Fernand-Victor-Eugène Delacroix

He kept a pet lion named Baron as a houseguest, who reportedly chewed his slippers and fell asleep by the stove. Delacroix painted in a blur of fast brushstrokes, so when critics called his colors “dirty,” he shot back, “I paint the truth, not the Sunday school version.” In a quiet corner of Paris’s Saint-Sulpice church, you can still see his swirling apostles on the wall—look for the one where light hits his face like a spotlight during midday mass.