A FAVORITE PLACE FOR THE ARTISTS TO VISIT

If you visit the Louvre you will often come across artists copying paintings. This is more commonly seen on the second floor, as there are fewer visitors. These artists or students have been given special permission to copy paintings, and the only stipulation that the Louvre make is that the copy should be a different size to the original.

As you will note, some of these visiting artists do an amazing job of reproducing the originals.
 

038. Une Odalisque (1814)  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

(Title contributed by Rebecca)  Title confirmed on Louvre Museum web site

039.

040. Portrait of Jeanne d'Aragon, 1518, Rafael  (title contributed by Olga Milner)

041.

042.

043. Satyr and Nymph

044.

045. Cupid and Psyche, by Canova 1796

046.

047. Liberty Leading the People (La Liberté guidant le peuple) by Eugene Delacroix

Delacroix's most influential work came in 1830 with the painting Liberty Leading the People.

Delacroix's painting is an unforgettable image of Parisians, having taken up arms, marching forward under the banner of the tricolour representing liberty and freedom; Delacroix was inspired by contemporary events to invoke the romantic image of the spirit of liberty. The soldiers lying dead in the foreground offer poignant counterpoint to the symbolic female figure, who is illuminated triumphantly, as if in a spotlight.

It was painted to commemorate the July Revolution that had just brought Louis-Philippe to the French throne.

This painting, which is a sort of political poster, is meant to celebrate the day of 28 July 1830, when the people rose and dethroned the Bourbon king. Alexandre Dumas tells us that Delacroix's participation in the rebellious movements of July was mainly of a sentimental nature. Despite this, the painter, who had been a member of the National Guard, took pleasure in portraying himself in the figure on the left wearing the top-hat. Although the painting is filled with rhetoric, Delacroix's spirit is fully involved in its execution: in the outstretched figure of Liberty, in the bold attitudes of the people following herm contrasted with the lifeless figures of the dead heaped up in the foreground, in the heroic poses of the people fighting for liberty, there is without a doubt a sense of full participation on the part of the artist, which led Argan to define this canvas as the first political work of modern painting.


Liberty Leading the People caused a disturbance. It shows the allegorical figure of Liberty as a half-draped woman wearing the traditional Phrygian cap of liberty and holding a gun in one hand and the tricolor in the other. It is strikingly realistic; Delacroix, the young man in the painting wearing the opera hat, was present on the barricades in July 1830. Allegory helps achieve universality in the painting: Liberty is not a woman; she is an abstract force.

The French government bought the painting but officials deemed its glorification of liberty too inflammatory and removed it from public view. Nonetheless, Delacroix still received many government commissions for murals and ceiling paintings. He seems to have been trying to represent the spirit and the character of the people, rather than glorify the actual event, a revolution against King Charles X which did little other than bringing a different king, Louis-Philippe, to power.

Following the Revolution of 1848 that saw the end of the reign of King Louis Philippe, Delacroix' painting, Liberty Leading the People, was finally put on display by the newly elected President, Napoleon III. Today, it is visible in the Louvre museum.

The bare-breasted woman in the picture is known in France as "Marianne".  The boy holding a gun up on the right is sometimes thought to be an inspiration of the Gavroche character in Victor Hugo's 1862 novel, Les Misérables.
 

This is the end of our Exhibit.  Hope you enjoyed the visit!