Delacroix’s painting celebrates the July Revolution of 1830 as a fight for liberty. The woman leading the crowd is not a real person but an allegory of Liberty, and the blue, white and red of the French flag, banned while the monarchy was restored from 1815 to 1830, return all over the canvas. The Louvre calls this hymn to the three colours the true subject of the picture, which has become a symbol of liberty and of struggles for freedom.

Source: Louvre press release on the restoration (2024) · Louvre: The Red Rooms (Salle Mollien) · Louvre teaching dossier on the painting (PDF, in French)

Liberty Leading the People hangs in the Louvre in Paris, in Room 700 (Salle Mollien, Romanticism), Denon wing, Level 1. Its inventory number is RF 129. The French state bought it in August 1831; it was shown at the Musée du Luxembourg and entered the Louvre in November 1874. After a restoration from October 2023 to April 2024, it went back on display in the Salle Mollien on 2 May 2024.

Source: Louvre collection record (RF 129) · Louvre press release on the restoration (2024)

Because the figure is an allegory, not a real woman. The Louvre describes Liberty as part classical goddess, part woman of the people: the bare breast, the perfect Greek profile and the drapery in the antique style mark a classical figure, while the Phrygian cap, the rifle with its bayonet and the tricolour tie Liberty to the revolution. X-rays show that Delacroix first painted the face from the front, then turned it into a profile.

Source: Louvre: The Red Rooms (Salle Mollien) · Louvre teaching dossier on the painting (PDF, in French)

The painting shows the July Revolution of 1830, the Three Glorious Days of 27, 28 and 29 July, when the people of Paris rose up against King Charles X. Delacroix witnessed the uprising and began the painting in September. In October 1830 Delacroix wrote to a brother, General Charles-Henry Delacroix: “J’ai entrepris un sujet moderne, une barricade, et si je n’ai pas vaincu pour la patrie, au moins peindrais-je pour elle” (I have taken up a modern subject, a barricade, and if I have not fought for my country, at least I will paint for it). The scene is not one recorded episode but a symbol of the revolt.

Source: Louvre: interview with curator Côme Fabre (2024) · Louvre: The Red Rooms (Salle Mollien) · Louvre teaching dossier on the painting (PDF, in French)

Liberty Leading the People measures 260 × 325 cm (about 8.5 × 10.7 feet); with its frame it is 297 × 365 cm. Delacroix painted it in oil on a canvas made of three strips sewn together horizontally and finished it in December 1830, in barely four months.

Source: Louvre collection record (RF 129) · Louvre teaching dossier on the painting (PDF, in French) · Louvre: interview with curator Côme Fabre (2024)

Yes. Delacroix died in 1863, so Delacroix’s paintings are free of copyright everywhere. A faithful photograph of a public-domain painting adds no new copyright in the United States or the European Union, so you can download this image and use it in personal or commercial projects. Public Domain Images for Commercial Use explains how.

Source: Wikidata Q33477 (died 13 August 1863)