Woman with france flag painting. Eugene Delacroix

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... or "Freedom at the Barricades" - a painting by the French artist Eugene Delacroix. It seems to be created by one impulse. Delacroix created a painting based on the July Revolution of 1830, which put an end to the Restoration regime of the Bourbon monarchy.
This is the final assault. The crowd converges towards the viewer in a cloud of dust, brandishing their weapons. She crosses the barricade and breaks into the enemy camp. At the head are four figures in the center of a woman. Mythical goddess, she leads them to Freedom. The soldiers lie at their feet. The action rises in a pyramid, according to two planes: horizontal figures at the base and vertical, close-up. The image becomes a monument. The rushing touch and the rushing rhythm are balanced. The picture combines accessories and symbols - history and fiction, reality and allegory. Allegories of Liberty are the living and energetic daughter of the people, who embody rebellion and victory. Dressed in a Phrygian cap floating around her neck, she recalls the revolution of 1789. The flag, the symbol of the struggle, unfolds from the back to blue-white-red. From dark to bright as a flame. Her yellow dress, whose double sash floats in the wind, glides below her breasts and is reminiscent of vintage draperies. Nudity is erotic realism and is associated with winged victories. The profile is Greek, the nose is straight, the mouth is generous, the chin is gentle. An exceptional woman among men, resolute and noble, turning her head towards them, she leads them to the final victory. The profile figure is illuminated from the right. Leaning on her bare left leg, which protrudes from her dress, the fire of action transforms her. Allegory is a true hero of struggle. The rifle she holds in her left hand makes her look realistic. On the right, in front of the figure of Liberty, there is a boy. The symbol of youth rises as a symbol of injustice. And we recall the character of Gavroche in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. For the first time, Liberty Leading the People was exhibited at the Paris Salon in May 1831, where the painting was enthusiastically received and immediately bought by the state. Due to the revolutionary plot, the canvas was not exhibited in public for the next quarter of a century. In the center of the picture is a woman symbolizing freedom. On her head is a Phrygian cap, in her right hand is the flag of Republican France, in her left hand is a gun. The bare chest symbolizes the dedication of the French of that time, who with "bare chest" went to the enemy. The figures around Liberty - a worker, a bourgeois, a teenager - symbolize the unity of the French people during the July Revolution. Some art historians and critics suggest that the artist depicted himself as a man in a top hat to the left of the main character.

Which of us in childhood did not look with reverence at "Freedom on the Barricades" by the artist Delacroix, which was a must-have in any Soviet textbook? A more accurate title for the painting, “Liberty Leading the People” (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple), was created by the Frenchman Eugène Delacroix based on the July Revolution of 1830, which ended 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 her."

For the first time, "Liberty Leading the People" was exhibited at the Paris Salon in May 1831, where the painting was enthusiastically received and immediately bought by the state. Heinrich Heine, in particular, spoke about his impressions of the salon and of Delacroix's painting.

As we were taught - "due to the revolutionary plot, the canvas was not exhibited in public for the next quarter of a century."

In the center of the picture is a woman symbolizing freedom. On her head is a Phrygian cap, in her right hand is the flag of Republican France, in her left hand is a gun. The bare chest symbolizes the dedication of the French of that time, who with "bare chest" went to the enemy. Some art historians and critics suggest that the artist depicted himself in the form of a man in a top hat to the left of the main character...

Like any Master with a capital letter, Delacroix reflected not only his love for Freedom, but also the dialectics of this concept (although, perhaps, he did not want to). Delacroix's painting is not just an agitation for democratic forces. With all the power of artistic reflection, she poses the main question for our days:

- So what is Freedom - a sacrament or an orgy?!

The insidiousness of the concept of "Freedom" is such that both meanings can be put there. What people have been doing for two centuries. For some, freedom is the right to divine fire, for others it is the right to scum.

It is not by chance that the picture was truncated in Soviet textbooks. The naked breasts of a young woman are of dubious spiritual value, but at least not ugly. What if it was the shriveled chest of an old woman?

The answer is at the bottom of the canvas. Why are men without pants fighting for Freedom?! And how ominous is the combination of a pantsless dead man with a half-naked girl in the overall composition...

And what does the other man, on all fours, lust after? Is he looking at the banner, or, excuse me, at ladies' charms? Or is it the same for him?

Delacroix, of course, will not answer these questions for us. We must answer them for ourselves.

Delacroix only helped us sharpen the problem in images.

In Christianity, Freedom is revered as the highest value, but it is always emphasized that we are talking about the shrine of "Freedom from sin."

This is when a person is free from the need to do evil, and free from slavery to his internal vices, passions.

But liberalism has changed concepts. Freedom became without trousers and without a dress, by "freedom" they began to understand a vile orgy, which no one interferes with and which no one condemns.

Therefore, when you once again begin to sing hymns to Freedom - ask if the anthem singers have it in their pants? Does it act as a sacrament, elevating a person, or does it imply an orgy that freely reduces a person to cattle?

The plot of the painting "Liberty at the Barricades", exhibited at the Salon in 1831, is turned to the events of the bourgeois revolution of 1830. The artist created a kind of allegory of the union between the bourgeoisie, represented in the picture by a young man in a top hat, and the people who surround him. True, by the time the picture was created, the union of the people with the bourgeoisie had already broken up, and for many years it was hidden from the viewer. The painting was bought (commissioned) by Louis-Philippe, who financed the revolution, but the classic pyramidal composition of this canvas emphasizes its romantic revolutionary symbolism, and the energetic blue and red strokes make the plot excitingly dynamic. A young woman personifying Freedom in a Phrygian cap rises in a clear silhouette against the background of a bright sky; her chest is exposed. High above her head, she holds the French national flag. The gaze of the heroine of the canvas is fixed on a man in a top hat with a rifle, personifying the bourgeoisie; to her right, a boy brandishing pistols, Gavroche, is a folk hero of the Parisian streets.

The painting was donated to the Louvre by Carlos Beistegui in 1942; Included in the Louvre collection in 1953.

Marfa Vsevolodovna Zamkova.
http://www.bibliotekar.ru/muzeumLuvr/46.htm

“I chose a modern subject, a scene at the barricades. .. If I didn’t fight for the freedom of the fatherland, then at least I should glorify this freedom,” Delacroix informed his brother, referring to the painting “Liberty Leading the People” (we also know it under the name “Freedom to 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 those 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 a 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.

Recently I came across a painting by Eugene Delacroix "Liberty Leading the People" or "Liberty at the Barricades". The picture was painted based on the popular revolt of 1830 against the last of the Bourbon dynasty, Charles X. But this picture is attributed to the symbol and image of the Great French Revolution.

And let's consider this "symbol" of the Great French Revolution in detail, taking into account the facts about this Revolution.

So from right to left: 1) - fair-haired European with noble features.

2) with protruding ears, very similar to a gypsy, with two pistols screams and runs forward. Well, teenagers always want to assert themselves in something. Even in the game, even in a fight, even in a riot. But he is wearing a white officer's ribbon with a leather bag and a coat of arms. So maybe it's a personal trophy. So this teenage boy has already killed.

3) and With surprisingly CALM FACE, with a French flag in his hand and a Phrygian cap on his head (like - I'm French) and bare chest. Here one involuntarily recalls the participation of Parisian women (possibly prostitutes) in the taking of the Bastille. Excited by permissiveness and the fall of law and order (i.e., intoxicated with the air of freedom), the women in the crowd of rebels entered into a skirmish with the soldiers on the walls of the Bastille fortress. They began to expose their intimate places and offer themselves to the soldiers - "Why shoot at us? Better drop your weapons, come down to us and "love" us! We give you our love in exchange for your going over to the side of the insurgent people!" The soldiers chose free "love" and the Bastille fell. About the fact that the naked asses and pussies with boobs of Parisians took the Bastille, and not the storming revolutionary crowd, they are now silent about this so as not to spoil the mythologized "picture" of the "revolution". (I almost said - "Revolution of Dignity", because I remembered the Kyiv maydauns with the flags of the outskirts.). It turns out that "Liberty leading the people" is a cold-blooded Semitic woman of easy temper (bare chest) disguised as a Frenchwoman.

4) looking at the bare chest of "Freedom". The chest is beautiful, and it is possible that this is the last thing he sees beautiful in his life.

5), - took off the jacket, boots and pants. "Freedom" sees its causal place, but it is hidden from us by the foot of the murdered. Riots, oh, revolutions, they are always not without robbery and stripping.

6). The face is slightly drawn. The hair is black and curly, the eyes are slightly protruding, the wings of the nose are raised. (Whoever knows, he understood.) As soon as his cylinder on his head did not fall off in the dynamics of the battle and even sits so perfectly on his head? In general, this young "Frenchman" dreams of redistributing public wealth in his favor. Or for your family. Probably does not want to stand in the shop, but wants to be like Rothschild.

7) Behind the right shoulder of a bourgeois in a top hat, is - with a saber in his hand and a pistol behind his belt, and a wide white ribbon over his shoulder (it seems that it was taken from a murdered officer), the face is clearly a southerner.

Now the question is- where are the French, who are, as it were, Europeans(Caucasoids) and who somehow did the Great French Revolution ??? Or even then, 220 years ago, the French were all without exception dark "southerners"? This is despite the fact that Paris is not in the South, but in the North of France. Or is it not French? Or are they those who are called "eternal revolutionaries" in any country???

Only Soviet art of the 20th century can be compared with French art of the 19th century in terms of its gigantic influence on world art. It was in France that brilliant painters discovered the theme of revolution. France developed a method of critical realism
.
It was there - in Paris - for the first time in world art, revolutionaries with the banner of freedom in their hands boldly climbed the barricades and entered into battle with government troops.
It is difficult to understand how the theme of revolutionary art could be born in the head of a young remarkable artist who grew up on monarchical 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 epoch one can find the grains of the future artistic method (and direction) of reflecting the class and political life of a person in the social environment of the society surrounding his life. Seeds sprout only when brilliant minds 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 the 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 excuse 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 brethren and critics over a century and a half. And instead of studying the reasons for his 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.
How can bourgeois historians write the truth about this bold and courageous revolutionary?! Channel "Culture" bought, translated and showed the most disgusting BBC film about this painting by Delacroix. But could the liberal M. Shvydkoy and his team act otherwise?

Eugene Delacroix: "Freedom on the Barricades"

In 1831, the prominent French painter Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) exhibited his painting "Liberty at the Barricades" at the Salon. Initially, the name of the picture sounded like "Freedom leading the people." He devoted it to the theme of the July Revolution, which blew up Paris at the end of July 1830 and overthrew the Bourbon monarchy. Bankers and bourgeois took advantage of the discontent of the working masses to replace one ignorant and tough king with a more liberal and accommodating, but just as greedy and cruel Louis Philippe. He was later nicknamed the "King of the Bankers"
The painting shows a group of revolutionaries with the republican tricolor. The people united and entered into a mortal battle with government troops. A large figure of a brave Frenchwoman with a national flag in her right hand rises above a detachment of revolutionaries. She calls on the rebellious Parisians to repulse the government troops who defended the thoroughly rotten monarchy.
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 frantic power of glorifying folk heroes, repelled bourgeois visitors. They reproached the artist for showing only "rabble" in this heroic action. In 1831, the French Ministry of the Interior bought "Liberty" for the Luxembourg Museum. After 2 years, "Freedom", the plot of which was considered too politicized, Louis Philippe, frightened by its revolutionary character, dangerous during the reign of the union of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, ordered the painting to be rolled up and returned to the author (1839). Aristocratic loafers and moneyed aces were seriously frightened by her revolutionary pathos.

two truths

"When barricades are erected, two truths always appear - on one side and the other. Only an idiot does not understand this," said the outstanding Soviet Russian writer Valentin Pikul.
Two truths also 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 raise an uprising 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 existence of the historical-revolutionary theme not only in art, but in life itself. And for this discovery we must 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 the fighters against the rotten and dying Bourbon regime, but glorified them as folk heroes, boldly going to their death, not being afraid to die for a just cause in battles with policemen 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 still resounds in the ears of the world bourgeoisie. Her heroes called the people to the uprisings in 1848 in European countries. In 1871 the Communards of Paris smashed the bourgeois power. The revolutionaries raised the masses of working people to fight against the tsarist autocracy in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. These French heroes are still calling the masses of the people of all countries of the world to war against the exploiters.

"Freedom on the Barricades"

Soviet Russian art historians 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 I. V. Dolgopolov in the first volume of essays on art “Masters and Masterpieces”: “The last assault. A dazzling noon, flooded with hot rays of the sun. smoke. The free wind flutters the tricolor republican banner. It was raised high by a majestic woman in a Phrygian cap. She calls the rebels to attack. She knows no fear. This is France itself, calling her sons to the right battle. Bullets are whistling. Buckshot is bursting. The wounded are groaning. But the fighters of the "Three Glorious Days" are adamant. A Parisian Gamin, impudent, young, shouting something angrily in the face of the enemy, in a famously pulled down beret, with two huge pistols in his hands. A worker in a blouse, with a scorched fighting, courageous face. A young man in top hat and black pair - a student who took a weapon.
Death is near. The ruthless rays of the sun slid over the gold of the downed shako. They noted the failures of the eyes, the half-open mouth of the dead soldier. Flashed on a white epaulette. They outlined sinewy bare legs, a blood-drenched torn shirt of a lying fighter. They sparkled brightly on the wounded man's kumach sash, on his pink scarf, enthusiastically looking at the living Freedom, leading his brothers to Victory.
“The bells are singing. The battle rages. The voices of the fighters are furious. 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, the young glow of his heart into this canvas.
"Scarlet, crimson, crimson, purple, red colors sound, and according to them, blue, blue, azure colors echo, combined with bright strokes of white. Blue, white, red - the colors of the banner of the new France - the key to the coloring of the picture. Powerful, energetic modeling of the canvas The figures of heroes are full of expression and dynamics, and the image of Freedom is unforgettable.

Delacroix created a masterpiece!

“The painter combined the seemingly impossible - the protocol reality of reporting with the sublime fabric of romantic, poetic allegory.
“The magic brush of the artist makes us believe in the reality of a miracle - after all, Freedom itself has become shoulder to shoulder with the rebels. This painting is truly a symphonic poem praising the Revolution.”
The hired scribes of the "king of bankers" Louis Phillip described this picture in a completely different way. Dolgopolov continues: “The volleys have ceased. The fighting subsided. Sing "La Marseillaise". The hated Bourbons are expelled. Weekdays have come. And again passions flared up on the picturesque Olympus. And again we read words full of rudeness, hatred. Particularly shameful are the assessments of the figure of Svoboda herself: "This girl", "the bastard who escaped from the Saint-Lazare prison."
“Is there really only mob on the streets in those glorious days?” - asks another esthete from the camp of salon actors. And this pathos of denying Delacroix's masterpiece, this fury of the "academicians" will last for a long time. By the way, let's remember the venerable Signol from the School of Fine Arts.
Maxim Dekan, having lost all restraint, wrote: “Oh, if Freedom is like that, if this is a girl with bare feet and a bare chest, who runs, shouting and brandishing a gun, we don’t need her, we have nothing to do with this shameful vixen!”.
Approximately this is how bourgeois art historians and art critics characterize its content today. Watch the BBC film at your leisure in the archive of the channel "Culture" to make sure I'm right.
“The Parisian public, after two and a half decades, again saw the barricades of 1830. In the luxurious halls of the exhibition, the Marseillaise sounded, the alarm rang. - 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 subject, a scene at the barricades. .. If I didn’t fight for the freedom of the fatherland, then at least I should glorify this freedom,” Delacroix informed 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 his life in a monarchical society. He painted his paintings on traditional historical and literary themes in monarchical and republican times. They stemmed from the aesthetics of romanticism and realism in the first half of the 19th century.
Did Delacroix himself understand what he "did" in art, introducing the spirit of revolutionism and creating the image of revolution and revolutionaries in world art?! Bourgeois historians answer: no, I did not understand. Indeed, how could he in 1831 know in what ways Europe would develop in the next century. He will not live to see the Paris Commune.
Soviet art historians wrote that “Delacroix ... did not cease 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 well-being of the bourgeoisie 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 mode of action." (History of Art, Volume 5; these volumes of the 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 to pay attention to. Why do these important parts of life play such a huge role in today's society? Why do they require the attention of a creative personality to themselves no less than portraits of kings and Napoleons? No less than half-naked and dressed-up beauties, whom the neoclassical, neo-Greeks, and Pompeians so loved to write.
And Delacroix answered, because "painting is life itself. In it, nature appears before the soul without intermediaries, without covers, 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.
At the Salon of 1831, he showed a painting that - albeit for a short time - made his glory official. He was even presented with an award - a ribbon of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole. He was well paid. Other canvases for sale:
"Cardinal Richelieu Listening to Mass at the Palais Royal" and "The Assassination of the Archbishop of Liège", and several large watercolors, sepia and drawing "Raphael in his studio". There was money, 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 go on a diplomatic mission to Algiers. 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 close, one after the other. 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. Some of them he poured 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 a new exotic Orient proved to be contagious.
Other painters rushed to the East, and almost everyone brought a story with non-traditional characters inscribed in an exotic setting. So in European art, in France, with the light hand of the brilliant 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 commissions to paint ceilings in the Louvre in 1850-51; the throne room and the library of the chamber of deputies, the dome of the library of the peers, the ceiling of the gallery of Apollo, the hall in 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 of 1848, the progressive public remembered her. She turned to the artist with a proposal to paint a new similar picture about the new revolution.

1848

"I am a rebel, not a revolutionary," Delacroix replied. In other glories, he declared that he was a rebel in art, but not a revolutionary in politics. In that year, when the proletariat, not supported by the peasantry, was fighting all over Europe, blood flowed like a river through the streets of European cities, he was not engaged in revolutionary affairs, did not take part in street battles along with the people, but rebelled in art - he was engaged in the reorganization of the Academy and the reform Salon. It seemed to him it was indifferent who would win: the monarchists, the republicans or the proletarians.
Nevertheless, he responded to the call of the public and asked the officials to exhibit their "Freedom" in the Salon. The picture was brought from storage, but they 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 be repeated in such terrible scenes as 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 last months of the Second Empire, "Freedom" was again seen as a great symbol, and engravings from 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 storeroom. After 3 years - in 1855 - it is 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 cap's bright red tone to soften its revolutionary look. Delacroix dies at home in 1863. And after 11 years "Freedom" settles in the Louvre forever...
Salon art and only academic art has always been central to the work of Delacroix. Only the service of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie he considered his duty. Politics did not excite his soul.
In that revolutionary year of 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 paintings were not hidden from the public. On the contrary, they were praised in every way, like his paintings in the Louvre, like the canvases of his Algerian and Moroccan series.
The revolutionary theme will never die
It seems to some that the historical-revolutionary theme has died forever today. The lackeys of the bourgeoisie want her so badly to die. But no one will be able to stop the movement from the old decaying and convulsing bourgeois civilization to a new non-capitalist or, as it is called, socialist, to be more precise, to a communist multinational civilization, because this is an objective process. Just as the bourgeois revolution fought the aristocratic classes for more than half a century, so the socialist revolution is fighting its way to victory in the most difficult historical conditions.
The theme of the interconnectedness of art and politics has long been established in art, and the artists raised it and tried to express it in a mythological content, familiar to 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 show the common people who rebelled against the king. The theme of nationality, the theme of the revolution, the theme of the heroine in the image of Freedom, already like ghosts roamed Europe with particular force from 1830 to 1848. Not only Delacroix thought 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 a lot of paintings that appeared in that period of time in France. Daumier and Messonnier painted the barricades and the people, but none of them portrayed the revolutionary heroes of 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 about it. 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 understandable that all Soviet revolutionary art of socialist realism came out of Delacroix and Messonnier's Barricades. It does not matter whether the artists themselves and Soviet art historians understood this or did not; knew whether they had seen this painting by 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 rot. The degradation of bourgeois society has assumed 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 was the nobility-bourgeois Russia. Mass discontent seethed in 1905, but tsarism held out and proved to be a tough nut to crack. But the rehearsal of the revolution was useful. In 1917 the proletariat of Russia won the victory, carried out the first victorious socialist revolution in the world and established its dictatorship.
Artists did not stand aside and painted 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".
Several examples can be given. Kustodiev B. I. in his painting "Bolshevik" (1920) depicted the proletarian as a giant, Giliver, walking over the midgets, over the city, over the crowd. In his hands he holds a red flag. In the painting by G. M. Korzhev “Raising the Banner” (1957-1960), a worker raises a red banner that had just been dropped by a revolutionary killed by police.

Didn't these artists know Delacroix's work? Didn't they know that since 1831 the French proletarians went to the revolution with a three-calorie, and the Parisian Communards with a red banner in their hands? They knew. They also knew the sculpture of Francois Rude (1784-1855) "La Marseillaise", which adorns the Arc de Triomphe in the center of Paris.
I found the idea of ​​the enormous influence of the painting by Delacroix and Messonnier on Soviet revolutionary painting in the books of the English art historian T. J. Clark. In them, he collected a lot of interesting materials and illustrations from the history of French art relating to the 1948 revolution, and showed paintings in which the themes I have outlined 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 themes of European painting after 1973. Then for the first time Clarke's works came out of print. Then they were re-released 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 goes on

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 are waging a long struggle around his creative heritage. Bourgeois theoreticians do not want to remember his famous painting "Liberty at the Barricades on July 28, 1830". In their opinion, it is enough for him to be called the "Great Romantic". Indeed, the artist fit into both the romantic and realistic directions. His brush painted both heroic and tragic events in the history of France during the years of struggles between the republic and the monarchy. She painted with a brush and beautiful Arab women in the countries of the East. Orientalism in world art of the 19th century began with his light hand. 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. Created frescoes for the Parisian church of Saint-Sulpice (1849-61). He worked on decorating the Luxembourg Palace (1840-47) and painting ceilings in the Louvre (1850-51). No one except Delacroix in France of the 19th century came close in his 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 affirmed the dominant role of color in the painting of the 19th century. Therefore, bourgeois historians like to write about him as an innovator, a forerunner of impressionism and other trends in modernism. They pull him into the realm of the decadent art of the late 19th century. - beginning of XX century. This was the subject of the exhibition mentioned above.