La Mort de Sardanapale

Delacroix showed this at the Paris Salon of 1827, and it caused an uproar. French official painting still ran on neoclassical rules, clear space, calm colour, uplifting subjects, and this was the opposite of all of it. A whole world piled up in reds and golds, sliding toward the viewer. The story comes from a play by Lord Byron. The Assyrian king Sardanapalus, facing defeat, has everything he owns destroyed rather than let his enemies take it, and orders his horses, his treasure, and the women of his court killed before his eyes. Delacroix puts the king up on his great red bed, propped on an elbow, watching the slaughter almost without expression. One critic called it the fanaticism of ugliness. The official in charge of the arts warned Delacroix that unless he changed his manner he could expect no more government support. When the picture travelled to London the following year, the English praised it warmly.