Delacroix created a painting based on the July Revolution of 1830, which put an end to 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." The picture also has a second name: "Freedom leading the people." At first, the artist simply wanted to reproduce one of the episodes of the July battles of 1830. He witnessed the heroic death of d "Arcol when the rebels captured the Paris City Hall. A young man appeared on the hanging Greve bridge under fire and exclaimed:" If I die, remember that my name is d "Arcol". And he really was killed, but managed to captivate the people.
In 1831, at the Paris Salon, the French first saw this painting, dedicated to the "three glorious days" of the July Revolution of 1830. The canvas made a stunning impression on contemporaries with the power, democracy and courage of the artistic decision. According to legend, one respectable bourgeois exclaimed: “You say - the head of the school? Tell me better - the head of the rebellion! *** After the closing of the Salon, the government, frightened by the formidable and inspiring appeal emanating from the picture, hastened to return it to the author. During the revolution of 1848, it was again put on public display in the Luxembourg Palace. And again returned to the artist. Only after the canvas was exhibited at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855, it ended up in the Louvre. One of the best creations of French romanticism is kept here to this day - an inspired eyewitness account and an eternal monument to the people's struggle for their freedom.
What artistic language did the young French romantic find in order to merge together these two seemingly opposite principles - a broad, all-encompassing generalization and concrete reality, cruel in its nakedness?
Paris of the famous July days 1830. In the distance, hardly noticeable, but proudly rise the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral - a symbol of history, culture, and the spirit of the French people. From there, from the smoky city, over the ruins of barricades, over the dead bodies of dead comrades, the insurgents stubbornly and resolutely come forward. Each of them can die, but the step of the rebels is unshakable - they are inspired by the will to win, to freedom.
This inspiring force is embodied in the image of a beautiful young woman, in a passionate outburst calling for her. With inexhaustible energy, free and youthful swiftness of movement, she is like the Greek goddess of victory, Nike. Her strong figure is dressed in a chiton dress, her face with perfect features, with burning eyes, is turned to the rebels. In one hand she holds the tricolor flag of France, in the other a gun. On the head is a Phrygian cap - an ancient symbol of liberation from slavery. Her step is swift and light - that's how goddesses walk. At the same time, the image of a woman is real - she is the daughter of the French people. She is the guiding force behind the movement of the group on the barricades. From it, as from a source of light in the center of energy, rays radiate, charging with thirst and the will to win. Those who are in close proximity to it, each in their own way, express their involvement in this inspiring call.
On the right is a boy, a Parisian gamen, brandishing pistols. He is closest to Freedom and, as it were, kindled by her enthusiasm and joy of free impulse. In a swift, boyishly impatient movement, he is even a little ahead of his inspirer. This is the predecessor of the legendary Gavroche, portrayed twenty years later by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables: “Gavroche, full of inspiration, radiant, took upon himself the task of setting the whole thing in motion. He scurried back and forth, rose up, fell down, rose again, made noise, sparkled with joy. It would seem that he came here in order to cheer everyone up. Did he have any motive for this? Yes, of course, his poverty. Did he have wings? Yes, of course, his cheerfulness. It was kind of a whirlwind. It seemed to fill the air with itself, being present everywhere at the same time ... Huge barricades felt it on its backbone.**
Gavroche in Delacroix's painting is the personification of youth, a "beautiful impulse", a joyful acceptance of the bright idea of Freedom. Two images - Gavroche and Liberty - seem to complement each other: one is a fire, the other is a torch lit from it. Heinrich Heine told what a lively response the figure of Gavroche evoked among the Parisians. "Damn it! exclaimed a grocer. “Those boys fought like giants!” ***
On the left is a student with a gun. Previously, it was seen as a self-portrait of the artist. This rebel is not as swift as Gavroche. His movement is more restrained, more concentrated, meaningful. Hands confidently squeeze the barrel of the gun, the face expresses courage, firm determination to stand to the end. This is a deeply tragic image. The student is aware of the inevitability of the losses that the rebels will suffer, but the victims do not frighten him - the will to freedom is stronger. Behind him stands an equally brave and resolute worker with a saber. Wounded at the feet of Freedom. He rises with difficulty to once again look up at Freedom, to see and feel with all his heart that beauty for which he is dying. This figure brings a dramatic start to the sound of Delacroix's canvas. If the images of Gavroche, Liberty, the student, the worker are almost symbols, the embodiment of the inexorable will of the freedom fighters - inspire and call on the viewer, then the wounded man calls for compassion. Man says goodbye to Freedom, says goodbye to life. He is still an impulse, a movement, but already a fading impulse.
His figure is transitional. The viewer's gaze, still fascinated and carried away by the revolutionary determination of the rebels, descends to the foot of the barricade, covered with the bodies of the glorious dead soldiers. Death is presented by the artist in all the nakedness and evidence of the fact. We see the blue faces of the dead, their naked bodies: the struggle is merciless, and death is just as inevitable a companion of the rebels as the beautiful inspirer Freedom.
From the terrible sight at the lower edge of the picture, we again raise our eyes and see a beautiful young figure - no! life wins! The idea of freedom, embodied so visibly and tangibly, is so focused on the future that death in its name is not terrible.
The artist depicts only a small group of rebels, living and dead. But the defenders of the barricade seem unusually numerous. The composition is built in such a way that the group of fighters is not limited, not closed in on itself. She is only part of an endless avalanche of people. The artist gives, as it were, a fragment of the group: the frame of the picture cuts off the figures from the left, right, and bottom.
Usually color in the works of Delacroix acquires an emotional sound, plays a dominant role in creating a dramatic effect. The colors, sometimes raging, sometimes fading, muffled, create a tense atmosphere. In Liberty at the Barricades, Delacroix departs from this principle. Very accurately, unmistakably choosing paint, applying it with wide strokes, the artist conveys the atmosphere of the battle.
But the range of colors is restrained. Delacroix focuses on the relief modeling of the form. This was required by the figurative solution of the picture. After all, depicting a specific yesterday's event, the artist also created a monument to this event. Therefore, the figures are almost sculptural. Therefore, each character, being part of a single whole of the picture, also constitutes something closed in itself, represents a symbol cast into a completed form. Therefore, color not only emotionally affects the feelings of the viewer, but carries a symbolic load. In the brown-gray space, here and there, a solemn triad of red, blue, white flashes - the colors of the banner of the French Revolution of 1789. The repeated repetition of these colors supports the powerful chord of the tricolor flag flying over the barricades.
Delacroix's painting "Freedom on the Barricades" is a complex, grandiose work in its scope. Here the authenticity of the directly seen fact and the symbolism of the images are combined; realism, reaching brutal naturalism, and ideal beauty; rough, terrible and sublime, pure.
The painting "Freedom on the Barricades" consolidated the victory of romanticism in the French "Battle of Poitiers" and "The Assassination of the Bishop of Liege". Delacroix is the author of paintings not only on the themes of the French Revolution, but also battle compositions on the subjects of national history ("The Battle of Poitiers"). During his travels, the artist made a number of sketches from nature, on the basis of which he created paintings after his return. These works are distinguished not only by their interest in exotics and romantic coloring, but also by the deeply felt originality of national life, mentality, and characters.
, Lance
K: Paintings of 1830"Liberty Leading the People"(fr. La Liberte guidant le peuple) or "Freedom on the Barricades" is a painting by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
Delacroix created the painting 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. 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.
In 1999, Svoboda made a 20-hour flight from Paris to an exhibition in Tokyo via Bahrain and Calcutta. Transportation was carried out on board the Airbus Beluga (the canvas dimensions - 2.99 m high by 3.62 m long - were too large for a Boeing 747) in an upright position in an isothermal pressure chamber protected from vibration.
On February 7, 2013, a visitor to the Louvre-Lance Museum, where Liberty is exhibited, covered the lower part of the canvas with a marker, after which she was detained. The next day, restorers removed the damage in less than two hours.
Filmography
- "On the bridges. Stopped Moment, film Alain Jaubert from the cycle "Palettes" (France, 1989).
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Notes
Links
- in the database of the Louvre (fr.)
An excerpt characterizing Liberty leading the people
And my soul soaked up this laughter, as a condemned man soaks up the warm farewell rays of the already setting sun...- Well, Mom, we are still alive! .. We can still fight! .. You yourself told me that you will fight while you are alive ... So let's think if we can do something . Can we rid the world of this Evil.
She supported me again with her courage!.. Again she found the right words...
This sweet brave girl, almost a child, could not even imagine what kind of torture Karaffa could subject her to! In what brutal pain her soul could drown ... But I knew ... I knew everything that awaited her if I did not go to meet him. If I do not agree to give the Pope the only thing he wanted.
- My good, my heart ... I can’t look at your torment ... I won’t give you to him, my girl! The North and others like him do not care who will remain in this LIFE... So why should we be different?.. Why should you and I care about someone else's fate?!.
I myself was frightened by my words ... although in my heart I perfectly understood that they were caused only by the hopelessness of our situation. And, of course, I was not going to betray what I lived for ... For the sake of which my father and my poor Girolamo died. Simply, just for a moment, I wanted to believe that we could just take it and leave this terrible, “black” Caraffa world, forgetting about everything ... forgetting about other people we didn’t know. Forget about evil...
It was a momentary weakness of a tired person, but I understood that I did not even have the right to allow it. And then, on top of everything, apparently unable to withstand any more violence, burning evil tears poured down my face in a stream ... But I tried so hard not to let this happen! .. I tried not to show my dear girl into what depths of despair my exhausted, pained soul...
Anna looked at me sadly with her huge gray eyes, in which lived a deep, not at all childish sadness ... She quietly stroked my hands, as if wanting to calm me down. And my heart was screaming, not wanting to accept... Not wanting to lose her. She was the only remaining meaning of my failed life. And I couldn't let the non-humans called the Pope of Rome take her away from me!
“Mommy, don’t worry about me,” Anna whispered, as if reading my thoughts. - I'm not afraid of pain. But even if it hurts a lot, grandfather promised to pick me up. I spoke to him yesterday. He'll be waiting for me if you and I don't succeed... And so does dad. They will both be there waiting for me. But it will be very painful to leave you ... I love you so much, mommy! ..
Anna hid in my arms, as if seeking protection... But I couldn't protect her... I couldn't save her. I did not find the "key" to Karaffa ...
- Forgive me, my sun, I let you down. I failed both of us... I didn't find a way to destroy him. I'm sorry Anna...
The hour passed unnoticed. We talked about different things, not returning to the murder of the Pope, since both knew perfectly well that today we lost ... And it didn’t matter what we wanted ... Caraffa lived, and that was the worst and most important thing. We have not succeeded in freeing our world from it. Failed to save good people. He lived, despite any attempts, any desires. Despite everything...
In his diary, the young Eugene Delacroix wrote on May 9, 1824: “I felt the desire to write on contemporary subjects.” This was not a 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 his desire to write on contemporary topics, 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 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. Escolier, 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’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.
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.
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 depict not a single fleeting episode (even if it was the heroic death of d'Arcol), not even a single 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 on the right side (in the depths, the banner raised on the tower of Notre Dame Cathedral is barely visible), but by 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 a three-color republican banner in her right hand and a gun with a bayonet in her left took a wide step. 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.
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 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 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.
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 critics 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”.
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 act. 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.
Detailed view of the picture:Realism and idealism. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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The figure of a craftsman brandishing a blade symbolizes the working class of Paris, which played a leading role in the uprising. |
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dead brother | |
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. Pod-le Liberty is a teenager armed with two pistols, so reminiscent of the heroic image of 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. The head of the romantic school in French painting, he was precisely the artist who was called upon to capture the elements 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 vivid characters, in the dramatic events of history or in the exoticism of distant lands, 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, 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 ... "
