Eugène Delacroix - Demosthenes Declaiming by the Seashore 1859
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Demosthenes Declaiming by the Seashore 1859
49x60cm oil on paper, laid on wood panel
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin
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From National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin:
Eugène Delacroix was the leading artist of the Romantic movement in France. Renowned for painting historical subjects on a grand scale, his compositions are highly charged, full of colour, dramatic movement and emotion.
Demosthenes was a statesman and orator who lived in Athens during the fourth century BC. To overcome a speech impediment he is said to have practised speaking with pebbles in his mouth. He also gave speeches on the seashore, projecting his voice over the sound of the waves in preparation for tumultuous crowds. Delacroix depicts him barefoot on a beach with one arm outstretched towards the water. Two figures clamber on the rocks behind and appear to gesture in alarm at the spectacle. When this picture was first exhibited in Paris in 1860 it was admired primarily as a marine painting.