Freedom leading the people to the barricade. eugene delacroix
Plot
Marianne with the flag of Republican France and a gun leads the people. On her head is a Phrygian cap. By the way, he was also the prototype of the Jacobin hat during the French Revolution and is considered a symbol of freedom.
Marianne herself is the main revolutionary symbol of France. She personifies the triad "Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood". Today her profile is on the French state seal; at least there were times (after the revolution of 1830, by the way) when it was forbidden to use her image.
When describing a bold act, we usually say that a person with bare hands went to the enemy, let's say. At Delacroix, the French walked bare-chested and this expressed their courage. That is why Marianne has bare breasts.
Marianne
Next to Svoboda - a worker, a bourgeois and a teenager. So Delacroix wanted to show the unity of the French people during the July revolution. There is a version that the man in the top hat is Eugene himself. It is no coincidence that he wrote to his brother: "If I did not fight for the Motherland, then at least I will write for it."
The painting was first exhibited almost a year after the revolutionary events. The state accepted it with enthusiasm and bought it. However, for the next 25 years, access to the canvas was closed - the spirit of freedom was so strong that it was removed from sin away from the French, flushed by the July events.
Context
The events of July 1830 went down in history as three glorious days. Charles X was overthrown, Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, ascended the throne, that is, power from the Bourbons passed to the younger branch, the House of Orleans. France remained a constitutional monarchy, but now the principle of popular sovereignty prevailed over the principle of the divine right of the king.
A propaganda postcard against the Paris Commune (July 1871)
Charles X wanted to restore the order that prevailed before the French Revolution of 1789. And the French did not like it very much. Events developed rapidly. On July 26, 1830, the king dissolved the House of Representatives and introduced new qualifications for suffrage. The liberal bourgeoisie, students and workers, dissatisfied with his conservative policy, revolted on July 27. After a day of barricade battles, armed soldiers began to go over to the side of the rebels. The Louvre and Tuileries were blocked. And on July 30, the French tricolor soared over the royal palace.
The fate of the artist
The main romanticist of European painting, Eugene Delacroix was born in the suburbs of Paris in 1798. Many years later, when Eugene will shine in society and win ladies' hearts, interest in him will be fueled by gossip regarding the mystery of birth. The fact is that it is impossible to say for sure whose son Eugene was. According to the official version, the father was Charles Delacroix, a politician, former foreign minister. According to the alternative - Charles Talleyrand or even Napoleon himself.
Thanks to his restlessness, Eugene miraculously survived the age of three: by that time he had almost “hanged himself,” accidentally wrapping a sack for oats around his neck; "Burned" when a mosquito net flashed over his crib; "Drowned" while swimming; "Poisoned", swallowing copper paint. The classic path of passions and tests of the hero of romanticism.
Self-portrait
When the question arose about choosing a craft, Delacroix decided to paint. With Pierre Narsis Guerin, he mastered the classical basis, and in the Louvre he met the founder of romanticism in painting, Theodore Gericault. At that time in the Louvre there were many canvases captured during the Napoleonic Wars and not yet returned to their owners. Rubens, Veronese, Titian - the days passed quickly.
Success came to Delacroix in 1824, when he exhibited the painting "The Massacre at Chios". This was the second canvas presented to the public. The painting revealed the horrors of Greece's recent war of independence. Baudelaire called it "an eerie hymn to fate and suffering." Accusations of excessive naturalism rained down, and after the next picture - "" - also of undisguised eroticism. Critics could not understand why the canvas seemed to scream, threaten and blaspheme. But it was precisely such a chord of emotions that the artist needed when he took up Freedom Leading the People.
Soon the fashion for rebellion passed, and Delacroix began to look for a new style. In the 1830s, he visited Morocco and was discouraged by what he saw. The African world turned out to be not as noisy and festive as it seemed, but patriarchal, immersed in its domestic concerns. Delacroix made hundreds of sketches that he used for the next 30 years.
Returning to France, Delacroix understood what being in demand meant. Orders came in one after another. These were mainly official things: painting in the Bourbon Palace and the Louvre, decorating the Luxembourg Palace, creating frescoes for the Church of Saint-Sulpice.
Eugene had everything, everyone loved him and, despite his developing sore throat, they always waited with his sharp jokes. But, Delacroix lamented, everyone idolized the works of past years, while fresh ones were ignored. Delacroix, receiving compliments on paintings from 20 years ago, grew gloomy. He died at the age of 65 from that very throat disease, and today his body rests on Père Lachaise.
Eugene Delacroix. Freedom leading the people to the barricades
In his diary, young Eugene Delacroix wrote on May 9, 1824: "I felt the desire to write on modern subjects." This was not an accidental phrase, a month earlier he wrote down a similar phrase: "I would like to write about the plots of the revolution." The artist has repeatedly spoken about his desire to write on contemporary themes before, but he very rarely realized his Desires. This happened because Delacroix believed: "... everything should be sacrificed for the sake of harmony and the real transfer of the plot. We must do without models in paintings. A living model never corresponds exactly to the image that we want to convey: the model is either vulgar or defective , or her beauty is so different and more perfect that everything has to be changed. "
The artist preferred plots from novels to the beauty of a life model. "What should be done to find a plot? - he asks himself one day. - Open a book that can inspire, and trust your mood!" And he sacredly follows his own advice: every year the book becomes more and more a source of themes and plots for him.
This is how the wall gradually grew and strengthened, separating Delacroix and his art from reality. The revolution of 1830 found him so withdrawn in his solitude. Everything that a few days ago constituted the meaning of the life of the romantic generation was instantly thrown far back, began to "look small" and unnecessary in the face of the grandeur of the events that had taken place.
The amazement and enthusiasm experienced these days invade Delacroix's secluded life. For him, reality loses its repulsive shell of vulgarity and ordinariness, revealing real greatness that he had never seen in it and which he had previously sought in Byron's poems, historical chronicles, ancient mythology and in the East.
The days of July echoed in the soul of Eugene Delacroix with the idea of a new picture. Barricade battles on July 27, 28 and 29 in French history decided the outcome of a political coup. These days, King Charles X, the last representative of the Bourbon dynasty, hated by the people, was overthrown. For the first time for Delacroix it was not a historical, literary or oriental plot, but a real life. However, before this idea was realized, he had to go a long and difficult path of change.
R. Escolier, the artist's biographer, wrote: “At the very beginning, under the first impression of what he saw, Delacroix did not intend to depict Liberty among its adherents ... He just wanted to reproduce one of the July episodes, such as the death of d'Arcola. Yes Then there were many feats and sacrifices made. The heroic death of d "Arcola is associated with the capture of the Paris City Hall by the rebels. On the day when the royal troops were holding the suspension bridge of Greve under fire, a young man appeared and rushed to the town hall. He exclaimed: “If I die, remember that my name is d“ Arkol. ”He was really killed, but he managed to carry the people along with him and the town hall was taken.
Eugene Delacroix made a sketch with a pen, which, perhaps, became the first sketch for a future painting. The fact that this was not an ordinary drawing is evidenced by the precise choice of the moment, and the completeness of the composition, and thoughtful accents on individual figures, and the architectural background, organically fused with the action, and other details. This drawing could indeed serve as a sketch for a future painting, but the art critic E. Kozhina believed that it remained just a sketch that had nothing to do with the canvas that Delacroix wrote later.
The artist is no longer satisfied with the figure of only d "Arcola, who rushes forward and carries away the rebels with his heroic impulse. Eugene Delacroix transfers this central role to Freedom herself.
The artist was not a revolutionary and admitted it himself: "I am a rebel, but not a revolutionary." Politics was of little interest to him, so he wanted to portray not a separate fleeting episode (even the heroic death of d'Arcola), not even a separate historical fact, but the nature of the entire event. painted in the background of the picture on the right side (in the depths you can barely see the banner raised on the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral), but on city houses. a private episode, even a majestic one.
The composition of the painting is very dynamic. In the center of the picture is a group of armed men in simple clothes, moving in the direction of the foreground of the picture and to the right.
Because of the gunpowder smoke, the area is not visible, and how large this group itself is not visible. The pressure of the crowd, filling the depth of the picture, creates an ever-growing internal pressure that must inevitably break through. And so, ahead of the crowd, a beautiful woman with a three-color republican banner in her right hand and a gun with a bayonet in her left stepped broadly from a cloud of smoke to the top of the taken barricade.
On her head is the red Phrygian cap of the Jacobins, her clothes flutter, exposing her breasts, the profile of her face resembles the classic features of Venus de Milo. This is a freedom full of strength and inspiration, which shows the way to the fighters with a decisive and courageous movement. Leading people through the barricades, Freedom does not give orders or commands - it encourages and leads the rebels.
When working on the picture, two opposing principles collided in Delacroix's worldview - inspiration inspired by reality, and on the other hand, distrust of this reality, which had long been rooted in his mind. Distrust that life can be beautiful in itself, that human images and purely pictorial means can convey in its entirety the idea of a painting. It was this mistrust that dictated Delacroix the symbolic figure of Liberty and some other allegorical refinements.
The artist transfers the entire event to the world of allegory, reflecting the idea in the same way as Rubens, adored by him, did (Delacroix told the young Edouard Manet: "You need to see Rubens, you need to be imbued with Rubens, you need to copy Rubens, because Rubens is a god") in his compositions that personify abstract concepts. But Delacroix still does not follow his idol in everything: Freedom for him is symbolized not by an ancient deity, but by the simplest woman, who, however, becomes regally majestic.
Allegorical Freedom is full of vital truth, in a swift impulse it goes ahead of the column of revolutionaries, dragging them along and expressing the highest meaning of the struggle - the power of the idea and the possibility of victory. If we did not know that Nike of Samothrace was dug out of the ground after the death of Delacroix, it could be assumed that the artist was inspired by this masterpiece.
Many art critics noted and reproached Delacroix for the fact that all the greatness of his painting cannot overshadow the impression that at first turns out to be only barely noticeable. We are talking about the collision in the artist's mind of opposing aspirations, which left its mark even in the completed canvas, Delacroix's hesitation between a sincere desire to show reality (as he saw it) and an involuntary desire to raise it to the sidelines, between a gravitation towards emotional, immediate and already established painting. accustomed to the artistic tradition. Many were not satisfied that the most ruthless realism, which horrified the well-meaning audience of art salons, was combined in this picture with an impeccable, ideal beauty. Noting as a dignity the feeling of life's certainty, which had never before been manifested in Delacroix's work (and never repeated again later), the artist was reproached for the generalization and symbolism of the image of Freedom. However, and for the generalization of other images, making the artist to blame that the naturalistic nudity of a corpse in the foreground is adjacent to the nudity of Freedom.
This duality did not escape both Delacroix's contemporaries and later connoisseurs and critics. Even 25 years later, when the public was already accustomed to the naturalism of Gustave Courbet and Jean François Millet, Maxime Ducan still raged in front of Liberty on the Barricades, forgetting any restraint of expressions: “Oh, if Freedom is such, if this girl with bare feet and bare chest that runs, shouting and waving a gun, then we do not need it. We have nothing to do with this shameful shrew! ".
But, reproaching Delacroix, what could be opposed to his painting? The revolution of 1830 was reflected in the work of other artists. After these events, Louis-Philippe took the royal throne, who tried to present his coming to power as almost the only content of the revolution. Many artists who have taken this approach to the topic have taken the path of least resistance. The revolution, as a spontaneous wave of the people, as a grandiose popular impulse for these masters does not seem to exist at all. They seem to be in a hurry to forget about everything that they saw on the Parisian streets in July 1830, and "three glorious days" appear in their image as quite well-intentioned actions of the Parisian townspeople, who were concerned only with how to quickly acquire a new king instead of the exiled. These works include Fontaine's painting "The Guard Proclaiming King Louis Philippe" or O. Bernet's painting "The Duke of Orleans Leaving the Palais Royal".
But, pointing to the allegorical nature of the main image, some researchers forget to note that the allegoricality of Freedom does not at all create dissonance with the rest of the figures in the picture, it does not look as alien and exceptional in the picture as it might seem at first glance. After all, the rest of the acting characters are also allegorical in their essence and in their role. In their person, Delacroix, as it were, brings to the fore the forces that made the revolution: the workers, the intelligentsia and the plebs of Paris. A worker in a blouse and a student (or artist) with a gun are representatives of quite certain strata of society. These are undoubtedly bright and reliable images, but Delacroix brings this generalization to symbols. And this allegoricality, which is clearly felt already in them, reaches its highest development in the figure of Freedom. She is a formidable and beautiful goddess, and at the same time she is a daring Parisian. And next to him, jumping over the stones, screaming with delight and waving pistols (as if conducting events) is a nimble, disheveled boy - a little genius of the Parisian barricades, whom Victor Hugo will call Gavroche in 25 years.
The painting "Liberty on the Barricades" ends the romantic period in the work of Delacroix. The artist himself was very fond of this painting of his and made a lot of efforts to get it to the Louvre. However, after the seizure of power by the "bourgeois monarchy", the exhibition of this canvas was prohibited. Only in 1848, Delacroix was able to exhibit his painting one more time, and even for quite a long time, but after the defeat of the revolution, it ended up in the storeroom for a long time. The true meaning of this work by Delacroix is determined by its second name, unofficial: many have long been accustomed to seeing in this picture "The Marseillaise of French Painting".
"One hundred great pictures" N. A. Ionin, publishing house "Veche", 2002
Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix(1798-1863) - French painter and graphic artist, leader of the romantic trend in European painting.
Delacroix created a painting based on the July Revolution of 1830, which put an end to the Restoration regime of the Bourbon monarchy. After numerous preparatory sketches, it took him only three months to complete the painting. In a letter to his brother on October 12, 1830, Delacroix writes: "If I did not fight for the Motherland, then at least I will write for it." The painting also has a second title: "Freedom Leading the People." At first, the artist just wanted to reproduce one of the episodes of the July battles of 1830. He witnessed the heroic death of d "Arcolle during the capture of the Parisian city hall by the rebels. A young man appeared under shelling on the hanging Greve bridge and exclaimed:" If I die, remember that my name is d "Arcol". And he really was killed, but managed to drag the people along with him.
In 1831, at the Paris Salon, the French first saw this picture, dedicated to the "three glorious days" of the July Revolution of 1830. With its power, democracy and boldness of the artistic solution, the canvas made a stunning impression on contemporaries. According to legend, one respectable bourgeois exclaimed: “You say - the head of the school? Better say - the head of the rebellion! " *** After the Salon was closed, the government, frightened by the formidable and inspiring appeal from the painting, hastened to return it to the author. During the revolution of 1848, it was again put on public display at the Luxembourg Palace. And they returned it to the artist again. Only after the canvas was exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855, it ended up in the Louvre. It still houses this one of the best creations of French romanticism - an inspired eyewitness testimony and an eternal monument to the people's struggle for their freedom.
What artistic language did the young French romantic find in order to merge together these two seemingly opposite principles - a broad, all-embracing generalization and concrete reality, cruel in its nakedness?
Paris of the famous July days of 1830. In the distance, barely noticeable, but proudly rise the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral - a symbol of history, culture, and the spirit of the French people. From there, from the smoky city, over the ruins of the barricades, over the dead bodies of their dead comrades, the rebels stubbornly and resolutely step forward. Each of them can die, but the step of the rebels is unshakable - they are inspired by the will to victory, to freedom.
This inspiring power is embodied in the image of a beautiful young woman, in a passionate impulse calling for her. With inexhaustible energy, free and youthful speed of movement, she is like the Greek goddess of victory Nike. Her strong figure is dressed in a chiton dress, her face with perfect features, with glowing eyes, is turned to the rebels. In one hand she holds the tricolor flag of France, in the other - a gun. On the head is a Phrygian cap - an ancient symbol of liberation from slavery. Her step is swift and light - this is how the goddesses step. At the same time, the image of a woman is real - she is the daughter of the French people. She is the guiding force behind the movement of the group on the barricades. From it, as from a source of light in the center of energy, rays radiate out, charging with thirst and will to victory. Those in close proximity to it, each in their own way, express their involvement in this inspiring call.
On the right is a boy, a Parisian gameman brandishing pistols. He is closest to Freedom and is kind of kindled by her enthusiasm and joy of a free impulse. In a swift, boyishly impatient movement, he is even slightly ahead of his inspirer. This is the predecessor of the legendary Gavroche, portrayed twenty years later by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables: “Gavroche, full of inspiration, radiant, took on the task of putting the whole thing into motion. He scurried back and forth, climbed up, went down, rose again, made noise, sparkled with joy. It would seem that he came here to cheer everyone up. Did he have any incentive for this? Yes, of course, his poverty. Did he have wings? Yes, of course, his gaiety. It was some kind of whirlwind. He seemed to fill the air with himself, being present everywhere at the same time ... Huge barricades felt him on their ridge. ”**
Gavroche in Delacroix's painting is the personification of youth, "a wonderful impulse", a joyful acceptance of the bright idea of Freedom. Two images - Gavroche and Svoboda - seem to complement each other: one is fire, the other is a torch lit by him. Heinrich Heine talked about the lively response the figure of Gavroche evoked from the Parisians. "Damn it! a grocer exclaimed. "These boys fought like giants!" ***
On the left is a student with a gun. Previously, it was seen as a self-portrait of the artist. This rebel is not as swift as Gavroche. His movement is more restrained, more concentrated, meaningful. Hands confidently grip the barrel of the gun, the face expresses courage, firm determination to stand to the end. This is a deeply tragic image. The student realizes the inevitability of losses that the rebels will incur, but the victims do not frighten him - the will for freedom is stronger. An equally brave and determined worker with a saber stands behind him. There is a wounded man at the feet of Freedom. He rises with difficulty in order to once again look up, at Freedom, to see and with all his heart feel the beauty for which he perishes. This figure brings a dramatic start to the sound of Delacroix's canvas. If the images of Gavroche, Svoboda, a student, a worker are almost symbols, the embodiment of the unyielding will of freedom fighters - inspire and call on the viewer, then the wounded one appeals to compassion. Man says goodbye to Freedom, says goodbye to life. He is still an impulse, movement, but already a fading impulse.
His figure is transitional. The viewer's gaze, still bewitched and carried away by the revolutionary determination of the rebels, descends down to the foot of the barricade, covered with the bodies of glorious fallen soldiers. Death is presented by the artist in all the nakedness and obviousness of the fact. We see the blue faces of the dead, their naked bodies: the struggle is merciless, and death is the same inevitable companion of the rebels, like the beautiful inspirer Freedom.
From the terrible sight at the lower edge of the picture, we again raise our gaze and see a young beautiful figure - no! life wins! The idea of freedom, embodied so visibly and tangibly, is so directed into the future that death in its name is not terrible.
The artist depicts only a small group of rebels, alive and dead. But the defenders of the barricade seem unusually numerous. The composition is built in such a way that the group of combatants is not limited, not closed in itself. She is only part of an endless avalanche of people. The artist gives, as it were, a fragment of a group: the picture frame cuts off the figures from the left, right, bottom.
Usually, color in Delacroix's works acquires an acutely emotional sound, plays a dominant role in creating a dramatic effect. The colors, now raging, now fading, muffled, create a tense atmosphere. In Liberty on the Barricades, Delacroix departs from this principle. Very accurately, unmistakably choosing paint, applying it with wide strokes, the artist conveys the atmosphere of the battle.
But the color scheme is restrained. Delacroix focuses on the relief modeling of the form. This was required by the figurative solution of the picture. After all, depicting a specific yesterday's event, the artist also created a monument to this event. Therefore, the figures are almost sculptural. Therefore, each character, being a part of a single whole picture, is also something closed in itself, is a symbol that has been cast into a complete form. Therefore, color not only emotionally affects the feelings of the viewer, but also carries a symbolic load. In a brownish-gray space, here and there, a solemn triad of red, blue, white flashes - the colors of the flag of the French Revolution of 1789. The repeated repetition of these colors supports the powerful chord of the tricolor flag flying over the barricades.
Delacroix's painting "Liberty on the Barricades" is a complex, grandiose work in its scope. It combines the reliability of a directly seen fact and the symbolism of images; realism, reaching brutal naturalism, and ideal beauty; gross, terrible and sublime, pure.
The painting "Liberty on the Barricades" consolidated the victory of romanticism in the French "Battle of Poitiers" and "The Assassination of the Bishop of Liege". Delacroix is the author of paintings not only on the themes of the Great French Revolution, but also battle compositions on the subjects of national history ("The Battle of Poitiers"). During his travels, the artist made a series of sketches from nature, on the basis of which he created paintings after his return. These works are distinguished not only by their interest in exoticism and romantic flavor, but also by the deeply felt originality of the national way of life, mentality, and characters.
Only Soviet art of the 20th century can be compared with French art of the 19th century in its gigantic influence on world art. It was in France that brilliant painters discovered the theme of revolution. The method of critical realism has developed in France
.
It was there - in Paris - for the first time in world art that revolutionaries with the banner of freedom in hand boldly climbed the barricades and entered into battle with government troops.
It is difficult to understand how the theme of revolutionary art could have been born in the head of a remarkable young artist who grew up on monarchist ideals under Napoleon I and the Bourbons. The name of this artist is Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863).
It turns out that in the art of each historical era, one can find the seeds of the future artistic method (and direction) of displaying the class and political life of a person in the social environment of society around him. The seeds sprout only when the minds of genius fertilize their intellectual and artistic era and create new images and fresh ideas for understanding the diverse and ever-objectively changing life of society.
The first seeds of bourgeois realism in European art were sown in Europe by the Great French Revolution. In French art of the first half of the 19th century, the July Revolution of 1830 created the conditions for the emergence of a new artistic method in art, which only a hundred years later, in the 1930s, was called "socialist realism" in the USSR.
Bourgeois historians are looking for any reason to belittle the significance of Delacroix's contribution to world art and distort his great discoveries. They collected all the gossip and anecdotes invented by their fellows and critics over a century and a half. And instead of investigating the reasons for its special popularity in the progressive strata of society, they have to lie, get out and invent fables. And all by order of the bourgeois governments.
Can bourgeois historians write the truth about this brave and brave revolutionary ?! The Culture channel bought, translated and showed the most disgusting BBC film about this picture of Delacroix. But could a liberal on the board M. Shvydka with his team have acted differently?
Eugene Delacroix: "Liberty on the Barricades"
In 1831, the prominent French painter Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) exhibited his painting "Liberty on the Barricades" at the Salon. Initially, the title of the picture sounded like "Freedom Leading the People." He dedicated it to the theme of the July Revolution, which blew up Paris at the end of July 1830 and overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. The bankers and the bourgeoisie took advantage of the discontent of the working masses to replace one ignorant and tough king with a more liberal and complaisant, but equally greedy and cruel Louis Philippe. He was later nicknamed "the king of bankers"
The painting depicts a group of revolutionaries with a republican tricolor. The people united and entered into mortal combat with the government forces. A large figure of a brave Frenchwoman with a national flag in her right hand towers over a detachment of revolutionaries. She calls on the insurgent Parisians to repulse the government troops who defended the rotten monarchy through and through.
Encouraged by the successes of the 1830 Revolution, Delacroix began work on the painting on September 20 to glorify the Revolution. In March 1831 he received an award for it, and in April he exhibited the painting at the Salon. The painting, with its fierce power of glorifying folk heroes, repulsed bourgeois visitors. They reproached the artist for showing only the "rabble" in this heroic act. In 1831, the French Ministry of the Interior bought Liberty for the Luxembourg Museum. After 2 years "Liberty", the plot of which was considered too politicized by Louis Philippe, frightened by its revolutionary character, dangerous during the reign of the union of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, ordered to roll up the painting and return it to the author (1839). Aristocratic idlers and money aces were seriously frightened by her revolutionary pathos.
Two truths
"When barricades are erected, then two truths always arise - on one side and the other. Only an idiot does not understand this" - such an idea was expressed by the outstanding Soviet Russian writer Valentin Pikul.
Two truths arise in culture, art and literature - one is bourgeois, the other is proletarian, popular. This second truth about two cultures in one nation, about the class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat was expressed by K. Marx and F. Engels in the Communist Manifesto in 1848. And soon - in 1871 - the French proletariat will revolt and establish its power in Paris. The commune is the second truth. People's truth!
The French revolutions of 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871 will confirm the presence of a historical-revolutionary theme not only in art, but in life itself. And for this discovery we should be grateful to Delacroix.
That is why bourgeois art historians and art critics do not like this painting by Delacroix so much. After all, he not only portrayed fighters against the rotten and dying Bourbon regime, but glorified them as folk heroes, boldly going to their deaths, not afraid to die for a just cause in battles with police and troops.
The images he created turned out to be so typical and vivid that they are forever engraved in the memory of mankind. Not only the heroes of the July Revolution were the images he created, but the heroes of all revolutions: French and Russian; Chinese and Cuban. The thunder of that revolution is still ringing in the ears of the world bourgeoisie. Her heroes called the people to uprisings in 1848 in European countries. In 1871 the communards of Paris were smashed against the bourgeois power. The revolutionaries aroused the masses of working people to fight the tsarist autocracy in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. These French heroes are still calling the popular masses of all countries of the world to the war against the exploiters.
"Freedom on the Barricades"
Soviet Russian art critics wrote with admiration about this painting by Delacroix. The brightest and most complete description of it was given by one of the remarkable Soviet authors IV Dolgopolov in the first volume of essays on the art of "Masters and Masterpieces": "The last assault. Dazzling noon, flooded with hot rays of the sun. Alarm bells. Cannons rumble. Gunpowder clouds swirl. A free wind flutters the tricolor republican banner. A majestic woman in a Phrygian cap has raised it high. She calls the rebels to attack. She is unfamiliar with fear. This is France itself, calling her sons to the right battle. Bullets whistle. Buckshot is torn. The wounded groan. But adamant are the fighters of “three glorious days.” Parisian gameman, impudent, young, shouting something angrily in the face of the enemy, in a famously pulled down beret, with two huge pistols in his hands. top hat and black pair - the student who took the weapon.
Death is near. The merciless rays of the sun glided over the gold of the shot down shako. They noted the holes in the eyes, the half-open mouth of the killed soldier. Glittered on a white epaulette. They outlined the sinewy bare legs, the blood-stained tattered shirt of the lying soldier. They shone brightly on the wounded man's red sash, on his pink kerchief, gazing enthusiastically at the living Freedom leading his brothers to Victory.
“The bells are singing. The battle rumbles. The voices of the fighting are fierce. The Great Symphony of the Revolution roars joyfully in Delacroix's canvas. All the jubilation of unchained power. People's anger and love. All holy hatred for the enslavers! The painter put his soul, youthful warmth of his heart into this canvas.
“Scarlet, crimson, crimson, purple, red colors sound, and according to them are echoed by blue, blue, azure colors, combined with bright strokes of white. Blue, white, red - the colors of the banner of the new France - are the key to the color of the picture. Powerful, energetic sculpting of the canvas The figures of the heroes are full of expression, dynamics, the image of Freedom is unforgettable.
Delacroix has created a masterpiece!
“The painter combined the seemingly impossible - the protocol reality of the reportage with the sublime fabric of romantic, poetic allegory.
“The artist's witchcraft brush makes us believe in the reality of a miracle - after all, Freedom itself has become shoulder to shoulder with the rebels. This picture is truly a symphonic poem, praising the Revolution. "
The hired scribblers of the "king of bankers" Louis Phillip described this picture quite differently. Dolgopolov continues: “The volleys were heard. The fighting subsided. The Marseillaise has been sung. The hated Bourbons are banished. Weekdays have come. And again passions flared up on the picturesque Olympus. And again we read words full of rudeness, hate. Especially shameful are the assessments of the figure of Freedom herself: "This girl", "a scoundrel who escaped from Saint-Lazare prison."
"Was there really only rabble on the streets in those glorious days?" - asks another esthete from the camp of salon actors. And this pathos of denial of Delacroix's masterpiece, this rage of "academics" will last for a long time. By the way, let us recall the venerable Signol from the School of Fine Arts.
Maxim Dean, having lost all restraint, wrote: “Oh, if Freedom is such, if this is a girl with bare feet and bare chest, who runs, shouting and waving a gun, we do not need her, we have nothing to do with this shameful shrew!”.
This is approximately how its content is characterized by bourgeois art historians and art critics today. Look at your leisure BBC film in the archive of the channel "Culture" to see if I was right.
“The Parisian public saw the 1830 barricades again two and a half decades later. The "Marseillaise" sounded in the luxurious halls of the exhibition, the alarm was thundering. " - this is how I.V.Dolgopolov wrote about the painting exhibited in the salon in 1855.
"I am a rebel, not a revolutionary."
“I chose a modern plot, a scene on the barricades. .. If I did not fight for the freedom of the fatherland, then at least I should glorify this freedom, "Delacroix told his brother, referring to the painting" Liberty Leading the People. "
Meanwhile, Delacroix cannot be called a revolutionary in the Soviet sense of the word. He was born, raised and lived a life in a monarchical society. He painted his paintings on traditional historical and literary themes during monarchist and republican times. They flowed from the aesthetics of romanticism and realism of the first half of the 19th century.
Did Delacroix himself understand what he had "done" in art, bringing the spirit of revolution and creating the image of revolution and revolutionaries into world art ?! Bourgeois historians answer: no, I did not understand. Indeed, how could he in 1831 know what paths Europe would take in the next century? He will not live to see the Paris Commune.
Soviet art historians wrote that “Delacroix ... never ceased to be an ardent opponent of the bourgeois order with its spirit of self-interest and profit, hostile to human freedom. He felt a deep disgust both for the bourgeois well-being, and for that polished emptiness of the secular aristocracy, with which he often happened to come into contact ... ". However, "not recognizing the ideas of socialism, he did not approve of the revolutionary method of action." (History of Art, Volume 5; these volumes of Soviet history of world art are also available on the Internet).
Throughout his creative life, Delacroix was looking for pieces of life that were in the shadows before him and that no one had thought of paying attention to. Wondering why these important pieces of life play such a huge role in modern society? Why do they demand the attention of a creative person to themselves no less than portraits of kings and Napoleons? No less than half-naked and dressed up beauties, whom the neoclassicists, neo-Greeks, and Pompeians loved to write so much.
And Delacroix answered, because "painting is life itself. In it, nature appears before the soul without intermediaries, without coverings, without conventions."
According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, Delacroix was a monarchist by conviction. Utopian socialism, anarchist ideas did not interest him. Scientific socialism will appear only in 1848.
In the Salon of 1831, he showed a painting that - albeit for a short time - made his fame official. He was even presented with an award - a Legion of Honor ribbon in his buttonhole. He was paid well. Other canvases were also sold:
"Cardinal Richelieu Listening to Mass at the Palais Royal" and "The Assassination of the Archbishop of Liege", and several large watercolors, sepia and a drawing "Raphael in His Studio". There was money, and there was success. Eugene had reason to be pleased with the new monarchy: there was money, success and fame.
In 1832 he was invited to leave on a diplomatic mission to Algeria. He gladly went on a creative business trip.
Although some critics admired the artist's talent and expected new discoveries from him, the government of Louis Philippe preferred to keep "Freedom on the Barricades" in storage.
After Thiers commissioned him to paint the salon in 1833, orders of this kind follow closely, one after another. No French artist in the nineteenth century managed to paint so many walls.
The birth of orientalism in French art
Delacroix used the trip to create a new series of paintings from the life of Arab society - exotic costumes, harems, Arabian horses, oriental exoticism. In Morocco, he made a couple of hundred sketches. He poured some of them into his paintings. In 1834, Eugene Delacroix exhibited the painting "Algerian Women in a Harem" at the Salon. The noisy and unusual world of the East that opened up amazed the Europeans. This new romantic discovery of the new exoticism of the East turned out to be contagious.
Other painters flocked to the East, and almost everyone brought a plot with unconventional characters inscribed in an exotic setting. So in European art, in France, with the light hand of the genius Delacroix, a new independent romantic genre was born - ORIENTALISM. This was his second contribution to the history of world art.
His fame grew. He received many orders to paint ceilings at the Louvre in 1850-51; The Throne Room and the Library of the Chamber of Deputies, the dome of the Peers' Library, the ceiling of the Apollo Gallery, the hall at the Hotel de Ville; created frescoes for the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice in 1849-61; decorated the Luxembourg Palace in 1840-47. With these creations, he forever inscribed his name in the history of French and world art.
This work paid well, and he, recognized as one of the largest artists in France, did not remember that "Liberty" was safely hidden in the vault. However, in the revolutionary year 1848, the progressive community remembered her. She turned to the artist with a proposal to paint a new similar picture about a new revolution.
1848 year
"I am a rebel, not a revolutionary," Delacroix replied. In other fame, he declared that he was a rebel in art, but not a revolutionary in politics. In that year, when all over Europe there were battles of the proletariat, not supported by the peasantry, blood was flowing through the streets of European cities, he was not engaged in revolutionary affairs, did not take part in street battles with the people, but rebelled in art - he was engaged in the reorganization of the Academy and reformation Salon. It seemed to him that it did not matter who would win: monarchists, republicans or proletarians.
And yet he responded to the call of the public and asked officials to exhibit their "Freedom" in the Salon. The picture was brought from the store, but did not dare to exhibit: the intensity of the struggle was too high. Yes, the author did not particularly insist, realizing that the potential for revolutionism among the masses was immense. Pessimism and disappointment overcame him. He never imagined that the revolution could repeat itself in such dire scenes that he saw in the early 1830s, and in those days in Paris.
In 1848 the Louvre demanded the painting. In 1852 - the Second Empire. In the final months of the Second Empire, Freedom was again regarded as a great symbol, and the engravings of this composition served the cause of republican propaganda. In the first years of the reign of Napoleon III, the painting was again recognized as dangerous to society and sent to the storehouse. After 3 years - in 1855 - it was removed from there and will be shown at an international art exhibition.
At this time, Delacroix rewrites some of the details in the picture. Perhaps he darkens the bright red tone of the cap to soften its revolutionary look. In 1863, Delacroix dies at home. And after 11 years "Svoboda" settles in the Louvre forever ...
Salon art and only academic art have always been central to Delacroix's work. He considered it his duty only to serve the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Politics did not excite his soul.
In that revolutionary year 1848 and in subsequent years, he became interested in Shakespeare. New masterpieces were born: Othello and Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, Samson and Delilah. He painted another painting "Women of Algeria". These pictures were not hidden from the public. On the contrary, they praised him in every way, as well as his paintings in the Louvre, as well as the canvases of his Algerian and Moroccan series.
The revolutionary theme will never die
Someone thinks that the historical-revolutionary theme today has died forever. The lackeys of the bourgeoisie so want it to die. But the movement from the old decaying and convulsing bourgeois civilization to the new non-capitalist or, as it is called, socialist - more precisely, to the communist multinational civilization will not be able to stop anyone, because this is an objective process. As the bourgeois revolution fought for more than half a century with the aristocratic estates, so the socialist revolution is making its way to victory in the most difficult historical conditions.
The theme of the interconnection between art and politics has long been established in art, and artists raised it and tried to express it in the mythological content, which is customary for classical academic art. But before Delacroix, it never occurred to anyone to try to create an image of the people and revolutionaries in painting and to show the common people who had rebelled against the king. The theme of nationality, the theme of revolution, the theme of the heroine in the image of Freedom, like ghosts, roamed Europe with particular force from 1830 to 1848. Delacroix was not alone in thinking about them. Other artists also tried to reveal them in their work. They tried to poeticize both the revolution and its heroes, the rebellious spirit in man. You can list many paintings that appeared at that time in France. Daumier and Messonier painted the barricades and the people, but none of them portrayed the revolutionary heroes from the people as vividly, so figuratively, so beautifully as Delacroix. Of course, no one could even dream of any socialist realism in those years, let alone talk. Even Marx and Engels did not see the "ghost of communism" roaming Europe until 1848. What can we say about artists !? However, from our 21st century it is clear and clear that all Soviet revolutionary art of socialist realism came from the "Barricades" of Delacroix and Messonier. It does not matter whether the artists themselves and Soviet art historians understood this or did not understand it; knew whether they saw this picture of Delacroix or not. Time has changed dramatically: capitalism has reached the highest stage of imperialism and at the beginning of the twentieth century began to decay. The degradation of bourgeois society took on cruel forms of relations between labor and capital. The latter tried to find salvation in world wars, fascism.
In Russia
The weakest link in the capitalist system turned out to be noble-bourgeois Russia. Discontent of the masses seethed in 1905, but tsarism held out and turned out to be a tough nut to crack. But the rehearsal for the revolution was rewarding. In 1917, the Russian proletariat won victory, carried out the world's first victorious socialist revolution and established its dictatorship.
The artists did not stand aside and wrote the revolutionary events in Russia both in a romantic way, like Delacroix, and in a realistic one. They developed a new method in world art called "socialist realism".
How many examples can be cited. B. I. Kustodiev in his painting "The Bolshevik" (1920) portrayed the proletarian as a giant, Giliver, walking over the midgets, over the city, over the crowd. He is holding a red flag in his hands. In the painting Korzhev GM "Raising the Banner" (1957-1960), a worker raises the red banner, which was just dropped by a revolutionary who was killed by the police.
Didn't these artists know Delacroix's work? Didn't they know that starting from 1831 the French proletarians went out to revolutions with a three-calorie, and the Parisian Communards with a red banner in their hands? They knew. They also knew the sculpture "Marseillaise" by François Rude (1784-1855), which adorns the Arc de Triomphe in the center of Paris.
I found the idea of the enormous influence of paintings by Delacroix and Messonier on Soviet revolutionary painting in the books of the English art historian TJ Clark. In them, he collected a lot of interesting materials and illustrations from the history of French art related to the 1948 revolution, and showed pictures in which the themes I indicated above sounded. He reproduced illustrations of these paintings by other artists and described the ideological struggle in France at that time, which was very active in art and criticism. By the way, no other bourgeois art historian was interested in the revolutionary theme of European painting after 1973. It was then that Clark's works were published for the first time. Then they were republished in 1982 and 1999.
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The Absolute Bourgeois. Artists and Politics in France. 1848-1851. L., 1999. (3d ed.)
Image of the People. Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. L., 1999. (3d ed.)
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Barricades and modernism
The fight continues
The struggle for Eugene Delacroix has been going on in the history of art for a century and a half. Bourgeois and socialist art theorists wage a long struggle over his artistic legacy. Bourgeois theoreticians do not want to remember his famous painting "Freedom on the Barricades on July 28, 1830". In their opinion, it is enough for him to be called the “Great Romantic”. Indeed, the artist has blended into both the romantic and the realistic directions. His brush painted both the heroic and tragic events of the history of France during the years of the battles between the republic and the monarchy. She painted with a brush and beautiful Arab women in the countries of the East. With his light hand, orientalism begins in the world art of the 19th century. He was invited to paint the Throne Room and the Library of the Chamber of Deputies, the dome of the Peers' Library, the ceiling of the Apollo Gallery, the hall at the Hotel de Ville. He created frescoes for the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice (1849-61). He worked on the decoration of the Luxembourg Palace (1840-47) and painting the ceilings in the Louvre (1850-51). No one except Delacroix in 19th century France came close in talent to the classics of the Renaissance. With his creations, he forever inscribed his name in the history of French and world art. He made many discoveries in the field of colorful writing technology. He abandoned classical linear compositions and approved the dominant role of color in painting in the 19th century. Therefore, bourgeois historians love to write about him as an innovator, a forerunner of impressionism and other trends in modernism. They pull him into the area of decadent art at the end of the 19th century. - the beginning of the XX century. This is what the above-mentioned exhibition was dedicated to.