Over two centuries have passed since the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence. In 1821, the Greek people started a revolution against the Ottoman Empire, claiming their freedom and national identity. This struggle led to the establishment of an independent Greek state in 1830, which later expanded and eventually evolved into contemporary Greece.
Although all this is now history, for the international public of the time it was, of course, news: governments and common people alike were surprised by the Greek Revolution, with the latter being immediately sympathetic towards the quest of the oppressed and disenfranchised nation. People in the arts and letters were especially sympathetic to the Greek cause, often seeking to contribute to it. As people with a classical education, who viewed Greece as the birthplace of philosophy, poetry, theater and art, many were deeply moved and sought to contribute to this cause, leading to the international movement of Philhellenism.
Writers and poets were inspired by the heroism of Greek fighters, while several contributed financially or even chose to travel to Greece to take part in the war. Visual artists, on the other hand, helped raise awareness on the hardships of the Greek people and mobilize public opinion – which in turn increased pressure on foreign governments to aid Greece.
It is important to bear in mind that photography had not been invented at the time, and the first publicly available photographic process was introduced in the late 1830s. Hence, there are no photographic accounts of the Greek War of Independence. Bringing in mind the power of image, and the lasting sensation brought about by photos depicting conflict and bloodshed, one can realize the importance of images in sensitizing viewers to the pain of people they never met.
Hence, paintings created at the time of the revolution can be regarded, in part, as a form of photojournalism: although artists mostly painted from their own imagination, they helped visualize the struggles and woes of the Greek population at the time, acting as champions of the Greek cause.
French artists
The most famous of the painters who used the Greek Revolution as a source of artistic inspiration was, arguably, Eugène Delacroix. Regarded as the leader of the French Romantic school, his works drew crowds and often caused a sensation. The subject of one of his most celebrated works was the Chios massacre, which was perpetrated on the island by Ottoman troops in 1822. His painting, originally titled Scenes of massacres at Chios; Greek families awaiting death or slavery, etc., was presented at the Salon of 1824.
Another famous work by Delacroix with a Greek theme was also inspired by a notorious massacre: the killing of thousands of Greeks during the heroic sortie which ended the Third siege of Missolonghi by Ottoman troops, in 1826. The work, painted that same year, shows a personification of Greece mourning the deaths, with the figure of a triumphant Ottoman soldier in the background.
A devoted philhellene, Delacroix would create several other works themed after the Greek War of Independence throughout his career.
The bloody sortie that concuded the third siege of Missolonghi also inspired the young French painter François-Émile de Lansac, whose most famous work depicts a woman holding her dead child in her arms and preparing to commit suicide, to avoid a fate as a slave to the enemy troops.
Ambroise Louis Garneray, a French seaman who evolved into a painter famous for his naval scenes, portrayed the most famous naval battle of the Greek War of Independence: the Battle of Navarino, in the Ionian Sea, where in 1827 allied forces from Britain, France, and Russia won a decisive victory against the Ottoman and Egyptian forces which were trying to suppress the revolution.
Claude Bonnefond was another French painter and lithograper deeply moved by the Greek cause. One of his most well-known works is The wounded Greek officer while, inspired by Greek culture, he also painted a Self-Portrait in a Greek Cap and The Holy Water Ceremony in the Church of Saint Athanasius (Sant’Atanasio dei Greci in Rome).
Louis Dupré was a French history painter and engraver. He had traveled in Greece ahead of the outbreak of the revolution, and had made various engravings portraying life under Ottoman rule. He continued to be interested in Greek themes in his subsequent works, with the most famous instrance being the idealized depiction of a Greek fighter (identified as Nikolakis Mitropoulos) raising a revolutionary flag.
Another painter, Hugues Fourau, was inspired by the execution of Gregory V, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople: in April of 1821 (a few weeks after the declaration of the Greek War of Independence), on the day of Greek Orthodox Easter, Gregory V was dragged out of the Patriarchal Cathedral right after the Easter Mass, still in his liturgical vestments. Accused of conspiring with the rebels, he was hanged at the gate of the Cathedral, his body left there to be ridiculed and later thrown in the Bosphorus.
The lesser-known French painter Vincent-Nicolas Raverat painted the work The Death of a Young Deacon in 1824, inspired by the poem The Young Deacon or The Christian Greece, by Casimir Delavigne (1739-1843), which told the story of a deacon in Messenia, shot by Turkish soldiers while sitting in a boat and singing a sad song about his homeland’s woes.
Another French artist inspired by a literary work about the Greek Revolution was Alexandre-Marie Colin, known for his historical and genre subjects. He painted The Greek child after the poem The child by iconic writer and philhellene Victor Hugo, who was also moved by the Chios Massacre.
Alphonse Apollodore Callet was, in his turn, inspired by the then-popular poem The refugees of Parga by the Baron of Ordre, which told the story of the inhabitants of the town of Parga -which was ceded by the English to the Turks in 1819- who preferred exile to the Ottoman yoke, burning everything before leaving. The episode predates the Revolution but became more famous after its outbrake.
Jean-Charles Langlois was a military officer who retired early following a serious injury and devoted himself to history painting. He has created some works portraying French General Nicolas Joseph Maison, commander of the French expeditionary corps in Morea (the Peloponnese) which was sent in 1828 with the aim of liberating the region from the Turkish-Egyptian occupation forces commanded by Ibrahim Pasha.
German artists
In 1826, Karl Krazeisen, a lieutenant at the time, formed part of a small delegation of Bavarian officers sent to Greece unofficially by Ludwig I, King of Bavaria (and father of Greece’s future king, Otto) to help train Greek troops. As Krazeisen was an amateur artist, he used the opportunity to capture the likenesses of many important figures of the Greek War of Independence, including the legendary heroes Kolokotronis, Karaiskakis, Kanaris, Miaoulis, Nikitaras and Makrygiannis.
On his return to Munich in 1827, he had most of those drawings turned into lithographs by Franz Hanfstaengl and Peter von Hess. A collection of those lithographs was publisahed in an album under the tilte Portraits of distinguished Greeks and Philhellenes, along with some landscapes and costumes, which was printed in seven editions between 1828 and 1831. As he was the only one to immortalize those heroes in their prime (and, for those who were killed, in their entire lifetime), many painters who would portray them later used his sketches as a reference.
Colonel Karl Wilhelm von Heydeck also arrived in Greece in 1826, like Karl Krazeisen. He took part in some important battles, and also used this opportunity to capture important personalities and events from the Greek Revolution. He received military distinctions in the army of the newly-liberated Greece in 1828, and following his return to Munich he was nominated to the regency council of young Otto, Greece’s first king.
Peter von Hess was a Bavarian painter; he had helped turn some of Karl Krazeisen’s drawings into engravings around 1827-28. In 1833 he would accompany Greece’s first king, Otto, son of the Bavarian king, and portray his entry to Nafplio, capital of Greece at the time. He also produced several other paintings with Greek themes, including battles, although these were produced after Greece had already won its independence.
Georg Christian Perlberg was yet another Bavarian painter who followed King Otto to Greece in 1833, and depicted landscapes, and several scenes from the Greek War of Independence, from his imagination, inspired from the actual scenery.
Carl Haag was a Bavarian-born painter who became a naturalized British subject and was court painter to the duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. One of his most famous works was the Greek Warrior.
Italian artists
Ludovico Lipparini was an artist from Bologna who created several paintings inspired by the Greek struggle from freedom. Among them we find an idealized depiction of Germanos III, Orthodox Metropolitan of Patras, raising the flag of the Revolution at Kalavryta; the English poet and philhellene Lord Byron, swearing an oath on Marco Botsaris’ tomb at Missolonghi; and an allegory of Greece sailing toward independence following the end of the Greek War of Independence.
One of his famous paintings portrays Markos Botsaris, Souliot chieftain, general of the Greek revolutionary army and hero of the revolution, who died in battle while defending Missolonghi against Mustafa Pasha’s army, in 1823.
The heroic death of Botsaris inspired several foreign as well as Greek artists, including the aforementioned Peter von Hess. Another Italian painter who portrayed his tragic end was Filippo Marsigli.
Francesco Podesti, on the other hand, was inspired by the death of a lesser-known Greek hero, Spyros Dagliostros from Zakynthos, who was among the rebels who fought in the first battles of the Greek War of Independence, and died a few months after the start of the revolution.
Giuseppe Mazzola was another painter who was touched by the tragic fate of the city of Missolonghi.
Other artists
The Dutch-French Romantic painter Ary Scheffer created several works with Greek themes, inspired by the Greek revolution but the plights of the Souliotes, Albanian-speaking Christians in Epirus, who fought in the Greek War of Independence and assimilated into the rest of the Greek nation.
The Souliotes had repeatedly revolted against local Ottoman authorities. In the 1790s, this culminated in a series of battles against Ali Pasha of Ioannina, which ended in bloody sieges by the Ottoman troops in late 1803. The Souliot women, especially, remained legendary for their intrepid spirit and self-sacrifice.
The story of the Souliot people became more famous following the outbreak of the Greek Revolution, more than seventeen years later. Another painter inspired by their bravery was the English Denis Dighton, best known for his military portraits and battle scenes.
Sir Charles Lock Eastlake PRA was a British painter, and the first director of the National Gallery in London. He was also among the painters moved by the tragic massacre on the island of Chios.
Another English artist who depicted scenes from the war in Greece was George Philip Reinagle, marine painter and engraver. Reinagle was in fact present at the aforementioned naval battle of Navarino, which he subsequently depicted through a number of works such as Illustrations of the Battle of Navarin and Illustrations of the Occurrences at the Entrance of the Bay of Patras between the English Squadron and Turkish Fleets 1827.
Ivan Aivazovsky was a Russian Romantic painter, considered one of the greatest masters of marine art. He too was inspired by the great naval Battle of Navarino, which he depicted focusing on the Russian ships which took part in the battle, under Admiral Lodewijk van Heiden.
Another impressive painting by Aivazovsky depicts yet another important episode of the war fought at sea: the burning of the Ottoman flagship off Chios in 1822, where a fire ship under Konstantinos Kanaris set the Ottoman frigate ablaze, killing around two thousand sailors, as a reprisal for the aforementioned Chios massacre, which had occurred two months earlier.
Nefeli Mosaidi (Intro image: The Massacre at Chios (detail), Eugène Delacroix, 1824)
Read also via Greek News Agenda: American and British Philhellenes; Theodoros Vryzakis, the “painter of the Greek Revolution” ; The Munich School, the first artistic current in the modern Greek state
