Delacroix, Art and Patrimony in Post-Revolutionary France
This book focuses on Eugène Delacroix's paintings produced during the Bourbon Restoration. Elizabeth Fraser demonstrates how these works, which include many of his best known paintings, such as The Death of Sardanapalus and Scenes from the Massacre at Chios, commented on contemporary efforts to reconcile the current political situation with the traumatic past of the French Revolution. Analyzing aspects of post-Revolutionary French society, such as social, legal and artistic constructions of inheritance and lineage, Fraser shows how the family served as an important subtext in Delacroix's art and as a political emblem in the Restoration. She also shows how private art collecting and art criticism served as forms of activist citizenship. Collectively these and other topics demonstrate that Delacroix's art was as much formed by a monarchical rule, as it was part of the resistance to it.
- Interdisciplinary approach using art history, literature, history, gender studies
- Original archival research
- Uses broad range of visual materials to place Delacroix's art in context of popular imagery
Reviews & endorsements
'The cultural-historical approach to these highly aestheticised paintings, particularly in the context of the Restoration, is welcome and there is some fine visual analysis of the individual works. … Fraser's book has much of value to say about the reception of Delacroix in the 1820s and the historical circumstances of producing, viewing, purchasing and interpreting contemporary art during the Restoration.' The Burlington Magazine
'Fraser's book has much of value to say about the reception of Delacroix in the 1820s and the historical circumstances of producing, viewing, purchasing and interpreting contemporary art during the Restoration.' The Burlington Magazine
Product details
May 2004Hardback
9780521828291
286 pages
255 × 182 × 21 mm
0.81kg
69 b/w illus. 8 colour illus.
Unavailable - out of print September 2006
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Delacroix, the Bourbons, and the problem of inheritance
- 1. Choosing fathers: Dante and Virgil
- 2. Family as nation in the Massacres of Chios
- 3. Contesting paternal authority: Delacroix, the private collector, and the public
- 4. Sardanapalus: the life and death of the royal body
- Epilogue: Gender and the family politics of the Restoration.