Eugène Delacroix is the engine of French Romanticism — the painter who, against Ingres' neoclassical line, made oil into operatic, blood-saturated melodrama where every brushstroke is visible and every composition climaxes in a single moment of triumph or massacre. From *Liberty Leading the People* (1830) to *Death of Sardanapalus*, the work is crimson banner, smoke-tinged sky, glinting brass, North African costume.

The aesthetic says color is the music and line is just the lyrics. Pyramidal compositions surge upward; cropped figures spill past the frame; gold filigree edges meet bordeaux drapery; nothing rests at balanced calm — everything is at the climactic instant of action.