French.—It is Ulysses conducting Polyxena to the sacrifice. He has one much better at the Luxembourg.
English.—I don’t know; I have not seen that, but this picture appears to me to be a very favourable specimen of the present French school. It has great force, considerable beauty, symmetry of form, and expression; and it is animated flesh, not coloured stone. The action and gestures into which the figures throw themselves, seem the result of life and feeling, and not of putting casts after the antique into Opera attitudes.
French.—We do not think much of that picture. It has not been perfected.
English.—Perhaps it passes a certain conventional limit, and is borne away by the impulse of the subject; and of that the most eminent among the French artists might be thought to be as much afraid as the old lady at Court was that her face would fall in pieces, if her features relaxed into a smile. The Ulysses is poor and stiff: the nurse might be finer; but I like the faces of the two foremost figures much; they are handsome, interesting, and the whole female group is alive and in motion.
French.—What do you think of the picture by Gerard, No. 745, of the Meeting between Louis XIV. and the Spanish Ambassador? It is greatly admired here.
English.—It appeared to me (as I passed it just now) to be a picture of great bustle and spirit; and it looks as if Iris had dipped her woof in it, the dresses are so gay and fine. Really, the show of variegated colours in the principal group is like a bed of tulips. That is certainly a capitally painted head of a priest stooping forward in a red cap and mantle.
French.—And the youth near him no less.
English.—The complexion has too much the texture of fruit.
French.—But for the composition—the contrast between youth and age is so justly marked. Are you not struck with the figure of the Spanish Ambassador? His black silk drapery is quite in the Italian style.
English.—I thought Gerard had been chiefly admired for a certain delicacy of expression, more than for his colouring or costume. He was a favourite painter of the Empress Josephine.