July Revolution 1830 through Liberty Leading the People: Ideology, Hegemony, and Power
July Revolution is one of the biggest revolutions in the world. The July revolution 1830 (Trois Glorieuses) was a period in which the power of King Charles X was overthrown by Louis-Phillipe and changes the system of government to a constitutional monarchy. This conflict happens for 3 days, from 27 until 29 July 1830. The working and the middle-class society set up the barricades to fight the royal army. From the revolution, many artists, poets, and writers used this moment as the background of their work, for example, the painter called Eugène Delacroix who commemorate the July revolution in Paris. Eugène Delacroix made his painting named “Liberty Leading the People” which has several symbolisms, ideology, hegemony, and power value for those connoisseurs.
Eugène Delacroix was born in Charenton-Saint-Maurice, France, on April 26, 1798, and noted as the figure of French romantic of the 19th-century era. Eugène Delacroix is the greatest French painter who is famous for his free and expressive brushwork, the use of rich and sensuous color, the dynamic composition, and the exotic and adventurous painting subject. Since Eugène Delacroix affected by history, literature, and exotic locales, he painted an amazing painting named “Liberty Leading the People” and finished it in three months by merging the concepts of realism, idealism, and romanticism, in order to represent the July revolution event.
The “Liberty Leading the People” is painted after the July reformation and it represents the event and from the explanation above, it has power on the historical side. Painting has the power to create history, which means stories and memories from the past are materialized into our source of knowledge about the past. Besides, the power through painting is to represent something within a society, which makes it has the power to shape a society’s understanding of their origin and goal. As we can see in the painting, the background of the painting is the July reformation that has historical meaning for France and also Europe. The important event of the July Revolution was the Trois Glorieuses (The Three Days) when King Charles X was overthrown by Louis-Phillipe and changes the system of government to a constitutional monarchy. The people, the lower-class society protested ordinance and grew larger, and threw stone and roof tiles to the royal army. It has the power to shape the people's knowledge about their origin and goal through the revolution itself.
Hegemony, based on Gramsci, is domination that flowing from the bottom to the upper. Hegemony is considered as an action that is done by the lower-class society in order to rebel against the government or the authority. By looking at the event that happens as the background of the painting, we can see that the lower-class society was doing rebellion in order to get freedom and to overthrow King Charles X. Painting as hegemony is also maintains a symbolic order and it often dominated by drawings and paintings of a famous certain background. From the painting “Liberty Leading the People”, we can see the portrayal of the July revolution, the struggling of the lower-class society against the government in order to gain freedom and equality. However, the most eye-catching object in this painting is the yellow-dressed woman that holds France’s flag. Delacroix does not show this woman specifically, but he used the yellow-dressed woman as the representation of freedom and contains several symbolisms that influence lots of painters in the romanticism era. First, is her face postured. In the painting, the woman is looking back and shows her straight nose, full lips, and delicate chin. It symbolized the leader of the Roman that pictured in the Roman coins. Her yellow dress with red rope and falling from her shoulder is portrayed as the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The yellow-dressed woman wears a red Phrygian cap that usually used by the workingmen and popular during the French revolution as a liberty cap. And the important symbolism is the Tricolor that hoists above her head because it is symbolized the modernity of freedom that they get from the revolution.
“Liberty Leading the People” also occur in the ideology value. Eugène Delacroix is one of the complex paintings who is influenced by French romanticism and his work is full of historical reference and the spectrum of human emotion — which are the characteristics of French Romanticism. Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental. The July revolution is one of the heroic histories, follows the war, the size, and dimension of the painting of Liberty Leading the People. Thus, the painting is the ideal tool for romanticism since it was combined terror, violence, and heroism.
In the conclusion, we can see that through the painting, we can also learn the cultural studies through the concepts of power, hegemony, and ideology. Eugène Delacroix is one of the greatest French romanticism painters who made “Liberty Leading the People” to commemorate the July Revolution in Paris. From the painting, we can see the historical value that portrays the painting and we can represent how the struggle of the lower-class society against the royal army in order to gain freedom under King Charles X's era. The painting has the power to shape the people's knowledge about their origin and goal through the revolution itself. The freedom is symbolized through the yellow-dressed woman, the most eye-catching object from the painting. The hegemony of the painting is seen through the symbolization of the object. The last point, Eugène Delacroix used romanticism as the based ideology for his painting. It fulfills heroic historical painting since it was combined terror, violence, and heroism.