You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers, these
painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I don’t know
why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such
grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself
should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical. It is good at
the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and
because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it. But these
men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy,
all the circumstances leading to them. This, however, is part of the
scheme—the bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that
our teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which
your humble servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily,
according to the strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down. What,
for instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas?
What was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba?
I would lay a wager that neither of them ever conjugated [Greek text
omitted], and that their school learning carried them not as far as the
letter, but only to the game of taw. How were they to be inspired by
such subjects? From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges
flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles
Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the “Mythological Dictionary.” What a classicism,
inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied,
half from ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one
shilling and sixpence the hour!
Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his “Medea” is a
genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
Brownrigg, and her two female ’prentices, would have done as well as
the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted]. M. Delacroix has
produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp
of genius on all of them,—the great poetical INTENTION, which is worth
all your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with not
such a great HEART, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful
draughtsman, and an excellent arranger of his subject. “The Death of
Elizabeth” is a raw young performance seemingly—not, at least, to my
taste. The “Enfans d’Edouard” is renowned over Europe, and has appeared
in a hundred different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and
gloomy, and merits fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in
such subjects—in what Lord Portsmouth used to call “black jobs.” He has
killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I
don’t know whom besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work
at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honor of seeing
him,—a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on
this important occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act
of smoking a cigar.
Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king
of French battle-painters—an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever a
man, that all he does is good to a certain degree. His “Judith” is
somewhat violent, perhaps. His “Rebecca” most pleasing; and not the
less so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless
singularity of costume. “Raphael and Michael Angelo” is as clever a
picture as can be—clever is just the word—the groups and drawing
excellent, the coloring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French
students study it incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one
who copies Delacroix. His little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now
publishing “Life of Napoleon,” are perfect gems in their way, and the
noble price paid for them not a penny more than he merits.
The picture, by Court, of “The Death of Cæsar,” is remarkable for
effect and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks
like Armand Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful heads
of women, and some very good color in the picture. Jacquand’s “Death of
Adelaide de Comminges” is neither more nor less than beautiful.
Adelaide had, it appears, a lover, who betook himself to a convent of
Trappists. She followed him thither, disguised as a man, took the vows,
and was not discovered by him till on her death-bed. The painter has
told this story in a most pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is
full of onction and melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally
represented; and the tone and color very good. Decaisne’s “Guardian
Angel” is not so good in color, but is equally beautiful in expression
and grace. A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the
infant. You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and
what triumph would a painter have more?
We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-pieces
of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of
Grasivaudan), and “The Prometheus” of Aligny. This is an imitation,
perhaps; as is a noble picture of “Jesus Christ and the Children,” by
Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better models, at any rate; and
one begins to perceive that the odious classical dynasty is no more.
Poussin’s magnificent “Polyphemus” (I only know a print of that
marvellous composition) has, perhaps, suggested the first-named
picture; and the latter has been inspired by a good enthusiastic study
of the Roman schools.
Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he broke up
his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of his pupils
attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and some, with
scarcely a penny in their pouches, walked through France and across the
Alps, in a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being determined not to forsake
their old master. Such an action was worthy of them, and of the high
rank which their profession holds in France, where the honors to be
acquired by art are only inferior to those which are gained in war. One
reads of such peregrinations in old days, when the scholars of some
great Italian painter followed him from Venice to Rome, or from
Florence to Ferrara. In regard of Ingres’s individual merit as a
painter, the writer of this is not a fair judge, having seen but three
pictures by him; one being a plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples
much admire.
Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French
art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for carrying
us back to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress here.
For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian or
Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a favorite
with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do believe this to be
a greater humbug than the humbug of David and Girodet, inasmuch as the
latter was founded on Nature at least; whereas the former is made up of
silly affectations, and improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance,
is Chevalier Ziegler’s picture of “St. Luke painting the Virgin.” St.
Luke has a monk’s dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the
sleeves. The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son
in her arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who is
eying his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look. They call
this Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend, more easy in life.
First take your colors, and rub them down clean,—bright carmine, bright
yellow, bright sienna, bright ultramarine, bright green. Make the
costumes of your figures as much as possible like the costumes of the
early part of the fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above
colors; and if on a gold ground, the more “Catholic” your art is. Dress
your apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a
good commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you
may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere. Deal
in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster’s wife by Cranach or Van
Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their gowns, and proper
angular draperies. Place all their heads on one side, with the eyes
shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the back of the head, draw, and
gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory, of the exact shape of a
cart-wheel: and you have the thing done. It is Catholic art tout
craché, as Louis Philippe says. We have it still in England, handed
down to us for four centuries, in the pictures on the cards, as the
redoubtable king and queen of clubs. Look at them: you will see that
the costumes and attitudes are precisely similar to those which figure
in the catholicities of the school of Overbeck and Cornelius.
Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley’s “Jeune Fille confiant son premier
secret à Vénus.” Charming, charming! It is from the exhibition of this
year only; and I think the best sculpture in the gallery—pretty,
fanciful, naïve; admirable in workmanship and imitation of Nature. I
have seldom seen flesh better represented in marble. Examine, also,
Jaley’s “Pudeur,” Jacquot’s “Nymph,” and Rude’s “Boy with the
Tortoise.” These are not very exalted subjects, or what are called
exalted, and do not go beyond simple, smiling beauty and nature. But
what then? Are we gods, Miltons, Michel Angelos, that can leave earth
when we please; and soar to heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp;
but the fools of academicians would fain make us so. Are you not, and
half the painters in London, panting for an opportunity to show your
genius in a great “historical picture?” O blind race! Have you wings?
Not a feather: and yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the
tops of rugged hills; and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your
ragged elbows, and making as if you would fly! Come down, silly
Daedalus; come down to the lowly places in which Nature ordered you to
walk. The sweet flowers are springing there; the fat muttons are
waiting there; the pleasant sun shines there; be content and humble,
and take your share of the good cheer.
While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has gayly
conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la porte du
Louvre ne défend pas our entry.
What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners who
sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the brethren
of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any extraordinary
wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which Paris, more than
any other city, abounds. But here they have a luxury which surpasses
all others, and spend their days in a palace which all the money of all
the Rothschilds could not buy. They sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and
dine in a cellar; but no grandee in Europe has such a drawing-room.
Kings’ houses have, at best, but damask hangings, and gilt cornices.
What are these to a wall covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a
hundred yards of Rubens? Artists from England, who have a national
gallery that resembles a moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy
pictures, except under particular restrictions, and on rare and
particular days, may revel here to their hearts’ content. Here is a
room half a mile long, with as many windows as Aladdin’s palace, open
from sunrise till evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of
study: the only puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall
begin upon, and keep his eyes away from the rest.
Fontaine’s grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings and
shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it is thought
too fine for working days, and is only opened for the public entrance
on Sabbath. A little back stair (leading from a court, in which stand
numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx, of polished granite,) is the
common entry for students and others, who, during the week, enter the
gallery.
Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death only
entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let us
confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this letter.
I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or two
admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and gayety. The
color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one of these so
much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman. “Pope Pius,” at
the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for its vigor and look of
life. The man had a genius for painting portraits and common life, but
must attempt the heroic;—failed signally; and what is worse, carried a
whole nation blundering after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty
years ago, he would have thrown the démenti in your teeth; or, at
least, laughed at you in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we
don’t know when we are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their
defeats are victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire; and
one might as well have said then that “Romulus” was a bad picture, as
that Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who believe in
the Emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe that Ducis
improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still, it is curious
to remark, in this place, how art and literature become party matters,
and political sects have their favorite painters and authors.
Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year after
his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him. Walter Scott,
from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of gallant young Scotch
adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights, and savage Highlanders,
who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins, fierce two-handed swords, and
harness on their back, did challenge, combat, and overcome the heroes
and demigods of Greece and Rome. Notre Dame à la rescousse! Sir Brian
de Bois Guilbert has borne Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle.
Andromache may weep: but her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See!
Robin Hood twangs his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie
Saint Denis! down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are
Leonidas and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor.
Classicism is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lemprière by the
nose, and reigns sovereign.
Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say
much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he has
come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet), it is
because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to advantage.
But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion for the nude,
which was followed by all the painters of the Davidian epoch? And how
are we to suppose yonder straddle to be the true characteristic of the
heroic and the sublime? Romulus stretches his legs as far as ever
nature will allow; the Horatii, in receiving their swords, think proper
to stretch their legs too, and to thrust forward their arms, thus,—
[Drawing omitted]
Romulus’s is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii are
all in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr. Angelo, of
Bond Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake, Michel, I don’t
think would.
The little picture of “Paris and Helen,” one of the master’s earliest,
I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are exquisitely
painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris has a most odious
ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are beautifully designed, and
have not the green tone which you see in the later pictures of the
master. What is the meaning of this green? Was it the fashion, or the
varnish? Girodet’s pictures are green; Gros’s emperors and grenadiers
have universally the jaundice. Gerard’s “Psyche” has a most decided
green-sickness; and I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the
enthusiasm which this performance inspired on its first appearance
before the public.
In the same room with it is Girodet’s ghastly “Deluge,” and Gericault’s
dismal “Medusa.” Gericault died, they say, for want of fame. He was a
man who possessed a considerable fortune of his own; but pined because
no one in his day would purchase his pictures, and so acknowledge his
talent. At present, a scrawl from his pencil brings an enormous price.
All his works have a grand cachet: he never did anything mean. When he
painted the “Raft of the Medusa,” it is said he lived for a long time
among the corpses which he painted, and that his studio was a second
Morgue. If you have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably,
with Reynolds’s admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing and
frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away, black,
against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully told, and has
a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,—deeper, because more
natural, than Girodet’s green “Deluge,” for instance: or his livid
“Orestes,” or red-hot “Clytemnestra.”
Seen from a distance the latter’s “Deluge” has a certain awe-inspiring
air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock, and clutches
hold of a tree. On the green man’s shoulders is his old father, in a
green old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe on her breast, and
dangling at her hair, another child. In the water floats a corpse (a
beautiful head) and a green sea and atmosphere envelops all this dismal
group. The old father is represented with a bag of money in his hand;
and the tree, which the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point
of giving way. These two points were considered very fine by the
critics: they are two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure
French Tragedy. For this reason I have never been able to read Racine
with pleasure,—the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good
things—melancholy antitheses—sparkling undertakers’ wit; but this is
heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.
The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin’s pictures; they put me
in mind of the color of objects in dreams,—a strange, hazy, lurid hue.
How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of solemn shadow is
in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black water, halts
Diogenes. The air is thunder-laden, and breathes heavily. You hear
ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom.
Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in
quite a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman is
riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench. O matutini
rores auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the artist managed
to create you out of a few bladders of paint and pots of varnish. You
can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the grass, and feel the fresh,
salubrious airs (“the breath of Nature blowing free,” as the corn-law
man sings) blowing free over the heath; silvery vapors are rising up
from the blue lowlands. You can tell the hour of the morning and the
time of the year: you can do anything but describe it in words. As with
regard to the Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without
bearing away a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the
other landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the vast
privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you with one
fixed particular subject or expression, but with a thousand never
contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of occasion. You may
always be looking at a natural landscape as at a fine pictorial
imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new thoughts in your
bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I cannot fancy more
delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man than half a dozen
landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on the contrary, and large
pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed, staring look, which must jar
upon the mind in many of its moods. Fancy living in a room with David’s
sans-culotte Leonidas staring perpetually in your face!
There is a little Watteau here, and a rare piece of fantastical
brightness and gayety it is. What a delightful affectation about yonder
ladies flirting their fans, and trailing about in their long brocades!
What splendid dandies are those, ever-smirking, turning out their toes,
with broad blue ribbons to tie up their crooks and their pigtails, and
wonderful gorgeous crimson satin breeches! Yonder, in the midst of a
golden atmosphere, rises a bevy of little round Cupids, bubbling up in
clusters as out of a champagne-bottle, and melting away in air. There
is, to be sure, a hidden analogy between liquors and pictures: the eye
is deliciously tickled by these frisky Watteaus, and yields itself up
to a light, smiling, gentlemanlike intoxication. Thus, were we inclined
to pursue further this mighty subject, yonder landscape of
Claude,—calm, fresh, delicate, yet full of flavor,—should be likened to
a bottle of Château Margaux. And what is the Poussin before spoken of
but Romanée Gelée?—heavy, sluggish,—the luscious odor almost sickens
you; a sultry sort of drink; your limbs sink under it; you feel as if
you had been drinking hot blood.
An ordinary man would be whirled away in a fever, or would hobble off
this mortal stage in a premature gout-fit, if he too early or too often
indulged in such tremendous drink. I think in my heart I am fonder of
pretty third-rate pictures than of your great thundering first-rates.
Confess how many times you have read Béranger, and how many Milton? If
you go to the “Star and Garter,” don’t you grow sick of that vast,
luscious landscape, and long for the sight of a couple of cows, or a
donkey, and a few yards of common? Donkeys, my dear MacGilp, since we
have come to this subject, say not so; Richmond Hill for them. Milton
they never grow tired of; and are as familiar with Raphael as Bottom
with exquisite Titania. Let us thank heaven, my dear sir, for according
to us the power to taste and appreciate the pleasures of mediocrity. I
have never heard that we were great geniuses. Earthy are we, and of the
earth; glimpses of the sublime are but rare to us; leave we them to
great geniuses, and to the donkeys; and if it nothing profit us aërias
tentâsse domos along with them, let us thankfully remain below, being
merry and humble.
I have now only to mention the charming “Cruche Cassée” of Greuze,
which all the young ladies delight to copy; and of which the color (a
thought too blue, perhaps) is marvellously graceful and delicate. There
are three more pictures by the artist, containing exquisite female
heads and color; but they have charms for French critics which are
difficult to be discovered by English eyes; and the pictures seem weak
to me. A very fine picture by Bon Bollongue, “Saint Benedict
resuscitating a Child,” deserves particular attention, and is superb in
vigor and richness of color. You must look, too, at the large, noble,
melancholy landscapes of Philippe de Champagne; and the two magnificent
Italian pictures of Léopold Robert: they are, perhaps, the very finest
pictures that the French school has produced,—as deep as Poussin, of a
better color, and of a wonderful minuteness and veracity in the
representation of objects.
Every one of Lesueur’s church-pictures is worth examining and admiring;
they are full of “unction” and pious mystical grace. “Saint
Scholastica” is divine; and the “Taking down from the Cross” as noble a
composition as ever was seen; I care not by whom the other may be.
There is more beauty, and less affectation, about this picture than you
will find in the performances of many Italian masters, with
high-sounding names (out with it, and say RAPHAEL at once). I hate
those simpering Madonnas. I declare that the “Jardinière” is a puking,
smirking miss, with nothing heavenly about her. I vow that the “Saint
Elizabeth” is a bad picture,—a bad composition, badly drawn, badly
colored, in a bad imitation of Titian,—a piece of vile affectation. I
say, that when Raphael painted this picture two years before his death,
the spirit of painting had gone from out of him; he was no longer
inspired; IT WAS TIME THAT HE SHOULD DIE!!
There,—the murder is out! My paper is filled to the brim, and there is
no time to speak of Lesueur’s “Crucifixion,” which is odiously colored,
to be sure; but earnest, tender, simple, holy. But such things are most
difficult to translate into words;—one lays down the pen, and thinks
and thinks. The figures appear, and take their places one by one:
ranging themselves according to order, in light or in gloom, the colors
are reflected duly in the little camera obscura of the brain, and the
whole picture lies there complete; but can you describe it? No, not if
pens were fitch-brushes, and words were bladders of paint. With which,
for the present, adieu.