A History of European Art

Lecture 40: Romanticism in the 19

th Century

up toward heaven, the dead mother and her living child, and the nude woman

whose bound arms indicate that she will be sold into slavery. The middle of

the painting is open; the common pyramidal composition is inverted, so that

a wedge of space opens in the center, revealing the chaos and destruction

behind and below. The mounted Turkish soldier is the apex of a diagonal

rising from the lower left. The S-curve of the old woman and its upward

continuation may be what Delacroix referred to in his journal on May 7,

1824: “My picture is acquiring a twist, an energetic movement that I must

absolutely complete in it.”

The night before the Salon opened, Delacroix paid a visit to the foreign

section, where a rural landscape scene, The Hay Wain (1821), by the English

painter John Constable (1776–1837) was on view. Delacroix is reported to

have been elated by the sparkling effect of Constable’s vibrant À ecks of

paint, an effect that conveyed the sensation of natural light.

The Hay Wain deserves praise beyond this technical note, however. Constable

loved the countryside, and he ¿ lled his paintings with the measured pastoral

tempo of country life. The changing weather, which dominates rural

agricultural life, was the object of his acute attention.

Delacroix followed up his proud painting of the Massacre with another

one inspired by the Greek civil war, Greece on the Ruins of Missolonghi

(1827). This painting was an allegory following the severe defeat of Greece

at Missolonghi. For a defeat, however, it is a noble picture. The beautiful

woman who personi¿ es Greece spreads her hands as much in supplication as

submission. Half kneeling on a great block of marble, suggesting a fragment

from a ruined temple, from beneath which the haunting hand of a crushed

patriot protrudes, she is “guarded” by a Turkish soldier behind her. But

Delacroix has made certain that he is dwarfed in scale by the thrilling blue-

and-white ¿ gure who dominates the painting.

In 1827, Ingres also painted a combination allegorical-historical work as a

ceiling painting for the Louvre, where today it hangs on a wall. It was a

commission from the restored Bourbon monarchy, and Ingres was eager for

the opportunity to create a history painting in the tradition of Raphael. The

painting is the Apotheosis of Homer (1827). This symmetrical composition