Delacroix is widely regarded as the leader of the Romantic movement in 19 th -century French art. His life and work embodied the movement's concern for emotion, exoticism, and the sublime, and his painting style - full of lush, agitated brushwork and pulsating with vivid color - was in direct contrast to the cool and controlled delineations of his peer and rival, Ingres. Delacroix eschewed academic conventions in his choice of subjects, favoring scenes from contemporary history rendered on a large scale in the most dramatic of fashions, with visibly energized brushwork and dynamic figural compositions.
Delacroix's work also embodies Romanticism's obsession with the exotic Other, seen in his paintings inspired by a transformational trip to North Africa, but his animal pictures can also be viewed in this vein. Interestingly, many of his works were based on direct observation of nature he was a prodigious draftsman and took an interest in early photography , which he then combined with a narrative imagination, not surprising given his intimacy with many of the most famous writers of his day.
In the foreground of Delacroix's canvas, we see a group of distraught Greek men, women, and children laying huddled some dead, some barely alive on the ground. On the left, a man expires from a stomach wound while his wife leans on his shoulder; on the right, a dead mother leans against an elderly woman as her child tries without success to suckle at her exposed breasts.
Behind them on the right an Ottoman Turk charges towards the group dragging a naked prisoner as a figure tries in vain to stop him with upraised hands. In the background, less defined figures are engaged in battle in the devastated landscape as the ocean meets the horizon line of a golden sky.
The large scale of the canvas it is over 16 feet wide monumentalizes the suffering of the Greek figures, and adds to the overall drama and visual impact of the picture.
