Chapter L: Costa F (7)

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

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.

(1780-1867)

No. 422.—THE SPRING

(La Source)

A nude figure of a fair-haired young maiden stands facing the
spectator, the background being formed by a perpendicular rock
partly overgrown with clinging plants. She raises her right arm
over her head to hold the foot of a tilted vase, the mouth of which
is supported by her left hand, and from which issues a streamlet of
water that falls into a pool at the base of the rock, in which are
reflected the feet of the maiden.

Signed on a stone on the left:—“INGRES, 1856.”

Painted in oil on canvas.

5 ft. 5 in. × 2 ft. 7½ in. (1.65 × 0.80.)]

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.

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.

(1796-1875)

No. 2801.—THE DELL

(Le Vallon, avec des paysannes et une vache)

A grass-covered hill descends from the horizon line on the left
to the right-hand bottom corner of the picture. A low hedge with
a clump of trees in the centre divides the grassy plot from the
field rising beyond towards the horizon-line, from which projects
a church in the far distance. The sun is behind the trees, which
throw a deep shadow on the dale. A cow occupies the centre of the
foreground. To the left a group of three peasant women and a child;
to the right a farm labourer.

Signed on left:—“COROT.”

Painted in oil on canvas.

1 ft. 1¾ in. × 1 ft. 9¼ in. (0·35 × 0·54.)]