Patrick Bade
Delacroix: Art and Revolution: Liberty Leading the People

Patrick Bade - Delacroix: Art and Revolution: Liberty Leading the People

- My talk today is about Delacroix’s famous painting, “Liberty Leading the People.” So I’m going to talk about what led up to it, the influences on Delacroix, the impact that it had, and the influence that it had, and the uses made of it right up to the present day. So I was very pleased a couple of days ago when I walked past a newsagent, and I saw this magazine cover in the window. The magazine “Le Point” is a weekly political magazine. It’s something like “Newsweek.” It’s sort of centre right in its political position. It belongs to Monsieur Pinault, who used to be my boss at Christie’s. He’s the owner of Christie’s. And so, I’ll give you a pic, the whole picture. This is the picture. It’s in the Louvre. It celebrates the Revolution of 1830. I’m sure you know there’ve been several French revolutions. The 1830 one was the second one, and it swept away the restored Bourbon monarchy. Just reaching for my notes on the other side of the room. So after the defeat of Napoleon, the two brothers of the executed Louis the 16th became king, Louis the 18th, who was kind of a wily old devil. But after he died, his brother, Charles the 10th, took over, and it was famously said of him that he had forgotten nothing and he had learnt nothing. And he wanted to switch the clock back to the Ancien Regime, reverse everything that had happened since the French Revolution, and that proved to be impossible. So Delacroix was actually, I would say, not a particularly political artist. This is really quite exceptional in his work. But he obviously felt that the replacement of the, an absolutist Bourbon monarchy by Louis Philippe, which was a sort of parliamentary monarchy, rather based on the English system. He obviously felt that was a good thing. And he painted this really quite surprisingly inflammatory painting, sent it to the Salon of 1831, where it was bought by the state.

But as I said, it’s quite a, it’s an inflammatory image. It’s an exciting image. And the government actually lost their nerve. They didn’t dare to exhibit it in a public museum. So it was actually returned to the artist and not publicly exhibited until well after his death, not ‘til 1874. Now it’s what is termed a modern history painting, so it’s dealing with an incident, a contemporary incident, but it’s dealing with it on a monumental and heroic scale. So this type of modern history painting was actually quite a recent development in western art. And the artist who’s credited with inventing this new genre is the American Benjamin West. This painting dated at 1770 of “The Death of General Wolfe.” He was the victorious general against the French, took the heights of Quebec in 1759. So it’s not exactly a brand new political, or event, that’s being celebrated here, but it’s a very recent one. This was one of the key victories in the Seven Years’ War between Britain and France, which was actually one of the most important wars in modern history in that it really did change the course of history. It meant that North America was English speaking, largely, instead of French speaking, and it also meant that India became part of the British Empire instead of being part of the French Empire. So he’s gone to quite a lot of trouble, I suppose, to get all the uniforms right and some of the detail right. But yet, you can see that, rather like Delacroix, he’s, ideally, he’s monumentalizing and idealising the subject.

You have this magnificent, muscular-looking Native American in a very thoughtful pose who looks more like a Greek athlete, but he’s probably a real Native American. And he, Benjamin West heightens the pathos of the scene by references to Christian iconography. The pose of the dying General Wolfe and the way he’s surrounded by figures is derived from images of the dissent from the cross. In a way, I’ve slightly spoiled it by telling you that, ‘cause I think it’s better if it works subliminally, if you just pick up these memories of the art of the past. So, as I said, Benjamin West, not a particularly good artist, I would say, but he’s important as the first American artist with an international reputation. But above all, he’s important for inventing this new genre of the modern history painting, which was taken up by other, I would say, much better artists, first of all, by another American. This is John Singleton Copley, and this is a painting of 1781, “The Death of Major Peirson.” It was an event in the long history of warfare between France and England when the French attempted to raid the island of Jersey and they were beaten off by the English. And this army officer was killed in this incident. Once again, you can see there is a decided reference, I think, to the imagery of Christ taken down from the cross. I think Copley’s a rather more accomplished artist, I would say, than Benjamin West. But I want to say a little bit about history painting as opposed to modern history painting. This is by Jacques-Louis David.

It was actually painted in Rome in the winter of 1784 to '85. It’s the “Oath of the Horatii.” It’s a key painting because it really defines the new neo-classical style of the late 18th century. And it also defines what people understood by history painting for the next generation or so. So it’s on a big scale, it’s a heroic painting. It is very impressive. I always stand in front of it for a bit when I go to the Louvre. I think for a lot of modern eyes, it’s a disturbing image. Of course, we’ve got that gesture, which was later taken up by fascist regimes, the so-called German greeting, the fascist salute. Doesn’t necessarily have the same connotations here, but this is a painting which, in some ways, does seem to me to be proto-fascist or to have pre-echoes of authoritarian imagery. It’s a painting that celebrates the duty, or it elevates, shall we say, duty to the tribe, duty to the state over any kind of personal feelings. It’s a horrible story really about the Horatii brothers who fight the Curiatii for control of Rome. And there’s a battle between six of them. Only one survives. It’s Publius, he’s the older brother of the Horatii. And he comes back and he discovers that his sister is mourning the death of her fiance, who was one of the Curiatii. And he finds this so shocking and disloyal that he kills her on the spot, and this is supposed to be a sign of his virtue. So I find that this whole, well, to me, it’s a rather repulsive story. So if I had to choose between my sister and the state, my sister would get the vote. But you see in this picture too, also, I think something that is a little disturbing to us is the gender zoning. You can see it’s a picture which is very forcefully reinforcing gender stereotypes. Men as muscular, forceful, active, women as sort of droopy and passive on the right-hand side of the picture. So this is a picture, it’s got this general theme of loyalty to the state, of patriotism and so on. It didn’t have, when it was painted, a very specific political message.

And neither did this. This is, well, same artist, this is Jacques-Louis David, and it’s Brutus, the story of Brutus. And this was exhibited at the Salon of 1789, so it was in the Salon when the French Revolution broke out. When it was exhibited, it was not seen, again, as being a specifically political painting. It was actually going to be acquired by a member of the French Royal family. But once the revolution really broke out, it picked up those kind of connotations. And again, it’s a horrible story. Brutus, who sentenced his own sons to be executed because they had conspired against the Roman Republic to bring back the old Roman monarchy. We’ve got some of the same themes here. There’s the masculine side, that he’s completely stoical, philosophical figure, not showing any emotion as the bodies of his sons are brought home. And it’s the women who are all floppy and emotional and hysterical on the right-hand side of the picture. So David quickly gets swept up in the ideals of the French Revolution, and he was actually present at the famous Oath of the Tennis Court. France had become virtually ungovernable because the aristocracy, royalty, aristocracy, the church, they weren’t paying any taxes. So the whole tax burden fell on, actually, poorer people, and there were rumblings of discontent. And eventually Louis the 16th is persuaded to recall the state’s general, the equivalent of our part of British Parliament, which had not been called since 1614, so well over 150 years earlier.

And when the state general met, of course, they started making political demands and the king and his ministers took fright, and they tried to shut it down. So on this date, which was the 20th of June, 1789, a certain Dr. Guillotin, later famous for his invention of a machine for chopping people’s heads off. He suggested, well, as they were barred from meeting in the Palace of Versailles, they broke into the tennis court and they held a meeting in the tennis court and they swore an oath not to disband until the French had a constitution. And as I said, David was present and swept up in the communal emotion. As the oath was sworn, there was a sudden outburst of thunder, a sudden thunderstorm. If you look up the top left-hand side, you can see the wind from the thunderstorm. You can see somebody’s umbrella which is blowing inside out. So that must be something that David had observed in the moment of the swearing of the oath. This drawing is really the best evidence we had of what this picture would have been like if he’d painted it. It was going to be a huge canvas, 35 by 26 feet with lots of life-size figures. But he got swept up in the events of the revolution and he never got round to finishing off the painting. Again, it’s a painting, well, it’s an image, which I find slightly scary. Well, I always find it scary, a mob. I encounter mobs very often 'cause I live, when I’m in London, I live near the Arsenal football ground. And when I’m trying to get into the Tube, walking in the opposite direction are 60,000 football fans who are all united in some communal emotion. I find that a very, very scary experience. And with the image here we’ve got at the top is, of course, of a Nuremberg rally and the Oath at the Tennis Court, where you’ve got this huge crowd of people all swept up with the same common emotion, all using the same body language, all raising their arms. For me, it’s, again, a somewhat disturbing image.

This is the canvas which he’s, you can see has only barely been begun. And I think what’s interesting here is that, although he clearly intended to show people dressed in contemporary clothing, so it was going to be a big modern history painting, that he still actually conceives it by thinking of all the people in the nude before he dresses them. There’s a detail. It shows his method of working, which is a very non-painterly method really. It’s the method of a linear artist of establishing the contours and then just filling in. It’s almost like a painting by numbers. This to me is David’s greatest painting and his greatest modern history painting. This is the “Death of Marat” who was a revolutionary agitator who was murdered by Charlotte Corday. And it’s a tremendously powerful image actually. And once again, an image that is clearly based on images of the dead Christ. Now this, I would say, is the greatest of all modern history paintings. It’s the first half of the 19th century, maybe even the first third of the 19th century, where the genre of modern history painting really comes into its own. This is Goya, 3rd of May. It’s 3rd of May, 1808. Painting was actually painted a few years later, 1812 to '13. But again, it’s commemorating a very recent event. And this, in the Napoleonic Wars, France invaded Spain and the French, Napoleon, attempted to establish a puppet-client regime in Spain. It didn’t work. This is a very difficult thing to bring off. We’ve just seen Putin failing to do the same in the Ukraine. And he’s probably learned already, and he certainly will learn, that when you occupy a neighbouring country, it’s endless trouble, that people are going to resent it, they’re going to rebel, they’re going to rise against you.

And the French made the usual mistake that regimes always make when they try and invade a country and occupy a country, of terrible reprisals. And then, of course, you get into an endless cycle of violence on both sides. So there was an uprising in Madrid in May, 1808, against the French, and then the French did what seems the Russians have just done, round up people in the street and massacred them. I think this is one of the most powerful, if I had to choose one image in the whole of western art that to denounce man’s inhumanity to man and man’s cruelty, this would be it. It is the most extraordinary painting. Goya’s indignation and passion. You can’t really see that in the image on the screen, but it comes across in every stroke of the brush. And you can see that, once again, like the images I’ve shown you already, he’s making use of Christian imagery that the man with a white shirt, of course, with his arms thrown out, has a recollection of the crucifixion. Napoleon himself started commissioning modern history paintings. He’s one of the first leaders, no, actually, that’s not true 'cause there are plenty of early leaders who commissioned art as propaganda. Louis the 14th of course, and even as far back as the Medici, but once again, this is Baron Gros, and it commemorates Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign where the French army was badly affected by a plague of cholera. And in this image, Napoleon again is, I think, exploiting Christ-like associations in the New Testament, all these stories of Christ healing people by touching them. And that’s what Napoleon is showing himself doing here. In fact, the reality was very different because the sick French soldiers were holding up his military campaign. He actually had them poisoned and bumped off, and he certainly never went and took the risk of touching these people.

And this is the other great painting by Baron Gros, which is a modern history painting that commemorates the battle of Eylau in which the Prussians were defeated by the Frenches, perhaps the bloodiest, most brutal battle of the Napoleonic Wars. I’ll come back to this painting in a minute because the most influential aspect is this kind of frieze of death in the foreground. In fact, it reminds me of the images that we’re seeing on our screens at the moment of the corpses and the destruction in the Ukraine. Now this shows the Salon, the Salon, which was established in the 17th century by Louis the 14th, and it took place every year. It was called the Salon 'cause it took place originally in the Salon d'Apollon in the Louvre, and throughout the 18th century, it was a relatively small-scale exhibition. And it really grows in size and importance after the fall of Napoleon, 'cause even though you’ve got a restored monarchy, the monarchy, the court, the aristocracy, the church, they’d previously been the most important patrons. They were really eclipsed after 1815 by the rising wealthy bourgeoisie, and the Salon was really aimed at a much wider public after 1815. It grew enormously in size and tens of thousands of people would visit it. And you could say the great heyday of the Salon was between 1815 and the 1870s. And if an artist wanted to make a career, if he wanted success, he had to have a success at the Salon.

And in this image, which shows Charles the 10th opening the Salon, it shows you very clearly how the pictures were exhibited in a way that seems quite inartistic to us with huge canvases frame to frame, floor to ceiling. And in several of the years around this time, the Salon was actually biannual rather than annual, and the reason behind that was that they actually, that the French government wanted to encourage large-scale history painting. They thought it was better that the artists would have a two-year gap between the exhibitions and that would enable them to work on larger and more ambitious works. Now the great modern history painting of this period, is the “Raft of the Medusa.” It tells a story of a disastrous shipwreck that was due to the incompetence of the royalist aristocratic officers on the ship. I mean, most of 'em probably hadn’t been on a ship since the French Revolution, but when the monarchy was restored, they were all given very important positions. So, I won’t go in, I’ve talked about this picture at great length in the lecture on Géricault, so I won’t go into it now. Just to say that incredibly powerful image. And it was an image that was immediately read by the public as being critical of the French monarchy, the French government, the French state, and as having a very important political message. And the great historian, Michelet, at the time, he said, all of France is on this raft. You can read this picture in many ways. You can also see it, of course, as a kind of great philosophical statement about the human condition. Some would say it’s not just all of France, it’s all of us actually on this raft at the moment. Think of all the things that are threatening us, climate change, nuclear war, so many disastrous things going on in the world. You could see this is humanity on this fragile raft on a turbulent sea. And one of the most powerful elements in this picture, again, is this frieze of death along the bottom of the picture. And it’s often been suggested that this was inspired by the Baron Gros Eylau picture.

And we do know that some of the bodies, particularly the one on the right-hand side where it’s a very brutal image, really, isn’t it, with the naked legs and the head covered. But this was a last minute addition to the painting. And that his friend, the younger artist, Delacroix, actually, that’s Delacroix’s body, he posed for that. And it was clearly an image that stuck in Delacroix’s mind, 'cause you’ve got a very similar, it’s even more brutal really. The Delacroix on the left-hand side, the corpse at the foot of “Liberty Leading the People.” Delacroix, as I said, he wasn’t a particularly political artist, and he only painted three major modern history pictures in his career. And the other two are here, and they’re both inspired by the Greek War of Independence. Again, you could make parallels with what’s going on in Ukraine. The Greek War of Independence, it fired up liberals all over the world in sympathy for the Greek cause, Greeks being brutalised by the very much more powerful Ottoman Empire, the Turks. So this is “The Massacre of Chios” on the left-hand side, which is really a denunciation of Turkish atrocities and brutality, and the painting on the right-hand side, which I’m going to come back to at the end of this talk, which is “Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi.”

So here we are with this painting shown at the Salon of 1831. And you’ve got this allegorical, bare-breasted figure of Liberty, and she’s upholding the tricolour flag. Tricolour flag is the flag of the French Revolution. After the warhorse were restored, that flag was banned and replaced by the fleur-de-lis, the old image of the flag of the French monarchy. But with 1830, many of the trappings and imagery of revolution were brought back by the regime of Louis Philippe, including the tricolour flag. And there’s another message here that Delacroix is really ramming home and that is a unity in French society. So we have people, we have a student, we have a bourgeois man with a top hat, and we have working-class people, so he’s saying that all French of all classes are coming together in this revolution. So where did this striking image of the bare-breasted lady come from? And it’s always suggested that he was inspired by the Venus of Milos, the Venus de Milo, which had just been discovered 10 years earlier and had just entered the Louvre, and that seems to me to be quite a convincing suggestion. He’s given her back her arms, and she’s wearing a Phrygian cap, the Phrygian cap which you can see represented in ancient Greek art, but it became a symbol of the French Revolution, so it becomes, it’s a revolutionary thing to wear. There is a Phrygian cap top left, and this is some kind of demonstration I think, I’m not sure what for, recently in France where the women have, again, adopted the Phrygian cap. And I can’t resist making this little comparison. Delacroix and Ingres were sort of great rivals, bitterly opposed to one another. Delacroix was the art romantic, Ingres thought he was representing tradition, the classical tradition. Delacroix was colour painterly, Ingres was drawing, line and so on. The painting on the right-hand side by Ingres is of Jeanne d'Arc, Joan of Arc, and consciously or unconsciously, probably unconsciously actually, 'cause he really didn’t like Delacroix, there is, I think, an echo of the pose of “Liberty Leading the People” with the upstretched arm clutching the flag.

And one reason I wanted to include this was, I just think this is so witty and so wonderful. This is a “Sunday Times” magazine cover from the 1970s by Michael Leonard. I think I have mentioned before, I just, my latest book is actually about Michael Leonard, who is, I suppose, most famous for his portrait of the Queen with her corgis, but he’s a brilliant, brilliant illustrator in the 1960s and '70s. And this is his tongue-in-cheek representation of Mrs. Thatcher, the Iron Lady, with a heavy debt to Ingres. When the Louis Philippe regime replaced the old Bourbons, the great Napoleonic monuments of Paris, which had been left half built in 1815, were resumed. And this piece of sculpture, by an artist called Francois Rude, was commissioned to adorn the Arc de Triomphe, which had just been left half built in 1815. And this shows the departure of the volunteers, the so-called Marseillaise, when France, revolutionary with France was attacked on all sides. And there was a great patriotic uprising and volunteers marched from Marseilles to Paris. It’s also the subject, of course, of the national hymn “La Marseilles” which I’ll be talking about in my next talk. It’s a parallel. I mean, this was being worked on at the same time as “Liberty Leading the People.” And you can see a somewhat similar image of an allegorical female figure with her arms outstretched.

The figure of the, the allegorical figure, the face was based on the face of the artist’s wife who you see on the right-hand side. I think you can actually see that there is quite a strong physical likeness. I don’t know what it says about their relationship. And this, like the allegorical figure in “Liberty Leading the People,” it’s had a, you have a kind of echo effect, and both these famous statues, Statue of Liberty of Bartholdi on the left-hand side, and the Volgograd monument to the motherland on the right-hand side in the Soviet Union, I think they, particularly the Volgograd one, really, is indebted to the Rude “Marseillaise.” Now, the Louis Philippe regime didn’t really fulfil its promises. It was a bit like the regime that replaced the old Soviet Union. It was just an example, it was just an opportunity for a number of people to get rich quickly. And the prime minister of France, a man called Guizot, he was notorious for telling the French, “Enrichissez-vous,” get rich. It’s really like the, you know, greed is good message of the 1980s in America and Britain. And Louis Philippe was notorious, or the whole regime was notorious, for its incredible corruption, the ripping off of the state and so on. This is Daumier, top left, and this is his caricature of the king selling honours. You can see he’s being fed money and he’s shitting out honours for people. And Daumier actually got a six-month prison sentence for that image. And so the most, the other very, very famous political image of the Louis Philippe period, in addition to the Delacroix “Liberty Leading the People” is this, it’s a Daumier, and it’s the massacre in the Rue Transnonain. Paris was still, this was a very dense, mediaeval city. Haussmann had not yet bulldozed those wide, straight avenues through Paris.

And one of the main reasons for doing that, of course, was that the Parisians, and they’re still at it, they’re at it today, I could hear riots and sirens and God knows what going on on the Rue Lafayette, the French are always, the Parisians are always on the point of revolt. And with these narrow streets of Paris at the time, what they did was to throw out the barricades and the National Guard was sent out to clear away the barricades and somebody in a house fired on the National Guard. And in return, the usual thing, terrible, completely disproportional reaction, the National Guard then just massacred the inhabitants of the entire block. And so, that’s the image. And I think it’s, again, quite interesting. The bare legs, the prostrate figure. I wonder if Daumier consciously had “Liberty Leading the People” in mind when he made that. Next revolution, 1848. And so if Delacroix is the great image of 1830, which I suppose is an optimistic image of revolution, this painting on the right-hand side by Ernest Meissonier, it’s really his masterpiece I would say. It’s called “The Barricade,” the barricade. And it’s a very pessimistic image of the brutality of the 1848 revolution. So I would say the Delacroix, although he wasn’t particularly left wing or liberal in his views, that, it’s a liberal, left-wing image. Meissonier, who was certainly very right wing, this is a disillusioned, anti-revolutionary image of a revolution. And a big leap forward now. This is an Italian artist called Pellizza da Volpedo.

It’s a huge painting. There are actually two versions of this and they’re both absolutely enormous, and it’s called “The Fourth Estate.” So again, it’s a painting of a popular uprising. By this time, he’s doing away with the paraphernalia of the metaphorical imagery of liberty, the allegorical imagery of “Liberty Leading the People.” And it may be an image that’s familiar to you 'cause it was used by Bertolucci in his film “1900.” And this is the poster for that movie. Now in Russia, problematic Russia, this is the revolution, eventually aborted, of 1905. This is a painting by Ilya Repin showing a joyous, optimistic, popular uprising with the Russian people, again, demanding some kind of constitution, and then to the authoritarianism of the old czars. And when the revolution does take place, the Soviets develop a whole language, really, of revolutionary imagery, some of which goes back very directly, I would say, to the Delacroix. This is the Soviet pavilion in the Paris World Fair of 1937. And there are these very splendid Soviet posters, again, with people with flag-waving upraised arms.

And I’m just going to finish off, really, by going through some of the uses that have been made of the Delacroix, uses, some of you may, in some cases, think abuses. “Charlie Hebdo,” a highly dubious magazine, political magazine, in my opinion. You can see making use of it. This is quite a, I think quite a funny and quite a clever use of it. You may remember, there was a big fuss in France where they tried to ban Muslim women from wearing these cover-all bathing costumes. You think, well, why not let them do it if they want to do it? And these are, I’m not quite sure where, these are just things I picked up off the internet. There are so many images that are indebted to, this is Asterix, of course. I don’t know what this one is. I’m going to go through these quickly. And commercial, so sometimes these images, based on the Delacroix, have a political point, but a lot are, well, this one, obviously, is very blatantly commercial. I don’t really understand all of these. As I said, I’ve really picked them up quite randomly off the internet just by Googling “Liberty Leading the People” cartoons, and any number of these things came up. This is a ballet, which is based on Delacroix’s painting. This, I know this is going to be controversial, but this is the, on a wall in the West Bank, it’s a great concrete wall, and presumably, this is a Palestinian protest as you’ve got Palestinian flag there, again, making use of the imagery of Delacroix, and I put this in just to say how this image is still with us, and it’s still being used for all sorts of purposes. This is a drawing that is actually in my flat in Paris. It’s in the next room. And it’s by an artist called Paul Rumsey, who’s an artist I admire hugely. I think he’s totally brilliant, amazing draughtsman who comes up with very, very powerful images. Since I’ve started collecting his work, I’ve come to know him quite well and his wife, and they are the sweetest, gentlest, most idealistic people you could possibly wish to meet, but as you can see, his imagery is pretty dark stuff.

This is an image that’s critical of Brexit. That was the title he gave it. But while I was preparing this lecture, I thought about it and how, in a way, also the imagery does go back to Delacroix. He’s certainly an artist who’s very, very aware of the art of the past. So I emailed him and I said, do you mind if I change the title of your picture? Can I call this picture “The United Kingdom Expiring on the Ruins of Brexit?” And he said, oh yes, that’s a great idea. So that’s what I’m going to call it now. But his work, it’s political, mostly I would say, oh, here is the, where the idea of the title came from. The Delacroix “Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi.” I have a version of this, actually, in my bedroom in London. It’s one of the first things I see in the morning. You might think, oh my goodness, what a way to start the day. So a lot, most of his imagery, I’d say, is political, but in a very generalised way. So he’s certainly an artist who’s angry and he’s indignant, he’s angry about man’s inhumanity to man, he’s angry about violence. He’s angry about greed, the worst abuses of capitalism. He’s particularly angry about the arms trade. He’s angry about militarism. But I think they’re terrific drawings and I’d be interested to know what your reaction is to them. He’s not, this is unusual because, well, I don’t think I need to identify the particular political leader who is under attack here, but I would say that his drawings are political, because they’re generally, they’re more generalised rather than specific in their target. And here is, again, “The United Kingdom Expiring on the Ruins of Brexit” and the frame. I decorated the frame, with the artist’s permission, to go around that. So I’m going to see if we have questions or comments.

Q&A and Comments:

Thank you very much, Alice, and thank you, Barbara. Oh, very nice, positive messages.

No, I don’t think he, Monsieur Pinault didn’t found La Croix. It goes back to the 1970s, but he bought it. We have a painting of the death, painting of “The Death of General Wolfe” in Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada. I’m not sure, there are two versions of it. There’s one in the National Portrait area in London, and I’m not sure which one was the first version. Thank you, Susan.

Q: Do you think that Nazis had this painting by David in mind when they instituted the Nazi salute?

A: Not, I don’t know. And I think the Italians had it first, didn’t they? It is something that goes back to ancient culture. So I’m sure that they were aware of the David, but I don’t think you can specifically blame David. I think that that raised arm salute is something that actually goes back to the ancient Romans.

The tennis courts. You know, I’ve been to Versailles many times, but I’ve never been to the tennis court. That’s interesting.

Dr. Barnes, yes. Well, not quite the same way as at the Salon. I mean, his way of, he had this wonderfully eccentric way of exhibiting his paintings with sort of farming implements and all sorts of odd objects included amongst the paintings.

Q: Which gallery has this picture?

A: If you’re talking about the “Liberty Leading the People”, it’s in the Louvre.

Q: Did the French Salon influence the founding and the growth of the British Royal Academy?

A: Yes, there were very, the British Royal Academy was founded about 100 years after. It dates from 1768, but it had the same purpose. It was an annual exhibition that was meant to be a place where artists could show their work and reach a wider public. I don’t know if there’s been any specific, there’ve been lots of exhibitions about the Salon. There’ve been lots of exhibitions about the Royal Academy Summer exhibition. Of course, in the 19th century, there were people like Sargent who exhibited in both.

Where are we going here? Paris Marathon today. Yeah, you’re quite right. Yes, that was probably it. It sounded like a revolution, but it was probably the marathon runners going down the Rue Lafayette.

Q: Was Delacroix’s liberty the first “Mariana?”

A: I’m not sure. Now, I need to find, do a bit of research there.

Q: Would you consider Delacroix’s one of the fathers of Impressionism?

A: Yes. With, in a certain way, in his colour theories and particularly in his later work, his use of the divided touch, the impressionists were all very, particularly Renoir, of course, was very, very keen on Delacroix.

Yes, he had a big influence on later French painting. The drawings, you’re talking about my friend, Paul Rumsey? Yes, he’s very influenced by Goya.

The elephant is Baba, thank you. Thank you. So many flag wavers. Yes, I know. A bit depressing, really.

Thank you for all your nice, the name of the last artist is Paul Rumsey, R-U-M-S-E-Y, and he does have a website, so you could go on and see more of his imagery. Paul Rumsey. Thank you. See lots of pictures to frame to frame. Yes. See the location of the tennis court of Versailles have been reopened and restored. Yes, thank you. Next time I go to Versailles, I’ll visit it.

Hope you don’t have too many nightmares, Nanette.

Jeu de Paume. Yes, well of course, there’s the other Jeu de Paume tennis court, which is the one in the Tuileries Gardens, which was part of the Tuileries Palace. Divided touch means if you compare Delacroix and Ingres, Ingres, all the paint touches are blended, so you can’t actually see the individual touches of the brush. So, but with the late Delacroix, you can, and of course you can with impressionism.

Thank you. Thank you all, and I think that’s it, and I’m going to do something a bit similar next one with music starting, of course, with the Marseilles. Thank you, everybody, bye bye.