Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix.
As for Gericault chiaroscuro and contrasts, yes to another French painter of the Romantic era, EUGENE DELACROIX (1798—1863) Color was the main means of expression. In his famous Diary, he wrote about painters who attributed a fundamental meaning to color:
colorists, so you, who combine all parts of the painting into one, they have to establish everything simultaneously and from the beginning, what is essential and proper to their art. They have to deal with the paint like this, like a sculptor with clay, marble or stone
The words of the artist quoted above testify to this, that's not a drawing, but color was considered by Delacroix to be the main factor in the construction of the painting, for building material, from which the composition is made. In his paintings on extremely diverse subjects (reality and history, fairy tale and eastern exoticism, the portrayed man and the acting man, landscape and images of exotic animals) Delacroix used an extremely precise set of colors, each of which was justified and necessary as a brick in an intricate building. He liked the color vividness and contrasts of red, golden-yellow colour, blue and green. Delacroix penetrated the deepest secrets of color, he knew their relativity, tj. dependence on adjacent colors, and learned the principle of color reflections (with color reflections there is a phenomenon called. simultaneous contrast, that is, the interaction of neighboring colors with each other). This artist had the courage to use abstract color (np. paint the horse pink), if the logic of the image required it. In this respect, Delacroix was many years ahead of the Fauvists.
Your big ones, Delacroix devoted innovative painting not only to subjects, which interested him as an artist, but also to topics related to the social and libertarian idea. In year 1824 paints a picture of the Chios Massacre, showing the persecution by the Turkish invader of the Greeks living on this island. Six years later, he creates a wonderful work: Freedom leading the people to the barricades, being instant, a direct and full of human and artistic passion reaction to the events of the July Revolution. Throwing a pile of corpses in the foreground of the picture, on the second, in the foreground shows a woman in a Phrygian cap - a symbol of revolutionary France - with a red banner in her hand, next to a soldier with a rifle, a worker with a saber and a small rookie, followed by a crowd of attackers.
The coloring of the image, not bright, but brightened with vivid accents of color (red banner stain), strength of characteristics, chiaroscuro contrasts and enormous dynamism of the composition, and, above all, the power of the social idea elevate this painting by Delacroix to the rank of the greatest works in the history of European Romantic painting.