In my last lecture I traced the progress or rather the retrogression of the French school of painting during the eighteenth century. I explained how, beginning fairly well with such painters as Lebrun, Sebastian, Bourdon, and Rigaud, the school gradually degenerated, and lost all traces of the pure and noble style of Poussin and Lesueur. Boucher and the numerous tribe of the Vanloos deluged the country with a species of art which, however suitable for decorative purposes in Louis XV galleries and boudoirs, could not be called historical painting, and the false sentiment, conventional color, and meretricious style peculiar to the school (if pardonable in the original founders) became unendurable in their followers and imitators. It is not surprising, therefore, that almost simultaneously with the great national Revolution, an art revolution should also have occurred.
At the time of our great Revolution, when we set the example of beheading royalty, Cromwell and his Roundheads were antagonistic to all art (at least to all painting), and no revival was possible. A gloomy Puritanism would tolerate nothing but dull portraiture. In France, however, the case was different. Atheism and the worship of the goddess of Reason, though, of course, antagonistic to religious art, were not opposed to pagan or classic painting, and in the interval immediately preceding the establishment of the Empire, art suffered no discouragement.
On the contrary, every thing was done to enlist the services of the best painters toward the glorification of the new régime; and as David, the most able artist of his day, happened to be an enthusiastic student of the antique, it is not surprising that he acquired unlimited influence over the school.
Artists (particularly when they are such men as David) do not spring up, like mushrooms, in a day, and it may surprise some to hear that he was born as early as 1748, and had therefore reached the mature age of forty-four when the Revolution broke out. He received his artistic education in the atelier of Vien. That painter, though not free altogether from the mannerism of the period, adhered more closely to nature than did the painters of the Vanloo school.
Vien rose to great eminence under Louis XVI, and held for many years the directorship of the French Academy at Rome. His pupil, David, having after three unsuccessful attempts at last obtained the prix de Rome, accompanied his master, and it was not till his residence in Rome that he finally and completely emancipated himself from the Vanloo school. His study from the antique was unremittent. He drew more than he painted, but the few pictures he executed at this period were the best he ever did. I know of nothing in the whole range of art more exquisite in arrangement and drawing than the drapery of the woman in his “Belisarius.” This and several other excellent pictures were bought by Louis XVI, and the Count d’Artois, afterward Charles X, so that David in his best time was any thing but a ferocious revolutionist.
When the terrible time at last came, David appears to have given up his art, and to have joined the party of Robespierre. His biographer says, “Il se laissa entrainer,” but there is no doubt that he was a willing convert, and his name is associated with some of the most atrocious acts of the Jacobins. It is possible that, having once connected himself with that sanguinary set, he found he could not draw back, and must be as cruel and ferocious as his colleagues. It is difficult to believe that a man who had such an exquisite and refined taste for form (and especially the human form) should have taken a pleasure in ordering wholesale executions.
After narrowly escaping the fate of his friend Robespierre, he wisely returned to art and humanity; nor did he ever afterward take any share in the political convulsions of his country. He was much patronized by the first Napoleon, as the huge official pictures at Versailles amply testify. Official pictures, particularly during the hideous fashions which marked the Empire, must have been very awkward things to undertake, and David, with all his good qualities, had not the gift of color, which alone could enliven and give interest to such subjects as the crowning of Napoleon and the distribution of the eagles to the troops.
He had, however, one quality in the highest perfection, and that was drawing. His monochrome cartoon for the great coronation picture is really a wonderful production. All the figures are completely nude, and it is a pity that his pontiffs, princes, and ambassadors could not be left in the state in which he first drew them from Academy models.
When he came to draw figures in violent action, as in his “Romans and Sabines” and the “Leonidas,” his drawing becomes rather stiff and constrained. This, coupled with his disagreeable color, makes these pictures odious in the sight of most artists, and to none more odious than to Frenchmen. But even in these works, if individual portions, heads, arms, and legs, are examined critically, it will be found how thoroughly masterly the drawing is. There is in his figures no display of anatomy (which display, by the way, generally indicates ignorance rather than knowledge of anatomy), no ugly realism perpetuating the bunions and other deformities of his models; and, on the other hand, none of that fictitious decorative style of drawing which is so characteristic of Louis XV painters. David was a very great draughtsman, not exactly in the sense in which M. Angelo is considered a great draughtsman. He was singularly deficient in imagination, in power of grouping, and in poetic feeling; but probably no man ever lived who could paint so good an Academy figure. It may also be said of him, that he was not only a great master of drawing, but a great drawing-master. Such a man was sadly wanted after the demoralization of eighteenth century art; and, notwithstanding the jeers of the modern realists, I maintain that the pre-eminence of the French historical painters over those of other nations during the better part of this century is entirely due to old David and his teaching. Amongst his actual pupils may be mentioned Girodet, Drouais, Gros, Gérard, and Ingres; but his influence extended far beyond the walls of his atélier, and it is no exaggeration to say that the correct and refined though manly style of drawing inaugurated by David permeated the whole French school.
Of the above-mentioned pupils Drouais was undoubtedly the most promising. His picture of the “Canaanitish Woman,” which is now at the Louvre, was his “prix de Rome” work, corresponding to our gold-medal pictures, and it certainly is a most remarkable work for a young man. It has very little of the stiff academic manner about it. Moreover, there is a feeling for color in it which is very rare in the David school. Unfortunately Drouais died in his twenty-fifth year, and France lost a man who fairly promised to be one of the greatest painters she ever had.