A brief description of the picture of freedom leading the people. Delacroix. Freedom leading the people. Detailed examination of the picture

Eugène Delacroix - La liberté guidant le peuple (1830)

Description of the painting by Eugene Delacroix “Liberty leading the people”

The painting was created by the artist in 1830 and its plot tells about the days of the French Revolution, namely about street skirmishes in Paris. It was they who led to the overthrow of the hated restoration regime of Charles X.

In his youth, Delacroix, intoxicated by the air of freedom, took the position of a rebel, he was inspired by the idea of painting canvases glorifying the events of those days. In a letter to his brother, he wrote: "Let me not fight for the Motherland, but I will write for her." Work on it lasted 90 days, after which it was presented to the audience. The canvas was called ″Freedom Leading the People″.

The plot is quite simple. street barricade, historical sources it is known that they were built from furniture and paving stones. The central character is a woman who crosses a barrier of stones with her bare feet and leads the people to the intended goal. In the lower part of the foreground, the figures of the killed people are visible, on the left side of the oppositionist killed in the house, a nightgown is put on the corpse, and on the right is an officer of the royal army. These are symbols of the two worlds of the future and the past. In her right raised hand, the woman holds the French tricolor, symbolizing freedom, equality and fraternity, and in her left she holds a gun, ready to give her life for a just cause. Her head is tied with a scarf characteristic of the Jacobins, her breasts are bare, which means the violent desire of the revolutionaries to go to the end with their ideas and not be afraid of death from the bayonets of the royal troops.

Behind it are visible figures of other rebels. The author, with his brush, emphasized the diversity of the rebels: here are representatives of the bourgeoisie (a man in a bowler hat), an artisan (a man in a white shirt) and a street child (gavroche). On the right side of the canvas, behind the clouds of smoke, two towers of Notre Dame are visible, on the roofs of which the banner of the revolution is placed.

Eugene Delacroix. "Liberty Leading the People (Liberty at the Barricades)" (1830)
Canvas, oil. 260 x 325 cm
Louvre, Paris, France

The greatest romantic exploiter of the exposed breast motif as a means of conveying conflicting feelings was, without any doubt, Delacroix. The powerful central figure on the canvas “Liberty Leading the People” owes much of its emotional impact to its majestically illuminated breasts. This woman is a purely mythological figure, which acquired a completely tangible authenticity, having appeared among the people at the barricades.

But her tattered costume is the most meticulously executed exercise in artistic cut and sewing, so that the resulting woven product demonstrates the chest as well as possible and thereby asserts the power of the goddess. The dress is made with one sleeve to leave the hand raised up holding the flag naked. Above the waist, except for the sleeves, there is clearly not enough material to cover not only the chest, but also the second shoulder.

The free spirited artist dressed Liberty in something asymmetrical in design, seeing the antiquity rags as fitting for a working-class goddess. Besides, there was no way her exposed breasts could have been exposed by some abrupt inadvertent action; rather, on the contrary, this detail itself - an integral part of the costume, the moment of the original design - should at once evoke feelings of holiness, sensual desire and desperate rage!

On July 28, 1830, the people of Paris rebelled against the hated Bourbon monarchy. King Charles X was deposed, and the tricolor flag of the French Republic was raised over the Tuileries Palace.
This event inspired the young artist Eugene Delacroix to create a large composition that perpetuates the victory of the people. From the depths, a dense crowd is moving directly towards the viewer. Ahead, running up to the barricade, is the allegorical figure of Freedom, raising high the blue-white-red banner of the republic and calling for the rebels to follow. In the foreground at the lower edge of the picture are the fallen bodies of the dead. Under le Liberty, a teenager armed with two pistols, so reminiscent of heroic image the boy Gavroche, created later by Victor Hugo in the novel Les Misérables. A little behind - a worker with a saber and either an artist or a writer with a gun in his hands. Behind these primeval figures one can see the human sea, bristling with weapons. The distance is covered with thick clouds of smoke; only on the right is a piece of the Parisian landscape with the towers of the Cathedral of Our Lady.
The picture is permeated with stormy tension, passionate dynamics. Freedom marches with a wide step, her clothes flutter, the flag flies in the air. In the last effort, the wounded man reaches out to her; sweeping gestures of the armed insurgents; Gavroche waved his pistols. But not only in the poses, gestures, movements of the depicted people, not only in the waves of powder smoke that enveloped the city, the drama of what is happening is felt. The rhythm of the composition is impetuous, expressive: the figure of Liberty burst out diagonally from the depths to the fore. It seems to be the largest, as it is placed on the top of the barricade. The small figure of a boy next to her contrasts with her; the wounded man and the man in the top hat echo the swirling movement of Liberty with their movement. Her sonorous yellow clothes, as it were, pull her out of the environment. The sharp contrasts of the illuminated and shaded parts cause the viewer's gaze to rush about, jumping from one point to another. Intense flashes of pure color, where the “tricolor” of the republican banner dominates, light up even more piercingly against the background of deaf “asphalt” tones. The passion and anger of the Rebellion are conveyed here not so much, perhaps, in the faces and gestures of individual characters, but in the very visual mood of the picture. The painting itself is dramatic here; the intensity of the struggle is expressed in a frenzied whirlpool of light and shadow, in the elemental dynamics of forms, in a restlessly vibrating pattern, and above all in heated color. All this merges in a feeling of unbridled power, approaching with inevitable determination and ready to sweep away all obstacles.
The inspiration of the revolutionary impulse found a worthy embodiment in Delacroix's painting. Chapter romantic school in French painting, he was precisely the artist who was called upon to capture the element of popular anger. In contrast to the classicism of the epigones of David, hated by him, who sought in art calm harmony, reasonable clarity, alienated from all earthly passions of "divine" grandeur, Delacroix devoted himself entirely to the world of living human passions, dramatic collisions; heroism appeared before his creative imagination not in the guise of sublime valor, but in all the immediacy of strong feelings, in the rapture of the fight, in the culmination of the utmost tension of emotions and all spiritual and physical forces.
True, the rebellious people in his picture were led by the conditional figure of Freedom. Barefoot, bare-breasted, dressed like an antique tunic, she is somewhat akin to the allegorical figures of academic compositions. But her movements are devoid of restraint, her facial features are by no means antique, her whole appearance is full of immediate emotional impulse. And the viewer is ready to believe that this Freedom is not a conventional allegory, but a living, flesh-and-blood woman of the Parisian suburbs.
Therefore, we do not feel any dissonance between the image of Freedom and the rest of the picture, where the drama is combined with a specific characteristic, and even with a merciless credibility. The revolutionary people are depicted in the picture without any embellishment: the picture breathes great vital truth. Delacroix all his life attracted unusual, significant images and situations. Romanticism sought in the heat of human passions, in strong and bright characters, in the dramatic events of history or in the exoticism of distant countries, the antithesis of modern bourgeois reality. The romantics hated the dry prose of their contemporary civilization, the cynical domination of the chistogan, the self-satisfied philistinism of the wealthy bourgeois. They saw art as a means to oppose the vulgar triviality of life with the world of poetic dreams. Only occasionally did reality give the artist a direct source of high poetry. This was the case, in particular, with Delacroix's Freedom at the Barricades. This is the importance of the picture, in which the artist managed to embody the true heroism of the revolutionary cause, its high poetry, in a bright and excited language. Later, De Lacroix did not create anything like this, although all his life he remained faithful to art, permeated with passion, brightness of feelings, refracted in the elemental power of his painting. In "Freedom on the Barricades" the artist's coloring is still harsh-forged, the contrasts of light and shadow are dry in places. In later works, the poetry of passions was embodied in him in such a free possession of the elements of color, which makes one recall Rubens, one of his favorite artists.
Delacroix hated the stilted conventions of classical epigonism. “The highest disgrace,” he wrote in his “Diary”, a wonderful document of the artist’s creative thought, “is just our conventions and our petty corrections to the great and perfect nature. The ugly is our embellished heads, embellished folds, nature and art, cleaned up to please the taste of a few nothingnesses ... "
But, protesting against a false understanding of beauty, Delacroix never forgot that the destiny of genuine art is not the external plausibility of naturalism, but the high truth of real poetry: “When I, surrounded by trees and charming places, write with my nose into a landscape, it turns out to be heavy, too finished, perhaps more faithful in details, but not consistent with the plot ... During a trip to Africa, I began to do something more or less acceptable only when he forgot enough small details and remembered in his pictures only the significant and poetic side of things; until that moment, I was haunted by a love of accuracy, which the vast majority take for truth ... "

Description of work

Romanticism succeeds the Age of Enlightenment and coincides with the industrial revolution, marked by the advent of the steam engine, the steam locomotive, the steamboat and photography and the factory outskirts. If the Enlightenment is characterized by the cult of reason and civilization based on its principles, then romanticism affirms the cult of nature, feelings and the natural in man. It was in the era of romanticism that the phenomena of tourism, mountaineering and picnics were formed, designed to restore the unity of man and nature.

1. Introduction. Description of the historical and cultural context of the era.
2- Biography of the author.
3- Species, genre affiliation, plot, formal language characteristics (composition, material, technique, strokes, coloring), the creative concept of the picture.
4- Painting "Freedom on the barricades).
5- Analysis with a modern context (substantiation of relevance).

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Chelyabinsk State Academy

Culture and Arts.

Semester test by art picture

EUGENE DELACROIX FREEDOM ON THE BARRICADES.

Completed by a second-year student of group 204 TV

Rusanova Irina Igorevna

Checked by the teacher of fine arts Gindina O.V.

Chelyabinsk 2012

1. Introduction. Description of the historical and cultural context of the era.

3- Species, genre affiliation, plot, formal language characteristics (composition, material, technique, strokes, coloring), the creative concept of the picture.

4- Painting "Freedom on the barricades).

5- Analysis with a modern context (substantiation of relevance).

ART OF THE COUNTRIES OF WESTERN EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE XIX CENTURY.

The development of romanticism in painting proceeded in a sharp controversy with an adherent of classicism. Romantics reproached their predecessors for "cold rationality" and the absence of a "movement of life." In the 1920s and 1930s, the works of many artists were distinguished by pathos and nervous excitement; in them there has been a tendency to exotic motifs and a play of the imagination that can lead away from the "dim everyday life." The struggle against the frozen classicist norms lasted a long time, almost half a century. The first who managed to consolidate a new direction and "justify" romanticism was Theodore Géricault

The historical milestones that determined the development of Western European art in the middle of the 19th century were the European revolutions of 1848-1849. and the Paris Commune of 1871. In the largest capitalist countries there is a rapid growth of the labor movement. There is a scientific ideology of the revolutionary proletariat, the founders of which were K. Marx and F. Engels. The upsurge in the activity of the proletariat arouses the furious hatred of the bourgeoisie, which unites around itself all the forces of reaction.

With the revolutions of 1830 and 1848-1849. the highest achievements of art are connected, based on the directions of which during this period were revolutionary romanticism and democratic realism. The most prominent representatives of revolutionary romanticism in the art of the mid-19th century. There were the French painter Delacroix and the French sculptor Rude.

Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix (French Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix; 1798-1863) - French painter and graphic artist, leader of the romantic direction in European painting. Delacroix's first painting was Dante's Boat (1822), which he exhibited at the Salon.

The work of Eugene Delacroix can be divided into two periods. In the first, the artist was close to reality, in the second, he gradually moves away from it, limiting himself to plots gleaned from literature, history, and mythology. Most significant paintings:

"Massacre at Chios" (1823-1824, Louvre, Paris) and "Freedom at the Barricades" (1830, Louvre, Paris)

Painting "Freedom on the barricades".

The revolutionary-romantic canvas "Freedom on the Barricades" is associated with the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris. The artist concretizes the place of action - on the right looms the island of Cité and the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral. The images of people are also quite specific, whose social affiliation can be determined both by the nature of their faces and by their costumes. The viewer sees the rebellious workers, students, Parisian boys and intellectuals.

The image of the latter is Delacroix's self-portrait. Its introduction into the composition once again indicates that the artist feels himself a participant in what is happening. A woman walks through the barricade next to the rebel. She is naked to the waist: on her head is a Phrygian cap, in one hand a gun, in the other a banner. This is an allegory of Freedom leading the people (hence the second name of the painting is Freedom leading the people). In the rhythm of raised hands, rifles, sabers, rising from the depths of the movement, in the clouds of powder smoke, in the major-sounding chords of the red-white-blue banner - the brightest spot of the picture - one can feel the rapid pace of the revolution.

The painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1831, the canvas caused a storm of public approval. The new government bought the painting, but at the same time immediately ordered it to be removed, its pathos seemed too dangerous. However, then for almost twenty-five years, due to the revolutionary nature of the plot, Delacroix's work was not exhibited.

Currently located in the 77th room on the 1st floor of the Denon Gallery in the Louvre.

The composition of the picture is very dynamic. The artist gave a timeless, epic sound to a simple episode of street fights. The rebels rise to the barricade recaptured from the royal troops, and Freedom itself leads them. Critics saw in her "a cross between a merchant and an ancient Greek goddess." In fact, the artist gave his heroine both the majestic posture of the “Venus de Milo”, and those features that the poet Auguste Barbier, the singer of the revolution of 1830, endowed Freedom with: “This Strong woman with a powerful chest, with a hoarse voice, with fire in his eyes, fast, with a wide step. Liberty raises the tricolor banner of the French Republic; an armed crowd follows: artisans, military men, bourgeois, adults, children.

Gradually, a wall grew and strengthened, separating Delacroix and his art from reality. Thus closed in his solitude, the revolution of 1830 found him. 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 astonishment and enthusiasm experienced during these days invade the secluded life of Delacroix. Reality loses its repulsive shell of vulgarity and everydayness for him, revealing real greatness, which he never saw in it and which he had previously sought in Byron's poems, historical chronicles, ancient mythology and in the East.

The July days echoed in the soul of Eugene Delacroix with the idea of a new painting. The barricade battles of July 27, 28 and 29 in French history decided the outcome of a political upheaval. These days, King Charles X, the last representative of the Bourbon dynasty hated by the people, was overthrown. For the first time for Delacroix, this was not a historical, literary or oriental plot, but real life. However, before this idea was embodied, he had to go through a long and difficult path of change.

R. Escollier, the artist's biographer, wrote: "At the very beginning, under the first impression of what he saw, Delacroix did not intend to depict Freedom among its adherents ... He simply wanted to reproduce one of the July episodes, such as the death of d" Arcole ". Yes , then many feats were accomplished and sacrifices were made. The heroic death of d "Arcol is associated with the capture of the Paris City Hall by the rebels. On the day when the royal troops kept under fire the suspension bridge Greve, a young man appeared who rushed to the town hall. He exclaimed: "If I die, remember that my name is d" Arcole ". He really was killed, but he managed to drag 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 exact choice of the moment, and the completeness of the composition, and the thoughtful accents on individual figures, and the architectural background, organically merged 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 painted later. rushing forward and captivating the insurgents with his heroic impulse.Eugène Delacroix transfers this central role to Liberty itself.

When working on a picture in Delacroix's worldview, two opposite principles collided - inspiration inspired by reality, and on the other hand, a distrust of this reality that had long been rooted in his mind. Distrust of the fact that life can be beautiful in itself, that human images and purely pictorial means can convey the idea of the picture in its entirety. This distrust dictated Delacroix's symbolic figure of Liberty and some other allegorical refinements.

The artist transfers the whole event into the world of allegory, we reflect the idea in the same way as the Rubens idolized by him did (Delacroix told the young Edouard Manet: “You need to see Rubens, you need to feel Rubens, you need to copy Rubens, because Rubens is a god”) in their compositions, personifying 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 royally 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 the Nika 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 historians noted and reproached Delacroix for the fact that all the greatness of his painting cannot obscure the impression that at first turns out to be only barely noticeable. It's about about the clash in the mind of the artist 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 cothurna, between the attraction to painting emotional, direct and already established, familiar to 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 impeccable, ideal beauty. Noting as a virtue the feeling of life authenticity, which had never before been manifested in the work of Delacroix (and never again then), the artist was reproached for the generalization and symbolism of the image of Freedom. However, for the generalization of other images, blaming the artist for the fact that the naturalistic nakedness of a corpse in the foreground is adjacent to the nakedness of Freedom.

But, pointing to the allegorical nature of the main image, some researchers forget to note that the allegorical nature of Freedom does not at all create dissonance with the rest of the figures in the picture, does not look as alien and exceptional in the picture as it might seem at first glance. After all, the rest acting characters in essence and in their role are also allegorical. In their person, Delacroix, as it were, brings to the fore those 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 definite strata of society. These are, undoubtedly, bright and reliable images, but Delacroix brings this generalization of them to symbols. And this allegoricalness, which is already clearly felt in them, reaches its highest development in the figure of Freedom. This is a formidable and beautiful goddess, and at the same time she is a daring Parisian. And nearby, a nimble, disheveled boy is jumping on stones, screaming with delight and brandishing pistols (as if orchestrating events), a little genius of the Parisian barricades, whom Victor Hugo will call Gavroche in 25 years.

The painting "Freedom 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 into the Louvre. However, after the "bourgeois monarchy" seized power, the exhibition of this canvas was banned. Only in 1848, Delacroix was able to exhibit his painting once more, 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."

The painting is on canvas. She was painted in oils.

ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BY COMPARISON OF MODERN LITERATURE AND RELEVANCE.

own perception of the picture.

At the moment, I believe that Delacroix's painting Liberty at the Barricades is very relevant in our time.

The theme of revolution and freedom still excites not only great minds, but also the people. Now the freedom of mankind is under the leadership of power. People are limited in everything, humanity is driven by money, and the bourgeoisie is at the head.

In the 21st century, humanity has more opportunities to go to rallies, pickets, manifestos, draw and create texts (but there are exceptions if the text is classified as extremism), in which they boldly show their positions and views.

Recently, the theme of freedom and revolution in Russia has also become more relevant than before. All this is connected with the latest events on the part of the opposition (the movements "Left Front", "Solidarity", the party of Navalnov and Boris Nemtsov)

More and more often we hear slogans calling for freedom and a revolution in the country. At contemporary poets it is clearly expressed in the verses. An example is Alexei Nikonov. His revolutionary rebellion and his position in relation to the whole situation in the country is displayed not only in poetry, but also in his songs.

I also believe that our country needs a revolutionary coup. You can't take freedom from humanity, shackle them and force them to work for the system. A person has the right to choose, freedom of speech, but they are trying to take this away. And there are no boundaries - you are a baby, a child or an adult. Therefore, Delacroix's paintings are very close to me, just like himself.

1830
260x325 cm Louvre, Paris

“I chose a modern subject, a scene at the barricades. .. If I did not fight for the freedom of the fatherland, then at least I must glorify this freedom, ”Delacroix informed his brother, referring to the painting“ Freedom Leading the People ”(we also know it under the name“ Freedom on barricades"). The call contained in it to fight against tyranny was heard and enthusiastically accepted by contemporaries.

Svoboda, bare-chested, walks over the corpses of the fallen revolutionaries, calling for the rebels to follow. In her raised hand, she holds the tricolor Republican flag, and its colors - red, white and blue - echo throughout the canvas. In his masterpiece, Delacroix combined the seemingly incompatible - the protocol realism of reportage with the sublime fabric of poetic allegory. He gave a timeless, epic sound to a small episode of street fighting. The central character of the canvas is Liberty, which combined the majestic posture of Aphrodite de Milo with the features that Auguste Barbier endowed Liberty with: “This is a strong woman with powerful breasts, with a hoarse voice, with fire in her eyes, fast, with a wide step.”

Encouraged by the success of the Revolution of 1830, 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 picture, with its violent power, repelled bourgeois visitors, who also reproached the artist for showing only "rabble" in this heroic action. At the salon, in 1831, the French Ministry of the Interior buys "Liberty" for the Luxembourg Museum. After 2 years, "Freedom", the plot of which was considered too politicized, was removed from the museum and returned to the author. The king bought the painting, but, frightened by its character, which was dangerous during the reign of the bourgeoisie, he ordered it to be hidden, rolled up, and then returned to the author (1839). In 1848, the Louvre demands the painting. In 1852 - the Second Empire. The painting is again considered subversive and sent to the storeroom. In the last months of the Second Empire, "Freedom" was again seen as great symbol, and engravings from this composition served the cause of republican propaganda. After 3 years, it is removed from there and shown at the world exhibition. At this time, Delacroix rewrites it again. Perhaps he darkens the bright red tone of the hat to soften its revolutionary look. Delacroix dies at home in 1863. And after 11 years, "Freedom" is exhibited again in the Louvre.

Delacroix himself did not take part in the "three glorious days", watching what was happening from the windows of his workshop, but after the fall of the Bourbon monarchy, he decided to perpetuate the image of the Revolution.

Detailed view of the picture: *Realism and idealism.*
The image of Liberty could have been created by the artist under the impression, on the one hand, of Byron's romantic poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and, on the other hand, of the ancient Greek statue of Venus de Milo, which had just been found by archaeologists at that time. However, Delacroix's contemporaries considered her prototype to be the legendary washerwoman Anna-Charlotte, who went to the barricades after the death of her brother and destroyed nine Swiss guards.
This figure in a tall bowler was for a long time considered a self-portrait of the artist, but now it is correlated with Etienne Arago, a fanatical republican and director of the Vaudeville theater. During the July events, Arago supplied the rebels with weapons from the props of his theater. On the Delacroix canvas, this character reflects the participation of the bourgeoisie in the revolution.
On the head of Freedom, we see her traditional attribute - a conical headdress with a sharp top, called the "Phrygian cap". Such a headdress was once worn by Persian soldiers.
A street boy also participates in the battle. His raised hand with a pistol repeats the gesture of Freedom. The excited expression on the face of the tomboy emphasizes, firstly, the light falling from the side, and secondly, the dark silhouette of the headdress.
The figure of a craftsman brandishing a blade symbolizes the working class of Paris, which played a leading role in the uprising.
dead brother This half-dressed corpse, according to experts, is identified as the deceased brother of Anna-Charlotte, who became the prototype of Freedom. The musket that Liberty holds in his hand could be his weapon.

In his diary, the young Eugene Delacroix wrote on May 9, 1824: “I felt the desire to write on contemporary subjects.” It was not random phrase, a month earlier he wrote down a similar phrase: “I want to write on the plots of the revolution.” The artist has repeatedly spoken about the desire to write on contemporary themes, but very rarely realized these Desires of his. This happened because Delacroix believed: “... everything should be sacrificed for the sake of harmony and a real transmission of the plot. We must manage in pictures without models. A living model never corresponds exactly to the image that we want to convey: the model is either vulgar, or inferior, or its 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 the 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.

Thus, the wall gradually grew and strengthened, separating Delacroix and his art from reality. Thus closed in his solitude, the revolution of 1830 found him. 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 July days echoed in the soul of Eugene Delacroix with the idea of a new painting. The barricade battles of July 27, 28 and 29 in French history decided the outcome of a political upheaval. These days, King Charles X, the last representative of the Bourbon dynasty hated by the people, was overthrown. For the first time for Delacroix, this was not a historical, literary or oriental subject, but the most real life. However, before this idea was embodied, he had to go through a long and difficult path of change.

R. Escollier, the biographer of the artist, wrote: “At the very beginning, under the first impression of what he saw, Delacroix did not intend to depict Freedom among its adherents ... He simply wanted to reproduce one of the July episodes, such as the death of d’Arcol.” Yes, then many feats were accomplished and sacrifices were made. The heroic death of d'Arcol is connected with the capture of the Paris city hall by the rebels. On the day when the royal troops kept under fire the suspension bridge Greve, a young man appeared who rushed to the town hall. He exclaimed: "If I die, remember that my name is d'Arcol." He really was killed, but managed to captivate the people and the town hall was taken.

The artist is no longer satisfied with the figure of d'Arcol alone, rushing forward and captivating the rebels with his heroic impulse. Eugene Delacroix transfers this central role to Liberty itself.

The artist was not a revolutionary and he himself admitted it: "I am a rebel, but not a revolutionary." Politics was of little interest to him, which is why he wanted to portray not a separate fleeting episode (even if it was the heroic death of d’Arcol), not even a separate one. historical fact, but the nature of the whole event. So, the scene of action, Paris, can only be judged by a piece written in the background of the picture with right side(in the depths, the banner raised on the tower of the Notre Dame Cathedral is barely visible), and in the city houses. The scale, the feeling of the immensity and scope of what is happening - this is what Delacroix tells his huge canvas and what the image of a private episode, even if majestic, would not give.

The composition of the picture is very dynamic. In the center of the picture is a group of armed men in simple clothes, it moves towards the foreground of the picture and to the right. Because of the powder smoke, the square is not visible, nor is it visible how large this group itself is. The pressure of the crowd filling the depth of the picture forms an ever-increasing internal pressure, which must inevitably break through. And so, ahead of the crowd, from a cloud of smoke to the top of the taken barricade, a beautiful woman with the tricolor republican banner in right hand and a gun with a bayonet in the left. On her head is a red Phrygian cap of the Jacobins, her clothes flutter, exposing her chest, the profile of her face resembles the classical features of the Venus de Milo. This is Freedom, full of strength and inspiration, which shows the way to the fighters with a decisive and courageous movement. Leading people through the barricades, Svoboda does not order or command - she encourages and leads the rebels.

The artist transfers the whole event into the world of allegory, we reflect the idea in the same way as Rubens, whom he idolizes (Delacroix told the young Edouard Manet: “You need to see Rubens, you need to be imbued with Rubens, you need to copy Rubens, for Rubens is a god”) in their compositions, personifying 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 royally majestic.

Many art historians noted and reproached Delacroix for the fact that all the greatness of his painting cannot obscure the impression that at first turns out to be only barely noticeable. We are talking about a clash in the mind of the artist 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 cothurna, between an attraction to painting emotional, direct and already established 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 impeccable, ideal beauty. Noting as a virtue the feeling of life authenticity, which had never before been manifested in the work of Delacroix (and never again then), the artist was reproached for the generalization and symbolism of the image of Freedom. However, for the generalization of other images, blaming the artist for the fact that the naturalistic nakedness of a corpse in the foreground is adjacent to the nakedness 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-Francois Millet, Maxime Ducan still raged before “Liberty on the Barricades”, forgetting about any restraint of expressions: “Oh, if Freedom is like that, if this girl with bare feet and bare-breasted, which runs, shouting and brandishing a gun, then we do not need it. We have nothing to do with this shameful vixen!”

But, reproaching Delacroix, what could be opposed to his picture? The revolution of 1830 was reflected in the work of other artists. After these events, the royal throne was occupied by Louis Philippe, 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 rushed along the path of least resistance. Revolution, like a spontaneous popular wave, like a grandiose popular impulse, for these masters, it seems that it does not exist at all. They seem to be in a hurry to forget everything they saw on the Parisian streets in July 1830, and the “three glorious days” appear in their depiction as quite well-meaning actions of Parisian citizens who were only concerned with how to quickly acquire a new king to replace the exiled one. These works include Fontaine's painting "Guards Proclaiming King Louis-Philippe" or the painting by O. Berne "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 allegorical nature of Freedom does not at all create dissonance with the rest of the figures in the picture, 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 essence and in their role. In their person, Delacroix, as it were, brings to the fore those 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 definite strata of society. These are, undoubtedly, bright and reliable images, but Delacroix brings this generalization of them to symbols. And this allegoricalness, which is already clearly felt in them, reaches its highest development in the figure of Freedom. This is a formidable and beautiful goddess, and at the same time she is a daring Parisian. And next to him, jumping on stones, screaming with delight and brandishing pistols (as if orchestrating events), a nimble, disheveled boy is a little genius of the Parisian barricades, whom Victor Hugo will call Gavroche in 25 years.

The painting “Freedom 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 into the Louvre. However, after the seizure of power by the “bourgeois monarchy”, the exposition of this canvas was banned. Only in 1848, Delacroix was able to exhibit his painting once more, 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”.