Ferdinand Victor Eugene Del a C R O I X

DEL A C R O I X, FERDINAND VICTOR EUGENE (1798-1863), French historical painter, leader of the romantic movement, was born at Charenton-St. Maurice, near Paris, on April 26, 1798. His father, Charles Delacroix (1741-1805), was foreign minister under the Directory. Eugene was educated at the Lycee Napoleon, and then entered the atelier of Baron Guerin. He studied the works of Rubens and Paolo Veronese at the Louvre; and he was attracted by the work of Jericault, whose influence can be traced in Delacroix's first important picture, "Dante and Virgil," exhibited in 1822 and now in the Louvre. At a time when the classic school was predominant and artists were intent on the representation of scenes of antiquity and mythology the appearance of Delacroix's "Massacre of Chios" in the Salon of 1824 marked a victory for the romantic movement. It represented in a tragic manner the atrocities enacted in Greece, and, like Byron's poetry, enlisted sympathy for the Greek War of Independence. The picture was painted in glowing colours, and contrasted with the dark canvases of the Classicists, whose opposition was roused. The aged Gros is said to have called the "Massacre of Chios" le massacre de la peinture. Delacroix spent some months in England in 1825, and drew fresh inspiration from the works of Byron. He was attracted by the fresh and direct painting of Constable's landscapes. His next two pictures, "Ma rino Faliero Decapitated on the Giant's Staircase of the Ducal Palace" and "Greece Lamenting on the Ruins of Missolonghi," with many smaller works, were exhibited for the benefit of Greek patriots in 1826. Next year he produced "Sardanapalus," from Byron's drama. After this, he says, "I became the abomination of painting, I was refused water and salt"—but, he adds with singularly happy naivete, J'etais enchante de moi-meme! The patrimony he inherited, or what remained of it, was i o,000 livres de rente, and with economy he lived on this, and continued to paint large historical pictures. In 1831 he re-appeared in the Salon with six works, among which was "Liberty leading the People," now in the Louvre, and immediately after left for Morocco, where he found the colour and light which flood his later work. "The Entry of the Crusaders" into Constantinople is a powerful colour harmony (Louvre). A visit to Madrid acquainted him with the methods of Velasquez and Goya. The "Noce Juive" in the Louvre shows the influence of Spain. In 1835, through the influence of Thiers, he received a commission to decorate the interior of the chamber of deputies, and between that date and 1861 he completed that and other great decorative works: "The Triumph of Apollo," the panel in the centre of the ceiling of the Galerie d'Apollon in the Louvre ; subjects from the Divine Com edy in the library of the Luxembourg ; and the mural paintings in the church of St. Sulpice, and in the Salon de la Paix in the Hotel de Ville. Delacroix died on Aug. 13, 1863, at Champrosay, considered the greatest of the romanticist subject painters. Al though he was hailed during his life time as a great revolutionary, it is not him, but Ingres, his classicist opponent and rival, whom modern painters claim as their ancestor. His large pictures repre senting romantic epics have not created a following. It is by his magic colour harmonies that he contributed to the development of painting; and his subtle decomposition of colour taught one of their principal secrets to the impressionists.

See Journal d'Eugene Delacroix, ed. P. Flat and R. Piot A. Robaut and Chesneau, L'Oeuvre complet d'Eugene Delacroix (1885) ; E. Dargenty, Delacroix par lui-meme (1885) ; G. Moreau, Delacroix et son oeuvre (1893) ; Dorothy Bussy, Eugene Delacroix (1907) ; Phil. Burty, Lettres d'Eugene Delacroix 1815-1863 (1879) ; Raymond Escholier, Delacroix (1927).

DE LA GARDIE, JAKOB, COUNT

), Swe dish field-marshal, son of Count Pontus de la Gardie, was born at Reval on June 3o, 1583. In 1610 he led an army of mercenaries to Moscow in support of Basil Shuisky; after his abdication La Gardie seized Ingria and Novgorod, which acknowledged the sov ereignty of the Swedes, but the Swedish army was held up before Pskov. But with the accession of the Romanovs the Russian situation changed. La Gardie defeated the Russians at Bronitski in July 1614, but Gustavus Adolphus now took charge of the operations, and with him La Gardie returned to Sweden. By the peace of Stolbova (1617) the Swedish possessions on the eastern Baltic were secured. La Gardie was promoted field-marshal, and devoted himself to the organization of the army. In 1625 he was again fighting in the Baltic provinces. On the death of Gustavus Adolphus he was appointed one of the guardians of the child queen Christina. He married in 1618 Countess Ebba Brahe, the early love of Gustavus Adolphus. He died on Aug. 22, 1652.

See A. Hamilton, Minne of riksmarsken gref ve Jakob Pontusson de la Gardie (1880.

DE LA GARDIE, MAGNUS GABRIEL, COUNT

1686), Swedish statesman, was born on Oct. 15, 1622, in Reval, son of the preceding. In 1646 Queen Christina sent him on an extraordinary mission to France, and on his return he married the queen's cousin, Marie Euphrosyne of Zweibrucken. He stood well in Christina's favour and continuously held high office until when he fell into disgrace and had to leave the court. But in the reign of Charles X. (1654-60), his brother-in-law, he held high command in the army fighting in the Baltic provinces against Russia and Poland, and conducted the peace negotiations at Oliva (166o) . Charles appointed him grand chancellor and a member of the Council of Regency of Charles XI. during his minority. He succeeded in dominating the council, and pursued a policy of reck less extravagance, and in 1672 engineered the alliance with France, which entangled Sweden two years later in the disastrous war with the elector of Brandenburg. (See SWEDEN : History.) In 1675 a special commission was appointed to enquire into the conduct of De la Gardie and his associates, and on May 27, 1682, it decided that the regents and. the senate were solely responsible for dilapi dations of the realm, the compensation due by them to the Crown being assessed at 4,000,00o dater or £500,000. De la Gardie was treated with relative leniency, but he "received permission to re tire to his estates for the rest of his life" and died there in com parative poverty, a mere shadow of his former magnificent self. He was a man of brilliant social gifts and a great patron of litera ture and art. He presented to the library at Uppsala the famous late 5th-century Codex Argenteus of Ulfilas' Gothic version of the Gospels.

See Martin Veibull, Sveriges Storhetstid (Stockholm, 1880 ; Sv. Hist. iv.; R. N. Bain, Scandinavia (Cambridge, i9os) ; Konst och Konstnarer vid M. G. de la Gardies hof (19os).