Following the scathing criticism of his large painting The Death of Sardanapalus at the Salon in 1827-28, Delacroix had been threatened with withdrawal of State commissions. Fortunately he had already built himself a reputation in the private market, and in the late 1820s he also became an illustrator and lithographer.
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His lithograph of Macbeth Consulting the Witches from 1825, showing one of the best-known scenes from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, centres on the witches’ cauldron, in which their potion is bubbling as they chant:
“Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
In the mid-1820s he decided to create a series of lithographs to illustrate Goethe’s Faust. He started by painting these scenes in ink on vellum in 1826, then turning them into lithographs over the next two years.
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Faust and Mephistopheles on the Blocksberg is one of his original paintings on vellum, showing the pair on the slopes of the Brocken or Blocksberg, the highest peak in the Harz, and the setting for the Sabbath of Walpurgis Night that marks the climax.
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Delacroix’s lithograph of Mephistopheles in the Sky is probably the best-known depiction of Mephistopheles in flight.
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This shows Mephistopheles Visits Gretchen, with Martha and the box of jewellery early in the seduction of the young woman.
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His Faust with Margarete in Prison shows Mephistopheles appearing at the door, warning Faust and Gretchen that dawn is approaching and his night-horses must be on their way before sunrise.
Delacroix completed a total of seventeen lithographs that were published in an illustrated edition of Faust in 1828. Although Goethe himself seemed pleased with them, and they’re sought after today, at the time they proved a commercial failure.
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Portrait of a Woman in a Blue Turban from about 1827 is thought to have been accepted for the Salon of 1827-28.
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Delacroix not only made studies for finished oil paintings using oils, but also employed a range of advanced watercolour techniques, as shown in his spirited watercolour of a Horse Frightened by Lightning from 1825-29.
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Two Horses Fighting in a Stormy Landscape from 1828 is another of his Romantic equestrian studies.
In July 1830, as Delacroix must have been wondering what he could submit for the Salon of the following year, the reigning French King Charles X abdicated in the July Revolution, and was replaced by the ‘citizen-king’ Louis-Philippe. Although he took no part in the brief revolution, Delacroix seized the opportunity to capture its spirit in his major work for that Salon, Liberty Leading the People (1830), which remains the most famous painting of his entire career.
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This large canvas is considerably more conservative in its style and composition than Sardanapalus, being built on a pyramid. At its apex is the tricolour, below which it’s largely formed by the figure of Liberty leading the revolutionaries on, over a base of fallen bodies. She wears a Phrygian cap, and is bare-breasted and barefoot; popularly known as Marianne, her origin is in the French Revolution of 1789.
Those revolutionaries include a factory worker brandishing a cutlass at the left, a bourgeois with a top hat, and a student waving a pair of pistols at the right. In the right distance are the twin towers of Notre Dame cathedral, from which a second tricolour is flying, although those who saw this painting in Paris must have realised this view is impossible in reality.
This had the impact at the Salon that Delacroix had surely intended. Critics were shocked with its vivid portrayal of fighting at the barricades, but it also achieved praise, and Delacroix was awarded the Legion of Honour.
The State bought the painting from the Salon for three thousand francs, but failed in its initial plan to hang it as a reminder to the new king. After it had been on display in the museum of the Palais du Luxembourg for a few months, it was decided that its message was too inflammatory; following the June Rebellion of 1832, it was returned to Delacroix. It reappeared briefly under the Second Republic in 1848, and again under the Second Empire in 1855, but it wasn’t until the Third Republic that it was exhibited permanently in the Louvre, in 1874.
References
Barthélémy Jobert (2018) Delacroix, new and expanded edn, Princeton UP. ISBN 978 0 691 18236 0.
Patrick Noon and Christopher Riopelle (2015) Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art, National Gallery and Yale UP. ISBN 978 1 857 09575 3.
Lucy Norton (translator) (1995) The Journal of Eugène Delacroix, 3rd edn, Phaedon. ISBN 978 0 7148 3359 0.
Arlette Sérullaz (2004) Delacroix, Louvre Drawing Gallery, 5 Continents. ISBN 978 8 874 39105 9.
Beth S Wright (editor) (2001) The Cambridge Companion to Delacroix, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 65077 1.