Among all the artists of our day, is one standing almost alone, and
singularly characterized in many respects. He is entirely wanting in
that lofty religious character which fills with pureness and beauty the
works of the early masters; he has not the great and impressive
historical qualities of the school of Raffaelle, nor the daring
sublimity of Michael Angelo; he has not the rich luxury of color that
renders the works of the great Venetians so gorgeous, nor even that sort
of striking reality which makes the subjects rendered by the Flemish
masters incomparably life-like. Yet he is rich in qualities deeply
attractive and interesting to the people, especially the French people,
of our own day. He displays an astonishing capacity and rapidity of
execution, an almost unparalleled accuracy of memory, a rare life and
motion on the canvass, a vigorous comprehension of the military tactics
of the time, a wonderful aptitude at rendering the camp and field potent
subjects for the pencil, notwithstanding the regularity of movement,
and the unpicturesque uniformity of costume demanded by the military
science of our day. Before a battle-piece, of Horace Vernet (and only
his battle-pieces are his masterpieces), the crowd stands breathless and
horrified at the terrible and bloody aspect of war; while the military
connoisseur admires the ability and skill of the feats of arms, so
faithfully rendered that he forgets he is not looking at real soldiers
in action. In the landscapes and objects of the foreground or
background, there are not that charm of color and aërial depth and
transparency in which the eye revels, yet there is a hard vigorous
actuality which adds to the force and energy of the actors, and
strengthens the idea of presence at the battle, without attracting or
charming away the mind from the terrible inhumanities principally
represented. No poetry, no romance, no graceful and gentle beauty; but
the stern dark reality as it might be written in an official bulletin,
or related in a vigorous, but cold and accurate, page of history. Such
is the distinguishing talent of Horace Vernet--talent sufficient,
however, to make his pictures the attractive centres of crowds at the
Louvre Exhibitions, and to make himself the favorite of courts and one
of the _illustrissimi_ of Europe.
The Vernets have been a family of painters during four generations. The
great-grandfather of Horace was a well-known artist at Avignon, a
hundred and fifty years ago. His son and pupil, Claude Joseph Vernet,
was the first marine painter of his time; and occupies, with his works
alone, an entire apartment of the French Gallery at the Louvre, besides
great numbers of sea-pieces and landscapes belonging to private
galleries. He died in 1789, but his son and pupil, Antoine Charles
Horace Vernet, who had already during two years sat by his side in the
Royal Academy, continued the reputation of the family during the
Consulate and Empire. He was particularly distinguished for
cavalry-battles, hunting scenes, and other incidents in which the horse
figured largely as actor. In some of these pictures the hand of the son
already joined itself to that of the father, the figures being from the
pencil of Horace; and before the death of the father, which took place
in 1836, he had already seen the artistic reputation of the family
increased and heightened by the fame of his son.
Horace Vernet was born at the Louvre on the 30th June, 1789, the year of
the death of his grandfather, who, as painter to the king, had occupied
rooms at the Louvre, where his father also resided; so that Horace not
only inherited his art from a race of artist-ancestors, but was born
amid the _chef d' oeuvres_ of the entire race of painters. Of course,
his whole childhood and youth were surrounded with objects of Art; and
it was scarcely possible for him not to be impressed in the most lively
manner by the unbroken artist-life in which he was necessarily brought
up. It would appear that from his childhood he employed himself in
daubing on walls, and drawing on scraps of paper all sorts of little
soldiers.
Like his father and grandfather, his principal lessons as a student were
drawn from the paternal experience, and certainly no professor could
more willingly and faithfully save him all the loss of time and patience
occasioned by the long and often fruitless groping of the almost
solitary Art-student. He was also thus saved from falling into the
errors of the school of David. Certainly no great _penchant_ towards the
antique is discoverable in his father's works; nor in his own do we find
painted casts of Greek statues dressed in the uniforms of the nineteenth
century. At twenty, it is true, he tried, but without success, the
classic subject offered to competition at the Academy for the prize of
visiting Rome. The study of the antique did not much delight him. On the
contrary, he rather joined with the innovators, whose example was then
undermining the over-classic influence of David's school, the most
formidable and influential of whom, a youth about his own age, and a
fellow-student in his father's atelier, was then painting a great
picture, sadly decried at the time, but now considered one of the
masterpieces of the French school in the Louvre--the "Raft of the
Medusa." Gericault was his companion in the studio and in the field, at
the easel and on horseback; and we might trace here one of the many
instances of the influence which this powerful and original genius
exercised on the young artists of his time, and which, had it not been
arrested by his premature death in January, 1824, would have made
Gericault more strikingly distinguished as one of the master-spirits in
French Art, and the head of a school entirely the opposite to that of
David.
Horace's youth, however, did not pass entirely under the smiles of
fortune. He had to struggle with those difficulties of narrow means with
which a very large number of young artists are tolerably intimate. He
had to weather the gales of poverty by stooping to all sorts of
illustrative work, whose execution we fancy must have been often a
severe trial to him. Any youth aiming at "high art," and feeling, though
poor, too proud to bend in order to feed the taste, (grotesque and
unrefined enough, it must be allowed,) of the good public, which artists
somewhat naturally estimate rather contemptuously, might get a lesson of
patience by looking over an endless series of the most variedly hideous
costumes or caricatures of costume which Horace was glad to draw, for
almost any pecuniary consideration. A series of amusingly _naive_
colored prints, illustrating the adventures of poor La Vallière with
Louis XIV., would strengthen the lesson. These were succeeded by
lithographs of an endless variety of subjects--the soldier's life in all
its phases, the "horse and its rider" in all their costumes, snatches of
romances, fables, caricatures, humorous pieces, men, beasts, and things.
In short, young Horace tried his hand at any thing and every thing in
the drawing line, at once earning a somewhat toughly-woven livelihood,
and perfecting his talent with the pencil. In later years, the force and
freedom of this talent were witnessed to by illustrations of a more
important character in a magnificent edition of Voltaire's _Henriade_,
published in 1825, and of the well known _Life of Napoleon_ by Laurent.
Failing, as we have said, and perhaps fortunately for him, in the
achievement of the great Prize of Rome, he turned to the line of Art for
which he felt himself naturally endowed, the incidents of the camp and
field. The "Taking of a Redoubt;" the "Dog of the Regiment;" the "Horse
of the Trumpeter;" "Halt of French Soldiers;" the "Battle of Tolosa;"
the "Barrier of Clichy, or Defense of Paris in 1814" (both of which
last, exhibited in 1817, now hang in the gallery of the Luxembourg), the
"Soldier-Laborer;" the "Soldier of Waterloo;" the "Last Cartridge;" the
"Death of Poniatowski;" the "Defense of Saragossa," and many more,
quickly followed each other, and kept up continually and increasingly
the public admiration. The critics of the painted bas-relief school
found much to say against, and little in favor of, the new talent that
seemed to look them inimically in the face, or rather did not seem to
regard them at all. But people in general, of simple enough taste in
matter of folds of drapery or classic laws of composition or antique
lines of beauty, saw before them with all the varied sentiments of
admiration, terror, or dismay, the soldier mounting the breach at the
cannon's mouth, or the general, covered with orders, cut short in the
midst of his fame. Little of the romantic, little of poetical
idealization, little of far-fetched _style_ was there on these
canvasses, but the crowd recognized the soldier as they saw him daily,
in the midst of the scenes which the bulletin of the army or the page of
the historian had just narrated to them. They were content, they were
full of admiration, they admired the pictures, they admired the artist;
and, the spleen of critics notwithstanding, Horace Vernet was known as
one of the favorite painters of the time.
In 1819 appeared the "Massacre of the Mamelukes at Cairo," now in the
Luxembourg. We do not know how the public accepted this production. We
have no doubt, however, that they were charmed at the gaudy _éclat_ of
the bloodthirsty tyrant, with his hookah and lion in the foreground, and
dismayed at the base assassinations multiplied in the background. Nor do
we doubt that the critics gave unfavorable judgments thereupon, and that
most of those who loved Art seriously, said little about the picture. We
would at all events express our own regret that the authorities do not
find some better works than this and the "Battle of Tolosa," to
represent in a public gallery the talent of the most famous
battle-painter of France. The Battles of Jemmapes, Valmy, Hanau, and
Montmirail, executed at this time, and hung till lately in the gallery
of the Palais Royal (now, we fear, much, if not entirely, destroyed by
the mob on the 24th February), were much more worthy of such a place.
Whether it was by a considerate discernment that the mob attacked these,
as the property of the ex-king, or by a mere goth-and-vandalism of
revolution, we do not know; but certainly we would rather have delivered
up to their wrath these others, the "property of the nation." The same
hand would hardly seem to have executed both sets of paintings. It is
not only the difference in size of the figures on the canvass, those of
the Luxembourg being life-sized, and those of the Palais Royal only a
few inches in length, but the whole style of the works is different. The
first seem painted as if they had been designed merely to be reproduced
in gay silks and worsteds at the Gobelins, where we have seen a copy of
the "Massacre of the Mamelukes," in tapestry, which we would, for
itself, have preferred to the original. But the latter four battles,
notwithstanding the disadvantage of costume and arrangement necessarily
imposed by the difference of time and country, produce far more
satisfactory works of Art, and come much nearer to historical painting.
They are painted without pretension, without exaggeration. The details
are faithfully and carefully, though evidently rapidly, executed. The
generals and personages in the front are speaking portraits; and the
whole scene is full of that sort of life and action which impresses one
at once as the very sort of action that must have taken place. Now it is
a battery of artillery backed against a wood,--now it is a plain over
which dense ranks of infantry march in succession to the front of the
fire. Here it is a scene where in the full sunlight shows the whole
details of the action; there it is night--and a night of cloud and
storm, draws her sombre veil over the dead and wounded covering the
field. A historian might find on these canvasses, far better than in
stores of manuscript, wherewith to fill many a page of history with
accurate and vivid details of these bloody days; or rather, many a page
of history would not present so accurate and vivid a conception of what
is a field of battle.
In 1822, entry to the exhibition at the Louvre being refused to his
works, Horace Vernet made an exhibition-room of his atelier, had a
catalogue made out (for what with battles, hunts, landscapes, portraits,
he had a numerous collection), and the public were admitted. In 1826 he
was admitted a Member of the Institute, and in 1830 was appointed
Director of the Academy at Rome, so that the young man who could not so
far decline his antiques as to treat the classic subject of the Royal
Academy, and thus gain the Academy at Rome, now went there as chief of
the school, and as one of the most distinguished artists of his time.
This residence for five years among the best works of the great masters
of Italy naturally inspired him with ideas and desires which it had not
been hitherto in his circumstances to gratify. And once installed in the
Villa Medici, which he made to resound with the voices of joy and
revelry, splendid fêtes and balls, he set himself to study the Italian
school.
A series of pictures somewhat new in subject and manner of treatment was
the result of this change of circumstances and ideas. To the Paris
Exhibition of 1831 he sent a "Judith and Holofernes," which is one of
the least successful of his pictures in the Luxembourg, where it hangs
still, with another sent two years after, "Raffaelle and Michael Angelo
in the Vatican." This is perhaps the best of his works at the
Luxembourg, all being inferior; but it has a certain dry gaudiness of
color, and a want of seriousness of design, which render it unfit to be
considered a master-work. One unquestionably preferable, the "Arresting
of the Princes at the Palais Royal by order of Anne of Austria," found
its way to the Palais Royal, so that in this, as in the other we have
remarked, the king seemed to know how to choose better than the
Art-authorities of the "Gallery of Living Painters." A number of other
pictures testified to the activity of the artist's pencil at
Rome:--"Combat of Brigands against the Pope's Riflemen," "Confession of
the Dying Brigand," also at the Palais Royal, but also we fear destroyed
by the popular vandalism of the 24th February; a "Chase in the Pontine
Marshes," "Pope Leo XII. carried into St. Peter's." The favor of the
public, however, still turned to the usual subject of Horace Vernet--the
French soldier's life; finding which, on his return from Rome, he
recurred to his original study. In 1836 he exhibited four new
battle-pieces, "Friedland," "Wagram," "Jena," and "Fontenoy," in which
were apparent all his usual excellencies.
The occupation of the Algerine territory by the French troops afforded
the artist an opportunity of exhibiting his powers in that department
most suited to them. A whole gallery at Versailles was set apart for the
battle-painter, called the _Constantine Gallery_, after the most
important feat of arms yet performed by the French troops in Africa, the
Taking of the town of Constantine. Some of the solitary and
extraordinary, we might say accidental, military exploits in Europe of
Louis Philippe's reign, are also commemorated there. The "Occupation of
Ancona," the "Entry of the Army into Belgium," the "Attack of the
Citadel of Antwerp," the "Fleet forcing the Tagus," show that nothing is
forgotten of the Continental doings. The African feats are almost too
many to enumerate. In a "Sortie of the Arab Garrison of Constantine,"
the Duke de Nemours is made to figure in person. Then we have the
Troops of Assault receiving the Signal to leave the Trenches, and "The
Scaling of the Breach." There are the "Occupation of the Defile of
Teniah," "Combat of the Habrah, of the Sickak, of Samah, of Afzoum." In
fine, there is the largest canvass in existence, it is said, the
"Taking of the Smalah," that renowned occasion when the army was so
_very near_ taking Abd-el-Kader; and the "Battle of Isly," which gained
that splendid trophy, the parasol of command. Besides these great
subjects there are decorations of military trophies and allegorical
figures, which seem to have been painted by some pupil of Vernet. These
battles were first of all exhibited to the admiration of Paris in the
various salons after their execution, and were then sent off to decorate
Versailles. There are also, in the _Gallery of French History_, at
Versailles, several others of his, such as the "Battle of Bouvines;"
"Charles X. reviewing the National Guard;" the "Marshal St. Cyr," and
some others among those we have already named. In them the qualities of
the artist are manifested more fully, we think, than in any others of
his works. They are full of that energy, vivacity, and daguerreotypic
verity which he so eminently displays. There is none of that pretension
after "high Art" which has injured the effect of some of his pictures.
The rapidity of their execution too in general was such, that the public
had hardly finished reading the last news of the combats, when the
artist, returned in many cases from witnessing the scenes, had placed
them on the canvass, and offered them to popular gaze. Yet the canvasses
are in many cases of great extent, and often, the figures of life-size.
But the artist rarely employs the model, painting mostly from memory, a
faculty most astonishingly developed in him. He generally also saves
himself the trouble of preparing a smaller sketch to paint after,
working out his subject at once in the definitive size. Of course with
more serious and elevated subjects, worked out in a more serious and
elevated spirit, such a system would not do. But for the style of
subject and execution required by Horace Vernet's artistic organization,
these careful preparations would not answer. They would only tend to
diminish the sweeping passion of the fiery _melée_, and freeze the swift
impulsive rush of the attack or flight.
Vernet has several times attempted Biblical subjects, but they have
never succeeded so well as to add anything to his fame as a
battle-painter. "Judah and Tamar," "Agar dismissed by Abraham," "Rebecca
at the Fountain," "Judith with the head of Holofernes," "The Good
Samaritan," have rather served to illustrate Arab costume and manners,
(which he makes out to be the same as, or very similar to, those of old
Biblical times,) than to illustrate his own power in the higher range of
Art.
In the midst of painting all these, Horace Vernet has found time, which
for him is the smallest requisite in painting, to produce an innumerable
mass of pictures for private galleries, or at the command of various
crowned heads; which, with many of those already mentioned, are well
known all over Europe by engravings. "The Post of the Desert," "The
Prayer in the Desert," "The Lion Hunt in the Desert," "Council of
Arabs," "Episode of the Pest of Barcelona," "The Breach of Constantine,"
"Mazeppa," and a host of others, together with landscapes, portraits,
&c., have served both to multiply his works in the galleries of every
country in Europe, and to make him one of the most popular of living
artists.