L’Art.
DELAROCHE.THE PRINCES IN THE TOWER.

Shortly afterwards Camille Roqueplan began to alter his manner. Up to that time he had been exclusively a painter who, like Watteau and Terborg, listened with a voluptuous shudder to the piquant rustle of silk, velvet, and satin dresses; now he devoted himself to depicting with perspicuity various scenes from history, renounced his airy and radiant fantasies, and became, in his “Scene from the Massacre of St. Bartholomew,” nothing but a tedious schoolmaster.

Nicolaus Robert Fleury, the painter of “Charles V in the Monastery of St. Just,” of the “Massacre of St. Bartholomew,” of the “Religious Conference at Poissy,” and of other historical anecdotes, carefully conceived and laboriously executed, devoted himself, like Lessing, to the propagation of noble ideas. His pictures were manifestoes against religious fanaticism, and philanthropic discussions concerning the trials and persecutions of the freethinkers. In order to give them the stamp of historical verisimilitude, he buried himself with the zeal of an archivist in the study of the period to be represented; often directly transferred into his pictures figures from Diepenbeeck or Theodor van Thulden; and having the faculty of seizing in old paintings those tones of colour which belong rather to the epoch than the master, he succeeded in giving his works a certain documentary and archaic character for which, on his first appearance, he obtained ample credit.

Louis Boulanger, after his “Mazeppa” of 1827, was a famous painter. But the highest success was that attained by Paul Delaroche, inasmuch as he understood better than any other, not only how to cater for the cultured public by the didactic nature and historical accuracy of his pictures, but also how to touch the heart by means of a lachrymose sentimentality.

Paul Delaroche belongs, by the date of his birth, to the eighteenth century. Being one of Gros’ pupils, he had never borne the yoke of the Classical school in its fullest weight, and therefore had never had occasion to revolt against it. When the Romanticists came to the front, he had gone or rather been dragged along with them, for to his circumspect nature Romanticism was an abomination, and his cool and deliberative spirit felt itself much more at home in the society of the Classicists. The works of the historians opened to him a welcome outlet by which to avoid a rupture with either party, and Delaroche found his vocation. He assumed the rôle of a peacemaker between the quarrelling brothers, placed himself as mediator between Montagues and Capulets, and thus became—like Casimir Delavigne in literature—the head of that “School of Common Sense” on whose banner glittered in golden letters Louis Philippe’s motto of the Juste-milieu. Ingres was cold, reserved, and colourless; Delaroche aspired to an agreeable, sparkling, highly seasoned, bituminous art of painting. Delacroix was genial and sketchy; Delaroche inscribed carefulness and exactness on his banner. The former had given offence by his boldness; Delaroche won the conservatives over to himself by his well-bred bearing and moderate attitude. People thought Delacroix too wild and poetical; Delaroche took care to give them only a touch of the eagerness of Romanticism, and set himself to reduce the passionate vehemence of Delacroix to rational, Philistine limits, and to soften down his native unruliness into sentimental pathos. This position which he assumed as a mediator made him the man of his age. The life of Delacroix was a long struggle. But for the commissions entrusted to him by the state he might have died of starvation, for his sales to dealers and lovers of art brought him scarcely five hundred francs a year. His studio held many pictures, leaning mournfully against each other in corners. Delaroche, on the other hand, was overwhelmed with praise and commissions. The representatives of eclecticism in philosophy and of the Juste-milieu in politics found themselves compelled to praise an artist who was neither revolutionary nor reactionist, neither Romantic nor Classical, who had bound himself over neither to draughtsmanship nor to colouring, but united both elements in vulgar moderation.

Cassell & Co.
DELAROCHE.STRAFFORD ON HIS WAY TO EXECUTION.