Study of Bodies "Liberty Leading the People"

Eugène Delacroix

1830 · Point of brush and brown ink on off-white woven paper · Robert Lehman Collection

A priest kneels among corpses as a mob passes in the distance at the upper left. This brush drawing is traditionally thought to represent an episode of street violence in Paris that Eugène Delacroix witnessed during the July Revolution of 1830. As such, it served as raw material for his best-known work: Liberty Leading the People (1830; Musée du Louvre, Paris), exhibited at the Salon the following year. Absent is the allegorical figure of Liberty herself, triumphantly bearing a rifle in her left hand and the tricolor flag in her right.

Artist

Eugène Delacroix

Date

1830

Medium

Point of brush and brown ink on off-white woven paper

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975