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Liberty Leading the People

Also Known As La Liberte guidant le peuple (French title)
History, Religious and Mythological Paintings

Liberty Leading the People is Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting commemorating the July Revolution of that year, showing an allegorical bare-breasted figure of Liberty carrying the French tricolor and a bayoneted musket over a barricade, leading a mixed crowd of armed citizens forward across the bodies of the fallen. Its dramatic composition, dynamic diagonal movement and unidealized, contemporary-dressed figures exemplify the qualities, color and emotion over academic restraint, that made Delacroix the leading painter of French Romanticism.

Facts
Year Created
1830 1
Medium
Oil on canvas 1
Location
Musee du Louvre, Paris, France 1
Classification
Genre
Painting 1
Connections

Created By

Source Gardner's Art Through the AgesFred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)

In Form

Painting, Art Forms

In Movement

Romanticism, Movements
Source Gardner's Art Through the AgesFred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner)
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Gardner's Art Through the Ages
Fred S. Kleiner (after Helen Gardner), Cengage Learning
  • chapter on Romanticism, section on Eugene Delacroix
  • Genre reference
    Liberty Leading the People is Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting commemorating the July Revolution of that year, showing an allegorical bare-breasted figure of Liberty carrying the French tricolor and a bayoneted musket over a barricade, leading a mixed crowd of armed citizens forward across the bodies of the fallen.
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