ABSTRACT
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was widely revered as a leading light of French Romanticism, and his concept of art and pioneering techniques produced a profound impact on avant-garde painters in late nineteenth-century France. His Journal, for instance, inspired Paul Signac (1863–1935) to write the treatise, From Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism, that served as the manifesto of Neo-Impressionism. This chapter addresses the following questions: Why did Signac trace his art historical lineage to Delacroix? How did Signac at once inherit and depart from Delacroix’s Romantic aesthetics? I argue that Signac modified Delacroix’s legacy through an anarchist lens as an attempt to sustain the revolutionary forces of Romanticism. A manifest aesthetic continuity exists between Delacroix and Signac in that they both embraced pictorial harmony through the use of colour contrast and valorised visual effects on subject matter. Meanwhile, Signac was an anarchist committed to individual freedom and class equality in contrast to Delacroix’s cultural elitism and Bonapartist sympathy. At the juncture of heightened civil turmoil during the Third Republic, Signac carefully sought to balance the aesthetic autonomy against political engagement and envisioned an anarchist existence motivated by creative dissent.
