“As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.⁣

In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.⁣

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible." Together with Ingres, Delacroix is considered one of the last old Masters of painting, and one of the few who was ever photographed.”⁣

 Eugène Delacroix⁣ Self-Portrait in a Green Vest⁣ ca. 1837 ⁣

“Although he is best known as a painter of complex and often turbulent figural compositions, Delacroix consistently displayed sensitivity to the expressive potential of atmospheric effects. About 1850, he apparently took up a concerted study of sunlit skies and clouds reminiscent of exercises by John Constable and J. M. W. Turner, British painters he admired. This radiant Sunset, captured in richly layered pastel, has been associated with the artist's work on the ceiling decoration of the Louvre's Gallery of Apollo, where Delacroix painted the sun god appearing in a burst of golden light to drive his chariot across the sky.”⁣

 Eugène Delacroix ⁣ Sunset⁣ ca. 1850⁣ “Although he is best

“Delacroix had great empathy with the natural world and was fascinated by animals, although he seems never to have encountered untamed ones in the wild, even during his trip to Morocco in 1832. Having to rely upon the resources of the Paris zoo, he began studying felines there in the late 1820s, probably not long before making this lithograph. In this terrible, beautiful picture, Delacroix demonstrated the Romantic penchant for tragedy, torment, and violence in scenes that showed nature "red in tooth and claw" some decades before Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859).”⁣

 Eugène Delacroix ⁣ Royal Tiger⁣ 1829⁣ “Delacroix had great

The Death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix in the Louvre shows an incredibly cruel picture of how the Assyrian king killed all his mistresses before setting himself an his possessions on fire!

Read more about this fascinating work on my blog.

 The Death of Sardanapalus by Delacroix in the Louvre shows

The Statue of Liberty is heavily inspired by the woman in Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix in the Louvre!