Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, Musée du Louvre

Eugène Delacroix

1798–1863 · France

Researched by Daniel Bilmes, painter and educator.

Delacroix worked colour-first, against Ingres's line. He laid out his whole palette in graded pre-mixed tones before he started, opened on a charcoal diagonal, built form from juxtaposed strokes of pure colour that mix in the eye, kept his shadows coloured rather than black, and painted fast, fast enough, he said, to catch a man falling from a window.

ProcessConstructive TemperamentDecisive Lineage19th-Century Studio

Signature moves

Lay out the whole palette before the first stroke

Pre-mixed his palette into graded rows of tones before painting, building a single hue in several states, like violet three ways: Prussian blue and vermilion (most intense), cobalt and vermilion (mid), Cassel earth and vermilion (most neutralised).

Why it matters · With the tones already mixed and ranged by temperature, painting becomes choosing instead of mixing. You can move a form from warm light into cool shadow without breaking rhythm to chase a colour, and without muddying it on the palette mid-stroke.

Attentive Equations, reconstruction of Delacroix's palette for the Apollo-ceiling Nymph from his colour notes — A reconstruction of one figure, not a verbatim primary palette list.

Slash a diagonal to set the rhythm

Rejected the careful squared-up grid of the Neoclassicists. He often opened a canvas by slashing a single dynamic diagonal in charcoal to fix the backbone and momentum of the composition, then blocked the big masses in unblended complementary colour, red set straight against green.

Why it matters · A grid gives you accuracy; a diagonal gives you motion. Starting from the line of action bakes energy into the picture from the first mark, where Ingres's grid bakes in stillness. The opening gesture decides what the whole painting will feel like.

Technical analysis of Delacroix's compositional method

Weave half-tones from juxtaposed strokes (flochetage)

Instead of laying a pure colour flat in its place, he interlaced small hatched strokes of pure contrasting tones that mix optically, in the eye, into a vibrating half-tone. His friend Villot compared the brush to a weaver's shuttle.

Why it matters · A half-tone mixed on the palette goes dead; the same half-tone made by juxtaposed pure strokes stays bright, because the eye does the blending and the colours keep their charge. This is optical mixing a generation before the Impressionists made it a programme.

Frédéric Villot, contemporary description of flochetage

Keep the shadows coloured, never black

Treated shadow as coloured reflected light rather than an absence of colour, using complementaries, a principle he sharpened in conversation with the chemist Michel-Eugène Chevreul, who gave him the law of the simultaneous contrast of colours.

Why it matters · Black shadows kill a painting and flatten the light. Coloured shadows hold the light and tie the picture together. He warned that a canvas almost always looks greyer than it is, so the painter has to over-state the colour to win it back.

Delacroix, Journal; Louvre, "Delacroix and colour" (on Chevreul and simultaneous contrast)

Pose the models for the camera

Embraced the new medium his rival rejected: in 1853 and 1854 he had the photographer Eugène Durieu shoot calotypes of nude models that he posed himself, and worked directly from the prints, finding the calotype's soft grain more useful than a hard, sharp image.

Why it matters · A photograph holds a pose no model can hold, and holds it for as long as the painter needs. Delacroix treated the camera as a tool for study, not a threat to art, which is exactly the line Ingres refused to cross. He said the photographs taught him more than the inventions of writers.

Delacroix, Journal (October 1855); Eugène Durieu, album of calotypes (1853-54)

Bank the colour in writing, in the field

On the 1832 Morocco trip he filled seven sketchbooks with rapid drawings carrying written colour annotations ("red," "green," "blue") so he could reconstruct the exact colour later, often sketching surreptitiously where figurative depiction was frowned on.

Why it matters · Memory lies about colour; a written note does not. The annotations let him rebuild the specific light of Morocco in a Paris studio years later, accurately, and fed his subjects for the rest of his life. The sketch is a colour document, not just a shape.

Delacroix, Moroccan sketchbooks (1832 Mornay mission); Morgan Library Moroccan collection notes

Paint fast enough to catch a falling man

Prized speed as proof of competence: if you cannot sketch a man falling from a fifth-floor window before he hits the ground, he said, you will never produce monumental work.

Why it matters · Monumental work needs the whole image grasped at once and committed quickly, before second-guessing flattens it. The speed is a competence test, not bravado. The hand has to be fast enough to keep up with the eye.

Delacroix, Journal

Choose the sketch, then trace it into harmony

Generated many free sketches, picked the one that held the right elements, then laid tracing paper over it and reworked the figure into harmony before transferring it to the canvas.

Why it matters · The first sketch usually has the life and the wrong proportion. Tracing lets him fix the structure on a second pass without losing the spark of the first. Selection and refinement are kept as separate acts, so neither kills the other.

Delacroix, Journal; standard accounts of his preparatory method

Run a mural like a workshop

On the Saint-Sulpice campaign (1857-1861) he drew the composition onto the wall as finished as he could get it, his chief assistant Pierre Andrieu coloured the forms in, and he came back over the top retouching with speed; the medium was oil-and-wax over stone waterproofed with up to thirteen layers of wax, resin and oil.

Why it matters · Scale is a logistics problem. The master keeps the two things only he can do (the design and the final touch) and delegates the fill. The oil-and-wax medium is a practical choice: it resists the damp that destroys wall paintings.

Saint-Sulpice mural literature (Smarthistory; The Murals of Eugène Delacroix at Saint-Sulpice)

Studio

Light: Not documented as a specific window or direction. He required uninterrupted solitude, writing that "the enemy is within my gates" when a visitor broke his focus. From 1857 he worked from a purpose-built studio and apartment at 6 rue de Furstenberg in Paris, chosen for its nearness to Saint-Sulpice so he could walk to the mural commission of his last years (now the Musée national Eugène-Delacroix).
Position: Worked fast, standing at the easel for the large historical canvases and sitting for small watercolour studies. Each session began by laying the palette out systematically, mixing graded transitional tones from dark to light before the brush ever touched the canvas. He kept a Journal from 1822 to 1824 and again from 1847 until his death in 1863, the central record of how he thought about colour and work.
Tools: A palette laid out in advance in graded rows of pre-mixed tones · Stiff bristle brushes, for impasto highlights and dragged dry strokes · A palette knife, to scrape wet paint back to the bright ground · Tracing paper for reworking a chosen sketch into harmony before transfer · Sketchbooks carrying written colour annotations from the field · An oil-and-wax medium for wall painting
Notes: The rue de Furstenberg studio was built around a working problem: he needed to be next to the church to finish the murals. The Journal is where the method lives.

Source: Musée national Eugène-Delacroix / Louvre; Delacroix, Journal

Palette

Ground: Hunted luminosity in the ground itself. For The Death of Sardanapalus he laid the underpainting (ébauche) in distemper (pigment, water, and animal size) for a bright, matte base, but found that oil glazes over the water-based ground dulled and cracked it. He switched to a bright white oil underpainting, deliberately leaving white strokes exposed in the lower layers to shine up through the thin glazes above. For murals, an oil-and-wax paint on plaster over stone waterproofed with up to thirteen layers of wax, resin and oil.
Whites: Flake white (lead white)
Earths: Cassel earth · Raw sienna · Burnt umber
Colors: Vermilion · Madder lake · Cadmium yellow · Naples yellow · Viridian · Emerald green · Green earth · Prussian blue · Cobalt blue · Synthetic ultramarine
Medium: Pre-mixed into graded tones before painting, a single hue built in several states from most intense to most neutralised. Applied with stiff bristle brushes: thick impasto in the highlights, dry dragged strokes for scratchy texture, and wet paint scraped back with a palette knife to reveal the bright ground. Shadows kept coloured, not black; half-tones woven from juxtaposed pure strokes rather than blended on the palette.

Source: Attentive Equations (palette reconstruction from his colour notes); Louvre, "Delacroix and colour"; conservation literature on his grounds and pigments — An early adopter of new synthetic pigments. The graded-tone list is partly reconstructed from his colour notes, not a single verbatim primary palette.

Workflow, from blank canvas

1. Generate and choose a sketch
Many free sketches, then the one that holds the right elements is picked out from the rest.
Why: The idea is found by drawing fast and loose, then judged. Selection is its own step, separate from execution.
2. Trace the chosen sketch into harmony
Tracing paper goes over the chosen sketch; the figure is reworked into proportion and harmony, then transferred to the canvas.
Why: It fixes the structure of the first idea without re-drawing it from scratch and losing its life. The spark of the sketch survives into the finished figure.
3. Lay out the palette in graded pre-mixed tones
Before a stroke, the palette is arranged in rows of pre-mixed tones, each hue built in several temperature states.
Why: Painting then becomes choosing rather than mixing, so the hand can keep pace with the eye and the colour stays clean.
4. Block in on the diagonal
A dynamic diagonal is slashed in charcoal to set the action, then the big masses go down in unblended complementary colour, pure red set against pure green to fix maximum temperature contrast early.
Why: The composition gets its momentum and its colour structure in the same opening move, before any detail can tame it.
5. Build form from juxtaposed strokes
Form is built in small hatched strokes of pure colour that mix optically into vibrating half-tones (flochetage), worked wet-into-wet.
Why: A half-tone mixed in the eye stays brighter than one mixed on the palette. The surface keeps its charge instead of going grey.
6. Colour the shadows by recipe
A shadow is cooled with a specific violet (usually Prussian blue and vermilion), then a warmer half-tone is glazed over it to unify the form. Black is kept out.
Why: Coloured shadows hold the light and unify the picture; the warm glaze ties the cool shadow back into the form instead of letting it sit as a hole.
7. For murals, delegate the fill
On the big campaigns he drew the composition onto the wall, an assistant coloured the forms in, and he retouched the result with speed, in an oil-and-wax medium.
Why: At scale the master reserves the design and the final touch for himself and hands off the labour of filling. The medium is chosen to survive damp.
8. Rework in the paint, then stop before it dies
He moved figures during the painting rather than from a fixed transferred drawing. Infrared of Christ on the Sea of Galilee shows the disciples' arms shifted in the paint over only loose underdrawing. Then he fought his habit of over-finishing, trying to stop at the point where another pass would no longer help.
Why: He knew finishing was his weakness ("a man prone to reworking") and that over-finishing kills the freshness the speed was meant to protect.

Refusals — what they would not do

Refused black in the shadows; treated shadow as coloured reflected light; "the enemy of all painting is grey."
Refused to mix his half-tones dead on the palette; wove them from juxtaposed pure strokes so the eye mixes them bright.
Refused the Neoclassical squared-up grid; opened on a charcoal diagonal to bake momentum into the composition.
Refused line as the master of the picture; colour, not contour, carried the image, the standing argument against Ingres.
Refused, in principle, to over-finish, though he admitted he was "a man prone to reworking" and had to fight the habit.

Reference

Primary source: Two engines. Observation banked for later: the colour-annotated sketches from Morocco. And imagination: literature and history he had never seen, from Dante and Byron to the fall of Sardanapalus and the July Revolution as allegory. He wrote that nature is "only a dictionary" the painter with imagination looks things up in.
Photography: Embraced, unlike Ingres. In 1853 and 1854 he had the photographer Eugène Durieu shoot calotypes of nude models that he posed himself, and used the prints as direct reference, valuing the soft grain of the calotype over a hard image. He wrote that these photographs told him more than the inventions of writers.

Exceptions

The 1832 Morocco trip with Count de Mornay produced seven sketchbooks of colour-annotated drawings that fed his Orientalist subjects for the rest of his life.
Posed nude models for Eugène Durieu's calotypes (1853-54) and worked directly from the photographs.
Copied Rubens and the Venetians in the Louvre as his colour standard.

Lineage

Teachers

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin · from 1815 — Entered Guérin's Neoclassical Paris studio, where he met Géricault and began copying Rubens and the Venetians in the Louvre.

Influences

Rubens (above all)
The Venetians: Veronese and Titian
Antoine-Jean Gros
Théodore Géricault, whose Raft of the Medusa spurred Delacroix's first major canvas
John Constable, whose colour at the 1824 Salon led Delacroix to repaint the sky and distance of The Massacre at Chios at the last moment

Students

Pierre Andrieu, chief studio assistant on the mural campaigns
Gustave Lassalle-Bordes, an earlier mural assistant
No teaching atelier in Ingres's sense, but his colour reshaped what came after: Cézanne built on his palette, Seurat on his optical mixing, and Van Gogh on his expressive brushwork.

In their own words

“My freshly arranged palette, brilliant with the contrast of colours, is enough to fire my enthusiasm.”

— Delacroix, Journal

The palette laid out in advance was itself the start of the work. Translated from French.

“If you are not skilful enough to sketch a man falling out of a window during the time it takes him to get from the fifth storey to the ground, you will never be able to produce monumental work.”

— Delacroix, Journal

Speed as the price of admission to large-scale painting. Translated from French.

“Speaking radically, there are neither lights nor shades. There is a colour mass for each object, having different reflections on all sides.”

— Delacroix, Journal

The colourist's creed: everything is colour, not value. Translated from French.

“Nature is only a dictionary. Painters who follow their imagination look up in it the elements that suit their conception; those who have no imagination copy the dictionary.”

— Delacroix, Journal

The case for invention over transcription. Translated from French.

“These photographs of naked men, this admirable poem, this human body, whose sight tells me more than the inventions of scribblers.”

— Delacroix, Journal, 1855

On working from Durieu's calotypes, October 1855. Translated from French.

“The first merit of a painting is to be a feast for the eye.”

— Delacroix, Journal, 1863

The final entry, 22 June 1863, less than two months before his death. Translated from French.

Techniques and practices

Ébauche Underpainting

A thin, fully-worked tonal underpainting of the whole composition—more complete than an imprimatura wash, less finished than a first paint layer.

flochetage

simultaneous-contrast

premixed-palette

coloured-shadows

What was Delacroix's painting technique?

Colour-first and fast. He pre-mixed his whole palette into graded tones before painting, opened on a charcoal diagonal, built form from juxtaposed strokes of pure colour that mix optically in the eye (flochetage), kept his shadows coloured rather than black, and worked at speed. For murals he used an oil-and-wax medium.

What is flochetage?

The late technique named for Delacroix's work. Instead of laying a pure colour flat, he interlaced small hatched strokes of pure contrasting tones that mix in the eye into a vibrating half-tone. His friend Villot compared the brush to a weaver's shuttle crossing coloured threads. Optical mixing before the Impressionists.

Did Delacroix use black in his shadows?

No. He treated shadow as coloured reflected light, built from complementaries, not black. He often cooled a shadow with a violet of Prussian blue and vermilion, then glazed a warmer half-tone over it. He sharpened the idea talking with the chemist Chevreul about the simultaneous contrast of colours.

Did Delacroix use photography?

Yes, and eagerly. In 1853 and 1854 he had the photographer Eugène Durieu shoot calotypes of nude models that he posed himself, and he worked directly from the prints, writing that the photographs told him more than the inventions of writers. It is the sharpest contrast with Ingres, who rejected the camera entirely.

How did the 1832 Morocco trip change Delacroix?

It reset his palette. Travelling with Count de Mornay's diplomatic mission, he filled seven sketchbooks with drawings carrying written colour notes ("red," "green," "blue") to capture the strong North African light accurately. That stock of colour-annotated reference fed his Orientalist subjects for the rest of his life.

How did Delacroix paint the Saint-Sulpice murals?

As a workshop. Between 1857 and 1861 he drew the compositions onto the wall, his chief assistant Pierre Andrieu coloured the forms in, and Delacroix retouched with speed. The medium was oil-and-wax over stone waterproofed with up to thirteen layers of wax, resin and oil to resist damp.

If this painter is your match

You think in colour before you think in line. You would rather build a half-tone from two pure strokes the eye mixes than grind it grey on the palette, and you keep your shadows alive with colour instead of killing them with black. You work fast, and you trust the charge of the colour to carry the picture.

Borrow this: Mix your palette before you start, and build each main hue in a few graded states from intense to neutralised so painting becomes choosing, not mixing. Open on a diagonal in charcoal to set the action, then make your half-tones by juxtaposing small strokes of pure colour and letting the eye blend them. Ban black from your shadows; cool them with a violet and glaze a warm half-tone back over to tie them in. And when you work from a place, write the colour down on the spot; your memory will lie to you about it later.

Adjacent painters

Ivan Shishkin1832–1898

The Peredvizhniki landscape master who lived in the forest in summer and reconstructed its anatomy in the studio in winter, using photography and projection as tools of discipline rather than shortcuts.

Vasily Surikov1848–1916

The Peredvizhniki monumental reconstructionist, who built history paintings like buildings—over years, from authentic artifacts, trained crowds of real faces, and a structural drawing logic inherited from Pavel Chistyakov.

John William Waterhouse1849–1917

The late-Victorian painter who built mythological narratives by staging them physically—an atelier stocked with authentic antique props, real costumes, and specific hand-selected models rather than invented fictions.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo1696–1770

The Venetian Rococo master who planned monumental ceilings through small, fully resolved oil modelli and executed them in wet plaster at the speed a buon fresco giornata demanded.

Shared the workbench

Other researched painters who used at least one of Delacroix’s techniques.

Anders Zorn1860–1920

The Swedish virtuoso who painted standing in north-lit studios from a four-color palette, built transparency into his darks through red-and-black washes, and resolved skin tones by painting the transition between light and shadow rather than blending it.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau1825–1905

The Parisian academic master who ran his studio on a factory schedule—7 AM until dark, no lunch break—and resolved every figure, every fold, and every leaf in preparatory studies before a single brushstroke landed on the final canvas.

Johannes Vermeer1632–1675

The Delft painter who produced only two or three finished pictures a year from an upstairs room in his mother-in-law's house, built every image over a monochrome "dead-coloring" stage, and finished his passages in sessions small enough that the hand-ground pigment on the palette never dried.

Primary sources

Eugène Delacroix, Journal (1822-1824; 1847-1863). The central primary source for his thinking on colour, speed, imagination, photography, and finishing. French; quotes translated.
Frédéric Villot, contemporary description of flochetage. Villot was Delacroix's friend and the Louvre's cataloguer. The "weaver's shuttle" description of the woven half-tones. French.
Eugène Durieu, album of calotypes (1853-1854). Photographs of nude models posed and directed by Delacroix for use as painting reference.
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, technical analysis of Delacroix's Christ on the Sea of Galilee. Conservation study: white lead ground, only loose selective underdrawing, figures' arms shifted during painting, white left exposed under glazes. [link]
Louvre / Musée national Eugène-Delacroix, "Delacroix and colour". Curatorial notes on his palette, Chevreul, and the juxtaposed-stroke handling. [link]
Attentive Equations, "Delacroix's Palette for the Nymph". Reconstruction of his graded pre-mixed tones from his colour notes (secondary analysis). [link]
Saint-Sulpice mural literature (Smarthistory; The Murals of Eugène Delacroix at Saint-Sulpice). The oil-and-wax medium, the wax/resin waterproofing, Andrieu's role, and the 1857-1861 dates (completed July-August 1861).

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