Delacroix and the Orientalism

In 1827 painted the huge and provocative The Death of Sardanapalus, a painting that was widely vilified. The subject, taken from a play by Byron (the man who inspired in him “that insatiable longing to create”), shows the cruel and jaded Assyrian potentate sitting on a bed atop his funeral […]

Delacroix, an unheroic gentleman

Delacroix’s distinctiveness was in part due to the circumstances of the time. He was born in 1798 at the end of the French Revolution, the son of Charles-François Delacroix, ambassador to the Netherlands, and Victoire Oeben, the daughter of a celebrated cabinet maker. Since Eugène arrived seven months after Charles […]

Delacroix, an influencer

Eugène Delacroix today holds, for many people, a somewhat peripheral place in the pantheon of 19th-century artists. That he was a powerful influence on the likes of Manet, the impressionists and Seurat is taken for granted, but so too is the idea that they went on to outstrip him. For […]