Eugène Delacroix

He died on August 13, 1863, in Paris and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery’.

He was born at Charenton-Saint-Maurice on April 26, 1798, in Île-de-France, in the family of Charles-François Delacroix and Victoire Oeben though certain reasons point out that his biological father was Talleyrand, a family friend.

Charles-François Delacroix was a Minister of Foreign Affairs and worked as governmental prefect in Bordeaux and in Marseilles. Eugène’s mother infused in him the love for art and literature. Charles died in 1805 and Victoire died in 1814 leaving him as an orphan. Talleyrand succeeded Charles as Minister of Foreign Affairs and later served the Restoration and the King, Louis-Philippe and finally became an ambassador of France in Great Britain. Talleyrand protected Eugène all through in his career as a painter.

He attended the ‘Lycée Louis-le-Grand’ school in Paris and the ‘Lycée Pierre Corneille’ school in Rouen. He showed great interest in art and literature and won many awards for his drawings.

In 1815 he started learning the neoclassical style of eminent French painter Jacques-Louis David under the guidance of academic painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.

In 1816 he joined one of the distinguished art schools of France, ‘École des Beaux-Arts’ in Paris.

He was inspired by the works of Michelangelo and Peter Paul Rubens, influence of whom was visible in many of his early works. Religious subject matters were reflected through many of his paintings.

He was also inspired by the works of Théodore Géricault, a fellow French artist who was considered one of the pioneers of Romanticism in art. ‘The Raft of the Medusa’, a masterpiece of Théodore Géricault had a great impact on Delacroix.

His first major work ‘The Barque of Dante’ also referred as ‘Dante and Virgil in Hell’ was inspired from the epic poem of Dante Alighieri, the ‘Divine Comedy’. The painting was exhibited at the prestigious ‘Paris Salon’ in 1822 and was considered one of the forerunners for the augmentation of the Romantic Movement. Though the work was scoffed off in general, the state purchased it for the ‘Luxembourg Galleries’.

In 1822 he became in-charge of architectural decorations with the aid of statesman and historian Adolphe Thiers.

He knew Antoine-Jean Gros, the famous historical painter and also the neoclassical painter Baron François Gérard. He was inspired by his friends Frédéric Chopin, a pianist, Richard Parkes Bonington, an English painter and George Sand, a French writer.

Pablo Picasso, who was fascinated by Eugène Delacroix’s use of color, examined and produced several studies of Delacroix’s 1834 painting ‘Women of Algiers in their apartment’.