Ophelia's Death, plate 13 from Hamlet

Born in 1789 in Paris, French Romantic painter Eugéne Delacroix received his early training from Pierre Guérin in a classicist vein. While that approach would have little effect on Delacroix’s ultimate artistic development, it was through this connection that he met the painter Théodore Gericault, creator of the masterwork Raft of the Medusa, 1818–19, a work for which Delacroix posed. Ultimately, Delacroix drew most of his inspiration from the plethora of art available for him to study at the Louvre. He was also exposed to a wide of array of literature, including the writing of Shakespeare, Byron, and Scott. It was those literary sources that would ultimately be the catalyst to Delacroix’s full embrace of Romanticism, despite the growing popularity of Neoclassicism.

Charenton-Saint-Maurice, France