turning its face to the wall! Today the picture is one of the chief treasures of the French School in the Louvre.

In the same year Delacroix made a journey to Morocco which had a considerable effect on his art, for he delighted alike in the brilliant colors and picturesque costumes of this sunny land, and on his return exhibited a number of pictures of Eastern subjects, which were enthusiastically received, and, inspiring other artists to do likewise, he gave birth to a school of artists known as the ‘Orientalists.’ Delacroix himself, however, was too big and varied a genius to confine himself to one subject, and having given a lead to the Orientalists he now devoted much of his time to decorative painting.

Though regarded by his great rival Ingres and by the classical painters as a revolutionary, Delacroix was full of respect for tradition, only whereas David and Ingres adhered to the tradition of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, Géricault and Delacroix upheld the tradition of Michael Angelo, Titian, Veronese, and Rubens. Though his own researches into color were perhaps his most valuable legacy to the art of France, the intention of Delacroix was not to break with the tradition but to bring back the color and methods of the old masters into modern painting. The romanticism of Delacroix was a half-way house between the old Classicism and the Realism that was coming, and as he in his youth had challenged the position of Ingres and the Classicists, so in his later years his own romanticism was challenged by Courbet the Realist.

Owing to this long battle between the classics and the romantics, the doors of the Academy were closed against Delacroix for five-and-thirty years, and it was not till he was sixty—and so barred by age from holding a professorship a the Ecole des Beaux Arts—the he was at last admitted as a member of the Institute. The artist did not long enjoy the distinction, for he died at Paris in 1863.

The Romantic Movement In France (continued)