The French painter Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) repudiated the neoclassic manner and developed a freer and more romantic style with a particular emphasis on color.

For 40 years Eugène Delacroix was one of the most prominent and controversial painters in France. Although the intense emotional expressiveness of his work placed the artist squarely in the midst of the general romantic outpouring of European art, he always remained an individual phenomenon and did not create a school. As a personality and as a painter, he was admired by the impressionists, postimpressionists, and symbolists who came after him.

Born on April 28, 1798, at Charenton-Saint-Maurice, the son of an important public official, Delacroix grew up in comfortable upper-middle-class circumstances in spite of the troubled times. He received a good classical education at the Lycée Impérial. He entered the studio of Pierre Narcisse Gué...