Part 24

A man of profound culture and rare critical acumen, Eugène Fromentin (1820-1876) was perhaps greater as a critic than as a painter. He, too, travelled repeatedly in Algeria and Egypt, where he found abundant material both for his brush and pen. He did not look upon the East with the curiosity of the traveller, nor did he let the strange land work upon his romantic imagination. His pictures, somewhat timid in technique but marked by great refinement, reveal, on the other hand, a thorough understanding of the sad monotony of the sun-parched desert, and the chivalrous, noble bearing of its Arab inhabitants. His refined talent shows to best advantage in _Hawking in Algeria_ (No. 305).

REGNAULT

The Orient was by no means the uncontested field of the Romanticists. But the followers of the official school who devoted themselves to the depicting of Eastern life and scenery, approached these subjects in the same spirit of _parti pris_ which robs all their work of real significance—unless, like Henri Regnault (1843-1871) in his famous and often reproduced _Moorish Execution_ (No. 771), they treated them as rank melodrama. Regnault is, however, not to be judged by this overrated piece of sensationalism. Killed in the Franco-German War in 1871 at the early age of twenty-eight, this young painter gave rare promise of brilliant achievement in an altogether unacademic direction in his superb equestrian portrait of _General Prim_ (No. 770). There is something truly heroic in the way the Spanish general sits his horse, arresting its forward movement with a sudden jerk at the reins; but the ruggedness and unkempt appearance of the rider displeased General Prim to such an extent that Regnault, who would not alter the picture, preferred to keep it on his hands.

ACADEMIC PAINTERS

It will suffice here merely to indicate the names and chief works at the Louvre of the principal artists who carried on, about the middle of the nineteenth century, the academic tradition,—capable painters all, but without clearly-marked individuality. Thomas Couture (1815-1879), a pupil of Gros and of Delaroche, in painting the huge composition, _Romans of the Decadence_ (No. 156), produced a picture which may be taken as typical of the ambitions and failings of the whole school—of their literary tendencies, theatricality, and uninspired dulness. He was, however, an accomplished master of technique, which is more than can be said of Joseph Devéria (1805-1865), the painter of _The Birth of Henri IV._ (No. 250); or of Ingres’s pupil, the dull Hippolyte Flandrin (1809-1864), who is only represented by two _Portraits_ (Nos. 284 and 285). Nor is it possible to-day to grow enthusiastic over the historical paintings of Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1797-1890), whose _Conference at Poissy_ (No. 2982), _Galileo before the Inquisition_ (No. 2983), and _Christopher Columbus received by Ferdinand and Isabella on his Return from America_ (No. 2984), can only be regarded as unnecessarily large coloured illustrations.

MICHEL AND HUET

In the much-neglected branch of landscape painting the classic tradition of Claude ruled supreme until a new conception arose with the victory of the romantics in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Two names only need be mentioned before we pass on to the new movement—the return to nature—which was inaugurated by the group of painters vaguely known as the Barbizon school. Both Georges Michel (1763-1843) and Paul Huet (1804-1868) may be regarded as forerunners of that great movement; and both have only in recent years received the recognition which is their due. Michel developed his style in copying and closely studying the Dutch landscape masters, and must in his maturity have been well acquainted with the art of Constable, who exercised, together with Bonington, a prodigious influence on the whole course of French landscape painting. If Michel’s breadth of style, which may be judged from _Near Montmartre_ (No. 626), had been accompanied by a greater range of subject-matter, he would probably rank more highly in the roll of French artists; but he contented himself with the endless repetition of the same motifs which he found close to Montmartre, where he spent his whole life. The care with which he studied the works of Jacob van Ruisdael earned for him the nickname of “the Ruisdael of Montmartre.”

Huet, again, learnt more from the old masters and from his friends, Bonington and Delacroix, than from his actual teachers. He, too, thrust aside the recipes of composing classic or “noble” landscapes, and was inspired by an altogether emotional outlook upon nature, calm and serene, as in _The Still Morning_ (No. 413), or threatening and tempestuous, as in _The Inundation at St. Cloud_ (No. 412), or in his masterpiece, _The Breakers at Granville_ (No. 2952).

THE BARBIZON SCHOOL

The term “Barbizon school” has been extended from its narrower meaning, in which it merely comprises Rousseau, Diaz, Millet and the disciples who joined them, to form a little artistic colony on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, to a less accurate but now generally accepted wider application, embracing “the men of 1830,” who collectively and individually set out, inspired indirectly by Constable, upon the conquest of light and atmosphere through intimate communion with nature. In a pedantic survey of this Barbizon school, Rousseau would have to take honour of place as the leader of the group, whilst Corot and Daubigny, neither of whom actually worked at Barbizon, would have to be altogether excluded. But in the more liberal interpretation of the term, which we have here adopted, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796-1875) must be given first place as the doyen of the whole group, since he alone was born before the eighteenth century had run its course.

COROT

Corot, the son of a _coiffeur_ and a _modiste_ in comfortable circumstances, was destined in his youth for the drapery trade, and was only enabled to follow his bent for the artistic profession when, at the age of twenty-five, he entered into possession of a small annual allowance, sufficient to meet his modest requirements and to save him from the desperate struggle for very existence which was the fate of some of his later friends and companions. His early work from nature had already laid the foundations for his subsequent style when he entered the studio, first of the academic painter Michallon, and then of Bertin. In 1825 Corot went to Rome, where he painted, among many pictures of equally rich luscious quality, the _View of the Forum Romanum_ (No. 139), and the _View of the Coliseum_ (No. 140), which he himself bequeathed to the State. Although these early works have none of the elusive charm and lyrical feeling of his mature style, and are of rather topographic character, they reveal in every touch the artist enamoured of atmosphere and of the quality of pigment. The touch is precise, but not tight. The two pictures were painted in 1826, but already they hold more than a hint of that unrivalled mastery of tone-values which found supreme expression in _A Street in Douai_ (No. 141F), painted in 1871.

From the precision of his early manner Corot gradually advanced to freedom and airy looseness of touch; from statement of fact, to the suggestion of the very spirit and essence of nature in terms of paint that, more than any other artist’s work, justify the expression “colour music.” His later canvases are filled with the soft shimmer of vibrating atmosphere and with the tender poetry of dawn and dusk. Whilst retaining a truly classic sense of style, and adapting nature to his purposes by arrangement and generalisation, he never fails to convince the beholder of the reality of the scene represented. Even if his glades are peopled with dancing nymphs and satyrs, as in _A Morning_ (No. 138), these mythical beings no longer suggest classic statuary, but they belong as much to the landscape as do the trees and shrubs and clouds, as do the peasant woman and the cow in _The Dell_ (No. 2801, Plate XLIX.), or the piping shepherd in the exquisite _Souvenir d’Italie: Castel Gandolfo_ (No. 141B). Of the twenty-two paintings by the master at the Louvre, no fewer than twelve form part of the Thomy Thiéry Bequest to which the great French national collection owes so many of its chief treasures of nineteenth-century art.

T. ROUSSEAU

The real head of the Barbizon school was Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), who was one of the first exponents of the “romantic” as opposed to the “classic” landscape. If Corot was the lyric, Rousseau was the epic poet of Nature. In his early works he was considerably influenced by Constable, but he failed for a long time to gain the approval of the public and of the Salon juries. Fourteen times in succession his pictures were refused admission to the Salon, and success only came to him late in life. In 1851, at about the same time as Millet, he settled at Barbizon, on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where henceforth he found the subjects for his pictures. Rousseau was a most conscientious artist, who “constructed a group of trees with the care that an Academician puts into the construction of a nude figure.” His love of accurate detail did not, however, make him lose sight of the general effect. His insistence on bold silhouettes made him favour the sunset hour when, as in his masterpiece, _An Opening in the Forest at Fontainebleau_ (No. 827), the trees would form effective dark masses against the glowing sunset sky. More characteristic of his favourite manner of composition is the imposing group of oak trees in the middle of a plain in the picture known as _Les Chênes_ (No. 2900). In this, as in _Marais dans les Landes_ (No. 830), which was bought in 1881 for £5160, and, indeed, in all the pictures where cattle are introduced, it will be noticed that the animals form part and parcel of the landscape, and are no longer individual “portraits” of animals, as they were apt to be in the pictures by the earlier Dutch cattle-painters. The same unity of vision is to be noted in all his sixteen pictures at the Louvre.

C. TROYON

This oneness of inanimate and animate nature is less completely realised in the art of Constant Troyon (1810-1865), who, having been trained as a porcelain-painter, was subsequently attracted by the romanticism of Dupré, but followed such Dutch masters as Paul Potter in subordinating the landscape to the cattle. It is for this reason that Troyon is known to the public as a “cattle-painter” rather than as a landscape painter. At the same time, he was a close observer of the effects of light on fields and meadows, which he rendered with a skill only rivalled by the solidity, the suggestion of weight and movement, the well-accentuated forms and sinuosities of his cattle. The huge canvas _Oxen going to Work_ (No. 889) is an unrivalled achievement of its kind—a piece of realism that is not without poetry and grandeur. Next to it in importance ranks the _Return to the Farm_ (No. 890). Among the eleven Troyons (Nos. 2906-2916) of the Thomy Thiéry Bequest, the _Morning_ (No. 2909) strikes a more cheerful and hopeful note than is this artist’s wont.

Another artist of this group, who devoted himself almost exclusively to the painting of sheep, is Charles Jacque (1813-1894), from whose brush the Louvre owns the _Flock of Sheep in a Landscape_ (No. 430A), a characteristic work of unusually large dimensions.

J. DUPRÉ

Jules Dupré (1811-1889) began, like Troyon, as a china-painter, and, like Rousseau, with whom he was for years on terms of intimate friendship, benefited by the example of Constable, whose art he had presumably occasion to study during a visit to England. It was from him that he acquired the sense of movement in nature, which is so much more pronounced in his landscapes than in Rousseau’s, whom he exceeded in breadth of touch and in power. More particularly in his later manner he loved to apply his colours in a thick impasto laid on to every part of the canvas, including the sky. Only on rare occasions did he adopt the more fluid, suave manner shown in _Morning_ (No. 2940) and _Evening_ (No. 2941), the two decorative panels executed for Prince Demidoff, and acquired by the Louvre in 1880 at the San Donato sale. More typical of his virile, forceful style are the twelve signed pictures by Dupré in the Thomy Thiéry Bequest (Nos. 2864-2875), especially the fine autumn landscape _The Pond_ (No. 2867, Plate L.), the intensely sad, sunless _Flock in the Landes_ (No. 2871), _The Large Oak_ (No. 2873), and _The Sunset on a Marsh_ (No. 2874), with the golden glow of the sky reflected in the water.

Before turning to Diaz, who has been aptly called “the most romantic of the Romanticists,” we must briefly mention Eugène Isabey (1804-1886), who connects the art of the First Empire with Romanticism, and who knew how to invest his historical paintings with genuinely pictorial interest at a time when that class of subject was generally treated from the literary and anecdotal point of view. His exuberant temperament led him not infrequently to exaggerated movement. The twelve pictures which bear his signature at the Louvre (Nos. 2878-2884, 2953-2956, and 2953A) are illustrative of every phase of his art. As a landscape painter he may be considered a forerunner of Rousseau.

DIAZ

Narcisse Diaz de la Peña (1809-1876) was born at Bordeaux, the son of political fugitives from Spain, and, like so many artists of this group, started his artistic career as a china-painter. He afterwards gained considerable success with his romantic figure pictures of mythological and Oriental subjects, like the _Nymphs in a Wood_ (No. 2854), _Venus and Adonis_ (No. 2858), _Venus disarming Cupid_ (No. 2859), and above all the _Fée aux Perles_ (No. 256). As a landscape painter he delighted in rendering the sparkle of sunlight penetrating through the dense foliage of forest and brushwood. Diaz must be placed between Isabey and Millet, who followed his example in his early figure pieces; but he was also influenced by Rousseau and by Delacroix. Among his eighteen pictures at the Louvre are several landscapes of superb quality, notably the _Study of a Birch Tree_ (No. 252), _Sous Bois_ (No. 253), and _Dogs in the Forest_ (No. 257A).

DAUBIGNY

Of all the Barbizon painters and their artistic kinship, Charles François Daubigny (1817-1878) is the one who approached nature with the most reverent spirit. He is in a way the least subjective of them all, because his love of nature even in her simplest aspects prevented him from imposing his own personality upon her; and for this very reason he is more varied in his range of landscape subjects than any of the other masters of this important group. The most fugitive effects of light and atmosphere were seized by him with a masterly sureness which found expression in every touch of his summary brush. Every hour of the day, every season of the year, every mood of nature appealed to him with equal intensity, although the choice of his subjects is most frequently inspired by serene optimism.

Daubigny belonged to a family of artists. He received his first instruction from his father, and afterwards studied under Delaroche. Before he began to paint landscapes in the neighbourhood of Paris, he gained his livelihood by painting sweet-boxes! He found his best subjects on the banks of the Oise, but worked also in other districts of France, in Italy, and in England. Of his sojourn in England we are reminded by _The Thames at Erith_ (No. 2821), one of the thirteen Daubignys bequeathed to the Louvre by Thomy Thiéry, which also include the sun-flooded _Weir Gate at Optevoz_ (No. 2818, Plate LI.), _The Pond with Storks_ (No. 2815), _Les Péniches_ (No. 2820), _Morning on the River_ (No. 2824), and _The Banks of the Oise_ (No. 2823). _The Vintage in Burgundy_ (No. 184), which was bought by the State at the ridiculously low price of £400, is a picture of unusually large dimensions for an artist who generally needed but a small surface to express his ardent worship of nature. The delicious _Spring_ (No. 185), with its blossoming apple trees and young grass, must be counted among his finest achievements. It is a picture that fills the heart of the beholder with the joy and contentment engendered by the blithe atmosphere of a bright spring day in the country.

MILLET

The Louvre is fortunate in possessing no fewer than a dozen pictures by Jean François Millet (1814-1875), the great painter of the peasant’s unceasing struggle with the forces of nature to gain his livelihood from the soil. Millet himself was the son of a peasant, and was kept busy with farm work until he had attained the age of twenty, when he began to study art at Cherbourg. His studies were repeatedly interrupted before he definitely took up art as his profession. Before he went to Barbizon, in 1849, to devote himself exclusively to the genre in which he was to achieve immortal fame, he gained popular favour and admission to the Salon by following the eighteenth-century tradition of mythological art, and painted a number of nude studies of nymphs, goddesses, and cupids, not unlike in style to those of Diaz, but already marked by that firmness of design and by the monumental character that are so remarkable in his later work. The study of _Bathing Women_ (No. 642) belongs to that period.

After he had settled at Barbizon, Millet, whose peasant origin was probably the cause of his intense sympathy with the struggles and hardships of the field labourers’ fatiguing work, devoted his brush to creating that profoundly moving record of labour and toil which constitutes his claim to be considered one of the world’s great masters. He knew how to invest scenes of humble life with truly monumental grandeur, and brought out the hopeless monotony and cruel hardships of the life led by the tillers of the soil with such incisive strength, that he was accused of propagandist tendencies. Nothing, however, was further from his aim. He was an artist pure and simple, who, in following his own unpopular ideal, preferred to suffer neglect and extreme poverty to a compromise with the taste of the vulgar.

The _Women Gleaning_ (No. 644, Plate LII.) may be considered his supreme achievement, and an epitome of his whole art. Millet alone could have invested so bald and unpromising a subject with so much epic grandeur. There is in the rhythmic repetition of the action of the two women in the centre of the composition a sense of the inevitable hopeless monotony of labour in the fields, even if the picture is not “a plea against the misery of the people.” The same struggle for existence and the resulting physical fatigue are admirably expressed in the statuesquely silhouetted figure of _The Weed-burner_ (No. 2890). _The Woodcutter_ (No. 2895), _The Strawbinders_ (No. 2892), and _The Winnower_ (No. 2893) all exemplify this phase of Millet’s art. The domestic life of the peasantry is treated with equally profound sympathy in _Maternal Precaution_ (No. 2894), _La Couseuse_ (No. 644A), and _La Lessiveuse_ (No. 2891). Among his comparatively rare pure landscape subjects _The Church of Gréville_ (No. 641), which was found in an unfinished state in the artist’s studio after his death, takes very high rank. It is as remarkable for the simple telling truth with which the normal aspect of the landscape is rendered, as the _Spring_ (No. 643) is for the realisation of a more uncommon effect—a rainbow and the shrill accent of sunlight in the orchard under the leaden grey of the departing thunder clouds.

DAUMIER

What Millet did for the life of the country, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) did for the life of the town, of which he was a shrewd and critical observer. But his long practice as a caricaturist made him look upon the types that engaged his brush with a certain cruel bitterness which is far removed from Millet’s human sympathy. With a palette restricted almost to black and grey, Daumier yet proved himself a great colourist through the infallible accuracy of his tone-values and the suggestion of rich colour in his almost monochrome schemes. His design is as massive and monumental as Millet’s. The touch of the _macabre_, which is so characteristic of Daumier’s art, is very evident in _The Thieves and the Donkey_ (No. 2937). The _Portrait of the Painter Théodore Rousseau_ (No. 2938) holds a hint of the caricaturist’s vision.

COURBET

Equally far removed from, and hostile to, Classicism and Romanticism was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), who as head and founder of the Realistic school exercised a prodigious influence upon nineteenth-century art. He was essentially a fighting spirit, determined to overcome official hostility to his revolutionary principles. Excluded from public exhibitions, he held a private show of his own works, and defended his theories by spoken and written arguments. His just claim was that it did not matter _what_ you paint, but _how_ you paint what you actually see; and in conformity with his loudly proclaimed principles he often chose subjects that were offensive to the taste of his day. At the same time we can see now that he was endowed with a keen instinctive feeling for pictorial fitness, and that most of his pictures are far from being haphazard snapshots of actuality. In his student years he had copied many masterpieces by Rembrandt, Velazquez, Hals, and Van Dyck. How much he benefited from the example of the old masters is to be judged from his portrait of himself, known as _The Man with the Leather-belt_ (No. 147).