RICARD
If Meissonier is beginning to find his proper level after having been grossly overrated, Louis Gustave Ricard (1824–1873), one of the most remarkable portrait painters of his century, has only just in recent years been rescued from almost complete oblivion. A pupil of L. Cogniet, Ricard spent several years in copying the works and analysing the technical methods of the old masters, and in travelling in Italy, Belgium, Holland, and England. It was not before his return to Paris in 1850 that he began to exhibit. Ricard was exclusively a portrait painter. Technically his early studies enabled him to arrive at a method of singular morbidezza and warm luminosity. There is a certain truth in a modern critic’s description of Ricard’s pigments as being composed of “crushed jewels, flower juice, and gold and silver powder.” The great merit of Ricard’s portraits is, however, his extraordinary insight into his sitters’ psychology. To him a portrait meant more than a correct record of the model’s superficial aspect: he endeavoured to paint the very soul in so far as it can be read from eyes and lips. In this respect he is the descendant of Giorgione and the forerunner of Watts and Carrière. The portraits of The Painter Heilbuth (No. 778a), of Mme. de Calonne (No. 778e), of His Own Portrait (No. 778), and the badly cracked Portrait of Paul de Musset (No. 778b), may be quoted as admirable instances of his art.