In 1815 Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix joined the studio of the neoclassical painter Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, where he met Théodore Géricault. After Géricault’s death in 1824, Delacroix became the head of the romantic school in France. Delacroix’s paintings exhibited in the 1820s at the Salon were a dramatic success, including The Barque of Dante (1822), The Massacre at Scio, 1824, and The Death of Sardanapalus (1827). In the 1820s the artist preferred literary and historical subjects, rarely turning to themes from actual life. However, his most famous painting, Liberty Leading the People (1830), is dedicated to a contemporary event, the July Revolution of 1830.

In 1832 Delacroix spent six months in Morocco at the court of Sultan Moulay Abderrahman. His impressions of the trip and the sketches he made during that year served as the basis for the numerous oriental works the artist created over the following quarter century. In his later years Delacroix devoted much time to writing in his famous journal and to painting monumental murals. In particular, from 1853 through 1861 he ornamented the Chapel of the Holy Angels in Saint-Sulpice, which brought him fame as the greatest colorist of the era.