MICHEL AND HUET
In the much-neglected branch of landscape painting the classic tradition of Claude ruled supreme until a new conception arose with the victory of the romantics in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Two names only need be mentioned before we pass on to the new movement—the return to nature—which was inaugurated by the group of painters vaguely known as the Barbizon school. Both Georges Michel (1763–1843) and Paul Huet (1804–1868) may be regarded as forerunners of that great movement; and both have only in recent years received the recognition which is their due. Michel developed his style in copying and closely studying the Dutch landscape masters, and must in his maturity have been well acquainted with the art of Constable, who exercised, together with Bonington, a prodigious influence on the whole course of French landscape painting. If Michel’s breadth of style, which may be judged from Near Montmartre (No. 626), had been accompanied by a greater range of subject-matter, he would probably rank more highly in the roll of French artists; but he contented himself with the endless repetition of the same motifs which he found close to Montmartre, where he spent his whole life. The care with which he studied the works of Jacob van Ruisdael earned for him the nickname of “the Ruisdael of Montmartre.”
Huet, again, learnt more from the old masters and from his friends, Bonington and Delacroix, than from his actual teachers. He, too, thrust aside the recipes of composing classic or “noble” landscapes, and was inspired by an altogether emotional outlook upon nature, calm and serene, as in The Still Morning (No. 413), or threatening and tempestuous, as in The Inundation at St. Cloud (No. 412), or in his masterpiece, The Breakers at Granville (No. 2952).