Part 23

When Napoleon rose to power, David became his favourite painter. The erstwhile Jacobin was chosen to paint the official _Coronation_ picture (No. 202A), an enormous canvas, which, like most ceremonial pictures of this kind, has more historical than artistic significance. The lifelike portraiture of the numerous personages surrounding the central group of Napoleon placing the crown on Josephine’s head, is the chief point of interest. On the restoration of the Bourbons in 1815, David was sent into exile. He died at Brussels in 1825; but his influence is reflected in official French art to this day. It was he who imposed upon the modern academic school a rigid canon of formal classic beauty which is fatal to evolution and progress, because it does not permit personal emotional expression.

Less severely classic in form, and showing at least an attempt at approaching a little nearer to truth than David, is the painting of the figures of _The Three Graces_ (No. 769), by David’s rival, J. B. Regnault (1754-1829), in the La Caze collection. The worst type of academic art is represented in the bituminous reconstructions of classic antiquity by his pupil, P. N. Guérin (1774-1833), whose _Return of Marcus Sextus_ (No. 393) enjoyed, perhaps owing to its supposed political allusion to the return of the emigrants, a success which cannot be accounted for on artistic grounds.

BARON GÉRARD

Among the numerous pupils and followers of David who rose to fame, honours, and wide popularity before Ingres became the acknowledged head of the official school, the most distinguished were Gérard, Girodet, and Gros. Baron F. P. S. Gérard (1770-1837), whilst following on the whole the principles laid down by his master, knew how to invest his work with more individual character, which stood him in particular good stead in his portraiture. That this was recognised by his contemporaries is proved by the fact that he became the portrait painter _par excellence_ of the First Empire and the Bourbon restoration, although his inclination drew him towards allegory and mythology. There is undeniable distinction and fine characterisation in such portraits as _The Painter Isabey and his Daughter_ (No. 332). The nature of the subject debarred him from showing the strongest side of his talent in the chillingly unemotional, but undeniably graceful, _Psyche receiving Cupid’s First Kiss_ (No. 328), and in the _Daphnis and Chloë_ (No. 329), which was bought in 1825 for £1000. They have their counterpart in the cold and antique French sculpture of the period.

A. L. Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767-1824) was of all David’s artistic progeny the one painter who devoted himself to the purely pictorial problem of concentrated light and shade, without, however, being able to free himself from the domination of linear design. The compromise of the two principles led to such unfortunate results as _The Sleep of Endymion_ (No. 361) and _The Burial of Atala_ (No. 362). In _The Deluge_ (No. 360), which was painted later, he shows pronounced leanings towards a crude naturalism which exceeds in horror the most cruel inventions of Ribera’s genius.

BARON GROS

Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835), though a classicist by training, was forced by circumstances, and by the patronage of Napoleon who ennobled him, to devote his brush to an important phase of contemporary life—the glorification of his hero’s warlike achievements. He was by no means a realist; and although he followed Napoleon on many of his campaigns and presumably brought back with him rich material in sketches and vivid recollections, his forceful compositions accentuate the heroic aspect and the imaginative appeal of warfare, and are not spontaneous glimpses of actuality. The whole glamour of the Napoleonic legend is expressed in the group of wounded soldiers who, oblivious of their suffering, cheer their great captain in _Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau_ (No. 389). The sense of the heroic is as pronounced in the large painting, _Napoleon visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa_ (No. 388), in the _Bonaparte at Arcole_ (No. 391), and even in the impressive _Portrait of Lieutenant-General Fournier-Sarlovèze_ (No. 392A), silhouetted against a smoke-filled battlefield. A careful inspection of this large canvas shows _pentimenti_ in the painting of the legs, of which the General seems now to have two pair! Gros’s weakness, like that of all David’s pupils, was his neglect of colour. His popularity waned rapidly after the fall of Napoleon. He became a victim to melancholia, and drowned himself in the Seine in 1835.

PIERRE PRUD’HON

Though not entirely detached from the ruling school of the period, Pierre Prud’hon (1758-1823) occupies a unique position among his contemporaries. Having absolved his preliminary studies at Dijon, he became the pupil of the old masters—of Correggio and Leonardo—first in Paris and then in Rome, where he worked for seven years before definitely settling at Paris in 1789. To his sympathy with the Italian masters he owed that mellowness of colour and understanding of chiaroscuro which escaped the grasp of the Davidists. He was a real _painter_ as distinguished from the classicist _draughtsmen_ of the official school. Even if it is impossible to share to-day the enthusiasm at one time evoked by the somewhat grotesque allegory, _Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime_ (No. 747), this picture, which was intended for the Palais de Justice, rises immeasurably above the average of the “imaginative” paintings produced by Prud’hon’s contemporaries.

Vastly superior as regards pictorial quality and the whole conception, is the _Abduction of Psyche by Zephyrus_ (No. 756). In the _Crucifixion_ (No. 744), his last picture, Prud’hon rises to telling dramatic effectiveness of colour, and heralds the advent of Delacroix. But the most masterly of his seventeen paintings at the Louvre is the magnificent _Portrait of a Young Man_ (No. 753), which the Louvre was fortunate enough to secure for £35 in 1895. It is a strangely living evocation of a personality, searching, intimate, and mysterious—a portrait not so much of the superficial features, but of the inner life of the sitter. The large _Portrait of the Empress Joséphine_ (No. 751) suffers from comparison with this masterpiece. The pose is affected, the background dingy, and the red of the shawl introduces a harsh and disconnected note of colour.

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH SCHOOL

GÉRICAULT

The revolutionary movement of the Romanticists, which was to find a strong leader in Eugène Delacroix, may be said to have been initiated by Géricault’s epoch-making picture _The Raft of the Medusa_ (No. 338, Plate XLVI.). Théodore Géricault (1791-1824), a pupil of Carle Vernet and Guérin, was an unusually gifted draughtsman, who from the outset strove to go beyond the dead perfection of the David school, and to infuse into his work the spark of life. The _Raft of the Medusa_, which caused an enormous stir at the Salon of 1819, was inspired by a tragic incident from actual life; and Géricault was the first who dared to represent in all its horrible reality this scene of human suffering—the survivors of a shipwreck driven by hunger to madness and mutual destruction. He set aside all arbitrarily ignored canons of formal beauty and the “grand style,” and applied himself to depicting fierce passions and emotions.

Géricault was a passionate lover of horses; but his knowledge of equine anatomy did not prevent him, in his portrait of an _Officer of the Guard_ (No. 339), from exaggerating the action of the charging horse to a point dangerously near the border-line between the sublime and the ridiculous. Most of his other pictures at the Louvre are studies of soldiers, and horses on the race-course or in the stable. He died in 1824 from the effects of a fall from a horse.

DELACROIX

The topical interest of the _Raft of the Medusa_ had caused the public to receive this picture with favour, in spite of its daring departure from the generally accepted canons of the “grand style.” The case was different when Delacroix showed at the Salon of 1822 the _Dante and Virgil_ (No. 207, Plate XLVII.), which was inspired by Géricault’s great picture, but applied that artist’s principles to a subject taken from literature,—from Dante’s “Inferno,”—and was therefore considered as a direct challenge to the academic host. To-day it is difficult to understand the indignation aroused by the young artist, who became forthwith the acknowledged head of the so-called Romanticist school, although he refrained from taking part in any propaganda. In this, his first important exhibited picture, he proved himself a true painter in the sense in which Rubens was a painter—that is to say, he no longer gave primary importance to drawing, with colour added afterwards in the manner of a tinted cartoon. In the _Dante and Virgil_ colour and the actual sweep of the brush assumed at once a vital and constructive function, no longer separable from drawing and design.

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863), who belonged to a family that had given to France many distinguished statesmen and soldiers, was a pupil of Guérin, whose conventional teaching, however, was little to the taste of a young man whose passionate nature had been fired by his extensive reading of romantic literature, and who preferred to form his style on the works of Rubens and other old masters at the Louvre, and to benefit from his intercourse with Géricault and Bonington. The _Dante and Virgil_, which is now in a deplorable state of neglect, was bought by the State at the not very generous price of £50. Delacroix’s next Salon picture, _The Massacre of Scio_ (No. 208), caused an even greater storm of abuse of the young artist who had dared to depict the horrors of this scene from the Greek War of Independence, as it was thought, in all their crudeness, without the heroical and theatrical poses that were deemed necessary for pictorial “histories.” The magnificent atmospheric background owes its origin to Delacroix’s first acquaintance with the _Hay Wain_ and two other pictures sent by Constable to the Salon of 1824, which caused the impetuous young artist to repaint in a few days the sky and landscape. The picture was again bought by the State, the price this time being raised to £240. A superb study for the dead mother and child in the right-hand corner has been bequeathed by M. Cheramy, the present owner, to the National Gallery, where it is to be hung next to “the best Constable.”

It is impossible here to give a full account of the twenty-one paintings by Delacroix at the Louvre, to which should be added his decorative masterpiece, the centre of the ceiling in the Galerie d’Apollon. We must content ourselves with a brief reference to his more important canvases, first of which in order of date is _The 28th of July 1830: Liberty leading the People_ (No. 209), better known as _The Barricade_. The introduction of a bourgeois with a top-hat in this stirring scene of contemporary heroism was another act of defiance. But the dramatic power of the conception, which suffers but is by no means destroyed by the wretched allegorical figure of Liberty, and the artist’s appeal to political passion, caused the picture to be an enormous success.

DELACROIX’S ORIENTAL PICTURES

Delacroix’s journey to Morocco, with Count Morney’s mission in 1832, was of the greatest benefit to the artist’s progress as a colourist. Although he had no time during his travels to paint any pictures, he brought back with him a wealth of rapid sketches which, with his vivid recollections of Eastern life and colour, led to the production of such masterpieces as the _Algerian Women in their Apartment_ (No. 210), the _Jewish Wedding in Morocco_ (No. 211), and _The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople_ (No. 213). In the sumptuous scheme of _Crusaders_ the last traces of the influence of Gros’s colourless palette have vanished. The picture was commissioned by Louis Philippe for the Château at Versailles, the remuneration being fixed at £400. A copy of the picture is in one of the Salles des Croisades at Versailles, and a small sketch is at Chantilly. The _Algerian Women_ is particularly remarkable for the luminous sparkle of rich pigment through the ambient of silvery atmosphere.

Among Delacroix’s masterpieces must be counted the _Portrait of the Artist_ (No. 214), which he left on his death to his servant, Jenny le Guillon, stipulating that she should give it to the Louvre on the day of the restoration of the Orléans family—an event which never happened, though the picture reached its destination in 1872 through the generosity of Mme. Durien. _The Shipwreck of Don Juan_ (No. 212), painted in 1840, is based on Lord Byron’s epic poem, of which it is, however, by no means a literal illustration. It is one of the most stirring renderings of human passion and despair in the whole history of art, the livid light and general sombre scheme of colour contributing towards the tragic effect, as though Nature herself were entering into the mood of the horrible scene.

Although, on the whole, an unsatisfactory picture, Delacroix’s _Roger delivering Angelica_ (No. 2845) may serve to illustrate the true significance of his art in its relation to the official school, as there is in the same collection another rendering of the identical subject (No. 419) by his great antagonist Ingres, the greatest draughtsman of his century, and the acknowledged leader of the Classicist school. Comparison between the two works will show that Delacroix’s version, with all its obvious imperfections, far surpasses Ingres’s in emotional intensity and fierce vitality. The academic perfection and exquisite finish of Ingres’s picture only accentuate the dulness and lifelessness of his conception.

INGRES

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) was a pupil of David. Having gained the Prix de Rome in 1801, he did not leave for Italy until 1806, but spent the next eighteen years in Rome and Florence, returning to Paris in 1824. Although Ingres was brought up in the cold tradition of the David school, he had a much clearer perception of the true spirit of Greek art than his master. When he became acquainted with the work of Raphael in Rome, he found it the very acme of perfection, and henceforth frankly strove to emulate that master, seeking to arrive at an eclectic ideal of the human form which in its dogmatic rule of the proportions that constitute absolute beauty, allowed none of the accents and variations which make for life and character. Himself greater than his theories, Ingres achieved that perfection of grace and beauty in his deservedly famous _The Spring_ (No. 422, Plate XLVIII.), one of the few “gems” in the Salle Duchâtel, and in the very Raphaelesque _Odalisque_ (No. 422B), which was purchased in 1899 from the Princesse de Sagan for £2400. On the other hand, the imposition of an inflexible, rigid ideal of form did incalculable harm to his numerous and less gifted followers, in whom every spark of individuality was extinguished by the tyranny of the dogma.

Yet Ingres, when he applied himself to portraiture, was as uncompromising a realist as Holbein, of whose sensitive, subtle drawing and plastic modelling, without the introduction of entirely unnecessary shiny high lights, we are forcibly reminded by the _Portrait of the Painter’s Friend, M. Bochet_ (No. 428A). Something of the same perfection of modelling, suggested rather by the sensitive contour than clearly stated by pronounced lights and shadows, is to be noticed in the nude figure of _The Odalisque_, and in the creamy white drapings of the oval _Portrait of Mme. Rivière_ (No. 427). Perhaps his best portrait at the Louvre is the one of _M. Bertin, Founder of the Journal des Débats_ (No. 428B), a masterpiece of character painting, in which the marvellously drawn fleshy hands, with their tapering fingers, are as expressive as the fine head. This portrait was acquired in 1897 for the sum of £3200.

The less admirable side of Ingres’s talent is illustrated by the circular composition of the _Virgin of the Host_ (No. 416), a crude scheme of “Sassoferrato blue” and red, on entirely conventional lines; and by the _Apotheosis of Homer_ (No. 417), a tame Raphaelesque design in which Homer is seen enthroned in the centre, with allegorical figures of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ seated on the steps of the throne, and a winged goddess placing a laurel wreath on his head. To the left of the central group are the figures of Hesiod, Æschylus, Apelles, Raphael, Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Corneille, and Poussin; to the right, Pindar, Plato, Socrates, Alexander, Camoens, Racine, Molière, and Fénelon. There is a touch of the grotesque in the combination of rather mechanical dry portraiture with trite allegory that constitutes the design of the terribly cracked _Portrait of the Composer Cherubini_ (No. 418). His failings as a colourist are most aggressively obvious in the _Christ handing the Keys to St. Peter_ (No. 415). Ingres died in Paris on the 14th January 1867.

DELAROCHE AND SCHEFFER

Among the painters who were influenced by Delacroix, and whose name was associated with the Romanticist movement, none rose to greater fame than Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), a pupil of Gros, and the Dutchman Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), who, like Delacroix, studied under Guérin. But neither of these artists managed wholly to shake off the trammels of the academic tradition, and both became popular for the very reasons for which a more critical generation has denied them the right to figure among the world’s great artists: Delaroche for the theatricality of his historical anecdotes, of which _The Death of Queen Elizabeth_ (No. 216) and _The Princes in the Tower_ (No. 217) are typical examples; and Scheffer for the sickly sentimentality displayed in such pictures as _St. Augustine and St. Monica_ (No. 841).

Contemporary with the fighters in the great battle between the Romanticists and the Classicists were a group of able painters who were not connected with either of these main currents of artistic thought, but drew their inspiration from the Dutch genre painters. _The Arrival of a Diligence at the Messageries_ (No. 28), by Louis Leopold Boilly (1761-1845), and _The Interior of a Kitchen_ (No. 261), by Martin Drolling (1752-1817), may be quoted as characteristic instances of these “small masters” without possessing the luminosity of their Dutch exemplars.

DECAMPS

Something of the precious quality of pigment and of the luminosity of these Dutchmen is to be found in the genre pictures of Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803-1860), of which a large number form part of the Thomy Thiéry Bequest—notably _The Knife-Grinder_ (No. 2831) and _The Gipsy Encampment_ (No. 2833). Decamps owes his historical importance to his position as the head of the Orientalists. Unlike his contemporary explorer of the East for pictorial purposes, Delacroix, he found the facts of Eastern life, scenery, and customs sufficiently attractive to be satisfied with the realistic statement of his visual impressions, instead of making them the basis for the invention of romantic incidents. Yet the _Street in Smyrna_ (No. 2827) and similar works are by no means of merely topographic interest, for Decamps was a great painter to whom pigment yielded beauty independent of the subject represented. _The Rat retired from the World_ (No. 2834) vies in quality with the still-life pictures of Chardin. Decamps was also the greatest animal painter of his time, as may be gathered from his _Chevaux de halage_ (No. 204), _The Bull-Dog and Scotch Terrier_ (No. 206), and the precious little genre piece, _The Kennel-Boy_ (No. 2838).

THE ORIENTALISTS

Brought up in the tradition of the Classicist school, Prosper Marilhat (1811-1847) only “formed himself” when the world of colour was discovered to him under the glowing sky of the Holy Land and Egypt, where he painted _The Mosque of the Khalif Hakem, at Cairo_ (No. 615). Another Orientalist of great distinction, who, after being a favourite pupil of Ingres, became attracted by the fiery romanticism of Delacroix, was the Creole Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856). His works at the Louvre illustrate the earlier better than the later phase of his art. Chassériau was still entirely under the spell of Ingres when he painted, in 1844, the decoration of the Cour des Comptes, which building was destroyed under the Commune. _Peace_ (No. 121A) is a fragment of this important decorative work, which may be said to constitute a link between Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes. _The Chaste Susannah_ (No. 121) and the _Portrait of Father Lacordaire, Dominican Preacher_ (No. 121B), are again clear evidence of Ingres’s influence upon Chassériau at the beginning of his brief career.