MEISSONIER.
MEISSONIER.
The old maxim, that "the gods reward all things to labor," has had fit illustration in Meissonier. His has been a life of constant, unvaried toil. He came to Paris a poor, unknown boy, and has worked over fifty years, till he stands a master in French art.
Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier was born at Lyons, in 1811. His early life was passed in poverty so grinding that the great artist never speaks of it, and in such obscurity that scarcely anything is known of his boyhood. At nineteen he came to Paris to try his fate in one of the great centres of the world. He, of course, found no open doors, nobody standing ready to assist genius. Genius must ever open doors for itself.
The lad was a close observer, and had learned to draw accurately. He could give every variety of costume, and express almost any emotion in the face of his subject. But he was unknown. He might do good work, but nobody wanted it. He used to paint by the side of Daubigny in the Louvre, it is said, for one dollar a yard. Now his "Amateurs in Painting," a chef-d'œuvre of six inches in size, is bought by Leon Say for six thousand dollars. Such is fame.
Time was so necessary in this struggle for bread, that he could sleep only every other night; and for six months his finances were so low, it is stated, that he existed on ten cents a week! No wonder that the sorrows of those days are never mentioned.
His earliest work was painting the tops of bon-bon boxes, and fans. Once he grew brave enough to take four little sepia drawings to an editor to illustrate a fairy tale in a magazine for children. The editor said the drawings were charming, but he could not afford to have them engraved, and so "returned them with thanks."
His first illustrations in some unknown journal were scenes from the life of "The Old Bachelor." In the first picture he is represented making his toilet before the mirror, his wig spread out on the table; in the second, dining with two friends; in the third, being abused by his housekeeper; in the fourth, on his death-bed, surrounded by greedy relations; and in the fifth, the servants ransacking the death-chamber for the property.