Music and Color

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) wanted painting to affect viewers the way music does — directly, physically, without intellectual mediation. His color theory — placing complementary colors side by side to create optical vibration — influenced the Impressionists a generation later.

Turner and Delacroix proved that emotion could be painted with the same seriousness as historical events. Their legacy runs through Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and every art movement that privileges feeling over representation.