Louis-Philippe hesitates to buy the work that will become France's iconic painting and when another insurrection breaks out six months later, stops exhibiting it.
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By Eugène Delacroix, 1831, zoom
Cut to emphasize those figures
The capitalism that 1830 unleashed worsened the lives of the humble:* "A free people whose happiness begins" is this work's ironic title.
* The population that is too poor to tax goes from 68% in 1833 to 72,2% in 1846. (Haussmann by Michel Carmona, 2000, p. 177)
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"10,000 in civil list, a budget of a billion, higher taxes, laws of privilege, arrests and illegal visits, arrests without motive, crowded prisons, stock market coups, produce at onerous cost, commerce wiped out, national colors forbidden, patriots assassinated, aggressors publicly paid, treasure wasted, sinecures, traitors to the nation and the population miserable.
Freed people, whose happiness begins,
relax after your immense achievement!
People! Rest!"
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A July hero
May 1831
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For all its passion the masterpiece is ambiguous: Liberty with what practical goal? For whom?
Like almost all intellectuals
Delacroix approved "the people"
when their force imposed middle class goals,
and backed their massacre
when they fought for themselves.
More later.
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