Liberty Leading the People 28th July 1830 Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)

Description of Eugène Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the People (Liberty at the Barricades)

Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 painting has since been referred to as Freedom at the Barricades, but it was originally titled Freedom Leading the People.

It is sometimes wrongly thought that this work was inspired by the French Revolution, but in fact Delacroix focused on July 1830, when fierce street fighting was taking place in Paris to overthrow Charles X, the last of the Bourbons, who were so hated by the French people.

The young Eugène Delacroix, who positioned himself not as a revolutionary but as a rebel, elated and intoxicated by the fresh air of freedom and victories accomplished, was inspired by the idea of painting a picture of those bloody days and the feat of his people. It took the artist three months to realize the task he had set for himself, and at the end of that period the admiring public saw Freedom Leading the People.

The plot of the painting tells about a fragment of a heated battle, where a detachment of armed rebels through the bodies of their dead comrades and through the whistling of bullets makes its way to the intended goal.

Ahead of them all, with the tricolor flag of the French Republic raised in one hand and a rifle in the other, is a woman. This is Liberty, drawing the men into the attack. She is wearing a Phrygian cap, typical of the Jacobins, and her bare chest, which symbolizes the revolutionaries’ frenzied desire to go bare-chested against the royal bayonets.

The painter’s brushwork flawlessly highlighted the various outfits of the rebels, indicating that the street barricades were fought shoulder to shoulder by members of all walks of life. Delacroix also appears in the painting as the man in the cylinder to the left of Liberty, even though he did not take part in the street battles.