COGNIET.   THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS.

What learning had begun, poetry carried further. A number of writers, young and old, began to consider what poetic use might be made of the materials which these investigations had brought to light, and few years had passed before the number of historical romances and dramas was hardly to be computed. Vitet, the elder Dumas, and de Vigny put historical tragedy in the place of classical, and the modern novel of George Sand, Balzac, and Beyle was ousted by the historical romance. During the same years was completed the process by which grand opera forsook fantastic for historical subjects, such as Auber’s Muette de Portici and Rossini’s Guillaume Tell.

Art also sought to turn to account the new materials furnished by historical science, and æsthetic minds hastened to enumerate the advantages which were to be expected of it. On the one hand—and this was nothing new—the artist, whose curse it was to be born in an inactive and colourless age, would find here all that he sought, for history offered him the contemplation of a magnificent life, full of movement. On the other hand—and this was the chief point—painting might also fulfil an important mission on behalf of culture, if by virtue of its more easily understood method it could supplement the science of history, and by recalling the great memories of the past keep alive that patriotism which in unfavourable conjunctures is so frequently found wanting. Guizot recommended French history, “the history of chivalry,” to painters, as the first and most important source of inspiration. “We want historians in the art of painting,” wrote Vitet; and his cry was not unheard.

While the Romanticists had seen in the old costumes nothing more than elements out of which a dashing colour-symphony could be obtained, troubling themselves little about the meaning or the narrative import of their pictures, their successors went over, bag and baggage, into the camp of the historians. In the place of pure painting, there arose an art laden with scientific documents, which busied itself in reconstructing former times with antiquarian exactness. While the former had produced nought but genuinely artistic colour-improvisations, so now a didactic aim, together with historical accuracy, became the main consideration. The painter was commissioned as a chronicler, an official of the state, to console citizens for the lamentable present by an appeal to the glorious past. He became a professor of history, a theatrical costumier who rummaged records, chose masks, cut out dresses, arranged scenic backgrounds, for no other purpose than to depict correctly and legibly on the canvas an historical event. And Mme. Tout le Monde found in these pictures exactly what she required. On the one hand, the didactic aim of historical painting, with its long explanations in the catalogues, answered precisely to the needs of the educated middle classes. Under the picture there was always a pretty card on which was printed this or that quotation from some historical writer. One read the description, and then satisfied one’s self that the corresponding picture was really there and that it was in keeping with the description. One recalled to mind the lessons in history one had learned at school, and was pleased to be reminded in so pleasant a fashion that before the nineteenth century people did not wear trousers and frock-coats, but knitted hose and mantles. On the other hand, there still survived enough of the Romantic unruliness to allow one to be shocked in a decorous and moderate manner, and with the help of the catalogue a picture might be permitted to make one’s flesh creep in an agreeable way.

L’Art.
PAUL DELAROCHE.
“Paul Delaroche à la funèbre mine
 S’entour avec plaisir de cadavres et d’os
Jane Grey, Mazarin, héros et héroine
 Chez lui tout meurt ... excepté ces tableaux.”

For the average painter of mediocre ability historical exercises of this sort must also have been very alluring, inasmuch as they made no demand upon specially artistic qualities—upon any peculiar aptitude of the fancy, eye, or palette. The historian must indeed possess the power of combination, but much more that of sober investigation; too much imagination or too great a sense of humour would be dangerous to him. So also the historical painter required neither fancy, sentiment, nor power of perception; a certain capacity for compiling facts was all that was necessary. It was enough to ferret out of some popular book on history the story of a murder, and to possess a work upon costumes. By such means, men of a certain ability could easily manage, with the help of the studio technique founded by the Romantic school, to put together the most imposing show-pieces. And even the critics allowed themselves frequently to be so far misled as to give to those models who were decked out in the finest costumes, and labelled with the names of the most celebrated personages, precedence over their more modest companions. Consequently it happened that in the time of the citizen monarchy a great number of painters entirely devoid of talent, whose only merit was that they attached to this or that chapter of universal history pictures showing some laboured animation, became in the twinkling of an eye leaders of the schools.

Eugène Devéria was the first and most important painter deliberately to enter upon this course. When his picture of the “Birth of Henry IV” was exhibited in the Salon of 1827 his appearance was welcomed as that of a new Veronese, and his work joyfully saluted as the first historical picture in which the local colour of the epoch represented was accurately observed. Henceforth Devéria dressed always in the style of Rubens, and his house became the headquarters of the Romantic school. He was perhaps the only member of this group in whom some breath of Delacroix’s spirit survived, but unfortunately he never found again either the Venetian tone or the male accent of his youth, and though he painted many more pictures he never contributed a second notable work to art.

Cassell & Co.
DELAROCHE.THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF GUISE.