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Eugene Delacroix:
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
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
1854-61 Oil and wax on plaster, 751 x 485 cm (whole painting) Saint-Sulpice, Paris Jacob Wrestling with the Angel has been read as a summary of Delacroix's life and work. Indeed the leitmotif of his career is the struggle - a spiritual combat - between his aspiration to classicism and his Romantic genius, between his admiration for Racine and his love of Shakespeare. Artist: DELACROIX, Eugene Title: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (detail) , painting Date: 1801-1850 French : religious
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