'Not only is the greatest by virtue of his talent, audacity and constancy the most persecuted, he is also exhausted and tormented by the burden of talent and imagination.'
Ferdinand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix

The idea of the artist as a rebel battling against society, a tortured and misunderstood genius, emerged with the birth of Romanticism.

For Romantic artists, a unique artistic vision was far more important than worldly success. They rejected the idea that great art was founded on academic rules: genius was innate and the true artist should pursue his individual vision, even if that meant becoming isolated from society.

Romantic ideas about the artist and his calling were not only expressed through the intense gazes and furrowed brows seen in their self portraits, but were also illustrated by many of the themes these artists chose for their work, particularly in scenes from the lives of great artists and poets of the past, which were highly popular. Thus Delacroix depicted Michelangelo as a solitary genius, alone in his studio.

In England the poet Thomas Chatterton, who killed himself in his London garret at the age of seventeen, came to stand for the archetypal starving poet, an unrecognised genius who had poisoned himself in despair.

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