After a restoration of just over six months, Liberty Leading the People find the Louvre Museum. The monumental canvas by Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) will once again be presented to the public in the Mollien room from this Thursday, May 2.
“It is one of the most emblematic works of the Louvre”, explains Sébastien Allard, director of the paintings department at the Louvre museum to RTL. “The restoration of Liberty Leading the People is part of a major program of restoration of large formats of the 19th century which were works which had not been restored by the Grand Louvre due to their size, due to the complexity of the examinations that must be carried out and also due to the cost of such an operation.”
“We were in a situation where these works were covered with eight, ten layers of dirty varnish,” emphasizes Sébastien Allard. But in the case of Delacroix, what constitutes the very essence of his art is color. And this color was covered with yellowed, very oxidized varnish So the work was very clearly betrayed, because in this work of freedom the entire chromatic range rests around the blue white red this flag of the revolution which had once again become the flag of the. France.”
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The canvas concentrates a quantity of imagination
“It is certainly the most famous painting by the artist, which particularly resonates in the hearts of the French,” explains Côme Fabre, curator in the paintings department at the Louvre Museum and specialist in 19th century French paintings. Because we knew him on stamps, on bank notes in the era of the Franks And then, he constantly reappears on advertisements. He concentrates a lot of imagination. We think it’s Marianne. it represents the Republic or France in general.”
And to add: “In reality Delacroix painted this painting not on the occasion of the first great revolution in France in 1789 but 40 years later in 1830 (during the days called ‘the 3 glorious days’). The revolution of July is a time when Parisians revolted against King Charles publishing what you want is freedom of expression.”
In September 2023, this table (an oil on canvas measuring 3.25 meters by 2.60 meters) was replaced by the painting in front of it: Soulful Womenby Ary Scheffer, dated 1827. “Long prepared in advance by x-rays and analyses”, the restoration of Liberty Leading the People intervenes as part of a major restoration campaign (over 10 years) launched by the Louvre Museum in 2019 for 19th century formats explains Sébastien Allard, director of the Louvre paintings department.
Striking colors and secrets revealed
For more than 6 months, two restorers patiently and meticulously cleaned the painting.with solvents, armed with cotton sticks, they removed the successive layers of varnish, the result of the various restorations and which ended up “betraying the colors”.
Before this restoration, infrared analyses, x-rays and ultraviolet have revealed some secrets of the painting. “Repentances”. The painting having been painted “quickly”, Eugène Delacroix made many modifications to it.
“We discovered that he had reoriented the face of Liberty, which initially looked at one of the men begging her at her feet, then finally Delacroix changed, turned her face in profile to give it a more divine appearance,” explains Côme Fabre, curator in the paintings department at the Louvre Museum and specialist in 19th century French paintings.
He continues: “We also see that he transformed the color of the dress of liberty, which was gray at the start, He certainly wanted to create a hot spot around it, so he added yellow on top, especially at the bust, and then the yellow is faded as we go down the legs He also added. a golden cloud like a halo around his head, which stands out very well from the other clouds (this was not the case in the unrestored version), and then we also discover a number of small echoes of the blue-white-red flag which had disappeared over time, but which are scattered everywhere. In the infinitely small, looking for example at the calf of one of the corpses in the foreground, we see that there are small blue-white-red hatchings on the skin. And then this corpse itself is ultimately a flag, since it has a blue sock, a white shirt and there is red blood flowing from his head.”
“We discovered lots of little touches that weren’t visible,” reveals Laurence Mugniot, one of the two restorers. “Pathetic details, drippings of blood, things that we couldn’t see very well before restoration. For example, on the head of the cuirassier which is at the bottom right, face down, we couldn’t see the blood flowing from his head at all. Or the character we call Hector, who is on the left, who is half naked, who also has a bloody head. There is this game like that, a little morbid, eyes a little white for some of the dead in the foreground, blood flowing. There is something very pathetic.”
An originally unloved painting
Completed in December 1830, the painting was exhibited at the Salon of May 1831. The salon was formerly the exhibition for artists approved by the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. But reception by the public and some critics is poorsome compare this “freedom” to a prostitute, a slut, a street woman, says Côme Fabre.
“This freedom disturbed a lot at the time, because usually a positive idea like freedom, we will represent it through a clean, beautiful and quite graceful, quite feminine woman. There, she has the muscles of a man, she is very red, she has hair under her armpits, she’s sweaty and she has really scary muscles. She’s armed to the teeth!”
The painting was still purchased, but not by a museum (Delacroix dreamed of seeing it exhibited): “Delacroix would have very much liked the painting to be purchased straight away to be shown at the museum. But unfortunately, it was purchased not by the Ministry of Culture at the time, but by the Ministry of Public Works and Commerce, which did not really know what to do with it. the painting remained in storage for a very long time, all the more hidden because it embarrassed the government, the new government. Although he was brought to power by this insurrection of 1830, the government wanted at all costs to stifle, calm and stop the revolutionary movements and in particular all social demands which were beginning to appear. And so this painting was embarrassing. He therefore remained completely hidden from the public eye for 25 years. It was not until 1855 that it reappeared for the first time since 1831.”
We had a problem with very old, yellow, dull, degraded varnish
Laurence Mugniot restaurateur
“We had a problem with old yellow, dull, degraded varnish,” explains Laurence Mugniot who, with Bénédicte Trémolières, restored this painting by Eugène Delacroix: “The gradient yellow varnishes form like a yellow photo film on the surface which modifies all the colors, which turns them yellow like yellow glasses, quite simply. and then which also attenuates all the contrasts. So the blacks appear less black, things are suddenly less clear, less distinct, and then there are lots of touches, small details which suddenly disappear and drown in this yellow-brown film which is on the surface. There are no rules, but we decided to proceed from the bottom up because the lower parts are darker, more complex. We really had to make sure we could have a correct, homogeneous result, before going to areas that are simpler to treat, like light colors or blues, where we have more visibility.”
Placed next to the board, solvents, brushes and XXL cotton swabs (for the length): “We work with small cotton sticks. Basically, it looks like a kind of long cotton swab, explains Laurence Mugniot. We also work with very small brushes for retouching and we also work a lot with UV lamps which allow us to control very precisely what we do because if the varnishes are visible to the naked eye. not see them, or like a yellow film, if we illuminate them under UV lighting, they fluoresce and therefore this allows us to know very precisely what is on the surface, if there is any left. to be able to move forward even in very dark areas where we don’t have much visibility. It helps us to work.”
A restoration with soft steps therefore. The two restorers explain that it was also necessary to identify the “repainted”, “the overpainted”. (it is common during a restoration to retouch the pictorial layer (when it is damaged for example).
“We got tired in the stony areas in particular, which were barely visible, more fragile areas, so it was complex to clean. And then we also wondered a lot about areas where there were repaintings, and it was a matter of understanding well, of being sure, of bringing together all the elements to be sure that they were repaintings. , that we have no doubt, and then decide with conservation whether we remove them or keep them. In this case, for the most part, as they turned out to be unsightly and unjustified, we were able to remove these repaintings.”
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