VERNET.THE WOUNDED ZOUAVE.

These words, which the well-known Vienna librarian Denis wrote in 1797 in his Lesefrüchte, show how early came the problem which was at high-water mark for a generation afterwards. The painting of the nineteenth century could only become modern when it succeeded in recognising and expressing the characteristic side of modern costume. But to do that it took more than half a century. It was, after all, natural that to people who had seen the graceful forms and delicate colours of the rococo time, the garb of the first half of the century should seem the most unfortunate and the least enviable in the whole history of costume. “What person of artistic education is not of the opinion,” runs a passage in Putmann’s book on the Düsseldorf school in 1835,—“what person of artistic education is not of the opinion that the dress of the present day is tasteless, hideous, and ape-like? Moreover, can a true style be brought into harmony with hoop-petticoats and swallow-tail coats and such vagaries? In our time, therefore, art is right in seeking out those beautiful fashions of the past, about which tailors concern themselves so little. How much longer must we go about, unpicturesque beings, like ugly black bats, in swallow-tail coats and wide trousers? The peasant’s blouse, indeed, can be accepted as one of the few picturesque dresses which have yet been preserved in Germany from the inauspicious influence of the times.” The same plaint is sung by Hotho in his history of German and Netherlandish painting; the costume of his age he declares to be thoroughly prosaic and tiresome. It is revolting to painters and an offence to the educated eye. Art must necessarily seek salvation in the past, unless it is to wait, and give brush and palette a holiday, until that happy time when the costume of nations comes to its pictorial regeneration. Only one zone, the realm of blouse and military uniform, was beyond the domain of tail-coat and trousers, and still furnished art with rich material.

Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
CHARLET.UN HOMME QUI BOÎT SEUL N’EST
PAS DIGNE DE VIVRE.		AUGUSTE MARIE RAFFET.

Since it was by working on uniform that plastic artists first learnt how to treat contemporary costume, so it was the military picture that first entered the circle of modern painting. By exalting the soldier into a warrior, and the warrior into a hero, it was here possible, even in the times of David and Carstens, to effect a certain compromise with the ruling classical ideas. Gérard, Girodet—to some extent even Gros—made abundant use of the mask of the Greek or Roman warrior, with the object of admitting the battle-piece into painting in the grand style. The real heroes of the Napoleonic epoch had not this plastic appearance nor these epic attitudes. Classicism altered their physiognomies and gave them, most illogically, the air of old marble statues. It was Horace Vernet who freed battle painting from this anathema. This, but little else, stands to his credit.

Together with his son-in-law Paul Delaroche, Horace Vernet is the most genuine product of the Juste-milieu period. The king with the umbrella founded the Museum of Versailles, that monstrous depôt of daubed canvas, which is a horrifying memory to any one who has ever wandered through it. However, it is devoted à toutes les gloires de la France. In a few years a suite of galleries, which it takes almost two hours merely to pass through from end to end, was filled with pictures of all sizes, bringing home the history of the country, from Charlemagne to the African expedition of Louis Philippe, under all circumstances which are in any way flattering to French pride. For miles numberless manufacturers of painting bluster from the walls. As pictor celerrimus Horace Vernet had the command-in-chief, and became so famous by his chronicle of the conquest of Algiers that for a long time he was held by trooper, Philistine, and all the kings and emperors of Europe as the greatest painter in France. He was the last scion of a celebrated dynasty of artists, and had taken a brush in his hand from the moment he threw away his child’s rattle. A good deal of talent had been given him in his cradle: sureness of eye, lightness of hand, and an enviable memory. His vision was correct, if not profound; he painted his pictures without hesitation, and is favourably distinguished from many of his contemporaries by his independence: he owes no one anything, and reveals his own qualities without arraying himself in those of other people. Only these qualities are not of an order which gives his pictures artistic interest. The spark of Géricault’s genius, which seems to have been transmitted to him in the beginning, was completely quenched in his later years. Having swiftly attained popularity by the aid of lithography which circulated his “Mazeppa” through the whole world, he became afterwards a bad and vulgar painter, without poetry, light, or colour; a reporter who expressed himself in banal prose and wounded all the finer spirits of his age. “I loathe this man,” said Baudelaire, as early as 1846.

Devoid of any sense of the tragedy of war, which Gros possessed in such a high degree, Vernet treated battles like performances at the circus. His pictures have movement without passion, and magnitude without greatness. If it had been required of him, he would have daubed all the boulevards; his picture of Smala is certainly not so long, but there would have been no serious difficulty in lengthening it by half a mile. This incredible stenographical talent won for him his popularity. He was decorated with all the orders in the world. The bourgeois felt happy when he looked at Vernet’s pictures, and the paterfamilias promised to buy a horse for his little boy. The soldiers called him “mon colonel,” and would not have been surprised if he had been made a Marshal of France. A lover of art passes the pictures of Vernet with the sentiment which the old colonel owned to entertaining towards music. “Are you fond of music, colonel?” asked a lady. “Madame, I am not afraid of it.”

RAFFET.THE PARADE.