Liberty Leading the People

Eugène Delacroix, 1830, oil on canvas
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People: Liberty, holding the tricolour flag, leads armed Parisians over a barricade.
Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

It hangs in room 700, on the first floor of the Denon wing, in the same room as the Raft of the Medusa.

“At least I'll paint for her”
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Where to find it

Room 700 (Salle Mollien), Denon wing, first floor.

Louvre

Delacroix painted it between September and December 1830, a few months after the July Revolution: three days of uprising in Paris against King Charles X.

Liberty waves the tricolour flag over a barricade as the Parisians break through it. Look for the blue, white and red repeated across the canvas: the flag had been banned under the restored monarchy, from 1815 to 1830.

The state bought it in August 1831, for 3,000 francs, then kept it in storage for years at a time. It entered the Louvre in November 1874.

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