Books Recommended: As before, Stranahan, et al.; also Ballière, Henri Regnault; Blanc, Les Artistes de mon Temps; Blanc, Histoire des Peintres français au XIXme Siècle; Blanc, Ingres et son Œuvre; Bigot, Peintres français contemporains; Breton, La Vie d'un Artiste (English Translation); Brownell, French Art; Burty, Maîtres et Petit-Maîtres; Chesneau, Peinture française au XIXme Siècle; Clément, Études sur les Beaux Arts en France; Clément, Prudhon; Delaborde, Œuvre de Paul Delaroche; Delécluze, Jacques Louis David, son École, et son Temps; Duret, Les Peintres français en 1867; Gautier, L'Art Moderne; Gautier, Romanticisme; Gonse, Eugène Fromentin; Hamerton, Contemporary French Painting; Hamerton, Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism; Henley, Memorial Catalogue of French and Dutch Loan Collection (1886); Henriet, Charles Daubigny et son Œuvre; Lenormant, Les Artistes Contemporains; Lenormant, Ary Scheffer; Merson, Ingres, sa Vie et son Œuvre; Moreau, Decamps et son Œuvre; Planche, Études sur l'École française; Robaut et Chesneau, L'Œuvre complet d'Eugène Delacroix; Sensier, Théodore Rousseau; Sensier, Life and Works of J. F. Millet; Silvestre, Histoire des Artistes vivants et étrangers; Strahan, Modern French Art; Thoré, L'Art Contemporain; Theuriet, Jules Bastien-Lepage; Van Dyke, Modern French Masters.

THE REVOLUTIONARY TIME: In considering this century's art in Europe, it must be remembered that a great social and intellectual change has taken place since the days of the Medici. The power so long pent up in Italy during the Renaissance finally broke and scattered itself upon the western nations; societies and states were torn down and rebuilded, political, social, and religious ideas shifted into new garbs; the old order passed away.

FIG. 60.—DAVID. THE SABINES. LOUVRE.

[Please click here for a modern color image]

Religion as an art-motive, or even as an art-subject, ceased to obtain anywhere. The Church failed as an art-patron, and the walls of cloister and cathedral furnished no new Bible readings to the unlettered. Painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the patron. Nature and actual life were about the only sources left from which original art could draw its materials. These have been freely used, but not so much in a national as in an individual manner. The tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an individual belief. Individualism—the same quality that appeared so strongly in Michael Angelo's art—has become a keynote in modern work. It is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century, nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. We must remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the Greek, Roman, and Italian, which practically ruled French painting in the first part of this century.

FRENCH CLASSICISM OF DAVID: This was a revival of Greek form in art, founded on the belief expressed by Winckelmann, that beauty lay in form, and was best shown by the ancient Greeks. It was the objective view of art which saw beauty in the external and tolerated no individuality in the artist except that which was shown in technical skill. It was little more than an imitation of the Greek and Roman marbles as types, with insistence upon perfect form, correct drawing, and balanced composition. In theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic, the incidents of Greek and Roman history forming the chief subjects, and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural surroundings. It was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly unsympathetic because lacking in contemporary interest; and, though correct enough in classic form, was lacking in the classic spirit. Like all reanimated art, it was derivative as regards its forms and lacking in spontaneity. The reason for the existence of Greek art died with its civilization, and those, like the French classicists, who sought to revive it, brought a copy of the past into the present, expecting the world to accept it.

There was some social, and perhaps artistic, reason, however, for the revival of the classic in the French art of the late eighteenth century. It was a revolt, and at that time revolts were popular. The art of Boucher and Van Loo had become quite unbearable. It was flippant, careless, licentious. It had no seriousness or dignity about it. Moreover, it smacked of the Bourbon monarchy, which people had come to hate. Classicism was severe, elevated, respectable at least, and had the air of the heroic republic about it. It was a return to a sterner view of life, with the martial spirit behind it as an impetus, and it had a great vogue. For many years during the Revolution, the Consulate, and the Empire, classicism was accepted by the sovereigns and the Institute of France, and to this day it lives in a modified form in that semi-classic work known as academic art.

THE CLASSIC SCHOOL: Vien (1716-1809) was the first painter to protest against the art of Boucher and Van Loo by advocating more nobility of form and a closer study of nature. He was, however, more devoted to the antique forms he had studied in Rome than to nature. In subject and line his tendency was classic, with a leaning toward the Italians of the Decadence. He lacked the force to carry out a complete reform in painting, but his pupil David (1748-1825) accomplished what he had begun. It was David who established the reign of classicism, and by native power became the leader. The time was appropriate, the Revolution called for pictures of Romulus, Brutus and Achilles, and Napoleon encouraged the military theme. David had studied the marbles at Rome, and he used them largely for models, reproducing scenes from Greek and Roman life in an elevated and sculpturesque style, with much archæological knowledge and a great deal of skill. In color, relief, sentiment, individuality, his painting was lacking. He despised all that. The rhythm of line, the sweep of composed groups, the heroic subject and the heroic treatment, made up his art. It was thoroughly objective, and what contemporary interest it possessed lay largely in the martial spirit then prevalent. Of course it was upheld by the Institute, and it really set the pace for French painting for nearly half a century. When David was called upon to paint Napoleonic pictures he painted them under protest, and yet these, with his portraits, constitute his best work. In portraiture he was uncommonly strong at times.