Eugène Delacroix
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Women of Algiers by Eugène Delacroix, 1833
Sketches like this came out of a few months tagging along with a French mission to North Africa, according to Wikipedia — notebooks filled up on the trip, then the big painting worked out later, back home. One journey he kept mining for years afterwards.
Erisava: Two pencil sketches on a stained bit of paper. Who decided this was worth keeping?
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix, 1830
The government reportedly bought this almost right away, then kept it out of public view for years — a painting cheering on revolution apparently made the people now in charge nervous.
Erisava: Why does she look like she's from a different painting than the bodies at her feet?
Death of Sardanapalus by Eugène Delacroix, 1827
The story behind it came from a Byron play about an Assyrian king who, with defeat coming, has everything he owns destroyed in front of him rather than let anyone else have it. Apparently the critics went for it hard when it was first shown, and it did him no favours with the officials who handed out state commissions.
Erisava: This is a massacre arranged like a shop window.
The Barque of Dante by Eugène Delacroix, 1822
The scene comes straight out of Dante — the poet being rowed across a river in hell, steadied by his old Roman guide, while the drowned try to climb aboard. From what I've read it was the first big thing he ever showed in public, and it more or less made his name on the spot.
Erisava: The skin looks wetter than the water it's actually in.