Eugne Delacroix - Research Paper Example

As a French citizen he was keenly interested in politics as portrayed in his work, Liberty Leading the People (1830). He travelled far and wide, incorporating the Oriental culture in his work. He passes down an impressive legacy to his descendants especially the artistic school of the Impressionists and Neo-Impressionists. Eugene de la Croix was contemporary with the Romanticism movement spanning from 1790 to 1850, rose as a reactionary wave against the Age of Reason or Enlightenment. Romantics are characterized by nature, sentimentalism, idealism, imagination, religion, utopia, memory, symbolism, and heroism.

All of these attributes are evidenced in Eugene de la Croix’s works of art. Romanticism is set apart from other epochs because it asserted the importance of individualism; therefore, romantic writers had the liberty to conform to the ideals of the movement and to detour in a new direction according to their own individual desires. De la Croix himself was described as individualist because despite the heritage of his predecessors like Michaelangelo, he invented himself by his own paintings. Because of Enlightenment’s neglect, Romanticism reasserts nature, feeling, memory, symbolic representation, imagination, myth, and spirituality.

One can find all these details in De la Croix art work. In Romanticism, nature is lauded as one of the most supreme objects of observation. Feelings and sentimentalism are core aspects of Romanticism since feelings and emotions are the channels through which man expresses thought and creativity. Romantics though that sensory and sensual perceptions also where vital in validating man as a being and not solely the mind as enlightenment intellectuals taught. Memory and imagination are mental transactions which evoke, project, and create images.

In memory, anything can happen details can be altered, exaggerated, idealized, and forgotten. Frequently in the romantics’ works, nostalgia and a tender evoking of the past play prominent roles where the romantic’s retrospective vision is viewed in idyllic and perfect color. Romantics often call mythological examples in order to their aid in describing or adding further spiritual or literary significance to their writing. Key examples of De la Croix religious and mythological depictions are Adam and Eva, Christ on the Cross, St.

Michael Defeats the Devil, Apollo and the Satyrs, Andromeda, Medea about to Kill Her Children, Apollo Slays Python etc. Eugene de la Croix’s most prominent painting is undoubtedly, “Liberty Leading the People” (1830). Inspired by the French Revolution of 1830, this painting evokes political idealism and depicts the personified values of the French Republic. “Delacroix's Liberty carries a tricolor and a rifle, and is in fact leading a revolutionary insurrection. Liberty Guiding the People also strides robustly forward, trampling bodies under foot” (Silverman 72).

Portraying France during this tumultuous and embattled period, Eugene de la Croix mixes some hard realism with his idealism. The devastating effects of war – fought most times in the name of liberty – are violence and death. However, ironically war and revolution lead to the freedom of the people. This masterpiece sends oxymoronic messages: life vs. death, order vs. disorder, happiness and uncertainty. Here De la Croix himself during the French Revolution of July 1830 describes, “the fierceness of a combat, in which Liberty herself is the leader and the