Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art
A new exhibition at the National Gallery, titled ‘Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art’, explores the work of the great French Romantic, Eugène Delacroix, and his pervasive legacy. I review the event, which runs until May 22nd.
The National Gallery, standing conveniently at the end of my local 29 bus route, is one of the world’s most frequented art museums — so I’m still unsure why it took me so long to set foot in the place. But what eventually drew me to the venue is an exhibition that, to a fine art novice like me, is both accessible and enlightening.
Eugène Delacroix’s (1798–1863) paintings have a modern appeal, perhaps because they appear cinematic. Agitated brushstrokes, dramatic tableaux and diverse colour schemes are the basis of his work, which features the kind of kinetic energy seen in some of today’s popular films, such as The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road. The ‘Rise of Modern Art’ refers to the exhibition’s structure, placing paintings by Delacroix’s contemporaries and successors adjacent to his own work — but the title could also refer to Delacroix’s enduring influence on any visual medium today.
For a beginner, the installation is cleverly arranged, establishing Delacroix’s personality before illustrating his legacy. Delacroix, we are told from the outset, was an outsider in the art world, individualistic and rebellious. His most famous work, ‘Liberty Leading the People’, is unfortunately missing here, but what is presented instead is a dose of each the artist’s shifts in stylistic experiments and successes. Part of his modern allure stems from his placement in art history, painting at the tail end of the Grand Style and at the dawn of Impressionism. Ostensibly a Romantic artist, Delacroix’s work cannot be defined by a single genre.
The exhibition presents the way in which different artists extrapolated different aspects from his art; Paul Cézanne’s ‘Apotheosis of Delacroix’ features the artist praising his forerunner, who sits angelically atop a cloud. Cézanne once said ‘we all paint in Delacroix’s language’, and we’re shown this inspiration in action, with the artists’ nude paintings side-by-side, showing similarities in posture and accents of green and blue.
Delacroix wasn’t always appreciated by critics; his vivid painting ‘The Death of Sardanapalus’ was lambasted for its unclear composition and violent subject, before gradually improving its reputation over time. Viewed today, it is the work’s ambition that makes Delacroix’s impact evident —while its sensuality influenced Cézanne, its indulgent colour and chaotic structure would influence symbolist and abstract artists such as Odilon Redon and Wassily Kandinsky.
The erotic leads to the exotic, as the exhibition dedicates a room to Delacroix’s journey to north Africa, where he found inspiration in the wild behaviour of both masses of people and wild animals — symbols that are synonymous with Delacroix’s revolutionary France. A highlight of the installation is ‘Fanatics of Tangier’, a vision of religious frenzy in Morocco which blends primary colours with sandy beige and contrasts the blur of limbs in the foreground with the static houses of the background.
From this ecstatic scene, another room showcases a very different branch of Delacroix’s work: flowers and still life. Here, comparisons are made with Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Gaugin, whose floral images were surely inspired by Delacroix’s pairing of complimentary colours and use of darkness to accentuate highlights. Beyond Impressionists and post-Impressionists, the exhibition goes as far as to highlight the artist’s influence on Pointillism — a movement far removed from Delacroix in time, but linked to his use of unpredictable brush strokes, which create a sense of movement through patterns of colour and changes in direction.
The National Gallery suggests that this show offers a ‘long-overdue homage’ to the French Romantic — and it’s clear that the artist deserves recognition for his legacy. While, at times, connections made between works by other artists may appear tenuous, this juxtaposition between a range of movements creatively brings to light Delacroix’s singular style.
