Research Essay On Liberty Leading The People

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Liberty Leading the People is a well-known painting by the French Artist Eugene Delacroix. He created this masterpiece in July 28, 1830 to celebrate the July 1830 Revolution. Furthermore, it was considered a political poster for the French revolution. The painting employs generic personifications mixed with specific references to the popular uprising against the government of Charles X in France (Crenshaw 294). The painter, Delacroix, had been a member of the National Guard and took pleasure in depicting himself in the painting. He is seen as a figure, wearing a top hat and standing at the left side of the painting. The background and the right portion of the canvas remain deserted, surrounded in clouds and smoke of cannons. Moreover, Liberty Leading the People depicts the symbolic figure of Liberty as a half-draped woman. She is wearing the traditional Phrygian cap of liberty and holding a gun in one hand and a French flag in the other. She commands the attention in the painting as she leads the people walking over the corpses. The figure of Liberty dominates the composition and she is the peak of a pyramid structure, which Delacroix created intentionally to achieve a balance in the busy composition. The depiction of the Liberty figure as a partially naked woman and the menacing crowd created some mixed reactions among people during that time. Some people, such as author Alexandre Dumas, thought that Delacroix had portrayed the crowd accompanying Liberty as too rough and unruly (Austin 268). Furthermore, some people compared Liberty to lively variation of the Aphrodite of Melos. Others thought that his personification of liberty as a fighting woman was commonplace and vulgar (Austin 268). Therefore, there have been many interpretations of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People but the personification of liberty seems to be the central disagreements among the

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