Eugène Delacroix - Liberty leading the People

Title: Liberty leading the People (La Liberté conduisant le Peuple)
Artist: Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)
Date: 1830
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 260 x 325 cm

“Liberty Leading the People” represents the French Revolution of July 1830, which toppled King Charles X. A woman of the people with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept of Liberty leads a varied group of people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen, holding the flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The figure of Liberty also known as Marianne had been officially made a symbol of France and the French Republic in September 1792 by the National Convention. By extension the painting is now understood to represent the French Revolution as a whole.

When he made the painting in the autumn of 1830, Delacroix was already the acknowledged leader of the Romantic school in French painting and proudly wrote to his brother- “if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her.”