Liberty Leading The People Analysis

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This paper will compare and contrast two different works of art from different time periods. The first work is The Night Watch from the Baroque period and was painted by Rembrandt van Rijn in 1642. This large oil on canvas work is about 142.9 by 172 inches located in Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The second work is Liberty Leading the People from the Romanticism period and was painted by Eugène Delacroix in 1830. This work is a little bit smaller than The Night Watch but is about 102.4 by 128 inches located in the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. These two works show differences and similarities about male and female figureheads from different countries and time periods during wartime. The Night Watch was painted during the Baroque period. Baroque art refers to the artistic style common in Europe and North and South …show more content…

The Romanticism period was where artists celebrated what was wild and illogical in humans, especially in America, the constraint of human control of untamed nature. Along with this, spontaneous and natural feelings were highlighted in Romanticism. Some other enormous aspects of Romanticism are the highlighting of heroic icons in these works, the intense emotions, and the exotic settings (MindEdge, 3.09). The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars were a background for most of the works in this period. The work, Liberty Leading the People was a highlight of the French Revolution. Liberty was depicted as a bare breasted woman, showing the Liberty was a delicate aspect of the working class and the company represented in the work. In Romantic art, a brighter use of color, rapid, expressive and visible brushstrokes were used to evoke emotions (MindEdge, 3.09). In Liberty Leading the People, the colors are bolder and show a lot more emotion. In the background, someone can especially tell that Delacroix used bolder brushstrokes, which shows the Liberty winning the war, turning from dark to