Liberty Leading the People

(Liberty Leading the People)

Liberty Leading the People is an artwork by Eugene Delacroix in 1830. This painting is painted to commemorate     their triumph in the July Revolution of 1830.

In this painting, Liberty is dominance object because she is at the right middle of the painting, coloured in high key value that attract our attention to look at her. We can see that the corpses beneath her and the fighters that follow her, almost all of them are painted in low key value like black colour. Besides, Chiaroscuro also applied on the human figures to create the 3D value to make the human figures look realistic.

In the painting, a tricolour flag is holding in Liberty's right hand. The 3 colour of the flag represented a meaning by each of them; red represented fraternity, white represented equality and blue represented liberty. Furthermore, the cap that Liberty wearing is the liberty cap which represented pursuit of freedom. Lastly, there is also another tricolour flag at the top of the tallest building which is Notre Dame de Paris. From these clue, we can feel their desperate for the freedom because of the tyranny of Charles X. In the end, they succeeded and Charles X was toppled.

In my opinion, this painting is amazing. The size of the canvas is 260cm x 325cm, even bigger and taller than anyone of us therefore it is not an easy work to paint on it. It shows us the situation of July Revolution of 1830, although the Liberty in the painting is not really exist, but she represent a kind of spirit that leading all the French people to union together and pursuit for their freedom. Furthermore, from the research it says that the man in top hat is Eugene Delacroix himself but he is not involve in the war at that time, maybe he has the willingness and determination to help but due to some reason he cant that's why he painted himself in this painting to remedy his regret. This painting overall is really impressed me for the detail in the painting and the skills and technique that Delacroix implied in it.

retrieved from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People
http://ezinearticles.com/?Critical-Analysis:-Liberty-Leading-The-People,-A-Painting-By-Delacroix&id=423142
http://republicancommunist.org/blog/tag/liberty-leading-the-people/
http://archivesofkhazad-dum.blogspot.com/2011/05/ferdinand-victor-eugene-delacroix.html(image)