Eugène Delacroix

Eugène Delacroix trained in Paris and made his mark at the Salon of 1822 with The Barque of Dante. The Massacre at Chios (1824) and The Death of Sardanapalus (1827) took their subjects from the Greek war of independence and from Byron, and set them in crowded, turbulent colour that critics found reckless. Liberty Leading the People (1830) commemorated the July Revolution.

A journey to Morocco and Algiers in 1832 supplied The Women of Algiers (1834) and sketchbooks he drew on for decades, alongside lions, horses and subjects from Shakespeare and Goethe. He decorated the libraries of the Palais Bourbon and the Palais du Luxembourg, then the Chapel of the Holy Angels at Saint-Sulpice, where Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (1861) was among his last major works. He died in Paris in 1863. Édouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh copied him.