Chapter 6

François Gérard, one of the many faithful followers of David, was born May 4, 1770, at Rome, where his father had gone in the service of the ambassador of France. He went to France in his twelfth year, and at sixteen was enrolled in the school of David. As a docile pupil he entered the competition for the Roman prize in 1789; but Girodet having obtained the first place, a second prize was awarded, and the next year the death of his father prevented him from finishing his competition picture; so that he is one of the exceptions amongst David's pupils, inasmuch as he did not obtain the Prix de Rome. In 1790, however, he accompanied his mother, who was an Italian, to her native country. But his sojourn there was short, as in 1793 he solicited the influence of David to save him from the general conscription; which was done by naming him a member of the Revolutionary tribunal. By taking refuge in his studio and feigning illness, he avoided the exercise of his judicial functions; and the storm passing away, he exhibited in 1795 a picture of Belisarius which attracted attention.

In 1806 Napoleon made him the official portrait painter attached to his court, and ordered the picture of the battle of Austerlitz, finished in 1810. This and indeed all of Gérard's pictures are marked by all the defects of David's methods, and lack the virile quality of his master. His portraits, however, have many qualities of grace and good taste, and his success in France was somewhat analogous to that of Lawrence in England. Under the Restoration his vogue continued; in 1819 he was given the title of baron; and, dying in Paris on January 11, 1837, he left as his legacy to the art of his time no less than twenty-eight historical pictures, many of great dimensions, eighty-seven full-length portraits, and over two hundred smaller portraits, representing the principal men and women of his time. The portraits of the Countess Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angely and of the Princess Visconti are both excellent specimens of the work of this estimable painter.

Of the pictures which testify to the industry and talent of Louis-Léopold Boilly, who was born at La Bassée, near Lille, on July 5, 1761, the Louvre possesses but one specimen; namely, the Arrival of a Diligence before the coach-office in Paris. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that with the preoccupation of the public mind with the events of the time, and the prevailing taste for great historical pictures, Boilly's art, so sincere and so intimate in character, was underestimated. It is certainly not due to any lack of industry on the part of the painter. Even at the age of eleven years he undertook to paint, for a religious fraternity of his native town, two pictures representing the miracles of St. Roch. These still exist, and they are said to be meritorious. His facility in seizing the resemblance of his sitter was evidently native, for when only thirteen years of age, without instruction of any kind, he left his parents, and established himself as a portrait painter first at Douai and afterwards at Arras. In 1786 he went to Paris, where he lived until his death. Here he painted a great number of pictures of small size, representing familiar scenes of the streets and of the homes of Paris, and an incredible number of portraits.

A valiant craftsman, happy in his work, following no school but that of nature, careless of official honor (which came to him only when, late in life, on the demand of the Academy, the government accorded him the cross of the Legion of Honor in 1833), his life was uneventful. But his little pictures pleased the people who saw themselves so truthfully depicted, and to-day they are more highly esteemed than are the works of many of his at-the-time esteemed contemporaries. He painted for seventy-two years, produced more than five thousand portraits, an incredible number of pictures and drawings, and died, his brush in hand, on January 5, 1845. The little picture of the Arrival of a Diligence presents, with exquisite truthfulness, a Paris unlike the brilliant city of our day, the Paris where Arthur Young in his travels in 1812 notes the absence of sidewalks; a city inhabited by slim ladies dressed _à la Grecque_, and by high-stocked gentlemen content to travel by post. It is a canvas of more value than the pretentious and tiresome historical compositions of the time, and suggests the reflection that many of the David pupils might have been better employed in putting their scientific accuracy of drawing to the service of rendering the life which they saw about them, instead of producing the arid stretches of academy models posing as Hector or Romulus.

Guillaume-Guillon Lethière, a painter in whose veins there was an admixture of negro blood, would hardly have echoed the sentiments of this last paragraph, as he lived and worked in the factitious companionship of the Greeks and Romans. So clearly, however, does the temperament of a painter inspire the character of his work that we may be glad that this was the case; for, of his school, Lethière alone infuses into his classicism something of the turbulent life which marked his own character.

Born in Guadeloupe January 10, 1760, coming to Paris when very young, he took the second prize of Rome in 1784, with a picture of such merit that the regulation was infringed and he was given leave to go to Rome at the same time as the winner of the first prize. His first picture was exhibited in the form of a sketch in the Salon of 1801; and not until eleven years after was the great canvas of Brutus Condemning his Sons to Death shown at the Salon of 1812. The other picture by which he is best known, the Death of Virginia, is, like the preceding, in the Louvre; and though the sketch of this was exhibited in 1795, the picture only took definite form in 1828.

Meanwhile Lethière had travelled much in England and Spain, and had been for ten years director of the French School of Fine Arts in Rome. His life was adventurous, and it is told of him that he was often involved in quarrels, and fought a number of duels with military officers because, humble civilian that he was, he yet dared to wear the mustache! In 1822 he returned definitely to Paris, where he was made a member of the Institute and professor in the School of Fine Arts, and where he died April 21, 1832. The quality of his work is well characterized by Charles Blanc, who writes of it "as producing the effect of a tragedy sombre and pathetic."

The picture of the Burial of Atala, from Châteaubriand's well-known story, is interesting as showing the methods of the David school applied to subjects of less heroic mould than the master and his disciples were wont to treat. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy Trioson, born at Montargis January 3, 1767, was one of the most convinced adherents of his master David; and while competing for the Prize of Rome, which he won in 1789, was accustomed each morning before beginning his work to station himself in front of David's picture of the Horatii as before a shrine, invoking its happy influence. Such devotion received its official reward, and after five years spent in Rome his great (and tiresome) picture of the Deluge met with the greatest favor, and in 1810 was awarded the medal for the best historical picture produced in the preceding decade. The Burial of Atala, painted in 1808, is, however, a work of charm in composition and sentiment; and though in color it is dry and uninteresting, is not unworthy of the popularity which it has enjoyed from the vantage ground of the Louvre for more than four-score years. Girodet died in Paris, December 9, 1824, after having received all the official honors which France can award to a painter.

The charming face of Marie-Anne-Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun, who, with the arms of her daughter encircling her, smiles on us here, was undoubtedly not painted in this century, as the painter was born in Paris April 16, 1755, and it is as a young mother that she has represented herself. But as its author lived until March 30, 1842, she should undoubtedly figure among the painters of this century. From early girlhood until old age,

"_Lebrun, de la beauté le peintre et le modèle._"

as Laharpe sang, was, though largely self-taught, a formidable concurrent to painters of the sterner sex. Married when very young to Lebrun, a dealer in pictures and critic of art, a pure marriage of convention, she left France shortly before the Revolution, and went to Italy. Before her departure she was high in favor at the court, and painted no less than twenty portraits of Marie Antoinette.

Fortune favored her in Italy, whence she went to Vienna, Prague, Dresden, and Berlin. In each and every capital the same success, due to her talent, beauty, and amiability, followed her; and at last arriving in St. Petersburg, she remained there until 1801, when she returned to Paris. Some time after, she visited England, where she remained three years, and then returned by way of Holland to France in 1809. The Academy of France and the academies of all other European countries admitted her to membership.

Indefatigable as a worker during her long career, she produced an immense number of portraits; and while she painted comparatively few subject pictures, she arranged her models in so picturesque a fashion that, as in the example here given, her portraits have great charm of composition. With a virile grasp of form, tempered though it be with grace, Madame Lebrun offers an interesting example of woman's work in art; and, while she has nothing to concede to the painters of her time, is no less interesting as showing that by force of native talent the woman of the early part of the century had in her power the conquest of nearly all the desired rights of the New Woman. She has left extremely interesting memoirs of her life, written in her old age, and there are many anecdotes bearing testimony to her wit. One of these goes back to the time when Louis XVIII., then a youth, enlivened the sittings for his portrait by singing, quite out of tune. "How do you think I sing?" inquired he. "Like a prince," responded the amiable artist.

With Antoine Jean Gros we come to the last and the greatest of the pupils of David. Born in Paris March 16, 1771, he competed but once, in 1792, for the Prix de Rome, was unsuccessful, but undertook the voyage thither on his own slender resources the next year. Italy was in a troubled state--he who troubled all Europe in the early years of the century being there at the head of his army; and in 1796, at Genoa, Gros attracted the attention of Madame Bonaparte. It was she who proposed that Gros should paint Napoleon; and Gros consequently went to Milan, and after the battle of Arcole painted the hero carrying the tricolor across the bridge at the head of his grenadiers. The picture pleased Bonaparte, who had it engraved, and gave Gros a commission to collect for the Louvre the chief artistic treasures of Italy. These functions occupied him until 1801, during which period, however, he executed a number of successful portraits.

Returning to Paris after nine years, he painted the Hospital at Jaffa, representing Napoleon visiting the fever-stricken soldiers. The success of this picture, exhibited in 1804, was very great; and it remains Gros's best title to remembrance. In it is something of the reality poetized and seen through the eyes of an artist which characterizes the work of Eugene Delacroix.

The force of David, however, was too great for Gros; at fifty years of age we find him demanding counsel of the master, who sternly bids him leave his "futile subjects," and devote his time to great historical epochs of the past. When David was sent into exile in 1816, it was to Gros that he confided the direction of his school; and this task, and the production of immense canvases like the Battle of the Pyramids, filled his life. The picture here reproduced, the Visit of Charles the Fifth and Francis the First to the Tombs of the Kings in the Cathedral of St. Denis, was painted in 1812.

The revolt which was already making itself felt in French art was a thorn in the flesh of the sensitive Gros. In vain were all the artistic honors showered upon him. In 1824 he was made a baron; since 1816 he had been a member of the Institute; and the crosses of most of the orders of Europe, and the medals of all the exhibitions were his. Nevertheless, about him younger painters revolted. In his secret soul, doubtless, he felt sympathy with their methods. But the commands of the terrible old exile of Brussels were still in his ears.

Finally a portrait of King Charles X., the decorations in the Museum of Sovereigns, and a picture exhibited in the Salon of 1835 were in turn harshly criticized by the press, which looked with favor on the younger men; and Gros, full of years, and of honors which had brought fortune in their train, was found drowned in a little arm of the Seine near Meudon, June 26, 1835. In despair he had taken his own life. With him died David's greatest pupil and a part of David's influence. But that portion of the teachings of the master most consonant with French character is not without effect to-day. Less strong than in the generation following David, absolutely extinct if we are to believe the extremists among the men of to-day, it yet remains a leaven to the fermenting mass of modern production. Perhaps its healthy influence is the best monument to the man who "restored to France the purity of antique taste."

THE DEFEAT OF BLAINE FOR THE PRESIDENCY.

BY MURAT HALSTEAD.

The fame of Blaine does not decline, but increases and will endure. It was not his destiny to fill the greater office created by our Constitution, but with a distinction exceeding that of the majority of Presidents, he is enrolled, with Clay, Webster, and Seward, among the illustrious Secretaries of State. The defeat of James G. Blaine for the Presidency in 1884 will rank among the memorable disappointments and misfortunes of the people with that of Henry Clay, forty years before.

Late in the week before the meeting of the Chicago National Republican Convention in 1884, I received in Cincinnati a telegram from Mr. Blaine requesting me to call on him in Washington, where he lived on the opposite side of Lafayette Square from that of the celebrated old house where he spent his last days. He was engaged on his "Twenty Years in Congress." I called on him the day after his despatch reached me, making haste, for I was about to go to Chicago; and he first said he feared he had sent for me on an insufficient errand, and after a moment's pause began to speak of the approaching convention, and quickly used the expression--"I am alarmed."

"Concerning what are you frightened?" I inquired; and added: "You surely are not afraid you are not going to be nominated?"

He responded with a flash of his eyes and a smile: "Oh, no; I am afraid I shall be nominated, and have sent for you for that reason, and want you to assist in preventing my nomination." I shook my head, and Mr. Blaine asked: "Why not?"

I said I had not been so long in his confidence and known by his friends to be of them, to venture upon such an enterprise as working in opposition. If I should appear actively against him, no matter how I presented the matter, the easy answer to any argument of mine would be that I had relapsed into personal antagonism to him. I then said: "I have not heard of this;" and asked: "Are there many who know that you are against your candidacy?" He said he had talked freely to that effect, and mentioned William Walter Phelps as one who was fully acquainted with his views, and also Colonel Parsons, of the Natural Bridge, Virginia, then in the house. I said: "Mr. Blaine, I think it is too late. I have looked over the field, and your nomination is almost certain--the drift is your way. Why precisely do you object, and what exactly do you think should happen?" He replied in his rapid way with much feeling, and I believe his very words were: "The objection to my nomination is that I cannot be elected. With the South solid against us we cannot succeed without New York, and I cannot carry that State. There are factions there and influences before voting and after voting, such that the party cannot count upon success with me. I am sure of it--I have thought it all over, and my deliberate judgment is as I tell you. I know, too, where I am strong as well as where I am weak--and we might, if we should get into the campaign with my name at the head of the ticket, think we were going to win. We would get to believing it, perhaps, but we should miss it in the end, if not by a great deal, just a little. With everything depending on New York," he continued, "it would be a mistake to nominate me. This is not new to me--I have weighed all the chances. Besides"--and here he kindled--"why should we let the country go into the hands of Democrats when we can name a ticket that is certain to be elected--one that would sweep every Northern State?"

"What is it?" I asked.

The answer came with vivid animation: "William T. Sherman and Robert T. Lincoln." This idea was instantly amplified. "The names of Sherman and Lincoln put together would be irresistible. That ticket would elect itself. We should have a campaign of marching and song. We need the inspiration, and 'Marching Through Georgia' and 'We Are Coming, Father Abraham,' would give it. We must not lose this campaign, and I am alarmed by the prospect of losing it in my name."

"But," I interposed, "it is the report and the public opinion that General Sherman would not consent to be a candidate; that he would throw the party down that would nominate him. Why not try the other Sherman?"

Mr. Blaine's response was that John Sherman would have the like difficulty in carrying New York that he would have himself. The element of military heroism was wanting. He had written to General Sherman on the subject, and of course the General thought he could not consent to be President--for that was what it amounted to--but his reasoning was fallacious. If General Sherman had the question put to him--whether to be President himself or turn the office over to the Democratic party, with the Solid South dominant--he would see his duty and do it, though his reluctance was real.

I said General Sherman could not consent to appear in competition with his brother John at Chicago, though he had a funny way of looking on John in West Point style as a "politician," and that was an insuperable difficulty; and that, Mr. Blaine did not seem to have thought of as a serious element in the case, but he realized the force of it. I was anxious to hear more about the correspondence between Blaine and General Sherman; but was only told that the letter to the General was a call to consider that circumstances might arise, and should do so, in which the General's sense of duty could be appealed to, and be as strong as that to take up arms had been when the Union demanded defenders.