"What has he done?"
"A Dante passant l'Acheron avec Virgile. Go and see his picture."
Next day Thiers goes to the Louvre, seeks for the picture, finds it, gazes at it and goes out entranced.
Intellectually, Thiers possessed genuine artistic feeling, even if it did not spring from the heart. He did what he could for art; and when he displeased, wounded and discouraged an artist, the fault has lain with his environment, his family, or some salon coterie, and, even when causing pain to an artist, and in failing to keep his promises, he did his utmost to spare the artist any pain he may have had to cause him, at the cost of pain to himself. He was lucky, also, in his dealings, if not always just; it was his idea to send Sigalon to Rome. True, Sigalon died there of cholera; but not till after he had sent from Rome his beautiful copy of the Jugement dernier. So Thiers went back delighted with Delacroix's picture; he was then working on the staff of the Constitutionnel, and he wrote a splendid article on the new painter. In short, the Dante did not raise too much envy. It was not suspected what a family of reprobates the exile from Florence dragged in his wake! The Government bought the picture for two thousand francs, upon the recommendation of Gérard and Gros, and had it taken to the Luxembourg, where it still is. You can see it there, one of the finest pictures in the palace.
Two years flew by. At that time exhibitions were only held every two or three years. The salon of 1824 then opened. All eyes were turned towards Greece. The memories of our young days formed a kind of propaganda, recruiting under its banner, men, money, poems, painting and concerts. People sang, painted, made verses, begged for the Greeks. Whoever pronounced himself a Turkophile ran the risk of being stoned like Saint Stephen. Delacroix exhibited his famous Massacre de Scio.
Good Heavens! Have you who belonged to that time forgotten the clamour that picture roused, with its rough and violent style of composition, yet full of poetry and grace? Do you remember the young girl tied to the tail of a horse? How frail and fragile she looked! How easily one could see that her whole body would shed its fragments like the petals of a rose, and be scattered like flakes of snow, when it came in contact with pebbles and boulders and bramble thorns!
Now, this time, the Rubicon was passed, the lance thrown down, and war declared. The young painter had just broken with the whole of the Imperial School. When clearing the precipice which divided the past from the future, his foot had pushed the plank into the abyss below, and had he wished to retrace his steps it was henceforth an impossibility. From that moment—a rare thing at twenty-six years of age!—Delacroix was proclaimed a master, started a school of his own, and had not only pupils but disciples, admirers and fanatical worshippers. They hunted out someone to stand in opposition to him; they exhumed the man who was least like him in all points, and rallied round him; they discovered Ingres, exalted him, proclaimed him and crowned him in their hatred of Delacroix. As in the age of the invasion of the Huns, the Burgundians and the Visigoths, they called upon the savages to help them, they invoked St. Geneviève, they adjured the king, they implored the pope! Ingres, certainly, did not owe his revived reputation to the love and admiration which his grey monochromes inspired, but to the fear and hatred which were inspired by the flashing brush of Delacroix. All men above the age of fifty were for Ingres; all young people below the age of thirty were for Delacroix.
We will study and examine and appreciate Ingres in his turn, never fear! His name, flung down in passing, shall not remain in obscurity; although we warn our readers beforehand—and let them now take note and only regard our judgment for what it is worth—that we are not in sympathy with either the man or his talents.
Thiers did not fail the painter of the Massacre de Scio, any more than he had failed the creator of Dante. Quite as eulogistic an article as the first, and a surprising one to find in the columns of the classic Constitutionnel, came to the aid of Delacroix in the battle where, as in the times of the Iliad, the gods of art were not above fighting like ordinary mortals. The Government had its hands forced, in some measure, by Gérard, Gros and M. de Forbin. The latter bought the Massacre de Scio in the name of the king for six thousand francs for the Luxembourg Museum.
Géricault died just when Delacroix received his six thousand francs. Six thousand francs! It was a fortune. The fortune was spent in buying sketches at the sale of the famous dead painter's works, and in making a journey to England. England is the land of fine private collections, the immense fortunes of certain gentlemen permitting them—either because it is the fashion or from true love of art—to satisfy their taste for painting.