Part 22
A young girl, in white dress and gauze fichu, stands facing the spectator, holding with both hands some loose flowers in the gathered-up folds of her dress. She carries a broken pitcher on her right arm. In the background, on the right, is a fountain with a crouching lion.
Painted in oil on canvas.
Oval, 3 ft. 10½ in. × 2 ft. 9½ in. (1·18 × 0·85.)]
JOSEPH VERNET
One has to realise that the art of landscape painting had become almost extinct in France, and that the art of seascape had never existed, if one wishes to account for Diderot’s enthusiasm with regard to Claude Joseph Vernet (1714-1789), which made him exclaim, “What pictures! He rivals the Creator in celerity, Nature in truth!” Our cooler judgment cannot so easily pass over all that is cold and formal in his art. But, taken in relation to his contemporaries, he deserves respect for his emotional attitude towards nature, for a sense of the dramatic that approaches Salvator Rosa’s, and for his admirable drawing of the figures introduced into his landscapes. Vernet’s love of the sea awoke when at the age of eighteen he journeyed to Rome, where he became imbued with the classic tradition. He only returned to Paris in 1752, and soon afterwards received from Louis XV. the commission to paint the large series of _French Seaports_ (Nos. 940-954) which are now to be seen in the rooms in this collection given up to the Musée de Marine. In his other marines and landscapes (Nos. 912-939), not all of which are actually exhibited, he allowed his imagination freer play than in the _Seaports_, which were naturally of more topographic character.
Both his son Carle Vernet (1758-1836), a historical painter who excelled in the rendering of horses in movement, and his grandson Horace Vernet (1789-1863), a popular battle painter, are represented at the Louvre, the former by the _Stag Hunt in the Forest of Meudon_ (No. 955), and the latter by the _Barrière de Clichy (Defence of Paris in 1814)_ (No. 956), and the uninspired _Judith and Holofernes_ (No. 957).
HUBERT ROBERT
Hubert Robert (1733-1808), of whose classic landscapes the collection contains nineteen examples (Nos. 797-815), was not, as might be imagined from the general character of his paintings, influenced by the art of Claude Lorrain, but derived his love of antique buildings and landscapes peopled with classic figures from the general atmosphere of archæological enthusiasm engendered by the excavations on the site of Herculaneum, which prevailed in Rome when the young artist arrived at that Mecca of his profession in 1754. Robert lived and worked in Italy for twelve years, and became thoroughly imbued with this antiquarian spirit. Unlike Claude, he rarely, if ever, drew upon his imagination for the details of his classic landscapes, which are faithful transcripts of existing ruined or half-ruined buildings, though not infrequently they are arranged for greater pictorial effect. Of this half-realistic, half-classic nature—the introduction of people in classic garb among the ruins of buildings, which in classic times wore a very different aspect, is a pardonable anachronism—are the _Interior of the Temple of Diana at Nimes_ (No. 799), and several similar pieces at the Louvre. In his smaller pictures, of which the best are the _Fountain under a Portico_ (No. 812) and the _Winding Staircase, with three Figures_ (No. 813), in the La Caze Room, he rivals the rich quality of pigment and mellow tone of Guardi at his best. Robert was Fragonard’s constant companion in Rome, and exercised considerable influence upon his friend, as may be seen from Fragonard’s landscape drawings.
There is scarcely a trace of Italian classicism in the superb _View in the Neighbourhood of Paris_ (No. 650), by Louis Gabriel Moreau (1740-1806), which in its silvery-grey tonality, in its sense of atmosphere, and in the treatment of the receding distances, rather recalls the manner of the Dutchman Philips de Koninck. That Moreau, who also worked in England, was not always free from conventionality, is proved by the rather formal composition of the _View of the Hills of Meudon from Saint-Cloud_ (No. 651).
[Illustration: PLATE XLIV.—ELISABETH LOUISE VIGÉE LE BRUN
(1755-1842)
No. 522.—PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AND HER DAUGHTER
(Portrait de Mme. Le Brun et de sa Fille)
The artist, in a white bodice with purple sleeves and a yellow satin skirt, is seated on a green sofa. Her head is inclined towards her right shoulder. She presses towards her, with both arms, her little girl, who is resting on her lap, with her head turned towards the spectator.
Painted in oil on canvas.
3 ft. 5½ in. × 2 ft. 9½ in. (1·05 x 0·85.)]
LOUIS DAVID
The boudoir art of the _ancien régime_ came to a natural end through the great social upheaval of the Revolution, of which Jacques Louis David (1748-1825) is the very personification in the realm of painting. As a pupil of Boucher, David in his early years was essentially a child of the eighteenth century. That he became the founder and head of a new classicist school, as tyrannical in his sway as had been Le Brun during the reign of Louis XIV., was due to the teaching of Joseph Marie Vien, whom he accompanied to Rome in 1775, the year in which Vien was appointed Director of the École de Rome. Vien was an eclectic and a purist of greater ability than would appear from his two dull pictures at the Louvre, _St. Germain and St. Vincent_ (No. 964) and _The Sleeping Hermit_ (No. 965).
David’s participation in the events of the year 1789 and his ardent republicanism did not, as has often been stated, attract him to subjects from Republican Roman history. Indeed, he had already painted _The Oath of the Horatii_ (No. 189) and _The Lictors taking to Brutus the Corpse of his Sons_ (No 191), for Louis XVI., and was only following the current of taste in devoting himself to the study of the antique and to antiquarian research. These two pictures, in spite of their cold classicism and theatricality, met with sensational success on their first appearance at the Salon. It is not in such works as these, nor in the _Rape of the Sabine Women_ (No. 188), compared with which even Poussin’s version of the same theme appears like a glimpse of actual life, that David’s talent found its happiest expression, but in the unaffected and irresistibly charming _Portrait of Mme. Récamier_ (No. 199, Plate XLV.) reclining on an Empire sofa. Whatever this picture may owe to the sitter’s grace and beauty and to the fact that it was never finished, and thus retained the freshness of a sketch, it is certainly one of the most attractive masterpieces of the French school. Here, as in the group of _Three Ladies of Ghent_ (No. 200A), in which the luminous quality of the fresh tones is enhanced by the general greyness of the scheme, we have the work of a real painter, whilst David’s bombastic historical compositions are scarcely more than tinted cartoons.
THE “CORONATION” PICTURE
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.
[Illustration: PLATE XLV.—JACQUES LOUIS DAVID
(1748-1825)
No. 199.—PORTRAIT OF MME. RÉCAMIER
(Portrait de Mme. Récamier)
The sitter wears a white Empire dress, the train of which hangs down to the ground from the Empire sofa on which she is half reclining, with her left elbow resting on a pair of round horse-hair bolsters. Her face is turned towards her right shoulder. A wide black riband is tied round her fair curled hair. A low footstool in front of the sofa on the right, and a standing candelabrum of classic design on the left.
The candelabrum is said to have been painted by Ingres.
Painted in oil on canvas (unfinished).
5 ft. 7 in. × 7 ft. 10½ in. (1·70 × 2·40.)]
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.
[Illustration: PLATE XLVI.—JEAN LOUIS ANDRÉ THÉODORE GÉRICAULT
(1791-1824)
No. 338.—THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA
(Le Radeau de la Méduse)
The raft of the wrecked Medusa, with the survivors of the crew, is floating on the stormy sea. In the foreground on the left, surrounded by dead sailors, a father is holding with his left hand the nude body of his dying son. On the right, a corpse is partly resting on the raft, partly floating on the water. Farther back the officer, Corréard, is seen pointing out to the surgeon, Savigny, the brig _Argus_, which appears on the far horizon under the clouded sky. At the far end of the raft a mulatto and a sailor have hoisted themselves on to some barrels to wave some rags, so as to attract the attention of the distant ship.
Painted in oil on canvas.
16 ft. 1½ in × 23 ft. 6 in. (4·91 × 7·16.)]
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.
[Illustration: PLATE XLVII.—FERDINAND VICTOR EUGÈNE DELACROIX
(1798-1863)
No. 207.—DANTE AND VIRGIL
(Dante et Virgile aux Enfers)
In a boat, steered by Charon across the river Styx, Virgil, laurel-crowned and dressed in a red cloak, holds with his right hand the left hand of Dante, who, in a blue cloak with a red hood, raises his right arm in a gesture of horror at the sight of the Damned, who, half-buried in the turbulent waters, cling despairingly to the sides of the boat. In the background are seen the towers of the burning city of Dite.
Signed:—“EUGÈNE DELACROIX.”
Painted in oil on canvas.
5 ft. 11 in. × 7 ft. 10½ in. (1·80 × 2·40.)]
INGRES