_F. V. E. Delacroix_ (French: 1798-1863).
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was the chief of the
"Romantic" school in painting, which in literature was
represented by de Musset, George Sand, and Victor Hugo. The
Romanticists revolted against the art of the Classicists as
cold, formal, and colourless. Delacroix, whose admiration
was for Byron in poetry and for Rubens in painting, sought
before all things passion, emotion, and colour. He had, says
Silvestre, "the sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his
heart, and his grandiose and awe-inspiring brush sounded the
entire gamut of human emotion." He loved strong colour, and he
was one of many French artists who were influenced by the sight
of Constable's pictures in the Salon. His pictures were as
fiercely assailed, as they were furiously painted. "It is the
massacre of painting," said Baron Gros of Delacroix's "Massacre
of Chios." "I became the abomination of painting," said the
artist, "I was refused water and salt;" but, he added, "I was
enchanted with myself," and he won his way into favour. He was
born at Charenton St. Maurice, near Paris. His father, who
held high office under the First Empire, had been a partisan
of the violent faction during the Revolution, and, like some
other revolutionaries, was more consumed with public ardour
than concerned with private affairs. The boy was exposed to
accidents and neglect in his childhood which make one wonder
that he survived. He had poor health throughout life, and there
was in him a hectic strain which was reflected in his art. In
1817 he entered the studio of Guérin, where he had Ary Scheffer
(see 1169) for a fellow-pupil and antagonist, and afterwards
he worked under Baron Gros. He was deeply stirred by the War
of Greek Independence; and a visit which he paid to Morocco
and Algiers in 1831 had the effect of enriching his sense of
colour. He had a strong supporter in Thiers, through whose
influence he received many important commissions for public
works--in the decoration of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the
Chamber of Deputies. Our picture was a design for the latter.
These and other large works occupied him till 1855; and at last
in 1857 he was admitted into the French Academy.
In this characteristic design the spirit of Ruthless Conquest is
personified in the figure of Attila, the leader of the Huns, called
"The Scourge of God." He drives before him, beneath a blood-red sky and
amid the ghosts of the slain, figures emblematic of Beauty, Art, and
Pleasure.