Erotica in Art
" In art, immorality cannot exist.
Art is always sacred"
August Rodin
Eugene Delacroix
b Charenton-Saint-Maurice, nr Paris, 26 April 1798; d Paris, 13 Aug 1863).
French painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was one of the greatest painters of the first half of the 19th century, the last history painter in Europe and the embodiment of ROMANTICISM in the visual arts. At the heart of Delacroix’s career is the paradox between the revolutionary and the conventional: as the arch-enemy of JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES and as the leading figure of the French Romantic movement, he was celebrated for undermining the tradition of painting established by JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID, yet he nevertheless enjoyed official patronage from the beginning of the Restoration (1814–30) until the Second Empire (1852–70).
Theodore Gericault
b Rouen, 26 Sept 1791; d Paris, 26 Jan 1824.
French painter, draughtsman, lithographer and sculptor. He experienced the exaltation of Napoleon’s triumphs in his boyhood, reached maturity at the time of the empire’s agony and ended his career of little more than 12 working years in the troubled early period of the Restoration. When he died, he was known to the public only by the three paintings he had exhibited at the Salon in Paris, the Charging Chasseur (1812; Paris, Louvre), the Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Field of Battle (1814; Paris, Louvre) and the Raft of the Medusa (1819; Paris, Louvre), and by a handful of lithographs.
