Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was born near Paris in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, the son of a senior government official.

Delacroix began his formal artistic training in the neoclassical studio of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, where Théodore Géricault had also studied.

Delacroix continued his training at the École des Beaux-Arts while studying old masters in the Louvre.

Delacroix's first major painting, The Barque of Dante, was shown at the Salon and purchased by the French state, launching his career.

His large canvas depicting Ottoman atrocities against Greeks during the Greek War of Independence caused a sensation at the Salon and confirmed him as leader of the Romantic school.

Inspired by the July Revolution of 1830, Delacroix painted Liberty Leading the People, which became an enduring symbol of the French Republic.

Delacroix accompanied a French diplomatic mission to Morocco, filling notebooks with sketches that supplied Orientalist subjects for the rest of his career.

Delacroix spent much of his later career on large decorative cycles for public buildings, including the Palais Bourbon, the Palais du Luxembourg, and the Church of Saint-Sulpice.

After seven unsuccessful attempts, Delacroix was finally elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France.

Delacroix died at his apartment on the Place de Furstenberg in Paris at the age of 65 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.