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.