Prudhon’s pictures are very inferior to his small drawings. He never was a thorough draughtsman like his contemporaries, and when he attempted life-size figures, the form becomes incorrect and very vague. His favorite masters appear to have been Correggio and Andrea del Sarto, but he exaggerated their softness until his figures lost all texture and appeared to be made of cotton wool.
In aiming at breadth, he again overshot the mark. Simplicity is a very desirable quality, and one which is rarely found in our Academy schools, but at the same time, when carried to such extremes as in Prudhon’s “Crucifixion” it degenerates into mannerism. Of his small drawings I cannot speak too highly. They are greatly admired in France, but little known in England.
The other eccentric nonconformist to the David tradition, namely, Géricault, is much better known in England than Prudhon. His famous picture of the “Medusa Raft” was not liked when first exhibited in Paris. It was brought over to London, where it was much more appreciated. On its return to Paris, M. de Forbin, the director of the national collection, in vain urged the government to purchase it. It was disliked by Louis XVIII’s ministers, and it took M. de Forbin three years to persuade them to grant £200 for its purchase. After this it suddenly rose to great popularity, which went on increasing until my student days, when it was universally acknowledged to be the chef-d’œuvre of the modern French school. It is no doubt a fine, vigorous work, full of action and energy, but my enthusiasm was always rather cold compared to that of my fellow-students. Its realism appears to me to lie more in the execution than in the conception. It is too melodramatic to be true. We admire the technical qualities of the painting, the vigorous drawing, and the appropriate, if somewhat sombre, color, but somehow we feel that the mise en scène lacks truth, that the painter has thought more about displaying his own power than realizing the dreadful scene he had to depict. Compared with the artificial, classical works of David, this picture is nature itself; but measured by the modern standard of pictorial truth, it must be confessed that it is not quite satisfactory. The sea ought surely in such a subject to play an important part. We miss altogether the long swell which always follows a storm, and the helpless condition of a rude raft as it plunges and rises on the big waves. Géricault’s single wave, which threatens to break over the raft, is a pasteboard, theatrical one, which need cause no alarm. To criticise the setting of the sail from a nautical point of view would be too matter-of-fact; but I cannot help thinking that if the canvas had been listlessly flapping, and consequently useless as a sail, the picture would have been truer, and therefore more touching.
Géricault’s other works in the Louvre are rather gigantic sketches than pictures. They all evince great power and facility, but the action is generally unnecessarily violent, and the relative proportion between man and horse not properly observed. In spite of his faults, Géricault was, however, a very great artist, and may justly be considered as the founder of the école romantique, which subsequently developed itself so greatly in France.
We now come to Gros, who, although originally a pupil of David, abandoned in after-life the style of his master. Gros spent a good deal of his youth in Italy, and having pleased Buonaparte by a picture representing the battle of the Bridge of Arcola, the young general attached him to his staff, and thus fixed the painter’s career.
Every one who has been to Paris knows the gigantic pictures commemorative of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, the “Pestiferés de Jaffa,” the “Battaille des Pyramides,” and last, though not least, the “Battaille d’Aboukir.” This picture may be accepted as the chef-d’œuvre of that noble style of battle-painting which is intermediate between the academic manner of David and the thoroughly naturalistic style of modern battle-painters. The composition of this picture has always struck me as being most masterly, and I strongly recommend all students to study the subtle manner in which the lines of the groups and the masses of light and shade are made to express the action, quite independent of the individual attitudes. Murat, who is charging at the head of the French cavalry, looks like the forerunner of a great wave which is about to break over the unfortunate Turks, and the whole composition, viewed as a composition, is a masterpiece. The relative proportions of the figures are not properly observed, but the spirit and skill displayed are so great that this fault passes almost unnoticed. I do not wish to underrate the battle-pieces of H. Vernet, Bellanger, and Raffet, and I admire exceedingly those of De Neuville, but I must say that the art which could produce on canvas such an epic poem as this “Battaille d’Aboukir” is of a higher quality; and when we recollect that the figures are considerably larger than life, our respect and admiration for old Gros must be proportionately increased. When considerably past fifty, Gros went to Brussels to visit his old master, David, who was living there in exile, and for whom he had always entertained the greatest affection.
Unfortunately for Gros, he allowed himself to be persuaded by the old man to give up painting modern battles, and to go back to the Greeks and Romans. A few attempts in this direction, made by Gros on his return to Paris, were so severely criticised, and greeted with such roars of laughter, that poor Gros drowned himself from sheer vexation. A coroner’s jury would have justly returned a verdict of temporary insanity, for previous to his suicide Gros had shown many symptoms of mental aberration independent of his egregiously bad pictures.
His rival Ingres survived him for thirty years. This painter (also a pupil of David) departed from the master’s style, but in quite a different direction to that taken by Gros. Slow, laborious, and fastidious, he was a long time before gaining the front rank of French painters, which, however, when once gained he kept for forty years. He largely modified the David interpretation of the antique by studying the works of Raffaelle, and importing into his own much of the simplicity, dignity, and grace which characterize the best works of the great Roman painter. He deserves, however, more honor as the founder of a school than as a great painter. He may be said to have supplemented the schooling in draughtsmanship which the French artists got under David. I can name but one very great artist amongst his pupils, namely, Flandrin, but there is no doubt that his severe and dignified style influenced, perhaps unconsciously, most of his younger contemporaries. My own master, P. Delaroche, was eclectic in his art; that is, he endeavored to unite the spirit and life of Gros with the severe drawing of Ingres. He was not always very successful in the attempt, but fortunately he had qualities of his own which will rescue his fame from the fate which attends that of most eclectic artists.
These qualities were great dramatic power and exquisite taste in the arrangement of his figures. I can bear witness to the care he bestowed on composition, never grudging time or labor if he could in any way improve the action of his figures or the outline of his groups. I have known him to efface no less than seventeen finished figures during the progress of his great mural painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts; thus destroying at least two months’ work, simply because he was dissatisfied with the grouping.
His atelier was about equally divided between the Ingrests and the partisans of the école romantique, but although a few men of extreme views would often quarrel over the respective merits of Ingres and Delacroix, the great majority were much better employed in endeavoring to draw and paint the model they had before them.