Damnation, Dante and decadence: why Eugène Delacroix is making a hero’s return

From Van Gogh to Cézanne to Picasso, Delacroix was revered by the very artists who would come to overshadow him. Now his pessimistic vision looks set for critical acclaim once againEugène Delacroix today holds, for many people, a somewhat peripheral place in the pantheon of 19th-century artists. That he was a powerful influence on the likes of Manet, the impressionists and Seurat is taken for granted, but so too is the idea that they went on to outstrip him. For the poet and art cr