“Meissonier,” he wrote in an article published in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, “composes his pictures with a science unknown to the Flemish masters to whom he is compared. Take, for example, a Smoker! The manner in which he is placed in the centre of the picture, one elbow resting on the table, one leg crossed over the other, one hand hanging idly by his side, his body sunk within his gaping waistcoat, his head bowed forward in revery, or jovially thrown backward,—all this forms a composition which, while not so apparent to the eye as some dramatic scene, nevertheless works its effect upon the spectator. The accessories cleverly play their part to throw more light upon the character of the central figure. Here is a Smoker, for instance, who is a worthy man, no doubt of it; clad in an ample coat of ancient cut, and of a modest gray, with a well brushed cocked hat upon his head; one foot swings free, encased in a good, stout shoe, with silver buckle; and, with the tranquillity of an honest conscience, he draws in a deep breath of tobacco smoke, which he allows to escape again in little clouds, wishing, thrifty man that he is, to make the pleasure last. Close at hand, upon a table with spiral legs, he has placed side by side a flagon and a pewter-lidded tankard of beer. An intimate satisfaction radiates from his face, which is furrowed by deep lines, a face expressive of foresight, orderly habits, and rigid probity. One could trust him with one’s cash-box and account books. Here is another Smoker, clad in red; he also holds a pipe and performs apparently the same action; but his disordered garments, violently rumpled, buttoned askew, his three-cornered hat jammed down upon his eyebrows, his cuffs and frilled shirt crumpled by nervous fingers, his whole attitude expressive of feverish anxiety, his twitching lip straining around the clay stem of his pipe, his hand thrust angrily into an empty pocket,—all these details proclaim the adventurer or the gambler in hard luck. He is evidently saying to himself: ‘Where the deuce could I borrow a louis or even a crown?’ Even the background, if we consult it, gives further enlightenment. In this case we no longer have neat plastering of modest gray and substantial brown woodwork, but battered and dirty walls stained with smoke and grease, reeking of tap-room foulness and unclean lodgings. And that shows how far one smoker may fall short of resembling another!”
It is precisely this difference between one human being and another, in other words, this quality of individuality, that constitutes the creative gift of the real artist and proves that the honour of this title is really deserved by a painter whose pictures are animated groups, among whom a spectator may wander, studying them with growing interest, and then afterwards call to mind the various types, episodes, scenes, dramas that he has actually seen.
One can never grow tired of quoting Gautier apropos of an artist whose brush always had something in common with his pen. This masterly art critic has described for us, sketched in words, so to speak, still another picture: “A man standing before a window through which the daylight streams flecking his face with silver; in his hand he holds a book which absorbs his entire attention,—this is not a complicated theme, but it grips us like life itself. We want to know the contents of that volume, it seems as though we could almost conjecture it. Plenty of other artists have painted marquises and marchionesses, sleek abbés and shameless beauties of the Eighteenth Century, thanks to the aid of powder and patches and paint, rosettes, paniers, bespangled coats, silken stockings, red-heeled shoes, fans, screens, cameos, crackled porcelain, bonbonnières and other futilities. Meissonier rediscovered the decent folk of that period, which was not made up exclusively of mighty lords and fallen women, and of which we get, through Chardin, a glimpse on its honest, settled bourgeois side. Meissonier introduces us into modest interiors, with woodwork of sober gray, furniture without gilding, the homes of worthy folk, simple and substantial, who read and smoke and work, look over prints and etchings, or copy them, or chat sociably, with elbows on table, separated only by a bottle brought out from behind the faggots.”
And who can ever forget, in The Confidence (the picture which passed from the gallery of M. Chauchard to that of the Louvre), how tense and attentive the face of the listener is, even in repose, while the relaxation of the body is revealed by his posture, as he leans against the wall with an elbow on the table,—and how naïve the face of his friend—younger and better looking—as he reads the letter: naïve, excited, even somewhat simple, with a nose slightly exceeding the average length and a forehead just a trifle too low.
In the Game of Cards, a soldier and a civilian are seated opposite each other, in the midst of a contest. The soldier has a dogged air and he is losing. Apparently, he is not a strong adversary, for the man of questionable age who faces him, his small, narrow, foxy head surmounted by a three-cornered hat, his lean body lost in the depths of a huge greatcoat, his thin ankle showing beneath the white stocking, belongs to the race of weaklings who live at the expense of the strong.
In The Etcher, just as in The Man at the Window—two of his most celebrated pictures (the former brought 272,000 francs, even during Meissonier’s lifetime)—the interest of the principal—and only—figure is heightened and singularly beautified by a delicate effect of light, forming an aureole, in the very centre of the picture, respectively around the face of the worker and of the dreamer.
Note, in A Song, the moist eye of the musketeer playing the guitar, and in Pascuale the half stupid, half poetic air of the central figure engaged in the same occupation; note also in The Alms-giving the frowning brow of the horseman as he searches in his pocket; and in The Visit to the Chateau—an ostentation of coaches and gentry—and in The Inn—three cavaliers who have halted for the moment and are grouped around the serving-maid, as they drink—the reconstruction of an entire epoch with its pomps and its idylls, that justifies us in calling these pictures veritable “stage settings taken from life.”
One might spend a long time in analyzing the various shades in the gamut of expressions on the faces of the principal and secondary figures in the Game of Piquet, who, scattered all nine of them around the two sides of the tavern table, follow either amusedly or critically or with feverish interest the changing fortunes of the game. And in the Portrait of the Sergeant, what a magnificent collection of different degrees of attention: that of the portrait painter as he studies his model standing in front of him on the pavement, in his finest uniform and his finest pose; that of the model intent only upon doing nothing to disturb his ultra-martial bearing, his gaze menacing, staring, fixed; that of the spectators, some of them drawing near, fascinated, another who casts an amused glance at the picture as he passes by, with some sarcastic remark on his lips; another who no doubt has just been looking, and for the moment, with pipe between his teeth, is thinking of something else as he sits on a bench with his back to the wall and his legs extended in front of him.
The Quarrel, with all the feverish violence that drives the two bravos at each other’s throats, has perhaps more amplitude and less realism than any of the previously mentioned works. It is Meissonier’s one romantic painting, and he professed a great admiration for it, ranking it as one of his four best canvases. It is recorded that the master said one day to a friend:
