Considered the leader of the French Romantic school of painting,, his use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, he illustrated various works of Shakespeare, Walter Scott and Goethe.

In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres, he took for his inspiration Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modelled form. Dramatic and romantic content characterised the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of Greek and Roman art, but to travel in North Africa in search of the exotic.