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DELACROIX, FERDINAND VICTOR
EUGÈNE (1798–1863)
French painter
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix, the most important
French romantic painter, was born in 26 April 1798
at Charenton Saint-Maurice in the Val-de-Marne. His
father was minister of Foreign Affairs, under Le Direc-
toire. His early education was at the Lycée Louis Le
Grand. In 1815 he began his training with Pierre-Nar-
cisse Guérin in the neoclassical style of Jacques-Louis
David, but he was strongly infl uenced by the more color-
ful and rich style of the Flemish painter P.P. Rubens and
fellow French artist Théodore Géricault. He showed his
particular talent already in 1822, with its colored “Dante
and virgil crossing the lake which surrounds the infernal
city of Dité” which caused a scandal.
In 1824, he was obviously inspired by paintings
of John Constable, which were exhibited in Paris. He
stayed several months in the United Kingdom, where he
came infl uenced of the poet Lord Byron and once again
of the lively and clear colors in the landscapes of Con-
stable. Meanwhile an inheritance of ten thousand pounds
gave him the freedom to concentrate on his art. He put
impressive historical shows on canvas and in 1831, he
exposed on the fair are famous “Freedom runs into the
people.” In 1832 he traveled to Spain and North Africa,
a trip that would infl uence the subject matter of a great
many of his future paintings. Between 1833 and 1847
he had assignments in the Salon du Roi en de libraries
of Palais Bourbon and the Palais de Luxembourg.
In the last ten years of his life he realized important
decorative ensembles: the central ceiling of Apollon-
galery in the Louvre, the Salon de la Paix in City Hall
in Paris and the Saint-Agnes Chapelle of the Saint-
Sulpice-Church.
From 1851 Delacroix was a member of the group
of artists and writers who went on to form the Société
héliographique. He used photography to make artists’
studies for use in future paintings. He worked with
Eugène Durieu who made graphic prints as well as
photographs. Delacroix took photographs during his
holidays in Dieppe. On 10 January 1857 he was incor-
porated in the Institut of the Academicians, taking the
place of Delaroche. Delacroix triumphed in 1855 at the
Exposition Universelle in Paris with showing 42 paint-
ings. In the period 1856–1863 he is accepted as member
of the Société française de photographie in which he be-
came very active. He endeavoured to give photography
proof of his esteem in attaching himself, among other
things, in 1859, to a group of seven artists, members
of a committee wanting to include photography in the
Paris Salon. They succeed. Delacroix was one of the
painters who, with Francis Wey and Le Gray, help the
photographers to fi nd their own terminology. Beside his
work as painter, Delacroix worked also as an illustrator
of books of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Sir
Walter Scott and the German writer Goethe.
Delacroix has had much infl uence on others, es-
pecially by his expressive use of color. He died on 13
August 1863 in Paris.
Johan SwinnenFurther Reading
Aubenas, Sylvie, L’art du nu au XIXième siècle: le photogrpahe et
son modèle, Hazan, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 1997.
Auer, Michel & Michèle, Encyclopédie internationale des pho-
tographes des débuts à nos jours, CD-Rom, Neuchâtel, Éd.
Ides et Calendes, diffusion Hazan, 1997.
Boom, Mattie (ed.), A New Art. Photography in the 19th Century,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1996.
Busse, Jacques, Dictionaire de peintres, sculpteurs, desinateurs
en graveurs de tous les temps et de tous un group d’écrivains
specialists français et étrangers (tome 4), Gründ, Paris,
1999.
Frizot, Michel (ed.), Nouvelle Histoire de la Photographie,
Bordas, Paris, 1994.
Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, The origins of photography,
Thames and Hudson, London, 1982.
Heilbrun, Françoise (ed.), L’invention d’un regard (1839–1918),
Musée d’Orsay/Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1989.
Lemagny Jean-Claude, Sayag, Alain, L’invention d’un art, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1989.
Witkin, Lee D. (ed.), The photograph collector’s guide, Secker
& Warburg, London, 1979.DELAGRANGE, BARON ALEXIS
(1825–1917)
French photographer and landowner
Alexis Delagrange was born into an ancient and noble
family in Douai on 4 April 1825. His father, Baron
Prosper-Amauri-Louis, was a colonel in the army and an
offi cer of the Legion of Honor. Alexis attended the Ecole
Polytechnique in Paris and upon graduation served in
the naval artillery from 1844 to 1847.
In 1849, equipped with a camera, he departed for a
two-year trip to India accompanied by his older cousin,
the statesman Felix Lambrecht (1819–1871). Theirs was
an unusual itinerary since, unlike Egypt or Palestine,
India was not part of the “Grand Tour” undertaken by
wealthy young Frenchmen of the time. In addition, they
traveled primarily in the northern interior part of the
country, stopping at only one of the few, small French
colonies still in existence along the coast. Their trip
is also unusual in that travel photography was in its
infancy and Delagrange was among its fi rst European
practitioners in India, anticipating the British govern-
ment-funded photographic surveys beginning the mid-
1850s along with the inauguration of the fi eld of Indian
architectural history.
Despite the pioneering nature of his work Delagrange