The candelabrum is said to have been painted by Ingres.
Painted in oil on canvas (unfinished).
5 ft. 7 in. × 7 ft. 10½ in. (1·70 × 2·40.)
BARON GÉRARD
Among the numerous pupils and followers of David who rose to fame, honours, and wide popularity before Ingres became the acknowledged head of the official school, the most distinguished were Gérard, Girodet, and Gros. Baron F. P. S. Gérard (1770–1837), whilst following on the whole the principles laid down by his master, knew how to invest his work with more individual character, which stood him in particular good stead in his portraiture. That this was recognised by his contemporaries is proved by the fact that he became the portrait painter par excellence of the First Empire and the Bourbon restoration, although his inclination drew him towards allegory and mythology. There is undeniable distinction and fine characterisation in such portraits as The Painter Isabey and his Daughter (No. 332). The nature of the subject debarred him from showing the strongest side of his talent in the chillingly unemotional, but undeniably graceful, Psyche receiving Cupid’s First Kiss (No. 328), and in the Daphnis and Chloë (No. 329), which was bought in 1825 for £1000. They have their counterpart in the cold and antique French sculpture of the period.
A. L. Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767–1824) was of all David’s artistic progeny the one painter who devoted himself to the purely pictorial problem of concentrated light and shade, without, however, being able to free himself from the domination of linear design. The compromise of the two principles led to such unfortunate results as The Sleep of Endymion (No. 361) and The Burial of Atala (No. 362). In The Deluge (No. 360), which was painted later, he shows pronounced leanings towards a crude naturalism which exceeds in horror the most cruel inventions of Ribera’s genius.
BARON GROS
Antoine Jean Gros (1771–1835), though a classicist by training, was forced by circumstances, and by the patronage of Napoleon who ennobled him, to devote his brush to an important phase of contemporary life—the glorification of his hero’s warlike achievements. He was by no means a realist; and although he followed Napoleon on many of his campaigns and presumably brought back with him rich material in sketches and vivid recollections, his forceful compositions accentuate the heroic aspect and the imaginative appeal of warfare, and are not spontaneous glimpses of actuality. The whole glamour of the Napoleonic legend is expressed in the group of wounded soldiers who, oblivious of their suffering, cheer their great captain in Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau (No. 389). The sense of the heroic is as pronounced in the large painting, Napoleon visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa (No. 388), in the Bonaparte at Arcole (No. 391), and even in the impressive Portrait of Lieutenant-General Fournier-Sarlovèze (No. 392a), silhouetted against a smoke-filled battlefield. A careful inspection of this large canvas shows pentimenti in the painting of the legs, of which the General seems now to have two pair! Gros’s weakness, like that of all David’s pupils, was his neglect of colour. His popularity waned rapidly after the fall of Napoleon. He became a victim to melancholia, and drowned himself in the Seine in 1835.
PIERRE PRUD’HON
Though not entirely detached from the ruling school of the period, Pierre Prud’hon (1758–1823) occupies a unique position among his contemporaries. Having absolved his preliminary studies at Dijon, he became the pupil of the old masters—of Correggio and Leonardo—first in Paris and then in Rome, where he worked for seven years before definitely settling at Paris in 1789. To his sympathy with the Italian masters he owed that mellowness of colour and understanding of chiaroscuro which escaped the grasp of the Davidists. He was a real painter as distinguished from the classicist draughtsmen of the official school. Even if it is impossible to share to-day the enthusiasm at one time evoked by the somewhat grotesque allegory, Justice and Divine Vengeance pursuing Crime (No. 747), this picture, which was intended for the Palais de Justice, rises immeasurably above the average of the “imaginative” paintings produced by Prud’hon’s contemporaries.