“One needs great courage to be oneself.” These words of Delacroix’s sum up the experience of a man who, having dedicated his whole life to art, used his talent to reflect on the problems of artistic creation and the great religious, mythological and historical themes, which became the subjects of many of his paintings.

Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix was born at Charenton-Saint-Maurice on 7 Floreal Year VI of the Revolutionary calendar, or 26 April 1798. His mother Victoire Oeben, came from the family of famous cabinet makers to the kings of France and his father Charles Delacroix was a minor politician, although it was unlikely that Charles was in fact Eugene’s natural father due to his ill health and it has long been thought that he was actually the son of the great statesman Talleyrand.

After studying at the Ecole des Beaux Arts he reacted against the popular neoclassical school of painting and turned instead to the rich colour and movement of Rubens, and after a visit to London in 1825, to the Paintings of Turner and Constable. His technique became freer, and his choice of subject related him to the romantic school. Dante and Virgil in Hell 1822 (plate 1), his first large scale work, announced his lifelong fascination with the idea of heroic figures threatened by danger. A model for this painting was Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa 1819 (plate 2), which was a revolution to Delacroix because it showed contemporary history in a style that was usually reserved for religious or mythological scenes. The muscular bodies of the damned are obviously influenced by Michelangelo’s Last Judgement (plate 3). Much preparation went into this painting, as we know from the numerous sketches, drawings and watercolours he made for it, and its vigorous composition impressed a youthful politician, Louis Thiers, who was later in a position to give Delacroix valuable state commissions.

His next major work was The Massacre at Chios 1824 (plate 4), inspired by the incident in the Greek War of Independence. The composition is loosely that of a double pyramid, and it is known that Delacroix repainted the sky, having seen Constables Haywain, whilst the painting was already on exhibition in the Salon. It is full of impressive details, particularly the figure of the Turk on his rearing horse. Delacroix became deeply involved in this painting, aptly described by Jean Cau as the Guernica of the nineteenth century.

In 1827 his Death of the Sardanapalus (plate 5) created a sensation when it was exhibited at the Paris Salon. A critic who had previously been favorable to Delacroix exclaimed, “He has been carried away beyond all limits.” There had never been a composition depicting so many beautiful women wearing such glittering bracelets (but little else), dying so violently amongst such exotic finery, heaps of gold, and horses rearing in their death agonies. It is one of the masterpieces of romantic painting. After the sensation of its exhibition this enormous painting (12 feet high by 18 feet long) surprisingly disappeared from sight for almost a century before reappearing to be bought for the Louvre in 1921.

Two other paintings exhibited in the same year were the allegorical Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi 1827 (plate 6) and the Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero 1826-7 (plate 7), but they were almost the last he painted in his youthful romantic manner. After the Revolution of 1830 he painted the Liberty Leading the People 1830 (plate 8), this painting was bought by Louis-Philippe for the Royal Museum in the Palais du Luxembourg, where it remained in store for many years, on the grounds that it could not be exhibited while France was not a republic. It reappeared for a short time during the revolutionary days of 1848 and later, with the agreement of Napoleon III, was exhibited at the 1855 Exposition Universelle. In a letter written to his brother Charles, Delacroix said: “ As for spleen, I get rid of it by work. I have began a modern subject, a barricade… if I have not fought for my country, the least I can do is paint for it.” The scene was based on the artist’s own observations and the viewer can be left with no doubt as to Delacroix’s support for the Revolution. He was awarded the Legion of Honour by the new government, suitably grateful for the vivid impression this painting had made on the public. But after this he turned away from the romantic scenes and the melodramatic historical subjects they relied upon, seeking instead an environment where the exotic was an accepted part of the everyday world. This he found in North Africa – where he also discovered the sense of connection with the past that satisfied the part of his nature still responsive to order and the classical tradition. Whilst there he managed to enter a harem, and back in Paris, painted Women of Algiers in Their Apartment 1834 (plate 9), a composition that is sumptuous and yet tranquil and truly shows his talent for capturing mood. His zest for exotic subjects never left him, but he preferred to place them in the contemporary – though perhaps foreign – world.

While the neo-classicists put great emphasis on the importance of line, the one necessity for Delacroix was colour. “In nature all is reflection, and all colour is an exchange of reflections.” Renoir claimed he could smell the incense the Women of Algiers were burning as soon as he came close to the picture, and Cezanne added, “The colour of the red slipper goes into ones eyes like a glass of wine down one’s throat.” And in Delacroix’s fast-moving scenes of galloping Arab horses, the outlines are often unclear, having in his own words, “the shaggy look of a tapestry seen from the back.” His work was the forerunner of Impressionism.

In his last years, when not producing large-scale murals for public buildings, he continued to paint scenes of struggle and slaughter, these involving wild horse, tigers, and lions. In complete contrast, he also painted large baskets of flowers. His great admirer, the poet Baudelaire, aptly described him as “a volcanic crater artistically concealed beneath bouquets of flowers.”