Liberty Leading the People: Difference between revisions
Add a reference to a very good educational film |
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* Prideaux, Tom, etc. (1972). ''The World of Delacroix''. United States: Time Life. |
* Prideaux, Tom, etc. (1972). ''The World of Delacroix''. United States: Time Life. |
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* Toussaint, Hélene (1982). ''La Liberté guidant le peuple de Delacroix''. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. |
* Toussaint, Hélene (1982). ''La Liberté guidant le peuple de Delacroix''. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux. |
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==External links== |
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*[http://www.canal-educatif.fr/en/videos/art/1/delacroix/liberty-leading-the-people.html Educational film about Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (CED)] |
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{{Eugène Delacroix}} |
{{Eugène Delacroix}} |
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Revision as of 07:58, 27 September 2011
| Liberty Leading the People | |
|---|---|
| French: La Liberté guidant le peuple | |
 | |
| Artist | Eugène Delacroix |
| Year | 1830 |
| Type | Oil on canvas |
| Location | Louvre, Paris |
Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X of France. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricolore flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The painting is perhaps Delacroix's best-known work.
History
By the time Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People, he was already the acknowledged leader of the Romantic school in French painting.[1] Delacroix, who was born as the Age of Enlightenment was giving way to the ideas and style of romanticism, rejecting the emphasis on precise drawing that characterized the academic art of his time, and instead giving a new prominence to freely brushed color.
Delacroix painted his work in the autumn of 1830. In a letter to his brother dated 12 October, he wrote: "My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I’ve embarked on a modern subject—a barricade. And if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her." The painting was first exhibited at the official Salon of May 1831.
Symbolism
Delacroix depicted Liberty, as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, an approach that contemporary critics denounced as "ignoble". The mound of corpses acts as a kind of pedestal from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. The Phrygian cap she wears had come to symbolize liberty during the first French Revolution, of 1789-94. The painting has been seen as a marker to the end of the Age of Enlightenment, as many scholars see the end of the French Revolution as the start of the romantic era.[2]
The fighters are from a mixture of social classes, ranging from the bourgeoisie represented by the young man in a top hat, to the revolutionary urban worker, as exemplified by the boy holding pistols (who may have been the inspiration for the character Gavroche in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables).[3] What they have in common is the fierceness and determination in their eyes. Aside from the flag held by Liberty, a second, minute tricolore can be discerned in the distance flying from the towers of Notre Dame.
The identity of the man in the top hat has been widely debated. The suggestion that it was a self-portrait by Delacroix has been discounted by modern art historians.[4] In the late 19th century, it was suggested the model was the theatre director Etienne Arago; others have suggested the future curator of the Louvre, Frédéric Villot;[3] but there is no firm consensus on this point.
Purchase and exhibition
The French government bought the painting in 1831 for 3,000 francs with the intention of displaying it in the throne room of the Palais du Luxembourg as a reminder to the "citizen-king" Louis-Philippe of the July Revolution, through which he had come to power. This plan did not come to fruition and the canvas was hung in the palace's museum gallery for a few months, before being taken down for its inflammatory political message. Delacroix was permitted to send the painting to his aunt Félicité for safekeeping. It was exhibited briefly in 1848 and then in the Salon of 1855. In 1874, the painting entered the Louvre.
In 1999 it flew aboard an Airbus Beluga from Paris to Tokyo via Bahrain and Calcutta in about 20 hours. The large canvas, measuring 2.99 metres (9.81 ft) high by 3.62 metres (11.88 ft) long, was too large to fit into a Boeing 747. It was transported in the vertical position inside a special pressurized container provided with isothermal protection and an anti-vibration device. [5]
Legacy
The painting inspired the Statue of Liberty in New York City,[6] which was given to the United States as a gift from the French only 50 years after Liberty Leading the People had been painted. The statue, which holds a torch in its hand, takes a more stable, immovable stance than that of the woman in the painting.
An engraved version of this painting, along with a depiction of Delacroix himself, was featured on the 100-franc note in the early 1990s.
The painting has had an influence on classical music; the American George Antheil titled his Symphony No. 6 After Delacroix, and stated that the work was inspired by Liberty Leading the People.[7]
The imagery was adapted by Robert Ballagh to commemorate Ireland's independence struggle on an Irish postage stamp in 1979, the centenary of the birth of Pádraig Pearse.[8]
The painting was used for the band Coldplay's album cover Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, with the words "Viva La Vida" written in white paint.
References
- ^ Noon et al. 2003, p. 58.
- ^ Renwick, William Lindsay (1889). The Rise of the Romantics 1789-1815: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Jane Austen / W. L. Renwick. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990, c1963
- ^ a b Pool 1969, p.33.
- ^ Toussaint, Hélene, (1982). La Liberté guidant le peuple de Delacroix. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux
- ^ http://www.allaboutguppys.com/beluga/600stf.htm
- ^ The Private Life of a Masterpiece, Part 3, Liberty Leading the People, BBC, 2004
- ^ http://www.classical.net/~music/recs/reviews/c/cpo99604a.php
- ^ Ann Mette Heindorff (2006-07-24). "Art History on Stamps: Eugène Delacroix". Retrieved 2011-03-22.
Bibliography
- Cook, Bernard A. (2006). Women and war: a historical encyclopedia from antiquity to the present 1. Santa Barbara, Calif. [u.a.]: ABC-Clio. ISBN 1851097708
- Noon, Patrick, et al. (2003). Crossing the Channel: British and French Painting in the Age of Romanticism. London: Tate Publishing. ISBN 1-85437-513-X
- Pool, Phoebe (1969). Delacroix. London: Hamlyn. ISBN 0600037967
- Prideaux, Tom, etc. (1972). The World of Delacroix. United States: Time Life.
- Toussaint, Hélene (1982). La Liberté guidant le peuple de Delacroix. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux.
