Liberty Leading the People
Encyclopedia
Liberty Leading the People 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 tricouleur
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.
school in French painting. 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
.
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.
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
). 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. 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; but there is no firm consensus on this point.
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.
in New York City
, 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 the 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. 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. 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.
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
commemorating the July Revolution
July Revolution
The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution or in French, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, the French Bourbon monarch, and the ascent of his cousin Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, who himself, after 18 precarious years on the throne, would in turn be overthrown...
of 1830, which toppled Charles X of France
Charles X of France
Charles X was known for most of his life as the Comte d'Artois before he reigned as King of France and of Navarre from 16 September 1824 until 2 August 1830. A younger brother to Kings Louis XVI and Louis XVIII, he supported the latter in exile and eventually succeeded him...
. A woman personifying Liberty
Liberty
Liberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricouleur
Flag of France
The national flag of France is a tricolour featuring three vertical bands coloured royal blue , white, and red...
flag
Flag
A flag is a piece of fabric with a distinctive design that is usually rectangular and used as a symbol, as a signaling device, or decoration. The term flag is also used to refer to the graphic design employed by a flag, or to its depiction in another medium.The first flags were used to assist...
of the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket
Musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded, smooth bore long gun, fired from the shoulder. Muskets were designed for use by infantry. A soldier armed with a musket had the designation musketman or musketeer....
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 RomanticRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
school in French painting. Delacroix, who was born as the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
was giving way to the ideas and style of romanticism, rejecting the emphasis on precise drawing that characterized the academic art
Academic art
Academic art is a style of painting and sculpture produced under the influence of European academies of art. Specifically, academic art is the art and artists influenced by the standards of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, which practiced under the movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism,...
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
Barricade
Barricade, from the French barrique , is any object or structure that creates a barrier or obstacle to control, block passage or force the flow of traffic in the desired direction...
. 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
Paris Salon
The Salon , or rarely Paris Salon , beginning in 1725 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France. Between 1748–1890 it was the greatest annual or biannual art event in the Western world...
.
Symbolism
Delacroix depicted Liberty as both an allegoricalAllegory
Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
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
Pedestal
Pedestal is a term generally applied to the support of a statue or a vase....
from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. The Phrygian cap
Phrygian cap
The Phrygian cap is a soft conical cap with the top pulled forward, associated in antiquity with the inhabitants of Phrygia, a region of central Anatolia. In the western provinces of the Roman Empire it came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty, perhaps through a confusion with the pileus,...
she wears had come to symbolize liberty during the first French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, 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
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
as the start of the romantic era.
The fighters are from a mixture of social classes, ranging from the bourgeoisie represented by the young man in a top hat
Top hat
A top hat, beaver hat, high hat silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, predominantly worn from the latter part of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century...
, to the revolutionary urban worker, as exemplified by the boy holding pistols (who may have been the inspiration for the character Gavroche
Gavroche
Gavroche is a fictional character from the novel Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.-Gavroche in the novel:Gavroche is the eldest son of M. and Mme Thénardier. He has two sisters, Éponine and Azelma, and two unnamed younger brothers. He is also technically unnamed; the reader is told he chooses the...
in Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
's Les Misérables
Les Misérables
Les Misérables , translated variously from the French as The Miserable Ones, The Wretched, The Poor Ones, The Wretched Poor, or The Victims), is an 1862 French novel by author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the nineteenth century...
). What they have in common is the fierceness and determination in their eyes. Aside from the flag held by Liberty, a second, minute tricolore
Flag of France
The national flag of France is a tricolour featuring three vertical bands coloured royal blue , white, and red...
can be discerned in the distance flying from the towers of Notre Dame
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra of...
.
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. In the late 19th century, it was suggested the model was the theatre director Etienne Arago
Étienne Arago
Étienne Arago was a French writer and politician, and co-founder of the newspaper Le Figaro.-Early life:Arago was born in Perpignan, the youngest of the four Arago brothers...
; others have suggested the future curator of the Louvre, Frédéric Villot; but there is no firm consensus on this point.
Purchase and exhibition
The French government bought the painting in 1831 for 3,000 francsFrench franc
The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...
with the intention of displaying it in the throne room of the Palais du Luxembourg as a reminder to the "citizen-king" Louis-Philippe
Louis-Philippe of France
Louis Philippe I was King of the French from 1830 to 1848 in what was known as the July Monarchy. His father was a duke who supported the French Revolution but was nevertheless guillotined. Louis Philippe fled France as a young man and spent 21 years in exile, including considerable time in the...
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
Louvre
The Musée du Louvre – in English, the Louvre Museum or simply the Louvre – is one of the world's largest museums, the most visited art museum in the world and a historic monument. A central landmark of Paris, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement...
.
In 1999 it flew aboard an Airbus Beluga
Airbus Beluga
-External links:*...
from Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
via Bahrain
Bahrain
' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...
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.
Legacy
The painting inspired the Statue of LibertyStatue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, 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 the 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
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
titled his Symphony No. 6 After Delacroix, and stated that the work was inspired by Liberty Leading the People. The imagery was adapted by Robert Ballagh
Robert Ballagh
Robert "Bobby" Ballagh is an Irish artist, painter and designer. He was born in Dublin and studied at the Bolton Street College of Technology. His painting style was strongly influenced by pop art...
to commemorate Ireland's independence struggle on an Irish postage stamp in 1979, the centenary of the birth of Pádraig Pearse. The painting was used for the band Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
's album cover Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida is the fourth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released on 11 June 2008 on Parlophone. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates in English as "long live life"...
, with the words "Viva La Vida" written in white paint.