The Liberation of the Harem
48" x 60"
1985
Collection of Angelina Lippert
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People was a romantic hymn to revolutionary idealism, celebrating the popular uprising in Paris in 1830 that led to the downfall of the Restoration and the crowning of Louis Philippe. It was also considered an assault on the more conservative artistic traditions of his great rival of the classic school, Ingres, whose two nudes replace, in my rough rendering, Delacroix's original foreground filled with casualties of the fighting. Here, I have tried to play a Jimmy Carter role, bringing the famous rivals together for the first, and possibly the last, time, in a worthy, feminist "Let My People Go" cause.
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