DELACROIX, EUGÈNE. - Painter, born at Charenton St-Maurice on 25 April 1794, died at Paris on 13 Aug. 1863.
First a pupil of Guerrin (1816) and then of the School of Fine Arts in Paris (1818), after a journey to Italy he turned decisively toward the search for new expressive means. Generally regarded as the typical representative of French pictorial Romanticism, in opposition to Ingres, considered the most characteristic expression of Classicism, E. D., besides being a great colourist, must be regarded for his ability to create images by means of an energetic brushstroke that draws and models forms within a dense chromatic mass. Spontaneous, passionate, emphatic, he opposed to the characteristic descriptive and finished modes of the traditional intellectualistic academy the rights of free imagination and ardour for purely pictorial investigations. After painting admirable small pictures rich in impetuosity and heroic impetus, and large compositions of historical subject or literary inspiration, such as the Barca di Dante (1822), the Morte di Sardanapalo (1827), and the Battaglia di Taillebury (1837), D. also devoted himself to extensive mural compositions, such as the frescoes in the Palazzo Borbone and the Lussemburgo, some likewise of religious subject, such as the frescoes in the chapel of the SS. Angeli in the church of S. Sulpizio in Paris (1861).