An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

by Albert D. Vandam

A few weeks ago,[30] when rummaging among old papers, documents, memoranda, etc., I came upon some stray leaves of a catalogue of a picture sale at the Hôtel Bullion[31] in 1845. I had marked the prices realized by a score or so of paintings signed by men who, though living at that time, were already more or less famous, and many of whom have since then acquired a world-wide reputation. There was only one exception to this—that of Herrera the Elder, who had been dead nearly two centuries, and whose name was, and is still, a household word among connoisseurs by reason of his having been the master of Velasquez. The handiwork of the irascible old man was knocked down for three francs seventy-five centimes, though no question was raised as to the genuineness of it in my hearing. It was a saint—the catalogue said no more,—and I have been in vain trying to recollect why I did not buy it. There must have been some cogent reason for my not having done so, for "the frame was no doubt worth double the money," to use an auctioneer's phrase. Was it suspicion, or what? At any rate, two years later, I heard that it had been sold to an American for fourteen thousand francs, though, after all, that was no guarantee of its value.

In those days it was certainly better to be a live artist than a dead one, for, a little further on among these pages, I came upon a marginal note of the prices fetched by three works of Meissonier, "Le Corps de Garde," "Une partie de piquet," and "Un jeune homme regardant des dessins," all of which had been in the salon of that year,[32] and each of which fetched 3000 francs. I should not like to say what their purchasing price would be to-day, allowing for the difference in the value of money. Further on still, there is a note of a picture by Alfred de Dreux, which realized a similar amount. Allowing for that same difference in the value of money, that work would probably not find a buyer now among real connoisseurs at 200 francs.[33] At the same time, the original sketch of David's "Serment du Jeu de Paume" did not find a purchaser at 2500 francs, the reserve price. A landscape by Jules André, a far greater artist than Alfred de Dreux, went for 300 francs, and Baron's "Oies du Frère Philippe" only realized 200 francs more. There was not a single "bid" for Eugène Delacroix' "Marc-Aurèle," and when he did sell a picture it was for 500 or 600 francs; nowadays it would fetch 100,000 francs. On the other hand, the drawings of Decamps' admirable "Histoire de Samson" realized 1000 francs each.

Yet Gabriel Decamps was a far unhappier man than Eugène Delacroix. The pictures rejected by the public became the "apples" of Delacroix' eyes, with which he would not part, subsequently, at any price, as in the case of his "Marino Faliero." Decamps, one day, while he lived in the Faubourg Saint-Denis, deliberately destroyed one hundred and forty drawings, the like of which were eagerly bought up for a thousand francs apiece, though at present they would be worth four times that amount. Delacroix was content with his God-given genius; "he saw everything he had made, and behold it was very good," Decamps fumed and fretted at the supposed systematic neglect of the Government, which did not give him a commission. "You paint with a big brush, but you are not a great painter," said Sir Joshua to a would-be Michael-Angelo. To Gabriel Decamps the idea of being allowed or invited by the State to cover a number of yards of canvas or wall or ceiling was so attractive that he positively lost his sleep and his appetite over it. It was, perhaps, the only bitter drop in his otherwise tolerably full cup of happiness, but that one drop very frequently embittered the whole. He had many good traits in his character, though he was not uniformly good-tempered. There was an absolute indifference as to the monetary results of his calling, and an inherent generosity to those who "had fallen by the way." But he was something of a bear and a recluse, not because he disliked society, but because he deliberately suppressed his sociable qualities, lest he should arouse the suspicion of making them the stepping-stone to his ambition. No man ever misread the lesson, "Do well and fear not," so utterly as did Decamps. He was never tired of well-doing; and he was never tired of speculating what the world would think of it. There is not a single picture from his brush that does not contain an original thought; he founded an absolutely new school—no small thing to do. The world at large acknowledged as much, and yet he would not enjoy the fruits of that recognition, because it lacked the "official stamp." When Decamps consented to forget his real or fancied grievances he became a capital companion, provided one had a taste for bitter and scathing satire. I fancy Jonathan Swift must have been something like Gabriel Decamps in his daily intercourse with his familiars. But he rarely said an ill-natured thing of his fellow-artists. His strictures were reserved for the political men of his time, and of the preceding reign. The Bourbons he despised from the bottom of his heart, and during the Restauration his contempt found vent in caricatures which, at the moment, must have seared like a red-hot iron. He had kept a good many of these ephemeral productions, and, I am bound to say, they struck one afterwards as unnecessarily severe. "If they" (meaning the Bourbons) "had continued to reign in France," he said one day, "I would have applied for letters of naturalization to the Sultan."

Decamps was killed, like Géricault, by a fall off his horse, but long before that he had ceased to work. "I cannot add much to my reputation, and do not care to add to my store," he said. In 1855, the world positively rang with his name, but I doubt whether this universal admiration gave him much satisfaction. He exhibited more than fifty works at the Exposition Universelle of that year, a good many of which had been rejected by the "hanging committees" of previous salons. True to his system, he rarely, perhaps never directly, called the past judgment in question, but he lived and died a dissatisfied man. Unlike Mirabeau, who had not the courage to be unpopular, Decamps derived no gratification from popularity.

I knew Eugène Delacroix better than any of the others in the marvellous constellation of painters of that period, and our friendship lasted till the day of his death, in December, 1863. I was also on very good terms with Horace Vernet; but though the latter was perhaps a more lively companion, the stronger attraction was towards the former. I was one of the few friends whom he tolerated whilst at work. Our friendship lasted for nearly a quarter of a century, and during that time there was never a single unpleasantness between us, though I am bound to admit that Delacroix' temper was very uncertain. Among all those men who had a profound, ineradicable contempt for the bourgeois, I have only known one who despised him even to a greater extent than he; it was Gustave Flaubert. Though Delacroix' manners were perfect, he could scarcely be polite to the middle classes. With the exception of Dante and Shakespeare, Delacroix was probably the greatest poet that ever lived; a greater poet undoubtedly than Victor Hugo, in that he was absolutely indifferent to the material results of his genius. If Shakespeare and the author of the "Inferno" had painted, they would have painted like Delacroix; his "Sardanapale" is the Byronic poem, condensed and transferred to canvas.

Long as I knew Delacroix, I had never been able to make out whether he was tall or short, and most of his friends and acquaintances were equally puzzled. As we stood around his coffin many were surprised at its length. His was decidedly a curious face, at times stony in its immobility, at others quivering from the tip of chin to the juncture of the eyebrows, and with a peculiar movement of the nostrils that was almost pendulum-like in its regularity. It gave one the impression of their being assailed by some unpleasant smell, and, one day, when Delacroix was in a light mood, I remarked upon it. "You are perfectly right," he replied; "I always fancy there is corruption in the air, but it is not necessarily of a material kind."

Be this as it may, he liked to surround himself with flowers, and his studio was often like a hothouse, apart from the floral decorations. The temperature was invariably very high, and even then he would shiver now and again. I have always had an idea that Delacroix had Indian blood in his veins, which idea was justified to a certain extent by his appearance, albeit that there was no tradition to that effect in his family. But it was neither the black hair, the olive skin, nor the peculiar formation of the features which forced that conclusion upon me; it was the character of Delacroix, which for years and years I endeavoured to read thoroughly, without succeeding to any appreciable degree. There was one trait that stood out so distinctly that the merest child might have perceived it—his honesty; but the rest was apparently a mass of contradiction. It is difficult to imagine a poet, and especially a painter-poet, without an absorbing passion for some woman—not necessarily for the same woman; to my knowledge Delacroix had no such passion, for one can scarcely admit that Jenny Leguillou, his housekeeper, could have inspired such a feeling. True, when I first knew Delacroix he was over forty, but those who had known him at twenty and twenty-five never hinted at any romantic attachment or even at a sober, homely affection. And assuredly a man of forty is not invulnerable in that respect. And yet, the woman who positively bewitched, one after another, so many of Delacroix' eminent contemporaries, Jules Sandeau, Alfred de Musset, Michel de Bourges, Chopin, Pierre Leroux, Cabet, Lammenais, etc., had no power over him.

Paul de Musset, perhaps as a kind of revenge for the wrongs suffered by his brother, once gave an amusing description of the miscarried attempt of George Sand "to net" Eugène Delacroix.

It would appear that the painter had shown signs of yielding to the charms which few men were able to withstand, or, at any rate, that George Sand fancied she could detect such signs. Whether it was from a wish on George Sand's part to precipitate matters or to nip the thing in the bud, it would be difficult to determine, but it is certain that she pursued her usual tactics—that is, she endeavoured to provoke an admission of her admirer's feeling. Though I subsequently ascertained that Paul de Musset's story was substantially true, I am not altogether prepared, knowing his animosity against her, to accept his hinted theory of the lady's desire "de brusquer les fiançailles."

One morning, then, while Delacroix was at work, George Sand entered his studio. She looked out of spirits, and almost immediately stated the purpose of her visit.