THE ORIENTALISTS
Brought up in the tradition of the Classicist school, Prosper Marilhat (1811–1847) only “formed himself” when the world of colour was discovered to him under the glowing sky of the Holy Land and Egypt, where he painted The Mosque of the Khalif Hakem, at Cairo (No. 615). Another Orientalist of great distinction, who, after being a favourite pupil of Ingres, became attracted by the fiery romanticism of Delacroix, was the Creole Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856). His works at the Louvre illustrate the earlier better than the later phase of his art. Chassériau was still entirely under the spell of Ingres when he painted, in 1844, the decoration of the Cour des Comptes, which building was destroyed under the Commune. Peace (No. 121a) is a fragment of this important decorative work, which may be said to constitute a link between Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes. The Chaste Susannah (No. 121) and the Portrait of Father Lacordaire, Dominican Preacher (No. 121b), are again clear evidence of Ingres’s influence upon Chassériau at the beginning of his brief career.
A man of profound culture and rare critical acumen, Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) was perhaps greater as a critic than as a painter. He, too, travelled repeatedly in Algeria and Egypt, where he found abundant material both for his brush and pen. He did not look upon the East with the curiosity of the traveller, nor did he let the strange land work upon his romantic imagination. His pictures, somewhat timid in technique but marked by great refinement, reveal, on the other hand, a thorough understanding of the sad monotony of the sun-parched desert, and the chivalrous, noble bearing of its Arab inhabitants. His refined talent shows to best advantage in Hawking in Algeria (No. 305).
REGNAULT
The Orient was by no means the uncontested field of the Romanticists. But the followers of the official school who devoted themselves to the depicting of Eastern life and scenery, approached these subjects in the same spirit of parti pris which robs all their work of real significance—unless, like Henri Regnault (1843–1871) in his famous and often reproduced Moorish Execution (No. 771), they treated them as rank melodrama. Regnault is, however, not to be judged by this overrated piece of sensationalism. Killed in the Franco-German War in 1871 at the early age of twenty-eight, this young painter gave rare promise of brilliant achievement in an altogether unacademic direction in his superb equestrian portrait of General Prim (No. 770). There is something truly heroic in the way the Spanish general sits his horse, arresting its forward movement with a sudden jerk at the reins; but the ruggedness and unkempt appearance of the rider displeased General Prim to such an extent that Regnault, who would not alter the picture, preferred to keep it on his hands.
ACADEMIC PAINTERS
It will suffice here merely to indicate the names and chief works at the Louvre of the principal artists who carried on, about the middle of the nineteenth century, the academic tradition,—capable painters all, but without clearly-marked individuality. Thomas Couture (1815–1879), a pupil of Gros and of Delaroche, in painting the huge composition, Romans of the Decadence (No. 156), produced a picture which may be taken as typical of the ambitions and failings of the whole school—of their literary tendencies, theatricality, and uninspired dulness. He was, however, an accomplished master of technique, which is more than can be said of Joseph Devéria (1805–1865), the painter of The Birth of Henri IV. (No. 250); or of Ingres’s pupil, the dull Hippolyte Flandrin (1809–1864), who is only represented by two Portraits (Nos. 284 and 285). Nor is it possible to-day to grow enthusiastic over the historical paintings of Joseph Nicolas Robert-Fleury (1797–1890), whose Conference at Poissy (No. 2982), Galileo before the Inquisition (No. 2983), and Christopher Columbus received by Ferdinand and Isabella on his Return from America (No. 2984), can only be regarded as unnecessarily large coloured illustrations.
MICHEL AND HUET
In the much-neglected branch of landscape painting the classic tradition of Claude ruled supreme until a new conception arose with the victory of the romantics in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Two names only need be mentioned before we pass on to the new movement—the return to nature—which was inaugurated by the group of painters vaguely known as the Barbizon school. Both Georges Michel (1763–1843) and Paul Huet (1804–1868) may be regarded as forerunners of that great movement; and both have only in recent years received the recognition which is their due. Michel developed his style in copying and closely studying the Dutch landscape masters, and must in his maturity have been well acquainted with the art of Constable, who exercised, together with Bonington, a prodigious influence on the whole course of French landscape painting. If Michel’s breadth of style, which may be judged from Near Montmartre (No. 626), had been accompanied by a greater range of subject-matter, he would probably rank more highly in the roll of French artists; but he contented himself with the endless repetition of the same motifs which he found close to Montmartre, where he spent his whole life. The care with which he studied the works of Jacob van Ruisdael earned for him the nickname of “the Ruisdael of Montmartre.”
Huet, again, learnt more from the old masters and from his friends, Bonington and Delacroix, than from his actual teachers. He, too, thrust aside the recipes of composing classic or “noble” landscapes, and was inspired by an altogether emotional outlook upon nature, calm and serene, as in The Still Morning (No. 413), or threatening and tempestuous, as in The Inundation at St. Cloud (No. 412), or in his masterpiece, The Breakers at Granville (No. 2952).