Delacroix, Art and Patrimony in Post-Revolutionary France
The Restoration was a messy period in French history, full of paradox, contradiction and ambiguity. Even as they sought to erase the legacies of the French Revolution and Napoleon and to reaffirm the ties binding them to the old regime, Louis XVIII and Charles X found themselves dependent upon the institutions and often the personnel of the recent revolutionary and imperial past. The more they insisted, through symbol, ritual and public display, that monarchical rule was sacred, the more potent became the arguments of a liberal opposition which emphasized the gulf between image and reality. Elisabeth Fraser helps to reveal and unravel the complexities of the period through an exploration of the paintings of Eugène Delacroix. Her decoding of the complex layers of meaning in the paintings exhibited by Delacroix at the Salons of 1822, 1824 and 1827 makes a significant contribution to the understanding both of Delacroix and of the political culture of post-revolutionary France.
Fraser argues persuasively that debates concerning the importance of family, patrimony and inheritance lay at the heart of French political culture during the Restoration and that the painting of Delacroix was deeply implicated in those debates. Drawing on the interpretations of Lynn Hunt, Michel Perrot, Sheryl Kroen and others, Fraser emphasizes the monarchy’s determination to reassert the family as well as patriarchal authority as a foundation for the restored social and political order. It also insisted upon the family as a political metaphor, representing the King as a benevolent father to his people. This strategy was calculated to emphasize the naturalness of monarchical rule, as well as to sublimate the fact of Louis XVIII’s execution during the Revolution. The focus on family had far-reaching implications. It dominated political debates, affected royalist (and by extension anti-royalist) iconography, influenced official ideologies of art patronage and helped determine both the subject matter and the form of artistic production. It is this context, rather than the intentions of the artist, argues Fraser, that is the key to comprehending the real power of Delacroix’s paintings.
The three paintings analyzed are Delacroix’s Dante and Virgil (1822), the Massacres of Chios (1824) and Sardanapalus (1827-8). In the course of producing these works, Delacroix’s ambiguous relationship with royal authority evolved from a position of relative harmony through understated criticism to more or less overt opposition. The Dante and Virgil is understood by Fraser to represent Delacroix’s own search for an artistic patrimony, something which he discovered in Michelangelo, Rubens and Géricault. The Massacres of Chios, by focusing on the plight of Greek families in the aftermath of defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, rejected the traditional heroic representation of war, instead emphasizing the helplessness of the victims. The painting implicitly pointed to the Greeks’ need for a paternal protector, leaving the question open as to whether Louis XVIII was up to the task. The familial trope suggested additional layers of meaning for contemporary French men and women who viewed the painting, reminding them of the western heritage that bound the Greeks to France as part of a common family as well as of the common colonial mission that united all French citizens. Finally, the Sardanapalus, an image associating a king’s body, itself a metaphor for the political body, with gender confusion, passivity, corruption and a terminal catastrophe, implied a powerful criticism of the contemporary French monarchy. It is notable that Delacroix enjoyed official patronage throughout this period and that only the last of these paintings was not purchased by the government. The Massacres of Chios was bought with indecent haste, in fact, despite the possibility of its being read as an implied criticism of the King, as the official responsible for the royal museums sought to cope with the threat of its acquisition by a private collector.
Her efforts to explain the relationships between Delacroix and the government, as well as with art critics, private patrons and the public lead Fraser into an insightful exploration of the culture and political climate of restoration France. She shows that official ideologies were subverted by an opposition press and by the existence of a public sphere forged by an alliance of private collectors and the French public. Supporters of the monarchy were very much on the defensive, and their best efforts to represent royalty in a positive light usually worked against them. If they resurrected royal statues they drew attention to the fact of their destruction by the Revolution. If they celebrated the doctrine of the King’s two bodies – corporeal and incorporeal – caricaturists took that as an invitation to emphasize only the corporeal (not to mention corpulent, at least in the case of Louis XVIII). The monarchy’s supporters failed to take the few real chances they had to win the support of public opinion, such as by celebrating the maternal image of the popular Duchesse de Berry. The very need to affirm the sacred and inviolable nature of the King’s person in the Constitutional Charter of 1814, suggests Fraser, indicates that the battle on behalf of the monarchy was lost before it began.
Elizabeth Fraser’s book on Delacroix and the Restoration is a model of interdisciplinary scholarship which allies the close analysis of an artist’s work and its development with broader consideration of the political, social and cultural context within which the artist operated. This is a clearly written, sophisticated and illuminating study of Delacroix and post-revolutionary culture which underlines the fragility of the Restoration monarchy.
