Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix, born in 1798, was a French Romantic artist, held by many as the pioneer of the French Romantic School. Delacroix could represent reality with the skill of a master and yet borrow richly from exotic inspirations. Also hugely proficient at lithography, he illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Sir Walter Scott and the German writer Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. But what Delacroix himself did not know was that he would be the album cover artist for a 20th century band that he never knew existed.
The band is the British rock band Coldplay which released its fourth album Viva La Vida on June 17 this year, finally gratifying its colossal fan base across the globe. Another phenomenal album isn’t a surprise at all, but the band’s 10 novel tunes that have been packaged in a 19th century painting, certainly is.
The album sleeve carries Delacroix’s most influential work, La Liberté guidant le peuple (Liberty leading the people), painted in 1830. The painting is a political poster with a powerful visual depiction of the event on July 28, 1830, when the people rose and dethroned the Bourbon king. Delacroix himself wasn’t part of the event, but wanted to paint it for sentimental value. The artwork shows Parisians, alight with the spirit of revolution, striding behind the French tricolour with a bed of dead soldiers in the foreground.
Read the full article at WikiColdplay here
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