V.2.4. FREEDOM'S GREAT PAINTING, FERVENT AND AMBIGUOUS

THE PLEBIAN GODDESS AND THE HUMBLE FIGHTER SHOWN

FULL FACE MAKE THE WORK EXPLOSIVE

Louis-Philippe hesitates to buy what will become France's great iconic painting and stops exhibiting it six months later, when another insurrection breaks out.

    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 too poor to tax goes from 68% in 1833 to 72,2% in 1846. (Haussmann by Michel Carmona, 2000, p. 177)

 Engraving by Travies, 1831 / zoom

 

"...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!"

A July hero

May 1831

# # #

The masterpiece is ambiguous: Liberty with what practical goal? For whom?

Like almost all intellectuals Delacroix approved "the people" 

when their force brought middle class goals and backed 

their massacre when they fought for themselves.

An exception proves the rule.

.*     *     *

Next,

5.2.5.

The Arc de Triomphe's lame homage to the plebes