 |
| Eugene Delacroix |
| 1798-1863 |
| European Artist |
| Delacroix was born in Marseilles, France. His father died in 1805; in 1814 his mother followed, leaving him an orphan at the age of 16. In 1816, he entered l'Ecole des Beaux-Art. In 1822 Delacroix took the Salon by storm. Although the French artistic establishment considered him a wild man and a rebel, the French government, bought his paintings and commissioned murals throughout Paris. Though Delacroix aimed to balance classicism and Romanticism, his art centered on a revolutionary idea born with the Romantics: that art should be created out of sincerity, that it should express the artist's true feelings and convictions. Educated firmly in the classics, Delacroix often depicted mythological subjects; themes encouraged by the reigning neoclassical artists at the Academie des Beaux-Arts. |
|
