Figure Studies related to "Liberty Leading the People"

Eugène Delacroix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This sheet includes early sketches of the bodies featured in the foreground of Delacroix’s remarkable submission to the Salon of 1831, "Liberty Leading the People" (1830; Musée du Louvre), his only painting of contemporary events in France: the July Revolution of 1830. The sprawled corpse at center with unbuttoned trousers appears in the lower right foreground of the painting. The slightly generalized character of the figures suggests that they were likely drawn from memory, rather than directly from life—casualties observed in the street and later recalled with pen and brush.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art