French Romantic Painter, 1798-1863 For 40 years Eugene Delacroix was one of the most prominent and controversial painters in France. Although the intense emotional expressiveness of his work placed the artist squarely in the midst of the general romantic outpouring of European art, he always remained an individual phenomenon and did not create a school. As a personality and as a painter, he was admired by the impressionists, postimpressionists, and symbolists who came after him. Born on April 28, 1798, at Charenton-Saint-Maurice, the son of an important public official, Delacroix grew up in comfortable upper-middle-class circumstances in spite of the troubled times. He received a good classical education at the Lycee Imperial. He entered the studio of Pierre Narcisse Guerin in 1815, where he met Theodore Gericaul
Apollo Vanquishing the Python
1850-51 Mural painting, about 800 x 750 cm Musee du Louvre, Paris This is the central panel of the vaulted ceiling of the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre. One of Delacroix's lesser-known masterpieces, the subject-matter was dictated by its destination. Apollo Vanquishing the Python shows the painter working in a direct line from the great decorators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, without losing any of his own ardor or lyricism. Artist: DELACROIX, Eugene Title: Apollo Vanquishing the Python , painting Date: 1801-1850 French : mythological