EUGENE DELACROIX
Statue of Delacroix in the Luxembourg Gardens . Eugène Delacroix lived from April 26 , 1798 to August 13 , 1863 . He is considered one of France ’ s greatest artists , with a major retrospective of his work at the Louvre in 2018 . In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres , Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance , with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form . In the words of Baudelaire , " Delacroix was passionately in love with passion , but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible ." As a painter and muralist , Delacroix ' s use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists , while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement .
Left : Detail du-monument Delacroix Right : Detail philosopher Compte Lower right : Statue of Comte on left with the Pantheon in the background .
AUGUSTE COMTE
The statue of Auguste Comte is seen just down the street from the Pantheon . He lived from January 19 , 1798 to September 5 , 1857 . He was a French philosopher and writer often regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term . Comte ' s ideas were also fundamental to the development of sociology ; indeed , he invented the term and treated that discipline as the crowning achievement of the sciences . He had a major impact on 19thcentury thought , influencing the work of social thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and George Eliot .
The Pantheon , built between 1758 and 1790 , was converted from a church to a mausoleum honoring major French citizens , among them Victor Hugo , Voltaire , and Marie and Pierre Curie .
50 PORTFOLIO MAGAZINE