Liberty Leading the People (Art)

This painting can be found in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It is done by Eugène Delacroix, an important French romantic artist. It is one of the most important paintings in the Romanticism period. It is showing the July revolution of the 1830 on the streets of Paris and it is also a rebellion painting. In September 1830 Delacroix had started this painting, then he continued it between October and December and he also exhibited in May at the Salon.

That lady with the French flag is a very important figure in the painting because she is representing victory, "equality", "fraternity" and "liberty" and she is also showing a patriotic act. In the painting there are dead people from both sides of the politics. Noticing one of the dead people, who was wearing his night shirt, which is showing that the enemy, which in this case was the government, went after people even in their own homes and some of them were killed. In this painting we can see a mixture of the real and unreal. There are also sense of faith, virtues and allegory. The artist is expressing his personal emotions of that event into the painting and wanted to let other people understand and visualize those emotions.

A similar work is the Statue of Liberty in the United States, which doesn't represent herself as a specific person but to show its main subject of freedom. And here in this painting we can see almost the same thing because the artist didn't want to show a specific person but wanted to show liberty from a certain event that happened in France.

The painting has a sense of ciaro-scuro. The main focus is on the lady holding the flag and it is shown by the brightness of the colours given on her. The painting is composed as in a shape of a triangle. The painting has rough brush stokes which are complementing the sense of rebellion. Also parts of the painting seem sketchy and unfinished.

Bibliography:

Malika Bouabdellah Dorbani, n.d. July 28: Liberty Leading the People [online] Available at:http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/july-28-liberty-leading-people. [Accessed 25 February 2014].

Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker, n.d.  Romanticism in France Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People [online] Available at:http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/romanticism-in-france.html. [Accessed 25 February 2014].