Coming soon...

Paintings are always best seen at first hand. Those discussed in this video can be found in the following galleries and museums.

• Musée du Louvre, Paris
  
  Most of Delacroix's best-known paintings, and also Géricault's "Raft of the Medusa", can be seen in the Mollien rooms (Denon wing, first floor). Other paintings by Delacroix are in the Sully wing, on the second floor: Room 52 contains only paintings by Delacroix. Pictures by other, lesser-known romantic painters are displayed in Room 66. See plan of the Louvres
  
  Free admission for all EU nationals under 26. Closed Tuesday.


• Delacroix Museum, 6 rue de Furstenberg, Paris 6.
  
  Housed in Delacroix’s last Paris home, the museum comprises his appartment and studio; it contains a number of small paintings, as well as drawings and engravings.See museum website See museum website
  
  Free admission for all EU nationals under 26. Closed Tuesday.


• Carnavalet Museum, Paris 3.
  
  The museum covers the history of Paris, and devotes an entire room to the revolution of 1830.
  
  Universal free admission. Closed Monday.


• Museum of the History of France, Château de Versailles
  
  The museum, established by King Louis-Philippe in 1837, focuses on the military victories and the revolutions which have shaped the history of France. Do not miss the "Gallery of Battles" and the 1830 Room.
  
  Free admission for all EU nationals under 26. Closed Monday


• • Museum of the French Revolution, Château de Vizille
  
  The Museum uses artworks and artefacts to tell the story of the French Revolution and illustrate the ways in which it has been portrayed up to the 20th century.
  
  Universal free admission. Closed Tuesday.

This transcript includes the text of the voiceover for the introduction and Act I.

Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix. Accidental icon?

A total mistake?

This woman - you know her from somewhere.

In fact, we all know her - she’s “Marianne”, symbol of the French Republic.

But we’ve all got it totally wrong: she’s a figure from a picture painted at a time when France was a monarchy, not a republic.

And that picture was the work of a rabid anti-republican, with a deep distrust of democracy: Eugène Delacroix, a real Parisian dandy, with a horror of anything vulgar or plebeian.

Quite a mistake! So how did it get made?

Was Delacroix unable to make his message clear?

Or is it us? Are we so determined to read his picture in one way that we simply overlook the death and cruelty which are part of it?

Act I. Where does the error come from?

1. A.      From us, the viewers?

Perhaps indeed we are to blame: perhaps we’ve seen the picture so often, we no longer stop to look at it properly.

It all seems so obvious:

                - the tricolour

                - the Phrygian cap

                - the sans-culottes...

At first sight, it’s a general image of the triumphant Republic.

And yet, the picture refers to a precise event - an event we can date, almost to the day.

We are thinking, of course, of the French Revolution - the great revolution of 1789

At the top, the victorious people

At the bottom, two of the king’s soldiers - a Swiss mercenary and a cuirassier, both sprawling and lifeless.

But this isn’t an 18th-century crowd!

[1] - The factory worker, with his beret, trousers, braces and apron...

[2] - The day labourer, with his blue smock both date from the industrial era.

This man, with his coat, cravat and top hat - a journalist, perhaps, or workshop supervisor - is dressed in the style of the 1820s.

Behind him, the cocked hat of a student from the Polytechnique - a school founded after the Revolution.

Finally, a Paris street urchin, in waistcoat and beret.

This figure was Victor Hugo’s inspiration for Gavroche, a character in Les Misérables, which is set in 1830...

Behind the gunsmoke, an infantry battalion is being fired on from the upper windows of the houses in the background...

And the flag flying from the towers of Notre-Dame tells us exactly what the date is - 28 July 1830, and the scene is one of the barricades.

An important date in history? So important that, today, it means nothing to anyone.

The other upheavals of the 19th century have eclipsed it.

Since 1789, France had seen a whole series of regimes in quick succession.

Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 was followed by the restoration of the monarchy: 20 years after the Revolution, Louis XVI’s two brothers were invited to return.

The second, Charles X, a fierce defender of the Church and the monarchy, has been on the throne for six years when, on 26 July 1830, he makes the mistake of introducing press censorship and restricting the vote - already very limited - even further.

The reaction is immediate: led by students from the Polytechnique, the people of Paris rush to arms, pour into the streets and hastily erect barricades.

For three days, known as the “trois glorieuses”, the fighting rages from street to street and house to house.

This is a full-blown revolution:

Forced from the throne, Charles X is obliged to flee the country...

... but is not replaced by a republic!

The country’s prosperous middle class prefer to fall back on his cousin, Duke Louis-Philippe of Orleans, who makes a more liberal and bourgeois impression, but rapidly proves as authoritarian (and unpopular) as his predecessors.

In short, no dramatic changes: it takes 18 more years, and another revolution, to make France a republic.

No wonder that 1830, and its failed revolution, were forgotten so quickly.

So why did Delacroix’s picture end by becoming even more famous than the event it portrays?

1. B.      A new kind of picture: a goddess in Paris

Let us imagine the situation at the time.

Delacroix was not the only painter to tackle this theme: it could hardly have been more topical - and the 1831 Paris Salon showed that numerous artists knew a good subject when they saw one.

In general, it was the novel idea of a battle in the very heart of Paris which appealed to them.

And so they produced conventional battle scenes:

Sweeping panoramas, swarming with tiny figures.

Seen from the standpoint of the victors, i.e. the insurgents, who are prominent in the foreground, faces to the foe and backs to the viewer.

Picturesque...

... and touching details.

Delacroix surprises by doing exactly the opposite:

What part of Paris is this? What exactly is happening? We have no way of knowing...

Since our viewpoint is very low down, with life-size figures looming over us.

Moreover, the visual logic of the scene is far from clear: the insurgents are charging towards us, yet the royal troops are behind them.

Finally, where we might expect to find their leader, Delacroix places a woman.

 [1] Everything shows that her role is a key one :

[2] At the apex of a pyramid of bodies...

[3]  At the point where diagonals meet...

... she commands our attention and dominates the men who surround her.

But the situation is unlikely. What is this half-naked woman doing in the firing line?

In reality, she is not a human figure like the others. Delacroix makes it plain that she comes from another world.

 [1] Her naked breast and [2] feet,

[3] The sinuous curve of her body,

[4] The airy line of her simple tunic

[5] come straight from classical statues of Greek goddesses, like the Venus de Milo.

Although she is advancing straight towards us, her head is turned aside and presented in profile - like the head on a Greek medallion.

Behind her head, a drift of smoke suggests a nimbus or halo - an effect reinforced by the fact that her arm is deliberately placed before the white stripe on the flag, and so appears lit from behind.

She wears the Phrygian cap, symbol of emancipation.

The picture’s title solves the mystery: she is Liberty. This woman has never existed, she has no name and no personal history

She embodies an abstract idea. In short, she is what we call an “allegory”.

 “Instead of losing himself in the details of the rising, Delacroix prefers to express the abstract, positive idea which inspired it.”

Since this is so, and the 19th century loves allegory, the picture should be an instant success.

But the reverse is the case:  from all sides, abuse is hurled at Delacroix’s Liberty.

So what went wrong?

1. C.      The plebeian face of democracy?

 “God, she’s filthy!”

“Brazen hussy!”

“A harlot of the lowest type, from the foulest streets in Paris!”

“Were the riffraff the only ones who turned out in 1830?”

The objections pour in:

First objection: the woman’s a fishwife, not a goddess:

.... breasts hanging out, running with sweat, red from the hot July sun,

.... if not from the grime and the gunpowder.

And she’s not either feminine or graceful.

(1)          Muscles like a gladiator, the same virile demeanour - and hairy armpits too!

Comparisions help us to see why the public were shocked.

Since the French Revolution, allegories of Liberty had portrayed her as a statuesque goddess - celestially beautiful, majestic and serene.

Légende: J.-L. Vallain, Liberty, 1790, Vizille, Museum of the French Revolution.

Even when she addresses humanity, she never mingles with it.

The rule is a simple one: allegories of positive ideas must always be idealised.

And this is the rule which the French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi follows at the end of the XIXth century, when he produces the monumental statue of Liberty which France presents to the United States.

Serene and immobile, a diadem on her head, Liberty holds in one hand the book of the law, in the other the torch of truth, bringing light to the world.

This is Liberty universal - herald of reason and peace:

the exact opposite of Delacroix’s version: chauvinistic, grime-smeared, tattered and menacing,  she’s a living political nightmare.

And her companions are no better:

Look at this one - obviously a public danger

Or these young delinquents - with their illegal firearms.

And there’s nothing to please us in the rest of the picture either:

Grey paving stones, charred beams, dark shadows.

Dirty feet, black finger-nails, pubic hair.

Violence on all sides...

... and gruesome details to make it even more upsetting.

This isn’t the people, heroically on the march, it’s the rabble - a dangerous, uncontrollable mob, led by a fury armed to the teeth!

The picture’s utterly ambiguous: one has the feeling that the painter is heading in two directions at once.

So, the question is: is Delacroix glorifying democracy - or caricaturing it?