CHAPTER IX

Horace Vernet

Vernet was then a man of forty-two. You are acquainted with Horace Vernet, are you not? I will not say as painter--pooh! who does not know, indeed, the artist of the _Bataille de Montmirail_, of the _Prise de Constantine_, of the _Déroute de la Smala?_ No, I mean as man. You will have seen him pass a score of times, chasing the stag or the boar, in shooting costume; or crossing the place du Carrousel, or parading in the court of the Tuileries, in the brilliant uniform of a staff officer. He was a handsome cavalier, a dainty, lithe, tall figure, with sparkling eyes, high cheek-bones, a mobile face and moustaches _à la royale Louis XIII._ Imagine him something like d'Artagnan. For Horace looked far more like a musketeer than a painter; or, say, like a painter of the type of Velasquez, or Van Dyck, and, like the Cavalier Tempesta, with curled-up moustache, sword dangling against his heels, his horse snorting forth fire from its nostrils. The whole race of Vernets were of a similar type. Joseph Vernet, the grandfather, had himself bound to a ship's mast during a tempest. Karl Vernet, the father, would, I am certain, have given many things to have been carried off, like Mazeppa, across the Steppes of Ukraine on a furious horse, reeking with foam and blood. For, be it known, Horace Vernet brings up the rear of a quadruple series, the latest of four generations of painters,--he is the son of Karl, the grandson of Joseph Vernet, the great-grandson of Antoine. Then, as though this were not enough, his maternal ancestor was the younger Moreau, that is to say, one of the foremost draughts-men and ablest engravers of the eighteenth century. Antoine Vernet painted flowers upon sedan chairs. There are two chairs painted and signed by him at Marseilles. Joseph Vernet has adorned every museum in France with his sea pictures. He is to Havre, Brest, Lorient, Marseilles and Toulon what Canaletto is to Venice.

Karl, who began by bearing off the _grand prix_ of Rome with his composition of the _Enfant prodigue_, became, in 1786, an enthusiastic painter of everything English. The Duc d'Orléans bought at fabulous prices the finest of English horses. Karl Vernet became mad on horses, drew them, painted them, made them his speciality and so became famous. As for Horace, he was born in 1789, the year in which his grandfather Joseph died and his father Karl was made an Academician. Born a painter, so to say, his first steps were taken in a studio.

"Who is your master?" I once asked him.

"I never had one."

"But who taught you to draw and paint?"

"I do not know.... When I could only walk on all fours I used to pick up pencils and paint brushes. When I found paper I drew; when I found canvas I painted, and one fine day it was discovered that I was a painter."

When ten years old, Horace sold his first drawing to a merchant: it was a tulip commissioned by Madame de Périgord. This was the first money he had earned, twenty-four sous! And the merchant paid him these twenty-four sous in one of those white coins that were still to be seen about in 1816, but which we do not see now and shall probably not see again. This happened in 1799. From that moment Horace Vernet found a market for drawings, rough sketches and six-inch canvases. In 1811 the King of Westphalia commissioned his first two pictures: the _Prise du camp_ _retranché de Galatz_ and the _Prise de Breslau._ I have seen them scores of times at King Jérome's palace; they are not your best work, my dear Horace! But they brought him in sixteen thousand francs. It was the first considerable sum of money he had received; it was the first out of which he could put something aside. Then came 1812, 1813 and 1814, and the downfall of the whole Napoléonic edifice. The world shook to its foundations: Europe became a volcano, society seemed about to dissolve. There was no thought of painting, or literature, or art! What do you suppose became of Vernet, who could not then obtain for his pictures eight thousand francs, or four thousand, or a thousand, or five hundred, or a hundred, or even fifty? Vernet drew designs for the _Journal des Modes_;--three for a hundred francs: 33 francs 33 centimes each drawing! One day he showed me all these drawings, a collection of which he kept; I counted nearly fifteen hundred of them with feelings of profound emotion. The 33 francs 33 centimes brought to my mind my 166 francs 65 centimes,--the highest figure my salary had ever reached. Vernet was a child of the Revolution; but as a young man he knew only the Empire. An ardent Bonapartist in 1815, more fervent still, perhaps, in 1816, he gave many sword strokes and sweeps of the paint brush in honour of Napoléon, both exercised as secretly as possible. In 1818, the Duc d'Orléans conceived the idea of ordering Vernet to paint pictures for him. The suggestion was transmitted to the painter on the prince's behalf.

"Willingly," said the painter, "but on condition that they shall be military pictures."

The prince accepted.

"That the pictures," added the painter, "shall be of the time of the Republic and of the Empire."

Again the prince acceded.

"Finally," added the painter, "on condition that the soldiers of the Empire and of the Revolution shall wear tricolor cockades."

"Tell M. Vernet," replied the prince to this, "that he can put the first cockade in my hat."

And as a matter of fact the Duc d'Orléans decided that the first picture which Vernet should execute for him should be of himself as Colonel of Dragoons, saving a poor refractory priest: a piece of good fortune which befell the prince in 1792, and which has been related by us at length in our _Histoire de Louis Philippe._ Horace Vernet painted the picture and had the pleasure of putting the first tricolor cockade ostentatiously on the helmet. About this time the Duc de Berry urgently desired to visit the painter's studio, whose reputation grew with the rapidity of the giant Adamastor. But Vernet did not love the Bourbons, especially those of the Older Branch. With the Duc d'Orléans it was different; he had been a Jacobin. Horace refused admission to his studio to the son of Charles X.

"Oh! Good gracious!" said the Duc de Berry, "if in order to be received by M. Vernet it is but a question of putting on a tricolor cockade, tell him that, although I do not wear M. Laffitte's colours at my heart, I will put them in my hat, if it must be so, the day I enter his house."

The suggestion did not come to anything either, because the painter did not accede to it; or because, the painter having acceded to it, the prince declined to submit to such an exacting condition.

In less than eighteen months Vernet painted for the Duc d'Orléans--the condition concerning the tricolor cockades being always respected--the fine series of pictures which constitute his best work: _Montmirail_, in which he puts more than tricolor cockades, namely, the Emperor himself riding away into the distance on his white horse; _Hanau, Jemappes_ and _Valmy._ But all these tricolor cockades, which blossomed on Horace's canvases like poppies, cornflowers and marguerites in a meadow, and above all, that detestable white horse, although it was no bigger than a pin's head, frightened the government of Louis XVIII. The exhibition of 1821 declined Horace Vernet's pictures. The artist held an exhibition at his own house, and had a greater success by himself than the two thousand painters had who exhibited at the Salon. This was the time of his great popularity. No one was allowed at that period, not even his enemies, to dispute his talent. Vernet was more than a celebrated painter: he belonged to the nation, representing in the world of art the spirit of opposition which was beginning to make the reputations of Béranger and of Casimir Delavigne in the world of poetry. He lived in the rue de la Tour-des-Dames. All that quarter had just sprung into being; it was the artists' quarter. Talma, Mademoiselle Mars, Mademoiselle Duchesnois, Arnault lived there. It was called _La Nouvelle Athènes._ They all carried on the spirit of opposition in their own particular ways: Mademoiselle Mars with her violets, M. Arnault with his stories, Talma with his Sylla wig, Horace Vernet with his tricolor cockades, Mademoiselle Duchesnois with what she could. One consecration was still lacking in the matter of Horace Vernet's popularity; he obtained it, that is to say, he was appointed director of the École Française at Rome. Perhaps this was a means of getting him sent away from Paris. But the exile, if such it was, looked so much more like an honour that Vernet accepted it with joy. Criticism grumbled a little;--it was the time of the raising of Voices!--Some complained in the hoarse notes, others in the screaming tones which are the peculiar property of the envious, exclaiming that it was rather a risk to send to Rome the propagator of tricolor cockades, and rather a bold stroke to bring into juxtaposition _Montmirail_ and _The Transfiguration_, Horace Vernet and Raphael; but these voices were drowned in the universal acclamation which hailed the honour done to our national painter. It was certainly not Vernet's enemies who should have indulged in recrimination; but rather his friends who should have felt afraid. In fact, when Horace Vernet found himself confronted with the masterpieces of the sixteenth century, even as Raphael when led into the Sistine Chapel by Bramante, he was seized with a spasm of doubt. The whole of his education as a painter was called in question. He felt he had been self-deceived for thirty years of his life;--at the age of thirty-two, Horace had already been a painter for thirty years!--he asked himself whether, instead of those worthy full-length soldiers, clad in military capot and shako, he was not destined to paint naked giants; the _Iliad_ of Homer instead of the _Iliad_ of Napoléon. The unhappy painter set himself to paint great pictures. The Roman school was in a flourishing state upon his arrival--Vernet succeeded to Guérin;--under Vernet it became splendid. The indefatigable artist, the never-ceasing creator, communicated a portion of his fecund spirit to all those young minds. Like a sun he lighted up and warmed throughout and ripened everything with his rays. One year after his arrival in Rome he must needs erect an exhibition hall in the garden of the École. Féron, from whom the institute asked an eighteen-inch sketch, gave a twenty-feet picture, the _Passage des Alpes_; Debay gave the _Mort de Lucrèce_; Bouchot, a _Bacchanale_; Rivière, a _Peste apaisée par les prières du pape._ Sculptors created groups of statuary, or at the least statues, instead of statuettes; Dumont sent _Bacchus aux bras de sa nourrice_; Duret, the _Invention de la Lyre._ It was such an outpouring of productions that the Academy was frightened. It complained that the École de Rome _produced too much._ This was the only reproach they had to bring against Vernet during his Ultramontane Vice-regency. He himself worked as hard as a student, two students, ten students. He sent his _Raphael et Michel-Ange_, his _Exaltation du pape_, his _Arrestation du prince de Condé_, his ... Happily for Horace, I cannot recollect any more he sent in at that period.

I repeat once more, the sight of the old masters had upset all his old ideas;--in the slang of the studio, Horace splashed about. I say this because I am quite certain that it is his own opinion. If it is possible that Horace could turn out any bad painting--if he has ever done so--and he alone has the right to say this--is it not the fact, dear Horace, that the bad painting which many artists point out with glee and triumph was done in Rome. But this period of relative inferiority for Horace, which was only below his own average in painting in what is termed the "grand style," was not without its profit to the artist; he drank the wine of life from its main source, the eternal spring! He returned to France strengthened by a force invisible to all, unrealised by himself, and after seven years spent in the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel and the Farnesina, he found himself more at ease among his barracks and battlefields, which many people said, and said wrongly, that he ought not to have quitted.

Ah! Horace led a fine life, dashing through Europe on horseback, across Africa on a dromedary, over the Mediterranean in a ship! A glorious, noble and loyal life at which criticism may scoff, but in respect of which no reproach can be uttered by France.

Now, during this year--_nous revenons à nos moutons_, as M. Berger puts it--Horace sent two pictures from Rome, namely, those we have mentioned already: the _Exaltation du pape_, one of the best of his worst pictures, and the _Arrestation du prince de Condé_, one of the best of his best pictures.