In Our Time - Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People

Episode Date: October 20, 2011

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People. In 1830 revolution once more overtook France, when a popular uprising toppled the French king Charles X. A few months later, the artist Eugene Delacroix immortalised the events of the July Revolution in a painting which remains one of the icons of the age. His allegorical depiction of a Paris barricade, with the figure of Liberty clutching a tricolore while standing on a pile of corpses, is a powerful image which has provoked much debate in the years since it was first unveiled to an enthusiastic public.Producer: Natalia Fernandez.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, in 1831, the German poet Heinrich Heiner visited the Salon in Paris, the largest and most important annual art exhibition in Europe. He noticed that one painting was surrounded by a large crowd of people,

and in his review of the show, he devoted particular attention. to it. The sacredness of the subject, he wrote, makes it dangerous to venture any criticism of its use of colour. Apart from a few purely technical faults, a great thought reigns in this work which strongly attracts us. The painting Haino was so taken with is called the 28th of July, Liberty, leading the people. It was the work of a 32-year-old Parisian, Eugene Delacroix. Its subject is a revolution which had taken place in France the previous year. The setting is a Paris barricade, over which a a bare-breasted woman, the personification of liberty, leads a group of armed men.

A pile of corpses lies at her feet. This striking image caused a furorre when it was first shown, and for years was deemed too subversive to be shown in public. Since then, it's become a symbol of human liberty and one of the most influential artworks of the 19th century. Joining me to discuss Delacrois Liberty leading the people are Tim Blanning, Emeritus Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge.

Tamar Garde, Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art at University College London and Simon Lee, senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Reading. You'll find an image of the painting on the In Our Time website. Tim Blanning, before we get to the painting, can we have some sense of what was going on in France at the time?

A brisk run through from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. Right, here we go, with just one or two dates. States are always helpful to give us a chronological take on this. I think we need to start really in 1814, with the successful Allied invasion of France, the Austrians, the Prussians, the Russians and the British, forced Napoleon to abdicate. That's April 1814.

So there's one Bourbon restoration. He's replaced by Louis XVI, head of the House of Bourbon. Then the following year, Napoleon returns from Elbe in an attempt to regain his empire. That comes to grief after 100 days at the Battle of Waterloo on the 18th of June, 1815. there's a second restoration, and it's quite important, I think, to bear in mind that there were two restorations, that the Bourbon, Louis X, the 18th, came back twice in the baggage train

of the Allied armies. Louis the 18th was, it wasn't exactly that he'd forgotten nothing and learned nothing, as Tallinnon famously said about the Bourbon. He'd forgotten a little, and he'd learned a little, but not very much. He dies in 1824, the only French monarch to die on the throne in the course of the 19th century, and is replaced by his younger brother. as Charles the 10th. Charles the 10th had certainly learned nothing and forgotten nothing, and it's he who falls in the July Revolution of 1830. And he falls because of policies that he endorsed. Can you tell the listeners about three or four of those,

which seem to put the clock right back? Yes, I think if I can do this very quickly, I think we need to start with this coronation in 1824. Charles the 10th had the justified reputation of being the most clerical, the most reactionary and also the most stupid of all the Bourbon princes. At his coronation in 1825, the year after he came to the throne, he went out of his way to emphasize that this was really a throwback to the past. He prostrated himself in front of the altar.

He touched for the king's evil. No one believed in that, apart from himself, after the ceremony. It was about as traditional as you could possibly imagine. He went out of his way to emphasize that he was turning the clock back. Anyway, got a long story short, things go see. Eeliously or rye in the late 1820s. He loses elections, despite the very limited nature of the franchise, he loses elections. And in the summer of 1829, he appoints a real 18-carat, 24-carat reactionary in the shape of the Duke de Pollyniac as his prime minister.

They lose elections together. And in the following year, on July the 25th, let me get the state right, but it was July the 25th, he passes four ordinances. and these are the ordinances which brings the revolution about in the three great days. The first and perhaps the most important was the imposition of a very rigid form of censorship. The Chamber of Deputies was dissolved, a new electoral law, a very restrictive electoral law was introduced and new elections were announced. Those were the four decrees which led to the three great days in July. The three glorious days, the French call them,

and he was surprised at what happened, but it did happen. Simon Lee, let's switch for a moment. Take the story to Delacroix. When the July Revolution arrived in 1830, and Delacro was 32. Could you tell us a bit more about him? We have this magnificent background from Tim, now a little about Delacroo himself. So Delacroo himself is a child of the Napoleonic era. His father was a Napoleonic servant. His father was prefect of Marseille and also in Bordeaux. Dulaquois has a rather privileged upbringing. Unfortunately, his father dies in 185. The family moved back to Paris, and although they should have been comfortably off, Dulaquois's mother managed money very badly. So there's an air of genteel poverty that surrounds Dulaquois,

even though he is extremely well-born. It seems like... There is a suggestion that he was illegitimate, that he was even better born than he thought he was. Well, some old stories say that Talleyon was his father. That seems to be discredited by most people these days. Right, that's fine. We can move on then.

So Dulaquat then is forced to make a living. Usually someone from his state would have entered one of the professions. But because his family's fortunes and those of Napoleon are so intimately connected, there is no chance of him advancing. So he'd taken painting lessons, he'd... enters the studio of Guerr in 1815, with the absolute role of becoming a history painter. Well, it's a wonderful choice, isn't it?

You want to make a living, you're broker and aristocrat, and you decide to be a painter. It's a curious route to being a painter in modern terms, isn't it? Absolutely, yes. And very few people of Dulaquat's class ever became painters. How well was he trained in this studio? Because he was criticised as time went on for a while about his lack of technique.

Absolutely, yes. I mean, many of the paintings of Dulaquois that we see today are almost in ruins because he had this faulty technique. He does train with Gérardin, so there is an element of draftsmanship. His great studio for learning was the Louvre. So at the time of Dulaquois's youth,

the Louvre is full of Napoleonic booty, full of paintings that Napoleon had pinched. So it's a great place to go and learn. And Dulaquire gravitates towards the colourists, people like Varenet, people like Rubens, the Venetian school. So colour, right from the start, is the medium that Dulaquois is going to use.

How well known was he in 1830 when it was 32 then, wasn't he? And he's had this rather shaky start. But was he well known? Had he made an effect? He's moderately successful. He'd made his debut in 1822 with the Bark of Dante. 1824, he paints a contemporary subject, scenes from the massacres of Kios,

so a scene of the Greek Wars of Independence that galvanise the intellectuals of Europe behind the Greek cause. Both of his initial first two paintings are bought by the state, so that's a pretty successful start. 1827, he paints his death of Sardinapolis that's roundly condemned. It's a great check to his career. It was thought to be in dubious moral taste. It's the suicide of an Assyrian potentate,

who at the same time as he kills himself, has all of his possessions, goods, chattels, concubines, destroyed at the same time. So it was thought to be not only a dubious subject, but also technically inept. People had great doubts about how good a painter Dulaquois actually was. So when we're thinking about 1830 and the motivations behind Dulaquah painting liberty, perhaps there's also some sense that with a new regime, a new opportunity might be found for him. Was he at this stage, could it be described as a political animal in any sense at all? We don't know a great deal about Dulaquois's political beliefs.

Clearly he had this nostalgia for Napoleon that goes back to his father. Some of the very earliest works of art we've got by him are satirical and political prints. So in the immediate aftermath of the occupation of Paris by the Allies, there were some political prints produced by Dulaquois. The scenes from the massacres of chaos, was it a painting asking for support for the Greek cause, or was it merely a way of painting a topical and interesting subject to advance his career. So we're not quite sure about his political opinions at this stage.

And Taigab, despite the, as it were, questions about his technique, he's sometimes described as the leader of French Romanticism in art. What's meant by that? Well, already in the 1820s, I think Delacroix comes to be identified as a romantic painter. And with that label, of course, is a very complex label and one with which we are now quite uncomfortable. Successive historians and critics have used it and debused it in all sorts of ways. Baudelaire, of course, in the 1840s described him as the great protagonist of romanticism. But already in the 1820s, Delacro was seen to occupy a position in direct opposition to his arch-rival Ang. And Ang was seen as the great neoclassical painter, the great heir of David and the classical tradition.

With Delacroix, in the 1820s already, particularly, around 1827 and the death of Sardinapolis being seen as the protagonist of a new revolutionary spirit in painting which was seen to celebrate the imagination and individuality and also certain kinds of painterly and formal properties colour movement dynamism these were the formal characteristics associated with romanticism and Delacqua comes to be seen to be the embodiment of that, although, you know, it's a simplification, really. Yes. But it's a movement that's growing up

in this country, particularly in the Lake District and in Germany. So you see him as part of up with Fridgert. Well, he can be seen in that way, and of course, the source for the death of Sartanapolis was a poem by Byron. So he is associated with musicians.

He was a friend of Chopin. He, you know, understood his Mozart. He knew the kind of music of the early 19th century and he admired the certain poets and writers. So I think with a broad brush, people have placed him in that context. It's interest in

a certain kind of naturalism and landscape and setting, etc. Also seen to distance him from the classical tradition of a kind of backward-looking archaic, perhaps a representation of space with stasis and stillness

and calm and formality being associated with it. But I think that this belies the complexity of de la Croix's contribution because of course he was interested in the past too he was interested in the classical tradition and he wrote about and thought about figures like pussain the great 17th century classicist and he himself was not antipathetic to the academy he strove a lot of his for a large portion of his life to become associated with the academy and didn't achieve that until the 1850s so i think it's a much more complex situation than these kinds of polarities would lead us

to believe. But it is true that already in the 1820s and subsequently in the 19th century, he is regarded as a romantic figure. But in the 1820s, to stick to our period, before we hit this particular painting. Was he part of a group? Did he gather a group around him? Was he a leader of a group? We're imagining Paris at this time in various sorts of

firmmen, but always exciting and interesting. Can you just give us some idea over the conference? He certainly had friends among literary figures like Georgeson, etc. He was associated with intellectuals and writers and musicians and poets. and he would certainly have identified with many of those in particular critics as well, who became his apologists a little bit later as well.

But in terms of other painters, I'm trying to think. Perhaps I would like to come in on that. Well, Dulaquah's part of a young generation of experimental artists. I think anybody writing in the mid to late 1820s about romanticism wouldn't necessarily think Dulaquo was its greatest exponent. an artist like Orez Verne and Leon Quangier There are plenty of other artists that are doing similar things to Dulaquois But it's really with this death of Sardinapolis in 1827

That catapults Dulaquois into this capital position in romanticism Don't you want to add Jericho to the mix Well, Jericho's dead in 1824 Yeah, but Jericho had had a considerable influence on Della Crabbe which he acknowledged himself. Indeed, it's thought that De La Croix was the model for one of the figures in the raft of the Medea. He was. Yes. So I think Jericho, who had made a tremendous impact, really does need to be added into the origins of Jada alquharia.

Can I ask you, Tomah, does this early give us any hint of the man who is going to paint liberty leading the people? Well, it does in a way, because of course the figure of the semi-cloud revolutionary female, the allegorical figure, had already been there earlier on in his image of Greece. the embodiment of Greece in one of his earlier paintings is a picture, rather more demure, we might say, than the figure of liberty, not so much giving the appearance of a woman of the people. And we can go on to describe and discuss the controversy around that when we think about the relationship between allegory and realism, perhaps a little bit later. But certainly in his earlier work, he had been open to the idea and to exploring the possibility of what it might be to represent an abstract ideal in the figure of a woman. He'd been interested in military images.

He was interested in the kind of movement and the tempestuous, you might think, vibrancy really, of the crowd. We see that in some of the earlier work. And we was also interested in colour already very much in the 1820s and in a kind of painterliness, which did differentiate him from the Davidian school and Ang and figures like that more associated with neoclassicism. Jim Blanning, the Bourbon monarchy was overthrown in these three glock

says, which you led us to from 1814. We're now in July 1830. What happened on those three, with the French called the Three Glorious Days? So what happened in those three days, which formed the basis a few months later of his painting? The Three Glorious Days of the 27th, 28th and 29th of July. But as so often with appellations of this kind, you really need to go back a bit to the previous day. Well, that's what his first of, exactly. It's the 26th of July when the four ordinances I referred to are published in the Government

newspaper Le Monitur. And on the evening of the 26th of July, trouble starts at the Palais Royal, where print workers, journalists and others connected with the printing trades, because they were the people who were to be most adversely affected by the first of those four ordinances, gather, they start to protest, the police and the troops arrive, there's fighting, they're shooting, Polyniac is found and stoned. So there's already violence on the 26th, but on the 27th, the balloon really goes up. That's when they take to the barricades, they're shooting, there are casualties,

people are killed on both sides. And then on the 28th, which is what we see depicted in Droglois' painting, there's savage fighting across Paris. Something like 4,000 barricades that's been estimated, went up across the streets of Paris. On the 29th of July,

which turns out to be the decisive day, the crowd, take the Tweedooleary Palace. That's the decisive moment. Partly because there are so many of them, this, irresistible, popular force, and that's captured so very well in this painting, but also crucially because

so many of the royal troops are defecting, are muting and going, fraternising with the crowd. It's really all over by the end of the 29th. Just as a small digression, did the word barricades come from this time? It didn't. No, it didn't. There had been barricades. I think the, well, barricades had gone up in Paris back

in the late 16th century, as part of the confessional disputes. I was misinformed. Okay, let's go on. Can we turn to the painting in slightly more detail, Simon Lee? Can you describe, give us an overall view. I know people, some people, might have it on their website, these new dimension we have of showing pictures as well as talking. Could catch on.

Can you just describe the painting and outline, and then let's get to grips with it? So, Liberty, this figure, semi-nude figure of a female allegory, is holding a musket in one hand, the trickler in the other. she's atop a barricade and she's surrounded by figures from all different classes, all different ages. At her feet are a couple of dead royalist soldiers

and what we usually think to be a dead insurgent who's partially stripped as well. In the background we've got the Tower of Notre Dame and on one of the towers of Notre Dame there's a tiny tricula flying and we know that that trickler flew on the 28th of June so the painting is located in a specific time but there's no specific location.

All the people that saw the painting said that this isn't an actual event. This is an amalgamation. This is an invention by Doloquois. Tamarab, the centre of the painting is this female figure of liberty. Now, can you tell us about her, what's her significance, and let's go on from here. Well, it's really fascinating, of course,

because the idea of representing some abstract ideal in the figure of a female is not new. Truth, liberty, the republic, love, we're used to seeing allegorical representations of female figures. More often, though, figures of truth are naked figures. Here you have a figure in a kind of strange hybridised costume. It looks a little bit like a Greek tunic, a Greek chiton, which would have been worn in ancient times or in representations with one bare breast.

But here it looks more like a proletarian frock. So there's a strange amalgamation here of something which is an allusion to the contemporary as well as an allusion to the classical. And the other things that are going on are interesting. And showing two breasts instead of one. And showing two breasts instead of one, absolutely. And of course the way the body is represented departs from the rather modest, chaste, static representations of the Republic

that we're more used to seeing, say, from the revolution of just after 1789. Can we just nail, he would have taken a model, wouldn't he? He would have drawn this from a model, this woman, would he? Or wouldn't it? Would it just... We don't know. There are some studies and we see that there are in the studies

it seems that he has drawn from life but I think that it would have been an amalgamation and I think in that sense he's very much a classical artist he works as other artists do with preparatory drawings with precedents he would have looked at prints he would have adapted and he would have also worked from the model so what you get is an amalgamation.

So we have no sense that this is a particular person one of the models in Paris at the time who might have been an actress and so on. Not as far as we know this. consensus about that. Of course, there are some historians who have wanted to identify this figure with a particular woman who was supposed to be a heroine of the barricade, but I think that's been discredited. Haina, whom I quoted at the beginning of the programme, suggested that she also had a route back to an ancient prostitute, and a bare breastedness was some talk. If that were

even partly true, be extremely interesting, because it's somebody, it's a woman, obviously, but it's also somebody from the lowest of the lower classes leading this thing. forward, it could be interesting. Is there anything in it? No, Hainer said three things. He said that the figure reminded him of a fishwife, a prostitute and a goddess. Now, none of us is looking in ancient sources for an image of a fishwife.

And I think that we also can't look in ancient sources for an image of a prostitute, because there is a convention which goes right the way back to the Renaissance. Well, why did Hines say it then? He wasn't a stupid man. I've got to quote somewhere. Well, I think he might have wanted to see this as an embodiment of a new kind of uprising, of a particular kind of

you know, a campaign for perhaps rights for women and it becomes a figure of class. I'm not saying a, I mean, I'm not actually suggesting for one moment a prostitute can't declare the rights of women. I think it's interesting if she does, Tim. I don't think he uses the word prostitute. The way to use is Frisne. Yes, which is not a prostitute. It's a classical allusion. I'm going to look at my notes while you talk among yourselves.

It's been largely translated as that, hasn't it? Yes, well, in the German, it comes as frisnay. which has been translated inaccurately in my view as a prostitute. So what is prisoner then? What is prisoner? It's a reference to a classical figure, but I'm afraid I'm searching my memory now.

It's a courtesan. It's a upper class prostitute in inverted commas in relation to 19th century classifications of these things. But I think the important thing is... I don't think we've got very far, but still, let's move on. Well, I think that, you know, I think left-wing historians, Hobbesbaum, being the greatest amongst them, have wanted to see this as the embodiment

of a certain kind of move towards women's rights and the image of the working class woman here being a specific reference to a particular transformation of French society. But this, I think, is really not the case. I think we really have to look at the fact that the allegorization of abstract ideals as being embodied by a woman is something that goes right the way back to the Renaissance.

Here we have it mediated through an image which references the contemporary. It's true. And we can talk about what that might mean. Well, we were talking about it and then we went in a different direction. Tim, can you give us some precedence for the Delacroix? Can you just leave on...

Let me ask the question. Can you give us some precedence that Delacroir might have had in his choice of women to express liberty? We refer to them. There's masses of them. Who are they? Sorry, Melvin. I was going to have a little verse which supported what Tamar was saying.

Well, the woman has a name. Her name is Marianne. She's the personification of the revolution, of liberty, and of the republic. and it goes back to the very early days of the French Revolution. There's some debate as to when she actually makes an appearance and is called Marianne, but she's certainly well in place by 1792, identified with the name.

As is so often the case, the name was invented in the first instance by those who wished to attack the revolution. Then it was adopted as a badge of pride. And her imagery, particularly, this is, something we haven't mentioned yet, but certainly ought to now, the fact that she is wearing a Phrygian cap, a Phrygian cap of Liberty, is a persistent image

throughout the 1790s. So D'Ala Choir had a long iconographical record to look back to. And did he go further back than that? Again, there have been references to, even back to the Madonna, to Venus and so on. Are we expected to read that into it as well?

Well, this is a little speculative, I think, but there is certainly a case for arguing that the revolutionaries knew what they were doing in the 1790s, and in Marianne, which was a popular name at the time, they are creating a secular revolutionary equivalent to the Virgin Mary, who of course was the badge of counter-revolution. So that's a little speculative, but I think that's, I would buy that one. Simon Lee, we have a variety of male figures around.

Can you tell us of the two or three more prominent ones? Well, the figure that's at the feet of liberty, the chap in the blue shirt a considerable amount of debate over what class he represents, who is he. My own feeling is that he's probably a print worker. It doesn't come out very well in many of the illustrations, but he's mortally wounded.

He's got a wound in his chest. It's pouring onto the cobblestones. So I think this is a figure that's dying. Why should he be a print worker? Because the print workers were extremely militant. They were some of the first people on the barricades, and their jobs are going to be affected by any restrictions on the press. So it's a sort of guess really, isn't it?

Well, looking at his clothing as well, gives us an idea, because costume historians have a field day and working out who's who in this painting. So he's dying, and he's the only figure in the painting that's actually looking at liberty. All of the other figures are getting on with the business of storming this barricade. And they're two more prominent. There's a young boy with the pistols. He's often identified as a student, because the cap he's wearing

is a cap that students wore at the time. And he's brandishing these stolen pistols, these looted pistols, he's also got an ammunition pouch. And of course, the painting is always called Liberty leading the people, but of course it's this figure that's the foremost in the painting. And then there's a chap with a top hat and the musk. Chap with a top hat, yes. Some accounts suggest that this is a self-portrableau. I don't think it is at all.

I don't think it's a named figure. I think this is a type. I think this is somebody of maybe an artisan, somebody the head of a workshop. And of course nowadays we associate top hats with elevated social status. Top hats were worn by everybody at this time. So if you look at Prince of the 1830 Revolution, many of the fighters have got top hats on. So it's not such a great mark of social class.

Tomar, can you tell us what you make of the way that he arranges his figures in this painting? I think it's something very interesting going on here because for the great revolutionary romantic, in some ways it's a rather traditional composition. We have a pyramidal structure with the figure of Liberty herself really at the time. the top of it mounting this whole collection of male figures that surround her. And at the same time, you've got a rather horizontal composition where you've got a sort of clear kind of horizon line. So this idea of a pyramid surmounting a horizontal format is something that one would have seen in history painting right the way back, you know, from the 17th century.

So I think that's very interesting, is you've got this tempestuous sense of movement and vibrant painterly brushwork and colour but actually the composition is really rather stable and solid. But there's the pathetic fallacy isn't there as well, the sky itself is joining in the turmoil. It's a turbulent sky. That's absolutely true and of course the buildings of not adorn that you see at the back and we can situate

this in an actual physical space it's not by any sense an abstracted or a generalized space. It is the specific location that's very important but I other thing that I wanted to add actually to what Simon was saying in relation to the figures that surround the body is that of course what creates the stability and the gravity

are the two dead figures of men in the front. And you have one which is the National Guard lying, creating the right-hand flank, a very, very deadly figure of the sort of torn uniform of this figure. And then the very scandalous figure on the left. And this is the other naked body in the picture. People always obsess about the breasts of liberty. But what about the groin of the figure on the left?

This is highly transgressive. You have a semi-naked male figure, one sock on, one sock off, with his pubic area exposed and pubic hair even exposed. Now this is arguably even more scandalous than, you know, Liberty's nipples being exposed. So I think there's a lot going on here, which is about sexuality and about dirt and about the people

that's articulated across the picture. Tim, do you want to add that... Just a little bit... Tony, Tony, any other figure before we move on. About the boy with the two pistols, who it has been asserted anyway, reappears as Gavroche in Les Miserables of Victor Bucco. So he's had a very long history indeed

and appears on the London stage as we speak. To this day. I'm staying with you, Tim. The painting is called Liberty Leading the People. How meaningful a concert was The People in 1830? Ah, well, that's a very good question, Melvin, which is extremely difficult to answer because one man's people was another woman's mob.

There are more French words for mob than there are Eskimo words for snow. And especially someone like Delacroix, who is definitely centre-right. I mean, if we're trying to sum up his political views, he's a liberal Bonapartist. But he was afraid of the mob, and he referred to them as the mob, and distinguished quite clearly between the multitude, a vile multitude, the vile mob and the people. The people is an idealised, it's not an aggregate of individuals, it's an idealised concept of what the people ought to be but aren't really. And so what we see here are the people elevated by the figure of liberty into a greater cause.

Individually, they may well be squalid and dirty and violent and so on. But when they're put together and led by an abstract concept, they are then transformed into something much higher. It is extraordinary what you said earlier in the programme, that these four ordinances by Charles the Tent, the Stupidest King they'd had for a very long time, instantly inflamed the French, as it were. They just rose up again. They were not having this.

And they solidified as the people. Yes. Just so. And that's how they chose to present themselves. That's how they legitimated themselves. This is popular sovereignty in action. And there is, of course, they knew what they were doing because they had a model. They could go back to 1789, to 1791, 19.

in the 93, 94, they had a template, they had a script to follow, and that's what they're doing. And so they are presenting themselves as the people, although in reality, there are probably a minority of the people of Paris are, of small minority the people of Paris are involved. But a lot of people were killed. I mean, something like 500 insurgents were killed during these three days of fighting. That's quite a big casualty rate. Correct me if I'm wrong, though, Tim. What I understand is that, of course, this concept of the people over here is a myth, because when one looks at the records of who, in fact, died on the barricade. of 1830, there are the artisans

and the workers. In fact, this idea of a kind of unifying, mobilising category called people is something that rhetorically has come to be, you know, coalesce around this picture, but history doesn't bear that out. You're absolutely right. And in a sense, that is what Delacri is doing, is he's creating an instant mythology

for the revolution of 1830. He wrote to his brother, I wasn't able to fight, but at least I can paint for the people. And of course, the... class of people that are conspicuously missing in this painting are the bourgeoisie. Ultimately, that class of people that benefited the most from the 1830 revolution. So Dulaquois is deliberately choosing his types from the lower areas of society. And I always think that the painting is a tribute to the kind of self-determination of the French people

to mobilize themselves when their freedoms are threatened. And lest we forget, of course, women had no rights at all at this time. So the great irony of the picture is that liberty is embodied. here and allegorized as a female figure. But the 19th century saw the complete deprivation of rights for women, and women arguably had more rights in the Anson regime when they were to have after

the Napoleonic Code. This doesn't change for a very long time in France, and I think one needs to remember that. But that was what I was fidgeting for unsuccessfully earlier, saying, by putting a woman so realistic, so prominent, was he actually also saying, this is part of our revolution too?

The woman, the position of the woman? No, I'm afraid not. I mean, we would love to think so. It's all allegorical. It's all allegorical. And in fact, you know, women only get the vote in France in 1946. It's a very long time. And they have absolutely no right at this point. You know, the qualified franchise.

It's not even on the suffragettes only emerge in France very, very much later. And it's a tiny, tiny little movement. Did the suffragettes take this painting as some kind of inspiration to them? Well, of course, funnily enough, now they do. I mean, we can talk about that later if you like, but it's become an image very much that, you know, the woman warrior and women's rights as a protagonist and as an emblem for women's rights. But at this time, it was really,

understood as an allegory, not as an advocate of anything to do with women's rights, except by a few very, very marginal socialist women. And they did exist all the way through the 19th century, but they were really a tiny minority. It's not at all uncommon to have a woman as a national symbol. There's Marianne for France. There's Germania for Germany, Britannia, for Britain, and so on. This is quite common. And it goes back to classical times. What's happening in the psychology then, Tim, it's fascinating. isn't it, that you choose a woman who has no rights whatsoever to represent some people going for all the rights they can gain.

It is a wonderful irony, I agree. Simon, of course, liberty is a feminine noun as well, so embodiments of her were always going to be female. Well, can I just turn to... Sorry, if you want to say something, I want to move on to the painting being, we've got a bit of a way to go. I won't say much about it, except to say that there have been lots of accounts of why women serve the purposes of allegory.

one of which might be that because there weren't women who were actually identified with political roles at the time and certainly earlier as well, if you wanted an abstract ideal, a woman could serve that. A woman was regarded as a blank state onto which you could project various abstract ideals. The painting Simon Lee was first exhibited in 1831 at the salon.

What reaction did it pervert in 1831? A rather mixed reaction. The 1831 Salon was the largest salon that had ever taken place over 2,500 paintings. About 35 of those were concerned with the events of the Three Glorious Days. But Dulaquois was the only major painter to take up this theme. He's the only major painter as well that has this curious mixture of allegory and realism. So I think he's trying to create an image that goes beyond those mere events of 1830,

something to project almost into the future an aspiration for later generations. And from what we read, the visitors of the gallery were crowding around his painting. It was thought by those who visited as being an... An outstanding painting in the exhibition. Is that right? Outstanding, but also very worrying. Because, of course, as a spectator, you're placed very close to these people. And depending on your political position, these are either freedom fighters that you can identify with,

or this is a terrible mob that's going to sweep away your riches. Tim Lanning, the French government bought the painting. What happened next? It went on display in the Luxembourg, but was very quickly removed. by 1832, I think it's out of circulation. And indeed it goes back to De La Crosse Studio. Then it reappears. Why was it removed?

I think Louis Philippe, who had become king. We haven't mentioned Louis Philippe yet. He's the head of the House of Orleans, junior branch of the Bourbon, who becomes king after the collapse of the... Of the French. What's of the French people, but not of France? Is that right? A king of the French and not of France.

You're quite right. Louis Philippe was very much a man of the centre-right, I think we have to say. What he was looking for was just milieu. And so as with every post-revolutionary outbreak of insurrection in France, as soon as the revolution starts, a significant proportion of those who are trying to put the brakes on because they didn't want it to degenerate into the terror of 1793 to 4.

And so the breaks are going on almost as soon as the revolution has brought Louis Philippe to power. And I think, Simon will correct me if I'm wrong, I think it was just thought to be too inflammatory, too radical a painting, too much of a call to arms. Absolutely, and it's significant that the king doesn't buy the painting personally. He's a great patron of art and buys a lot of art, but it's the government that buys it, because of course the moment that it portrays is at a time in the revolution before Louis Philippe is part of the political equation. He's not part of the three days whatsoever.

So it's not surprising that the painting is bought briefly shown and then put away, because it's a constant reminder of the power of the people, the power of the mob. Tamangam, how did the painting return to prominence? How and when? In fact, it's engraved in Iraq. I think in 1848, if I'm not mistaken, an engraving is generated of it. And then in 1855, with the Exposition Universal, Delacroix by this stage has become somewhat of an establishment figure.

He's rather admired. And he's given a one-person show at the big Paris Exposition Universal. And the picture is shown then. He chooses to show it in 55 And I think it enters into Another moment of the public imagination So that's a very important moment I'm not sure exactly when it goes then on public display

Perhaps Simon you would know when it actually enters Into the collection of the Louvre Because you had to be dead to have a painting in the Louvre It has to wait until de laquard dice It goes on show in 1874 It's in the Luxembourg Museum for Living Artists In the 1860s But of course when it's shown in 1855

it's often thought that maybe Dulaquire made some changes to this painting. Because if you look at Liberty's red bonnet, it's not that red. It's not nearly as red as the red on the trickler. And of course, that red bonnet had associations with republicanism and fanaticism. So when the Lube did an examination of this painting, they saw that Dulaquire had toned down this red bonnet. Exactly when he did it, we don't know. But it might well be that to make the painting more acceptable in 1855,

he made those changes. Tim Blurney. I think we should add that Dula Kra was not a Republican. He did not want to see a republic in 1830. Once the Bourbon Monarchy had collapsed, as a result of the three glorious days, there were all kinds of options. There might have been a Bonapartist resurrection. There might have been a republic.

There might have been the orliness. That was the solution that won out. And Dulaquois is certainly not looking for a Republican solution. There was some idea earlier on that being a romantic, he was against the classical, this is broad strokes, against the classical French tradition and leading something was a contra. Did he become pro after that?

Did he become for government for what was going on? Did he change his position? Yes, I think he was gradually, he was quite quickly absorbed into the establishment of Louis-Philippe and as Tamar has already observed by the 1850s, he's even being absorbed into the Empire of Napoleon III. And that sort of harks back to his Bonapartist loyalties.

Can we talk about his history since then, how it influenced, in my introduction I talked about posters, you talk about it. How did it play? Well, I think, of course, you know, the fact that people could see his work by the 1860s meant that younger artists, the young Suzanne, for example, artists like these have become absolutely emblematic of late 19th century colourism and painterliness

and the reformulation of modern painting, as we know it, really looked at his work and admired it enormously. I think he was powerfully important for that generation of late 19th. century artists. They ignored the technical limitations and went for the colour and the passion. Well, I don't think they saw them as technical limitations

because they themselves were, of course, standing against a certain academic refined notion of drawing. And Delacroa comes to stand for the great painterliness and colour that's associated with the opposition to line and the academic.

And the influence goes through. Do you want to take it up, Tim? Yes, I do, because the image keeps on coming up again and again and again in French, indeed in European art. One thing which just springs into my mind is a painting by John Hartfield from 1936, which is of Spanish fighters in the Spanish Civil War, and in the background you can see the Dulaquois painting.

But one of the things I think is important is to differentiate between the iconography of the painting, which has a life, the image of liberty which we see recycled from popular culture to high art throughout the late 19th and 20th century and even today. But then also Dellaquire, technique and his colourism, his association with, as you say, romanticism, the idea of the imagination, the notion of the artist as an inspired individual.

All these ideas really coalesce around his reputation as well. So we have both the iconography, which has its legacy, and also the reputation of Delacroix himself as a painter that embodies these ideals. And the wonderful emphasis on conservatism when she's on a postage stamp and on a banknote. Absolutely. And of course, she comes to represent France PLC. Liberty is sent to Japan for the trade fair, the year of France in Japan. And of course, it also reminds me, Charlotte-Gol, very famously said any nation that has 300 types of cheese can't be governed. You might even look at this painting and think,

this is how ungovernable the French are. But of course it could be conservatized as well as an image or altered, if not conservatized. If you look at the way in which the Statue of Liberty is the kind of reworking of the state of the state of, figure but transformed again. Well, thank you all very much. Thank you, Tamagab.

Tim Blanning, Simon Lee, and next week we'll be talking about the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you for listening to this Radio 4 podcast. If you've enjoyed it, you might like to try others like it, such as Start the Week or Thinking Aloud, which are both available from the Radio 4 website.