Liberty Leading the People
1830 · Oil on canvas · Musée du Louvre, Paris
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About this work
- Artist
- Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863)
- Year
- 1830
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 260 × 325 cm
- Collection
- Musée du Louvre, Paris
- Movement
- Romanticism
A bare-breasted woman in a Phrygian cap strides over a barricade of corpses holding the tricolour aloft in one hand and a musket in the other, leading a workman with a sabre, a top-hatted bourgeois with a rifle and a boy brandishing pistols, with the towers of Notre-Dame in the smoke behind. Delacroix painted it in the autumn of 1830 to commemorate the July Revolution that had toppled Charles X a few months earlier. He wrote to his brother that if he had not fought for his country he would at least paint for it. The allegorical figure of Liberty among real Parisians was new. The French state bought it in 1831, but it was judged too inflammatory to display for long and did not hang permanently in the Louvre until 1874.
This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.
Where it works
Smoke, a tricolour and a surging crowd want scale and a public room: a living room, hallway or office at 24×18 in black. It holds a dark or deep red wall and should hang alone, not in a gallery cluster.
Style, size & framing detail
- Style
- Romanticism painting
- Era
- 19th century (1830)
- Orientation
- Landscape
- Mood
- grand
- Rooms
- living room, hallway or entryway, home office, dining room
- Good gift for
- housewarming, art lovers
Size. We'd hang this one at 24×18. Prints at 16×12, 24×18 in — 16×12 for a shelf, desk or a gallery-wall grid; 24×18 above a console or sideboard.
Framing. The gallery ground is part of the print, so frame it without a mat — black suits the deep tones of this period; natural wood lightens it.
Pairing. Pairs as a set of three with other famous painting prints (10% off three or more).
Details & materials
Shipping & returns
Is this the whole painting, or a crop?
Is Liberty Leading the People in the public domain?
What is it printed on?
When was Liberty Leading the People painted, and in what medium?
What size works above a sofa or bed?
About this design
The Madten promise
An exhibition poster
The same artwork as a gallery exhibition poster — title, artist & date typeset beneath the image on a soft ground.





















