02 Works, The Art of War, Eugène Delacroix's The Battle of Taillebourg , with footnotes

Eugène Delacroix  (1798–1863)

The Battle of Taillebourg, 21st July 1242, c. 1837

Oil on canvas

489 × 554 cm (16 × 18.1 ft)

Palace of Versailles

The Battle of Taillebourg, a major medieval battle fought in July 1242, was the decisive engagement of the Saintonge War. It pitted a French Capetian army under the command of King Louis IX, also known as Saint Louis, and his younger brother Alphonse of Poitiers, against forces led by King Henry III of England, his brother Richard of Cornwall and their stepfather Hugh X of Lusignan.

The battle was fought on the bridge built over the river Charente, a point of strategic importance on the route between northern and southern France. Later it was fought near the city of Saintes. According to Charles Oman; the English and their allies were routed and forced to make peace, but the King of France contented himself of leaving things as they had been before the war. The battle put down the Poitevin revolt and marked the end of Henry III's hopes of restoring the Angevin Empire, which had collapsed during his father's reign. More on The Battle of Taillebourg

Eugène Delacroix  (1798–1863)

The Battle of Taillebourg (draft), c. between 1834 and 1835

Oil on canvas

height: 53 cm (20.8 in); width: 66.5 cm (26.1 in)

Louvre Museum

When Louis-Philippe created the Muse de l'Histoire de France at Versailles, two paintings were commissioned from Delacroix: The Battle of Taillebourg and The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople. For these vast canvases, Delacroix was obliged to open a studio, and train his own assistants. This time, the critics were completely won over. The derring-do of Louis IX on his white charger riding down the English defenses on the Taillebourg bridge and the famous capture of Constantinople (1204) acted as a balm after the terrible defeat of Waterloo. And yet Delacroix's method in these paintings is unchanged; again the implications of the event are focused in a single scene, again he shows the catastrophes of war and the women delivered over to the victors. His goal is not to describe the event - though the details are carefully researched and the armor and standards historically correct - but to make the spectator feel its emotional consequences. The inspiration flowing through these 'grandes machines' is no less personal and romantic than it was in The Barque of Dante and The Death of Sardanapalus. More on this painting

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (26 April 1798 – 13 August 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.

As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic. Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given to neither sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible." More on Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix

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