I. The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople . . . Frontispiece
In the Louvre
II. Algerian Women in their Apartment
In the Louvre
III. The Death of Ophelia
In the Louvre
IV. The Crucifixion
In the Louvre
V. The Bride of Abydos
In the Louvre
VI. Dante and Virgil
In the Louvre
VII. The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero
In the Wallace Collection
VIII. Faust and Mephistopheles
In the Wallace Collection
[Illustration: Delacroix]
"Delacroix, lac de sang, hante de mauvais anges,
Ombrage par un dais de sapins toujours vert,
Ou, sous un ciel chagrin, des fanfares etranges
Passent comme un soupir etouffe de Weber."
--Baudelaire, "Fleurs du Ma1."
I
To-day, as one examines the ten masterpieces by Delacroix in the Salle
des Etats at the Louvre--ten pictures which may without fear of
contradiction be asserted to form an epitome of the art of the man who
is now generally acknowledged to be the fountain-head of all modern
art--one can only with difficulty understand the bitter hostility, the
fierce passion, aroused by these works when Delacroix's name was the
battle-cry of the moderns, when Delacroix was the leader of the
numerically small faction which waged heroic war against the inexorable
tyrannic rule of academic art. What was once considered extreme and
revolutionary, has become what might almost be described as a classic
basis of a revaluation of aesthetic values. Even Manet's "Olympia," the
starting-point of a more recent artistic upheaval, a picture which on
its first appearance at the Paris Salon of 1865 was received with wild
howls of execration, now falls into line at the Louvre with the other
great masterpieces of painting. It marks a bold step in the evolution
of modern art, but it is no longer disconcerting to our eyes. And
Delacroix can no longer be denied classic rank. To understand the
significance of Delacroix in the art of his country, and the hostility
shown to him by officialdom and by the unthinking public almost during
the whole course of his life, one has to trace back the art of painting
in France to its very birth. It will then be found that the history of
this art, from the moment when French painting emerges from the
obscurity of the Middle Ages until well into the second half of the
nineteenth century, is a history of an almost uninterrupted struggle
between North and South.
All the efforts of chauvinistic French critics have failed to establish
the existence of an early indigenous school. Nearly all the early
painters who are mentioned in contemporary documents were Flemings who
had settled in France. Their art is so closely allied to that of the
Northern Schools, that it is sometimes impossible to establish the
origin of pictures that are traditionally ascribed to French painters.
But at the same time, perhaps in the train of the Popes who had
transferred their Court to Avignon, Italian art began to invade France
from the South. Simone Martini's frescoes in the Papal Palace at
Avignon certainly left their mark upon the School that arose in the
Provencal city; and gradually traces of Italian influence made
themselves felt in an art that remained Northern in its essential
features. There is at the National Gallery an early French panel, a
"Scene from the Legend of St. Giles" (No. 1419), which clearly shows
the harmonious blending of the two currents.
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