Liberty Leading the People

Delacroix’s massive canvas transforms the events of the July Revolution of 1830—a popular uprising in Paris that overthrew King Charles X and ended the Bourbon Restoration—into a dramatic allegory of liberty and national struggle. A woman personifying Liberty strides forward over a barricade, carrying the French tricolor and leading a diverse crowd through smoke and fallen bodies. The painting became a defining image of French Romanticism and republican identity.

After Delacroix exhibited the painting at the Paris Salon in 1831, it was purchased by King Louis-Philippe for the Musée du Luxembourg. It was withdrawn from public view in 1832 for its revolutionary imagery, briefly resurfaced in 1848, and finally entered the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, in 1874, where it remains on display.