[CHAPTER X]
Paul Delaroche
Delaroche exhibited his three masterpieces at the Salon of 1831: the Enfants d'Édouard; Cinq-mars et de Thou remontant le Rhône à la remorque du Cardinal de Richelieu, and the Jeu du Cardinal de Mazarin à son lit de mort.
It is hardly necessary to say that of these three pictures we prefer the Cinq-mars et de Thou remontant le Rhône.
The biography of the eminent artist will not be long. His is not an eccentric character, nor one of those impetuous temperaments which seek adventures. He did not have his collar-bone broken when he was fifteen, three ribs staved in at thirty, and his head cut open at forty-five, as did Vernet; he does not expose his body in every political quarrel; his recreations are not those of fencing, horse-riding and shooting. He rests from work by dreaming, and not by some fresh fatiguing occupation; for although his work is masterly, it is heavy, laboured and melancholy. Instead of saying before Heaven openly, when showing his pictures to men and thanking God for having given him the power to paint them, "Behold, I am an artist! Vivent Raphaël and Michael Angelo!" he conceals them, he hides them, he withdraws them from sight, murmuring, "Ah! I was not made for brush, canvas and colours: I was made for political and diplomatic career. Vivent M. de Talleyrand and M. de Metternich!" Oh! how unhappy are those spirits, those restless souls, who do one thing and torment themselves with the everlasting anxiety that they were created to do something else.
In 1831, Paul Delaroche was thirty-four, and just about at the height of his strength and his talent. He was the second son of a pawnbroker. He early entered the studio of Gros, who was then in the zenith of his fame, and who, after his beautiful pictures of Jaffa, Aboukir and Eylau, was about to undertake the gigantic dome of the Panthéon. He made genuine and rapid advance in harmony with the design and taste of the master. Nevertheless, Delaroche began with landscape. His brother painted historical subjects, and the father did not wish both his two sons to apply themselves to the same kind of painting. Claude Lorraines and Ruysdaels were accordingly the studios preferred by Paul; a woman with whom he fell in love, and whose portrait he persisted in painting, changed his inclinations. This portrait finished and found to be acceptable (bien venu), as they say in studio language, Delaroche was won over to the grand school of painting. He made his first appearance in the Salon of 1822, when he was twenty-five years of age, with a Joas arraché du milieu des morts par Josabeth, and a Christ descendu de la croix. In 1824, he exhibited Jeanne d'Arc interrogée dans son cachot par le Cardinal de Winchester, Saint Vincent de Paul prêchant pour les enfants trouvés, Saint Sébastien secouru par Irene and Filippo Lippi chargé de peindre une vierge pour une convent, et devenant amoureux de la religieuse qui lui sert de modèle.