How does The Massacre at Chios elucidate its History?
On 15 September 1821, Delacroix wrote to his friend Raymond Soulier that he wanted to make a reputation for himself by painting a scene from the war between the Ottomans and the Greeks, and have this painting displayed at the Salon. At this time Delacroix was not famous, and had yet to paint a canvas that was to be hung for public display. In the event, he decided to paint his Dante and Virgil in Hell, but even as this painting was revealed to the public in April 1822, the atrocities at Chios were being meted out in full force. In May 1823, Delacroix committed to paint a picture about the massacre.
When the Salon of 1824 opened on 25 August—an unusually late date for this institution—Delacroix's picture was shown there as exhibit no. 450 and entitled Scènes des massacres de Scio; familles grecques attendent la mort ou l'esclavage, etc.  (English:Scenes of massacres at Chios; Greek families awaiting death or slavery, etc..) The painting was hung in the same room that housed Ingres' The Vow of Louis XIII. This display of two works exemplifying such  a different approaches to the expression of form marked the beginning of the public rivalry between the two artists. Delacroix thought this was the moment the academy began to regard him as an "object of antipathy".Alexandre Dumas reported that "there is always a group in front of the picture ..., painters of every school engaged in heated discussion". Both Dumas and Stendhal remarked that they thought the picture was a depiction of a plague, which in part it was. Gros, from whose Plague of Jaffa Delacroix had noticeably borrowed, called it "the massacre of painting". Ingres said the painting exemplified the 'fever and epilepsy' of modern art. Critics Girodet and Thiers were, however, more flattering, and the painting was sufficiently well regarded for the state to purchase it the same year for the Musée du Luxembourg for 6000 francs. The purchase provoked internal conflicts in the Restoration arts administration, however, when the Comte de Forbin, director of the royal museums, bought the painting without the King's official approval, an irregular and politically risky procedure. In November 1874 it was transferred to the Musée du Louvre.
Musée du Louvre Plague of Jaffa Chios massacre Alexandre Dumas Musée du Luxembourg The Vow of Louis XIII Girodet Salon 1824 Dante and Virgil in Hell Louvre the war between the Ottomans and the Greeks Thiers