FRENCH PAINTING.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Stranahan, _et al._; also
Ballière, _Henri Regnault_; Blanc, _Les Artistes de mon
Temps_; Blanc, _Histoire des Peintres français au XIX^{me}
Siècle_; Blanc, _Ingres et son OEuvre_; Bigot, _Peintres
français contemporains_; Breton, _La Vie d'un Artiste_
(_English Translation_); Brownell, _French Art_; Burty,
_Maîtres et Petit-Maîtres_; Chesneau, _Peinture française au
XIX^{me} Siècle_; Clément, _Études sur les Beaux Arts en
France_; Clément, _Prudhon_; Delaborde, _OEuvre de Paul
Delaroche_; Delécluze, _Jacques Louis David, son École, et
son Temps_; Duret, _Les Peintres français en 1867_; Gautier,
_L'Art Moderne_; Gautier, _Romanticisme_; Gonse, _Eugène
Fromentin_; Hamerton, _Contemporary French Painting_;
Hamerton, _Painting in France after the Decline of
Classicism_; Henley, _Memorial Catalogue of French and Dutch
Loan Collection_ (1886); Henriet, _Charles Daubigny et son
OEuvre_; Lenormant, _Les Artistes Contemporains_;
Lenormant, _Ary Scheffer_; Merson, _Ingres, sa Vie et son
OEuvre_; Moreau, _Decamps et son OEuvre_; Planche,
_Études sur l'École française_; Robaut et Chesneau,
_L' OEuvre complet d'Eugène Delacroix_; Sensier, _Théodore
Rousseau_; Sensier, _Life and Works of J. F. Millet_;
Silvestre, _Histoire des Artistes vivants et étrangers_;
Strahan, _Modern French Art_; Thoré, _L'Art Contemporain_;
Theuriet, _Jules Bastien-Lepage_; Van Dyke, _Modern French
Masters_.
THE REVOLUTIONARY TIME: In considering this century's art in Europe,
it must be remembered that a great social and intellectual change has
taken place since the days of the Medici. The power so long pent up in
Italy during the Renaissance finally broke and scattered itself upon
the western nations; societies and states were torn down and
rebuilded, political, social, and religious ideas shifted into new
garbs; the old order passed away.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--DAVID. THE SABINES. LOUVRE.]
Religion as an art-motive, or even as an art-subject, ceased to obtain
anywhere. The Church failed as an art-patron, and the walls of
cloister and cathedral furnished no new Bible readings to the
unlettered. Painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a
luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the
patron. Nature and actual life were about the only sources left from
which original art could draw its materials. These have been freely
used, but not so much in a national as in an individual manner. The
tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an
individual belief. Individualism--the same quality that appeared so
strongly in Michael Angelo's art--has become a keynote in modern work.
It is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century,
nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. We must
remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and
the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the Greek, Roman, and
Italian, which practically ruled French painting in the first part of
this century.
FRENCH CLASSICISM OF DAVID: This was a revival of Greek form in art,
founded on the belief expressed by Winckelmann, that beauty lay in
form, and was best shown by the ancient Greeks. It was the objective
view of art which saw beauty in the external and tolerated no
individuality in the artist except that which was shown in technical
skill. It was little more than an imitation of the Greek and Roman
marbles as types, with insistence upon perfect form, correct drawing,
and balanced composition. In theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic,
the incidents of Greek and Roman history forming the chief subjects,
and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural
surroundings. It was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly
unsympathetic because lacking in contemporary interest; and, though
correct enough in classic form, was lacking in the classic spirit.
Like all reanimated art, it was derivative as regards its forms and
lacking in spontaneity. The reason for the existence of Greek art died
with its civilization, and those, like the French classicists, who
sought to revive it, brought a copy of the past into the present,
expecting the world to accept it.
There was some social, and perhaps artistic, reason, however, for the
revival of the classic in the French art of the late eighteenth
century. It was a revolt, and at that time revolts were popular. The
art of Boucher and Van Loo had become quite unbearable. It was
flippant, careless, licentious. It had no seriousness or dignity about
it. Moreover, it smacked of the Bourbon monarchy, which people had
come to hate. Classicism was severe, elevated, respectable at least,
and had the air of the heroic republic about it. It was a return to a
sterner view of life, with the martial spirit behind it as an impetus,
and it had a great vogue. For many years during the Revolution, the
Consulate, and the Empire, classicism was accepted by the sovereigns
and the Institute of France, and to this day it lives in a modified
form in that semi-classic work known as academic art.
THE CLASSIC SCHOOL: Vien (1716-1809) was the first painter to protest
against the art of Boucher and Van Loo by advocating more nobility of
form and a closer study of nature. He was, however, more devoted to
the antique forms he had studied in Rome than to nature. In subject
and line his tendency was classic, with a leaning toward the Italians
of the Decadence. He lacked the force to carry out a complete reform
in painting, but his pupil David (1748-1825) accomplished what he had
begun. It was David who established the reign of classicism, and by
native power became the leader. The time was appropriate, the
Revolution called for pictures of Romulus, Brutus and Achilles, and
Napoleon encouraged the military theme. David had studied the marbles
at Rome, and he used them largely for models, reproducing scenes from
Greek and Roman life in an elevated and sculpturesque style, with much
archæological knowledge and a great deal of skill. In color, relief,
sentiment, individuality, his painting was lacking. He despised all
that. The rhythm of line, the sweep of composed groups, the heroic
subject and the heroic treatment, made up his art. It was thoroughly
objective, and what contemporary interest it possessed lay largely in
the martial spirit then prevalent. Of course it was upheld by the
Institute, and it really set the pace for French painting for nearly
half a century. When David was called upon to paint Napoleonic
pictures he painted them under protest, and yet these, with his
portraits, constitute his best work. In portraiture he was uncommonly
strong at times.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--INGRES. OEDIPUS AND SPHINX. LOUVRE.]
After the Restoration David, who had been a revolutionist, and then an
adherent of Napoleon, was sent into exile; but the influence he had
left and the school he had established were carried on by his
contemporaries and pupils. Of the former Regnault (1754-1829), Vincent
(1746-1816), and Prudhon (1758-1823) were the most conspicuous. The
last one was considered as out of the classic circle, but so far as
making his art depend upon drawing and composition, he was a genuine
classicist. His subjects, instead of being heroic, inclined to the
mythological and the allegorical. In Italy he had been a student of
the Renaissance painters, and from them borrowed a method of shadow
gradation that rendered his figures misty and phantom-like. They
possessed an ease of movement sometimes called "Prudhonesque grace,"
and in composition were well placed and effective.
Of David's pupils there were many. Only a few of them, however, had
pronounced ability, and even these carried David's methods into the
theatrical. Girodet (1766-1824) was a draughtsman of considerable
power, but with poor taste in color and little repose in composition.
Most of his work was exaggeration and strained effect. Lethière
(1760-1832) and Guérin (1774-1833), pupils of Regnault, were painters
akin to Girodet, but inferior to him. Gérard (1770-1837) was a weak
David follower, who gained some celebrity by painting portraits of
celebrated men and women. The two pupils of David who brought him the
most credit were Ingres (1780-1867) and Gros (1771-1835). Ingres was a
cold, persevering man, whose principles had been well settled by David
early in life, and were adhered to with conviction by the pupil to the
last. He modified the classic subject somewhat, studied Raphael and
the Italians, and reintroduced the single figure into art (the Source,
and the Odalisque, for example). For color he had no fancy. "In nature
all is form," he used to say. Painting he thought not an independent
art, but "a development of sculpture." To consider emotion, color, or
light as the equal of form was monstrous, and to compare Rembrandt
with Raphael was blasphemy. To this belief he clung to the end,
faithfully reproducing the human figure, and it is not to be wondered
at that eventually he became a learned draughtsman. His single figures
and his portraits show him to the best advantage. He had a strong
grasp of modelling and an artistic sense of the beauty and dignity of
line not excelled by any artist of this century. And to him more than
any other painter is due the cultured draughtsmanship which is to-day
the just pride of the French school.
Gros was a more vacillating man, and by reason of forsaking the
classic subject for Napoleonic battle-pieces, he unconsciously led the
way toward romanticism. He excelled as a draughtsman, but when he came
to paint the Field of Eylau and the Pest of Jaffa he mingled color,
light, air, movement, action, sacrificing classic composition and
repose to reality. This was heresy from the Davidian point of view,
and David eventually convinced him of it. Gros returned to the classic
theme and treatment, but soon after was so reviled by the changing
criticism of the time that he committed suicide in the Seine. His art,
however, was the beginning of romanticism.
The landscape painting of this time was rather academic and
unsympathetic. It was a continuation of the Claude-Poussin tradition,
and in its insistence upon line, grandeur of space, and imposing trees
and mountains, was a fit companion to the classic figure-piece. It had
little basis in nature, and little in color or feeling to commend it.
Watelet (1780-1866), Bertin (1775-1842), Michallon (1796-1822), and
Aligny (1798-1871), were its exponents.
A few painters seemed to stand apart from the contemporary influences.
Madame Vigée-Lebrun (1755-1842), a successful portrait-painter of
nobility, and Horace Vernet (1789-1863), a popular battle-painter,
many of whose works are to be seen at Versailles, were of this class.
ROMANTICISM: The movement in French painting which began about 1822 and
took the name of Romanticism was but a part of the "storm-and-stress"
feeling that swept Germany, England, and France at the beginning of this
century, appearing first in literature and afterward in art. It had its
origin in a discontent with the present, a passionate yearning for the
unattainable, an intensity of sentiment, gloomy melancholy imaginings,
and a desire to express the inexpressible. It was emphatically
subjective, self-conscious, a mood of mind or feeling. In this respect
it was diametrically opposed to the academic and the classic. In French
painting it came forward in opposition to the classicism of David.
People had begun to weary of Greek and Roman heroes and their deeds, of
impersonal line-bounded statuesque art. There was a demand for something
more representative, spontaneous, expressive of the intense feeling of
the time. The very gist of romanticism was passion. Freedom to express
itself in what form it would was a condition of its existence.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.--DELACROIX. MASSACRE OF SCIO. LOUVRE.]
The classic subject was abandoned by the romanticists for dramatic
scenes of mediæval and modern times. The romantic hero and heroine in
scenes of horror, perils by land and sea, flame and fury, love and
anguish, came upon the boards. Much of this was illustration of
history, the novel, and poetry, especially the poetry of Goethe,
Byron, and Scott. Line was slurred in favor of color, symmetrical
composition gave way to wild disordered groups in headlong action, and
atmospheres, skies, and lights were twisted and distorted to convey
the sentiment of the story. It was thus, more by suggestion than
realization, that romanticism sought to give the poetic sentiment of
life. Its position toward classicism was antagonistic, a rebound, a
flying to the other extreme. One virtually said that beauty was in the
Greek form, the other that it was in the painter's emotional nature.
The disagreement was violent, and out of it grew the so-called
romantic quarrel of the 1820's.
LEADERS OF ROMANTICISM: Symptoms of the coming movement were apparent
long before any open revolt. Gros had made innovations on the classic
in his battle-pieces, but the first positive dissent from classic
teachings was made in the Salon of 1819 by Géricault (1791-1824) with
his Raft of the Medusa. It represented the starving, the dead, and the
dying of the Medusa's crew on a raft in mid-ocean. The subject was not
classic. It was literary, romantic, dramatic, almost theatric in its
seizing of the critical moment. Its theme was restless, harrowing,
horrible. It met with instant opposition from the old men and applause
from the young men. It was the trumpet-note of the revolt, but
Géricault did not live long enough to become the leader of
romanticism. That position fell to his contemporary and fellow-pupil,
Delacroix (1799-1863). It was in 1822 that Delacroix's first Salon
picture (the Dante and Virgil) appeared. A strange, ghost-like scene
from Dante's _Inferno_, the black atmosphere of the nether world,
weird faces, weird colors, weird flames, and a modelling of the
figures by patches of color almost savage as compared to the tinted
drawing of classicism. Delacroix's youth saved the picture from
condemnation, but it was different with his Massacre of Scio two
years later. This was decried by the classicists, and even Gros called
it "the massacre of art." The painter was accused of establishing the
worship of the ugly, he was no draughtsman, had no selection, no
severity, nothing but brutality. But Delacroix was as obstinate as
Ingres, and declared that the whole world could not prevent him from
seeing and painting things in his own way. It was thus the quarrel
started, the young men siding with Delacroix, the older men following
David and Ingres.
In himself Delacroix embodied all that was best and strongest in the
romantic movement. His painting was intended to convey a romantic mood
of mind by combinations of color, light, air, and the like. In subject
it was tragic and passionate, like the poetry of Hugo, Byron, and
Scott. The figures were usually given with anguish-wrung brows, wild
eyes, dishevelled hair, and impetuous, contorted action. The painter
never cared for technical details, seeking always to gain the effect
of the whole rather than the exactness of the part. He purposely
slurred drawing at times, and was opposed to formal composition. In
color he was superior, though somewhat violent at times, and in
brush-work he was often labored and patchy. His strength lay in
imagination displayed in color and in action.
The quarrel between classicism and romanticism lasted some years, with
neither side victorious. Delacroix won recognition for his view of
art, but did not crush the belief in form which was to come to the
surface again. He fought almost alone. Many painters rallied around
him, but they added little strength to the new movement. Devéria
(1805-1865) and Champmartin (1797-1883) were highly thought of at
first, but they rapidly degenerated. Sigalon (1788-1837), Cogniet
(1794-1880), Robert-Fleury (1797-), and Boulanger (1806-1867), were
romanticists, but achieved more as teachers than as painters.
Delaroche (1797-1856) was an eclectic--in fact, founded a school of
that name--thinking to take what was best from both parties.
Inventing nothing, he profited by all invented. He employed the
romantic subject and color, but adhered to classic drawing. His
composition was good, his costume careful in detail, his brush-work
smooth, and his story-telling capacity excellent. All these qualities
made him a popular painter, but not an original or powerful one. Ary
Scheffer (1797-1858) was an illustrator of Goethe and Byron, frail in
both sentiment and color, a painter who started as a romanticist, but
afterward developed line under Ingres.
[Illustration: FIG. 63.--GÉRÔME. POLLICE VERSO.]
THE ORIENTALISTS: In both literature and painting one phase of
romanticism showed itself in a love for the life, the light, the color
of the Orient. From Paris Decamps (1803-1860) was the first painter to
visit the East and paint Eastern life. He was a _genre_ painter more
than a figure painter, giving naturalistic street scenes in Turkey and
Asia Minor, courts, and interiors, with great feeling for air, warmth
of color, and light. At about the same time Marilhat (1811-1847) was
in Egypt picturing the life of that country in a similar manner; and
later, Fromentin (1820-1876), painter and writer, following Delacroix,
went to Algiers and portrayed there Arab life with fast-flying horses,
the desert air, sky, light, and color. Théodore Frere and Ziem belong
further on in the century, but were no less exponents of romanticism
in the East.
Fifteen years after the starting of romanticism the movement had
materially subsided. It had never been a school in the sense of having
rules and laws of art. Liberty of thought and perfect freedom for
individual expression were all it advocated. As a result there was no
unity, for there was nothing to unite upon; and with every painter
painting as he pleased, regardless of law, extravagance was
inevitable. This was the case, and when the next generation came in
romanticism began to be ridiculed for its excesses. A reaction started
in favor of more line and academic training. This was first shown by
the students of Delaroche, though there were a number of movements at
the time, all of them leading away from romanticism. A recoil from too
much color in favor of more form was inevitable, but romanticism was
not to perish entirely. Its influence was to go on, and to appear in
the work of later men.
ECLECTICS AND TRANSITIONAL PAINTERS: After Ingres his follower
Flandrin (1809-1864) was the most considerable draughtsman of the
time. He was not classic but religious in subject, and is sometimes
called "the religious painter of France." He had a delicate beauty of
line and a fine feeling for form, but never was strong in color,
brush-work, or sentiment. His best work appears in his very fine
portraits. Gleyre (1806-1874) was a man of classic methods, but
romantic tastes, who modified the heroic into the idyllic and
mythologic. He was a sentimental day-dreamer, with a touch of
melancholy about the vanished past, appearing in Arcadian fancies,
pretty nymphs, and idealized memories of youth. In execution he was
not at all romantic. His color was pale, his drawing delicate, and his
lighting misty and uncertain. It was the etherealized classic method,
and this method he transmitted to a little band of painters called the
NEW-GREEKS, who, in point of time, belong much further along in the
century, but in their art are with Gleyre. Their work never rose above
the idyllic and the graceful, and calls for no special mention. Hamon
(1821-1874) and Aubert (1824-) belonged to the band, and Gérôme
(1824-[6]) was at one time its leader, but he afterward emerged from
it to a higher place in French art, where he will find mention
hereafter.
[Footnote 6: Died, 1904.]
Couture (1815-1879) stood quite by himself, a mingling of several
influences. His chief picture, The Romans of the Decadence, is classic
in subject, romantic in sentiment (and this very largely expressed by
warmth of color), and rather realistic in natural appearance. He was
an eclectic in a way, and yet seems to stand as the forerunner of a
large body of artists who find classification hereafter under the
title of the Semi-Classicists.
PRINCIPAL WORKS: All the painters mentioned in this chapter
are best represented in the Louvre at Paris, at Versailles,
and in the museums of the chief French cities. Some works of
the late or living men may be found in the Luxembourg, where
pictures bought by the state are kept for ten years after
the painter's death, and then are either sent to the Louvre
or to the other municipal galleries of France. Some pictures
by these men are also to be seen in the Metropolitan Museum,
New York, the Boston Museum, and the Chicago Art Institute.