Original subtitles

Eugène Delacroix is one of the great romantic painters an artist who wrestled with the

revolutionary politics of 19th century France who added an exotic Oriental dimension to European art

and who inspired a late flourish in history painting whilst playing a major role in the

development of modern art Eugène Delacroix was born on the 26th of April 1798 just outside Paris

his father Charles was a lawyer and a politician and his mother came from an illustrious family of

cabinet makers but there's a certain mystery surrounding his birth because a rumor flew

around that in fact his real father was the celebrated politician and statesman Maurice

Talleyrand although nothing was ever proved when Delacroix was just seven Charles his father died

he left a considerable sum of money to his wife but through financial mismanagement she left her

family with almost nothing on her death nine years later Eugène now an orphan moved in with

his elder sister and her husband despite the setbacks Delacroix managed to get into a good school in Paris

where he won prizes for classics and for drawing enabling him to enter the prestigious Ecole des

Beaux-Arts and to study the work of the old masters at first hand just over the river in the Louvre in the 19th

century the salon was the place where every artist wanted to exhibit his or occasionally her work the

selection jury there could make or break careers but success led to public and private commissions the

salon was held every two years up to 1833 from then on though it was an annual event in the summer of 1821

Delacroix decided he was ready for the salon and he began work on a picture which was accepted by the jury the

following April it's called the bark of Dante and is taken from the great poem by the late medieval

Florentine poet Dante who has this poetic journey from hell through purgatory to paradise and what

Delacroix takes is hell and the inferno the bark is the small boat in which Dante himself is cited clad

here in red with an amazing expression of surprise and terror on his face and next to him is his

accompanist the great Roman poet Virgil who has this serene expression on his face with the laurel

leaf on his head and then next to them with his back turned to us is the boatkeeper from the river

Styx Phlegius who is struggling to get through this lake that surrounds the infernal city of

this and all around the damned are trying desperately to be saved and to get aboard the boat the inspiration

for the work Dante was oddly enough rare in French art even though Dante had fueled Italian art for the

previous five centuries no major French salon painter had ever attempted this subject matter

but of course the real inspiration for this subject is clear it's Jericho's Raft of the Medusa and the

drama and the lighting and the subject matter of figures struggling to get on board a boat

but I think what also struck the contemporary iron certainly what strikes us looking at the work

is the detailing not just the expressions but look at the way that colors use now Delacroix becomes one

of the great colorists in Western art but here it's very subtle particularly in the way that the

droplets of water are painted where instead of using the usual grays he uses a mixture of red and green

and yellow and white what he says is the palette of creation the rainbow rather than the muted colors that

have usually been used and this work was acquired by the French state and the reaction critically was one

of astonishment rather than admiration but nonetheless the feeling was there that here was the next young

talent in French art shortly after completing the bark of Dante Delacroix began to keep a journal leaving us an

extensive and fascinating insight into the workings of the artist's mind I'm carrying out my plan formulated so many times of writing a journal the writer has to say almost everything in order to make himself understood but in painting it is as if some mysterious bridge was set up between the spirit of the persons in the picture and the beholder we ought to steep ourselves from time to time in great and beautiful works of art

Delacroix now organized all his attempts to make great and beautiful works of art with the salon in mind

the next one was scheduled for 1824 and this was the work that Delacroix exhibited larger bolder brasher than the bark of Dante and entitled scenes from the massacres at Chios

and what had happened was that 90,000 inhabitants on this island had been subjected to over two months of burning pillaging looting and raping to the extent that there were less than 1,000 left the rest have been killed or deported for slavery and Delacroix had both read contemporary newspaper accounts and also interviewed eyewitnesses but in the end

in the end that was a springboard for his imagination the paintings dominated by the figures in the foreground who are all the Greeks who are awaiting death or slavery they all seem to be paired up from the woman crying leaning on the shoulder of the man who's been injured to perhaps the most touching scene the young child searching for his mother's nipple for nourishment while his mother lies dead again one of the noticeable things about the painting is this detail and color

not least in the red around the old woman's eyes flecked with green it's complimentary and then look at the shadow on her arm red once again but again flecked with green

but then there's the drama the drama of the Turk on horseback dragging off this woman whose clothes are falling from her as a young Greek man tries to protect her

and then we move to the middle ground where there's another massacre taking place where the Turks are there with guns and swords killing a group of Greeks

and then in the shadows we notice the spectre of the Turkish guards holding their guns

and so what we have is a scene of individual episodes brought into one where ultimately everything seems utterly chaotic

and the critical reaction to the work was on one hand people said this was the new wild man of French art

and others said Delacroix has massacred painting

and this work helped to polarize the situation in France that became a battle if you like between

classicism and the art that had been put forward by people like David idealness beauty order harmony

and its antithesis romanticism the subversion of classicism naturalism emotion the idea of sketchiness

and speed and intensity and all of those things Delacroix stood for the massacre of Chios was bought by the

French state for 6,000 francs which Delacroix used to fund a trip to London this three-month journey was

highly significant young artists tended to opt for the classical splendors of Italy but Delacroix made it clear

that his interest was in contemporary art and in particular the emerging British school notably Constable and Bonnington

this art he saw as a breath of fresh air in comparison to the rigidity of French painting

but it was English literature which partly inspired his next major work

in 1828 Delacroix was back in the salon to produce what turns out to be the third of the great three early works

and an image that he called his massacre number two and a painting that is still the most radical work he ever painted

and it's called the death of Sardanapalus

Sardanapalus was the Assyrian king who lived in the palace of Nineveh in the ninth century before the birth of Christ

but the precedence for the painting for Delacroix was a play written by Lord Byron in 1821 and subsequently performed in Paris

in Byron's play Sardanapalus kills himself along with one concubine

because the rebels are at the door of his palace of Nineveh

but in Delacroix's painting the king lies almost languidly like some reclining Venus on this giant billowing pink bed

with a concubine next to him pleading with him that a life isn't taken

but all around him people are being killed by his eunuchs and by the palace guards

there's a potion of poison being brought

and in the top right hand corner we can see the billowing flames just beginning

as if to tell us that shortly everything will go up in smoke

and it's almost like an image of a latter-day cult where everyone is condemned to die

but at the centre of it all is this kind of mystical enigmatic cultish leader

for many people this painting remains at the apex of romantic art

brilliant colours, dynamic brushstrokes, a dynamic composition where the eye is always drawn over the painting

and Delacroix himself said, I really hate organised painting

my disorganised mind has a void, this dark void he talks about that needs to be filled

and in a way that's what's going on here

and the subject matter is extreme too

suicide was favoured by romantic artists and writers like Goethe

but here by expanding it into a mass suicide

Delacroix was deemed to have pushed his art off the edge

and that sadly was the broad consensus amongst both critics and the public

that this was almost a delirious image

and this time the state didn't buy the painting

but it remained among Delacroix's favoured works

and it still strikes a chord

it still has this sense of energy and subversion

it's a total subversion of everything that classical art and order stood for

In 1822 when Delacroix had first shown at the salon with the bark of Dante

he was an unknown artist

now, just eight years later though

he was at the very heart of the French artistic establishment

but Paris was soon to become embroiled in political and military turmoil

which in turn led to Delacroix's most famous painting

Delacroix lived in turbulent revolutionary times

and it was this energy and excitement that fuelled the best of his painting

when Delacroix was born, Napoleon Bonaparte had seized power

proclaimed himself emperor

and ruled over France and much of Europe

for the next decade and a half

only being defeated in the end by the Duke of Wellington

at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815

there then followed the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy

who at least ostensibly understood that there was no going back

to the pretensions of the Ancien Regime

Nonetheless, they did try and establish a regressive, repressive Catholic monarchy

which in effect was turning the clock back

and on the 25th of July 1830

the repressive King Charles X

abolished the freedom of the press

dissolved the chamber of deputies

and altered the election laws

and in turn, the people of Paris rose up in revolution

which gave Delacroix the subject

for his most iconic large scale work

and this is Delacroix's pictorial response to the July revolution

a painting called Liberty Leading the People

painted between October and December

in a rush of creative energy by Delacroix

who tries to combine fact and fiction

to affirm that he was there

by showing his signature

on a piece of gnarled wood

in the right hand side of the painting

and also as he says

I didn't fight

but at least I can paint for the country

but look at the composition and you realise

that this is a very carefully constructed

and quite ordered painting by Delacroix standards

at the pinnacle of this pyramid

is the figure of Liberty

a combination of a working class girl

and some kind of classical statue

with her breast revealed rather tokenistically

but I suppose to show that she can also be

mother of the people

a kind of nourishing figure

and then down below her

there are various carefully observed types

of working class figures

on the left hand side clutching a sabre

there's a factory worker

then in a top hat holding a gun

slightly up the social scale

is an artisan

and then kneeling at the feet of Liberty

is a country labourer

on the right hand side

the young boy clutching two pistols

and then to the right of the boy

clearly visible

amidst the billowing clouds of smoke

you can see Notre Dame

as if to affirm that this is contemporary Paris

even though this would not have been possible to see

in quite this way

but nevertheless

Delacroix wants to say

this is my world

but of course

at the apex of the composition

is the flag

is the tricolor

and if you look at the colour

throughout the painting

which is muted

by the standards of Delacroix's previous art

there's this very subtle build-up

of red, white and blue

found throughout the work

but there

proclaimed

as the pinnacle

and there is something very ordered

and almost classical about this work

it's as if Delacroix has stepped back

from the extreme edges of Romanticism

to something relatively more controlled

it's also a picture

that struck a huge chord

both with critics and public alike

when it was exhibited in the 1831 Salon

and as a consequence of this work

Delacroix received the Légion d'honneur

now it's become an icon

of the French Republic

Delacroix's official status

was further enhanced in 1832

when he was invited to go to Morocco

as part of an official delegation

to see the Sultan

France had recently conquered Algeria

and was very keen

both to allay Moroccan fears

and also to re-establish a new relationship

between the two countries

and for Delacroix

the journey would shape the course of his art

for the rest of his life

Once here in Morocco

the exotic Orient

that had only existed in Delacroix's imagination

suddenly started to seem real

and his world was filled with new sensations

smells, sounds

and of course

a new vision

Each part of the six month trip

was documented through Delacroix's journals

and his letters

and most significantly

his sketchbooks

the majority of his time

was spent in Tangiers

immersing himself in a culture

that was largely unfamiliar

but which through Delacroix's images

became a mecca for Western artists

over the next few decades

whilst in Tangiers

he was invited to a Jewish wedding

which he subsequently painted

he shows the contrast of light

streaming into the courtyard

with the dark shadows on either side

the Jews are on the left

with the woman dancing

and then the Moors on the right

all observed

from above

from beyond the balustrade

and then of course

from down below

by implication

by the painter

After six weeks in Tangiers

the entourage were given orders

to travel to the imperial city of Mekanes

for an audience with the Sultan

finally

after a week of waiting

a crowd gathered here

there were standard bearers

and musicians

and cavalrymen

and people just looking

at what was about to happen

and then the Sultan appeared

at the Bab al-Mansur

the gateway

to the imperial city

It was an event

which burned itself

into Delacroix's imagination

and inspired this canvas

some 13 years later

Delacroix stayed in Morocco

for another three months

leaving for France

on the 10th of June

and going by Algiers and Spain

on the way home

The trip filled his sketchbooks

and his imagination

and it equipped him

for a full-blown

and seductive assault

on the Parisian art world

Back in France

Delacroix completed

and then exhibited

perhaps his greatest

and certainly most accomplished painting

from the Moroccan journey

It's called

The Women of Algiers

in their apartment

and it was shown

at the salon

in 1834

On one level

this painting

reaches new heights

of naturalism

as a kind of documentary realism

about the work

that stems from the fact

as we know

that Delacroix made sketches

in an actual harem

in Algiers

from which much of the work

is based

but we also know too

that it's still rooted

in that slightly exotic

other kind of fantasy

that dominates

the Western imagination

The work can also be read

in the context

of France's colonisation

of Algeria

Harim

or haram

means sacred

and in a way

by depicting this scene

Delacroix

is making that space

seem less sacred

less mysterious

however

what he's doing

in this work

is also

showing

or trying to show

the harim

as it actually was

and not

as some kind of caricature

of Western sexual fantasy

for a start

the women are clothed

there's plenty of limbs around

but they're not

sprawling naked

and therefore

explicitly sexualised

they seem ultimately

in control

they seem remote

and self-contained

and although the painting's

intimate

in the way that the detail

of the still life

the slippers

the cushions

the rugs

the pipe

is painted in the foreground

the women also act

as a kind of veil

or a screen

to what lies behind

which is in turn

revealed by the black servant

who's pulling the curtain

away to reveal

something of the inner mystery

of the harim

with the door open

but we only get

a flickering

fleeting glimpse

and ultimately

it seems a painting

of mood

it's that languid

sensual late afternoon

where the shadows

are falling

creeping in from the left

and where colour

as always

in Delacroix

has this amazing sense

of control

but also of procession

and this is a painting

that when the critics

saw it

in the 1834 salon

left them

to a certain extent

nonplussed

people said

nothing is happening here

because it was on such a large scale

they expected something

of the drama

of Delacroix's

previous history paintings

but in a way

what he's done here

is much more subtle

it has this much more subtle

hedonistic atmosphere to it

and it's this painting

perhaps above all others

that has struck a chord

with painters of future generations

Matisse adored this painting

and was partly driven to go to Morocco

as a consequence of it

Picasso did variations on it

the Spanish filmmaker

Louis Bunuel said

he could almost smell

the incense in the picture

and perhaps most memorably

Paul Cézanne said

looking at this picture

it enters your eye

in the way that a glass of wine

slips down the throat

and in the end

leaves you feeling intoxicated

soon after Delacroix's return

from Morocco

he was given the first

of a series of commissions

for decorative projects

in public and private buildings

around Paris

the first was for the

Palais Bourbon

or the National Assembly

as it's now known

here in the Salon du Roi

initially built as a throne room

Delacroix painted a frieze

running around the top

of the room

punctuated by window arches

filled with allegorical figures

highlighting the key aspects

of a successful state

justice

commerce

industry

agriculture

and war

all supported by

eight large columns

or piers

on which Delacroix painted

allegorical figures

representing the main rivers

of France

and the surrounding oceans

such was the success

of the Salon du Roi

that Delacroix

was then asked

to decorate the Bourbon

Palace's library

for eight years

struggling with ill health

he painted two half domes

and five large bays

a vast pictorial saga

of the rise and fall

of classical civilization

and learning

at one end

the lyric poet

Orpheus

brings enlightenment

to the early Greeks

whilst at the other

Attila the Hun

and his hordes

overrun Italy

and the arts

In between

the bays are filled

with ancient classical

and biblical stories

which Delacroix

believed to embody

the main subjects

of any library

history

philosophy

poetry

science

eloquence

law

and theology

and then

in 1854

Delacroix finally

began to work

on an illustrious

commission

he'd actually received

five years earlier

to paint three murals

for the church

of Saint-Sulpice

in the small

Chapelle de Saint-Ange

lit only from

a stained glass window

Delacroix painted

three works

that emphasized

the struggle

between good and evil

here

Jacob wrestles

with the angel

the Emperor

Heliodorus

is driven from

the temple

whose treasures

he was trying to seize

and finally

the archangel

Michael

defeats the devil

and proclaims

the triumph

of God

While Delacroix

was working

on the Saint-Sulpice murals

he became involved

in a project

in 1855

by the French government

to respond

to the great exhibition

that had taken place

in London

four years earlier

the new imperial regime

of Louis-Napoleon

wanted to assert

French superiority

in commerce

and the arts

and in order to do this

he staged

an exposition universelle

in which

there were pavilions

of work

by living artists

from each country

and Delacroix

was given pride of place

with his first major

retrospective exhibition

as well as being made

a member of the

French Academy

late recognition

for an artist

who'd played

the salon system

so effectively

but whose impact

transcended it

for Delacroix

offered an expansive

highly original

and often exotic

vision

which over the ensuing

decades

was to inspire artists

and filmmakers

from Manet

to Louis-Bernuel

Delacroix never stopped

painting

until his strength

finally deserted him

art was an all-consuming

affair for him

he never married

because as he put it

he needed nothing else

in his life

apart from painting

but in the winter

of 1862

he caught a cold

and then contracted

a severe virus

and although he was

looked after

by his trusty

mate Jenny

he died

on the 13th

of August

1862

having supposedly

uttered his last words

I had enough in my head

for another 40 years

mother

who

had

who

the

who

Amen.