CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FINE ARTS LIBRARY Cornell University Library NO 553.D37M44 Eugene Delacroix.One cut in four colour 3 1924 014 893 501 Cornell University Library f © h The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014893501 rfj -v^ THE INTERNATIONAL ART SERIES EUGENE DELACROIX THE INTERNATIONAL ART SERIES The first year's volumes will be I. WILLIAM HOGARTH. Text by Edward Hutton 11. E. M. DEGAS. Text by Georges Grappe m. THE GREAT ENGLISH MASTERS. (Berlin Exhibition of Old English Art 1908) Text by Fritz Stahl IV. EUGfiNE DELACROIX. Text by Camille Mauclair V. FRITZ BOEHLE. Text by Rudolf Klein VL AUGUSTE RODIN. Text by Gustave Kahn Par abonnement d 3 numeros The volumes of the International Art Series are published in decorated wrappers at 5/— net and in stiff linen at 6/6 net Par abonnement d 6 numeros There will also be issued 100 numbered copies of each volume at 20 shillings each, with text on hand-made paper and plates on superfine unglazed art paper, bound in real parchment. Where the artist is stiU living the copies will bear his auto- graph signature. EUGfeNE DELACROIX EUGENE DELACROIX BY CAMILLE MAUCLAIR ONE CUT IN FOUR COLOURS, 17 DRAWINGS ON SUPERFINE UN- GLAZED ART PAPER 31 TINTED ILLUSTRATIONS AND 1 ENGRAVING TH. FISHER-UNWIN, LONDON ==| HE COVER SHEET OF THIS WORK J_^ IS BY WILLY BELLING, THE =1 PUBLISHERS' TRADE MARK BY HANS BASTANIER. THE FIRST HUN- DERT COPIES ARE PRINTED ON HAND- MADE PAPER; THE ILLUSTRATIONS ON SUPERFINE UNGLAZED ART PAPER. THESE COPIES ARE BOUND IN REAL .:■•:. PARCHMENT .:•.:• •:• ALL COPYRIGHTS RESERVED •:• '\'y n order properly to understand the importance of Dela- croix's intervention in the French school and the extent of his influence on it we must-recall the exact position of painting at the time of his advent. The treatment meted out by the Revolution to the masters of the declining XVIII^ century had been nothing less than brutal. In the eyes of a generation of Jacobins in love with the severe Greco-Roman ideal of which Vien had already produced some examples and which David was destined to carry to its climax, the trifling and charming painters of the reign of Louis XVI seemed mere beneficiaries of luxurious nobles and corrupt fermiers-generaux, and were spurned in the same impulse of undiscriminating fury, Fragonard was evicted from his dwelling in the galleries of the Louvre and died forgotten; Hubert Robert escaped the guillotine only through a mistake; Greuze died in grinding proverty; Chardin's name was sunk in oblivion; a Latour was sold for a few francs; Watteau's Embarque- ment pour Cythere, which he had painted for his admission to the Academy, was pelted within its precincts by the paper pellets of David's pupils, and it was these pupils who abused Boucher in such terms that even David himself, who was Boucher's nephew, felt constrained out of very shame to make excuses for his uncle. The engravings of Cochin, Lepicie, Choffard, Lavreince, the Saint- Aubins, Debucourt, Gravelot and Eisen were buried amidst the rubbish heaps of a few old curiosity shops until eighty years later when they were dug out and sold for fabulous sums. The century came crashing to its fall. Its exquisite taste, its profoundly human and natural morality, its sceptical liberalism were all set down to it as so much vice and wickedness. There arose aspirations after a moralising art, for which Greuze, to the accompaniment of Diderot's applause, had already prepared the way by his scenes of family life and combination of middle class simplicity and hypocritical looseness. People longed for an art that should be heroic, severe and ennobling. David was the very man to lead such a movement; singly, by his own efforts he created the art of the reaction, its neo Roman aesthetics and its painting which was inspired by the sculpture of the ancients and devoted solely to the expression of the admirable sentiments of Corneille's heroes. The discipline of this school was even harder than that imposed a hundred and twenty five years earlier by Louis XIV, Le Brun and the school of Rome. There was to be no more studying of nature, no more grace, nor truth, nor colour, but simply an art that was allegorical, pompous and arid, aloof from life and built wholly upon theories — an art as utterly opposed as possible to the French temperament. The Empire afler the consulate, strengthened this determination that the only art to be tolerated was one that should be national, and militarised in its habits as well as in its tastes. And yet in spite of all and by the very nature of things, the modernism which had been so violently rejected was soon to make itself felt once more. Napoleon must have illustrators of his glory and commentators of his court. Heroes who were either undraped or else clothed in Roman togas and helmets must be abandoned and in their place must be portrayed the uniforms that had been seen on all the battle fields of Europe and the fine ladies of the new aristocracy. Corneille's heroes had come to life and were dressed like soldiers of the imperial army. David himself, the fierce tyrannicide, having made up his mind to become a Bona- partist, resigned himself to forsaking his Sabines and his Horatii in order to paint the Coronation of Napoleon and the few portraits, such as those of the ladies de Tangry and of M^^^- Recamier, the beauty of which, in our eyes of to-day, makes up for the pernicions influence and the still-born pretention of his classical work. Other men arose, amongst whom were Gerard, Prudhon, whose genius is mysteriously akin to Da Vinci's, and above all Gros, the master of The Battle of EylavL and The Battle of Aboukir, Gros, the first painter of the new era, powerful as a colourist who attained as a realist to the heights of the grand style by the strength of his impetuosity and his feeling for epic movement, the precursor at once of the Realists by his love of accuracy, and of the Romanties by the sumptuous eloquence of his compositions — Gros, as far removed from petty details as from grandiloquence — Gros, whose merit and importance and beauty on PORTRAIT PAR LUI-MEME SELBSTBILDNIS Collection C. Neurdein, Varis SELF-PICTURE EXTRAIT DE MASSACRE A CHIOS DETAIL AUS DEM ..MASSAKER VON CHIOS" FROM THE "MASSACRE IN CHIOS" LES MUSICIENS DIE MUSIKANTEN THE MUSICIANS the threshold of the XIX^ century have been too much forgotten. Then came the dappling existence of Gericault, the revelation of his genius and its abrupt extinction in death. The double tendency towards something new, a tendency which was at once highly realistic and highly lyrical and which sought in contemporary life all the elements of force and enthusiasm, was even more apparent in Gericault than in Gros. The advent of such men shattered David's school which had been all powerful twenty years before. If the mania for neo-Roman art continued to be in favour with Napoleon as it had been with the Jacobin general Bonaparte, if an art that was frigid and allegorical continued to reign supreme in the works consecrated to civic life, and if its insipid representatives, of whom the most amiable was Girodet, continued to obtain from the Institute recognition of their skilful and docile talent — there were at any rate other men who were returning to the traditions of life, of colour and of an emotion that was the direct outcome of the ideas and ideals of the day. Gericault's Raft of the Medusa from this point of view was an exceedingly audacious piece of work, because for the first time there was here seen represented on an enoumous scale an episode of private life which could not be classed as an event of official importance like the Emperor's victories — a drama which had stirred public opinion and had in it nothing of the "style" enjoined by the School. At the same time another young man was starting in life and slowly beginning to make his mark — a young man from Montauban called Jean Dominique Ingres, whose aims in art were very different from those of David, Gros, Prudhon or Gericault. Ingres, who is realistic in his portraits and as detailed and veracious as Holbein himself, had conceived a classical ideal which should take its source, not from the Romans, but from their masters the Greeks. He joined issue with David by attempting the reconstitu- tion of an antiquity that should have more truth and intimacy and no touch of pomposity. At the same time he was strongly attracted by the Middle Ages and by the early Italians, who at that time were utterly unknown, and even by certain Byzantine simplifications. A little later he became so greatly preoccupied with Raphael as to imagine 10 that he might in his turn give a fresh version of Greek art by means of an interpretation of the great Umbrian, to which the realism that is natural to the French race would give weight. His Oedipus, a picture that is remarkable for its truth, had already scandalised David's pupils by its colouring and its freedom of expression. His Jupiter welcoming Thetis, which may be considered as the first sign of the art of Gustave Moreau and the English Pre-Raphaelites, had in it some- thing that was at once Greek and primitive, strangely conventionalised and marked with a truly Alexandrine morbidezza. His Francesca da Rimini was full of reminiscences of the Tuscan quattrocentists and in his Louis XIII's Vow which was exhibited at the Salon of 1827 he showed himself an ardent admirer of Raphael. Thus on all hands and in different manners David's tyranny was being defied and the past coming to life again. Men began to reject the Roman tradition in order to take up the ideas of the Renaissance or go straight to the Greeks themselves. On the other hand they felt the desire of drawing the themes for a new style of painting from modern life, and again the Egyptian expedition aroused a taste for the East. Realism raised* itself to the heights of lyrical and decorative beauty because military heroism had transformed daily life into something epical and had opened a new world to artists' eyes. Those who like Ingres were drawn to the past, as well as those who like Gros and Gericault looked entirely to the future, showed an equal zeal and emulative ardour for new forms. The art of the XVIII^ century was forgotten or despised, but men's eyes turned towards the Renaissance, some towards Raphael, some towards Titian and Veronese. All there ideas swarmed together in young minds that were torn in two by the conflict between colour and line, between style and life. The atmosphere of heroism, the continual patriotic emotion of the last thirty years, of which not a day but had brought its drama, its triumph or its panic, all contributed to create a desire for the decisive manifestation of that new form of sensibility which was vaguely called Romanticism — a manifestation which had been foreshadowed by Gros and more strongly depned by Gericault. MEDIAE FURIEUSE DIE RASENDE MEDEA PHOT. AD. BRAUN & Co., DORNACH FURIOUS MEDEA REPOS RUHE REST EXTRAIT DE LA MORT DE SARDANAPALE DETAIL AUS DEM „TOD DES SARDANAPAL" FROM "SARDANAPAL'S DEATH" CROMWELL AU CHATEAU DE WINDSOR CROMWELL IM SCHLOSSE VON WINDSOR CROMWELL IN WINDSOR CASTLE HAMLET DEVANT LE HAMLET VOR DEM CORPS DE POLONIUS LEICHNAM DES POLONIUS HAMLET BEFORE POLONIUS' BODY RETOUR DE CHRISTOPHE COLOMB RUCKKEHR DES CHRISTOPH COLUMBUS COLUMBUS' RETURN MADELEINE EN PRlfiRE DIE BITTENDE MAGDALENA MAGDALEN IN PRAYERS PAGANINI JOUANT PAGANINI PAGANINI DU VIOLON VIOLINE SPIELEND PLAYING VIOLIN CHEVALIER BLESSfi VERWUNDETER RITTER WOUNDED KNIGHT 15 It was just at this moment, in the Salon of 1822, two years before Louis Kill's Vow established the classical reputation of Ingres, that the success of Delacroix's Dante and Virgil In the Inferno burst upon the world. Pictorial romanticism and neo Greek classicism found then- masters at one and the same moment. The injustice of enthusiasts who were incapable of that critical judgment which can be conferred by time alone, for many long years opposed as adversaries these two great men, who were destined, by destroying David's mistaken theory, to bestow on the XIX ^^ century its two great modes of expression and render possible the future development of impressionism. Eugene Delacroix was born on the 26*^ April 1798. His father, one of the regicide members of the convention, ambassador to the Batavian Republic and prefect of the Bouches du Rhone and the Gironde, died in 1805. One of Eugene's brothers, Charles Henri, after having fought in all the Republic and Imperial campaigns was made field marshal and Baron of the Empire in 1815 at thirty six years of age. Another brother, Henri, was killed at the age of twenty three at the battle of Friedland. Eugenes sister Henriette married M, de Verninac, prefect of the Bouches du Rhone. Delacroix was related to the Rieseners and the Oebens, who were masters in the art of cabinet making, and to the Berryers and the Lavalettes. Thus his family belonged to the imperial aristocracy and was at the same time strongly tinged with Republicanism. One or two visils to Guerins studio and above all the assiduous frequentation of the Louvre determined his vocation. He was imme- diately impressed by Veronese, Titian and Rubens and set to work to copy them. The attraction he felt for Rubens is a very striking trait. The XVIII^ century had adored the great Flemish master; Watteau, Boucher and Greuze had copied him with enthusiasm, and it may even be said that he directed the course of the whole century by diveting it from the degenerate Italian school, whose influence had been so harmful in the XVII^ century. The XVIII^ century it is true, was 16 forgotten, but Delacroix returned to the master who had been its guiding spirit, and it was to be one day his lot to turn also to Watteau and to Chardin and adopt to his own use their discovery of painting by means of juxtaposed, complementary tones; thus Delacroix was destined to be the connecting link between the XVIII*^ century and impressionism which pushed this discovery to its extreme consequences. At the time that Delacroix was taking counsel of Rubens, Ingres was devoting himself to Raphael. Delacroix taught himself He made a few sketches, a few studies, portraits and caricatures in company with his friend Gericault. But his Dante and Virgil came as a thunderbolt. People in those days were still under the impression of those extraordinary times when men who were utterly unknown the night before awoke in the morning to find themselves famous, and when reputations burst on the world like bomb shells; young Delacroix's picture aroused a sensation equal to that produced by the Raft of the Medusa. But the Medusa, by its mixture of drama and realism, had awakened horror and pity in a public stile quivering with the emotion caused by a peculiarly terrible shipwreck. The Dante and Virgil on the other hand was a commentary of a poem and appealed only to the intellectual side of its beholders. But it made its appeal so violently, with such magic of colouring and such frenzy of movement that it aroused an actually physical emotion. It is one of the finest pictures by which a man of genius has ever begun his career. It postulated, moreover, an important question of aesthetics by placing painting at the service of a work of imagination, a work that was poetic and mystic and unconnected with classical antiquity; it postulated also a question of technique by showing that the artist was resolved to draw by means of coloured planes, to escape from the tyranny of line, to situate all the objects of his picture in an atmosphere which should react on the colour of each one, and to subordinate conventional beauty to intensity of expression. No one had dared attempt such a thing as this since the days of Rubens and Rembrandt. It was considered a heresy by the school of David and by his successor Ingres. It had only been tolerated in Gros and Missing Page a w < ttJ H UJ 2 -J ^ H < ^ 2 Z aj w ^ '^ r u UJ UJ " UJ I UJ < — ' UJ 1- I : O IX t ~ z J oi '7; S UJ 'J1 5 " O UJ d -' -J o 5 o E£ "^ £ > > > Q Q (- z z U D < UJ UJ UJ H I- H z z z < < < Q Q a CHAT KATZE CAT LIONNE PRETE A S'ELANCER LOWIN SPRUNOBEREIT LIONESS READY TO JUMP 19 Gericault on account of their subjects, which dispensed them firom obeying the laws of academic aesthetics and placed them in a category apart, considered as being outside of "grand art". Delacroix handled figures like Dante and Virgil and dared to paint them in a manner that was alive, direct and unconventionalised. Everything concurred to make him appear a barbarian and scandal monger in the eyes of the classics, and for the same reasons an innovator and master in those of the young romantics. The whole of Delacroix, indeed, is in this picture — his faults and the brilliancy of his genius. Elsewhere he has shown himself more learned, surer of purpose, but when we go back to the Dante and Virgil after reviewing the whole of his later work, we recognize that it contains the essential image of his poetic and artistic conscieuce. Its success was great. Thiers, whose opinions were inspired by Gerard, praised the young man loudly and the Government bought his picture for 2000 francs. Delacroix went into the country. Two years later there was exhibited at the same Salon as Ingres' Vceu de Louis XIII ^^'7^ the poignant masterpiece, known as Episode of the Massacres of Scio, -/ a work which combines the deepest tragic feeling with the most dappling technique. It went straight to the heart of a public that had been lately harrowed by the Turkish atrocities. Gericault had just died prematureby from a fall from his horse; every one deplored his loss and eagerly hailed the man who was to continue his work and had already surpassed it. This picture also was bought for 6000 francs. But opinion was greatly divided. Gros himself, who would have wished to see Delacroix compete for the Prix de Rome, and was bitterly vexed at the direction the independant young man was taking, declared that he was "running along the house tops". Delacroix was still haunted by the thought of Rubens. But this time the very nature of his subject led him to adopt the low tones and sad silvery gleams which were to become one of his chief characteristics. In this picture he attains that sombre richness, that crepuscular sumptuousness which make him inimitable and which were unknown to Rubens. These are the qualities that made of Delacroix — disciple and continuer of LA BARQUE DE DON JUAN DER KAHN DES DON JUAN Collectiuii C. Xeurclein, I'aria DON JUAN'S BOAT NOCE JUIVE AU MAROC JUDISCHE HOCHZEIT IN MAROKKO Collection C. Neurdeiii, Paris JEWISH WEDDING IN MOROCCO 23 were Rubens and the great Italians, Titian and Veronese. He considered colour as the chief element in the expression of the feelings. He chose his subjects from foreign romanticism and from history. By such methods he deliberately defied, on the one hand, the academicians and on the other, Ingres, who was far from being beloved by the acade- micians, on account of his realism and his raphaelesque tendencies, but who was still less beloved by the partisans of romanticism, whom he dreaded and who shocked his sense of harmony by their truculence. It thus came about that the Academic party resigned itself to taking sides with Ingres, and, notwithstanding his haughty isolation, lay claim to him as one of themselves in order the better to combat Delacroix. From that moment people persisted in treating as antagonists these two masters, who in reality, were each created to carry on his own lofty work far above the vulgar herd, and indifferent alike to the precepts of the Academy and to the foolish praise and grotesque fury of their own disciples. The result of this campaign was that Delacroix was for a time debarred from receiving the patronage of the State and was unable to sell the seventeen lithographs which he had executed as illustrations of Faust. Goethe saw two of them and liked them. Etchings, drawings and portraits (among them his own) occupied Delacroix, notwithstanding the monetary difficulties in which he now found himself, after having been brought up in easy circumstances. Eventually he was given a commission for a picture of The Death of Charles the Bold at Nancy, of which he made the first sketch in 1828, but which he finished only in 1834. When the Revolution of 1830 broke out it filled him with enthusiasm. His production became as fruitful as that of Risidol Rubens. The admirable sketch of Boissy d'Anglas at the Convention dates from this period. He seut nine canvasses to the Salon of 1831. — Richelieu in the Palais Royal (destroyed in 1848), an Armed Indian, Cromwell looking at the Portrait of Charles I, a Tiger, two water colours, a sepia drawing, the Murder of the Bishop of Liege, and Liberty leading the People to the Barricades. This last picture is one of the finest that has ever 24 been painted, one of the most heroic visions in all art, and its execution is comparable to that of the finest masters. This time his success was triumphant. Once more he was met and welcomed by the emotion of his countrymen, who felt that he had symbolised with marvellous eloquence the awakening of liberty and hope. His genius was destined to be better appreciated under a liberal monarchy than under Charles X. The work was bought, and Louis-Philippe, who however, esteemed his art less than his character, decorated the painter; his sons, on the other hand appreciated Delacroix's greatness. The Duke of Orleans bought the Murder of the Bishop of Liege for his collection. Delacroix was authorised to accompany free of expense. Count Mornay's mission to Morocco, which lasted from January to Augu/st 1832, and from which the painter, who till then had had no first hand knowledge of the East, returned enthusiastic. In the Salon of 1833 he exhibited only a few water colours, but in that of 1834 was shown, together with a Street in Mequinez, the magnificeut Women of Algiers in their apartment, a master, piece of voluptuous mystery. The painting of the negress who is going Out, and who has been cattght with the very sparkle of life on her face, shows the artist as a fore-runner of Manet and of our contemporary painters of the characterist school. In 1835 he exhibited the Jewish Marriage in Marocco, in 1838 the Dancing Dervishes of Jangiers, in 1845 the Saltan Muley-Abd-er-Rhaman leaving his palace in Mequinez, in 1848 Arab Players. In addition to these contributions to the Salons, and a considerable number of water colours, including his Lions and Tigers, we have the works ordered by the July Monarchy; the St. Sebastian, of 1836 (restored to the church of Nantua in 1873), the St. Louis on the Bridge of Taillebourg of 1837, which was painted for the Galerie des Batailles at Versailles, and is the only work in it which comes from the hand of a great master, all the other pictures looking like indifferent vignettes that have been enlarged. The St. Louis is a superb piece of painting, full of furia; the prince's royal blue suit of armour stands out with a brilliancy, a sureness and a delicacy that would alone suffice to prove Delacroix's genius as a colourist. The Crusaders' Entrance into Constantinople must be counted as one of his HAMLET UND HORATIO Neurdeln, Paris MORT DE SARDANAPAL TOD DES SARDANAPAL sardanapal's death FEMMES D'ALGER DANS LEUR APPARTEMENT frauen aus aloier in IHREN OEMACHERN ALGERIAN WOMEN IN THEIR APARTMENT = = Collection C. Neurdein Paris 27 capital works. This picture shows us the painter's love of such harmonies as we see in oriental carpets — dull, rich and attenuated — his sense of lyrical melancholy, his faculty for expressing the passion of sorrow, which is his personal contribution to the tradition of the Venetians and Rubens, and fmally, his predilection for certain peculiar chromatic combinations, and his prophetic divination of the technical experiments of the present day. Notwithstanding these commissions and the sucess that attended them Delacroix was by no means in favour with the Salon juries. The whole clan of Academicians detested him and did not hesitate at times to reject his pictures; not daring to accuse him of painting badly, they attacked his tendencies. In 1834 two of his pictures were rejected; in 1836 the admirable Hamlet in the Graveyard, and in 1839 the Tasso in Prison had the same fate. In 1840 the masterpiece entitled the Justice of Trajan was accepted by a majority of only one vote. This com- position, more than any other of Delacroix's great creations, shows the influence of Veronese and Titian. It hangs now in the Rouen picture gallery, a magnificent and classic work. In 1841 Don Juan's Shipwreck, another marvel, the tragic character of which is of the same kin as Baudelaire's immortal poem, was accepted, but in 1845 the Education of the Virgin was rejected. In the press the struggle was all the more violent and persistent because Delacroix was upheld only in a half-hearted manner by the journalists who were friendly to Romanticism. No doubt in all men's eyes he stood out as the rival of Hugo and Berlioz, and as having won the acclamations of the younger generation. But he did nothing to attract the sympathy of the press whose exaggeration on the contrary was repugnant to his serious and thoughtful temper. He paid no court to Hugo who was an extraordinary adept at making the best possible use of publicity, and even ceased frequenting him afler 1837. He preferred the society of Dumas, Stendhal, Musset and Merimee and he was supported by a moderate press who distinguished between him and the more violent 28 romantics, and did him justice without withholding it from Ingres. Delacroix's love of privacy and his artistic scruples kept him aloof from the extravagant tastes of the romantics, and he accomplished an anticlassical revolution without having recourse to wild exaggeration, illogical paradox or over emphasis; so that notwithstanding his fame, his position was one of misunderstanding and isolation. As early as 1833 Thiers had invited him to decorate the King's room in the Chamber of Deputies with allegorical figures. It will always be a matter of wonder that a man so profoundly bourgeois as Thiers should have had such an admiration for Delacroix from the very beginning; but the fact remains that this admiration lasted all his life and that he was always ready to offer a helping hand to the artist. After the exhibition of Delacroix's decorations in 1836, the scheme was extended and Montalivet invited him to decorate the library of the Chamber, a work which comprised two hemicycles and jive cupolas with twenty pendentives. Delacroix devoted nine years to this work in which he retraced the history of ancient civilisation up to the invasion of Attila. The subjects were distributed as follows: cupola of Poetry, Alexander and the poems of Homer, the Education of Achilles, the Exile of Ovid, Hesiod: cupola of Theology, Adam and Eve, the Captivity of Babylon, the Death of John the Baptist, The Tribute Money; cupola of Legislation, Numa and Egeria, Lycurgus and the Pythia, Demosthenes, Cicero and Verres; cupola of Philosophy, Herodotus and the Magi, Chaldaean Shepherds, the Death of Seneca, Socrates and his Demon; cupola of Science, the Death of Pliny the Elder, Aristotle, Hippocrates, the Death of Archimedes. During the same time Delacroix was finishing the decoration of the library of the Senate, comprising four cupolas and four pendentives, and a Pietd for the Church of S*- Denis. This Pietd, which at the time of its execution was violently attacked, is perhaps the finest religious painting produced by the French school during the XIX. century. Lastly, the picture of Medea, a series of thirteen lithographs illustrating Hamlet, and cartoons for the stained glass windows of the churches of Eu and Dreux, were executed during the same period. The man LE ROI RODRIOUE DER KONIO RODRIGO KINQ RODRIQUES CAVALIER ALBANAIS ALBANISCHER RITTER ALBANESE RIDER CHEVAUX SE BATTANT DANS UNE ECURIE ARABE o = >= SICH BEISSENDE PFERDE IN EINEM ARABISCHEN STALL HORSES FIGHTING IN AN ARABIAN STABLE o a o o = o q 31 who accomplished this gigantic task which is without a precedent since the days of Rubens, was almost constantly ill, and found time as well to travel in Belgium and Holland, to visit George Sand at Nohant, to stop at Dieppe, Champrosay, Vichy, Plombieres and Ems, to write articles on art and to keep his Journal. In 1845 Charles Blanc, at that time director of the Beaux-Arts, entrusted Delacroix with the decoration of the central portion of the cieling of the Apollo Gallery at the Louvre. The theme which had been planned by Le Brun but not executed, was to be the triumph of the Sun. The portions of the gallery which had been already decorated in the XVIII^ century had to be taken into consideration, but since that time the work had been abandoned. Le Brun had naturally devised an allegory in honour of the Roi Soleil, Delacroix, while adhering to the original subject conceived the idea of representing the trmmph of light over darkness, an chaos. In 1851 the finest piece of decorative painting of the XIX*^ century was completed with the assistance of Pierre Andrieu, the most devoted of Delacroix's disciples. In the execution of the paintings in the Chamber he had been helped by Leger-Cherelle, Delestre, Planet and Lassalle- Bordes who in after years spoke spitefully of his master. The cieling had a considerable success and this time dealers and public hastened to buy the works of the great man, who till then had lived in straitened circumstances, and who used to say bitterly and calmly, "For thirly years I have been livre aux betes". In 1854 was inaugurated the Salon de la Paix at the Hotel de Ville. Its eight tympana and eleven caissons surrounding a central motive, which were all decorated by Delacroix, were destroyed by fire at the time of the Commune in 1871. The designs which he left to Andrieux and which were given by the latter in 1869 to the future Musee Carnavalet, shared the same fate; and as the government did not vouchsafe to grant a sum of money to have these works engraved, aU that remains to us of them are two engravings by Calliat. The rest has disappeared 32 for ever like Chasseriaus frescoes in the Cour des Comptes. In 1855 the Universal Exhibition at last brought Delacroix the unqualified homage of the critics, the public and the State; he was made Commander of the legion of honour and granted a Grand Medal. Delacroix was now fifty seven years of age. He thought at one time of becoming director of the Gobelins or of the State museums, but gave up the idea. The Institute, after keeping him waiting for twenty years, during which he was passed over for a series of nonentities, finally admitted him. He was elected in 1857, though he had first become a candidate at the death of Gerard in 1837. In the mean time he had not ceased suffering from the hostility of some of his critics; in 1859 eight of his smaller pictures were the subject of the most spiteful abuse, and yet they included another Hamlet, Entombment and a Calvary which rank among his finest easel pictures. In the mean time he was working at two large compositions and a cieling for the church of S^ Sulpice: Jacob wrestling with the Angel, Heliodorus driven from the Temple, and the Archangel Michael victorious over Satan. The success of these works, which were shown to the public in situ in 1861, somewhat consoled the artist for the humiliation of 1859. He felt decidedly that the time of iniquity was passed. In 1862 and 1863 he set himself to paint variants of some of his celebrated pictures, and worked at a Botzaris surprising a Turkish Camp and a Levying Arab taxes. Thus in his old age he turned once more to the subjects that had kindled and sustained his youthful genius — the Greek struggle for independence and the East These were his last thoughts. He died on August 13*^ 1863 after having drawn up his will with great care. On August 17^ the funeral took place at S^ Germain de Pres, Paris, in the presence of a concourse which would have been greater had not the lateness of the season dispersed many of his friends and admirers. The academic sculptor Jouffroy made a speech on behalf of the Institute with a hidden vein of hostility running through it. On the other hand Paul Huet spoke with heartfelt emotion as an artist and a friend, and prophesied immortality for the dead man. The art critic Philippe Burty classi^ed "V ^ So X v>- N^N - Sj ^. :4^ '^ \, ■ ^ -^ Sj V K - ^ N c^'^ v^ ^^ s^ ( ^ ~' N ^ ■^ '^ X - V \ -^ ^^ r-. s^ ^^. 33 his six thousand drawings and catalogued the vast number of his works. The sale which the deceased had directed should be held, and which he had estimated at 100000 francs, brought in 350000 in 1864. In 1865 his tomb was erected in Pere Lachaise, with neither bust, statue nor emblem on it, according to his instrubtions. Such is the story of one of the most indisputable and powerful men of genius that painting has ever produced, and of one of the noblest characters that have conferred honour upon humanity. He died four years before Ingres, who was treated as his rival, and who, while hating and thinking to combat him, had merely shared with him the supremacy of their art in two neighbouring spheres. It would be well now-a-days to lay aside the error that misled the contemporaries of these two masters, an error which consisted in drawing a parallel between them and treating them as symmetrically opposed to one another, when in reality they had nothing in common and neither of them was in the wrong. Both had disciples who pro- duced nothing of any value and both were infinitely superior to theory. But Ingres really applied his theories and sometimes with unfortun ate results, where as Delacroix's defects and qualities were the product of his soul alone. The thing that strikes one most when one studies him, is the really admirable beauty of that soul. With Franz Liszt's, it is the finest that Romanticism has produced. We must speak of it for it dominated his whole work. Beneath an outward appearance that was cold, taciturn and melancholy, beneath a sensitiveness that was rendered still keener by ill health, lay hidden the most exquisite goodness and the most generous kindliness. He was untouched by envy, and if he suffered it was never from wounded vanity but only when the ideas that he revered were attacked. His absolute discretion — the result of a sense of honour carried to the highest degree — has prevented us from knowing any thing of his private life; but he must have experienced the passion of love with equal sincerity and violence; his nerves, his anxious imaginings, his delicately strung organism, his 34 great intellect must all have been set vibrating to their utmost beut Beneath his outward reserve, he was a creature of burning passion, but it was only in his work that he showed it. In all his writings, which every young artist should constantly re-read, not a word of personal complaint escapes him. He had neither the journalistic and commercial adroitness of Hugo, nor was he subject to the unregulated habits and constant furies of Berlioz. He has been compared to both of these great men because he was a leader of his art, as they of theirs, because he served an analogous ideal and ran the same risks; but a closer study leads us to reject these superficial comparisons and to recognize that morally Delacroix was very different and far superior to them both. He was far more preoccupied with the inward life than either of his two famous contemporaries; his nature had the depth of a poet's and a thinker's. It would be more accurate to compare him to Liszt and Wagner — to Liszt for lyrical beauty, to Wagner for his sense of a new side to tragedy. He is preeminent amongst the Romantics for the loftiness of his spirit, which was both stormy and serene; guided by a superior logic, he corrected inspiration by reason detested chance and exaggeration, considered that boldness should be the result only of determined reflexion, and in the midst of the most fevered daring kept always a sure severity of taste. One may say that Delacroix never forgave himself anything. He was a saint and martyr in his desire for perfection. But fortunately, scrupulous as this desire was, it never chilled his lyrical inspiration and never led him to polish timidly a work of limited scope, to seek perfection in easy paths or to skrink from the most redoutable undertakings. The counsels of his soul were always towards greatness and his slightest sketch is pregnant with the ambition of his genius. His industry was incredible, but this was not known till after his death. It had been commonly believed that like another Rubens he was endowed with miraculous facility, and people were amazed to find in the six thousand drawings arranged by Burty, a proof of the meticulous study which the so-called spontaneous creation of his many master-pieces had necessitated. The frenzy of inspiration carried him away, but he COMBAT DE TOBIE ET DE L'ANGE = o d = o KAMPF DES TOBIAS MIT DEM ENOEL = = d FIGHT BETWEEN TOBIAS AND THE ANOEL Collection GiraDiiou, Piiris TOBIE ET L'ANGE d c n o TOBIAS UND DER ENGEL TOBIAS AND THE ANGEL LE CHRIST AV JARDIN DES OLIVIERS CHRISTUS AUF DEM OLBERGE CHRIST ON THE MOUNT OF OLIVES 37 verijied all that he imagined by means of constant study of life, and he did not exaggerate when he wrote to the critic Theophile Silvestre, who had asked him in 1855 for some biographical details. "You may say that as far as definite compositions go, all drawn out and perfectly ready for execution, I have as many as would fill two human existences, and as for plans of every sort I have enough for four hundred years". In Delacroix's intelligence, all great poetry, all the emotions of history and all the forms of human passion were in- cessantly materialising. He was able instantly to transpose into colour and form the world which he carried within him. We understand well enough that at the end of his life, when people were marvelling at his fecundity, he should have written. "I shall die in a rage", as he thought of all that death would prevent his accomplishing, and as he measured the distance between what he had done and what he desired to do. His was a race against time with his art and this struggle, as much as the nobility of his character, makes of him a represen- tative man and a hero. We have said that since Rubens no one had arisen capable of producing creative work so powerful and so abundant. But there the analogy ceases. Rubens' work is all on the outside. He is the in- comparable colourist of the happy and exuberant life of the senses. He knows nothing of the inward life, aims not at all at expressing the soul, Baudelaire's few lines have described him in an unforgettable manner, "fleuve d'oubli, jardin de la paresse, oreiller de chair fraiche ou Ton ne peut aimer". (1) He was exclusively a painter. Delacroix's tendency, on the other hand, was to express in especial the life of the intellect and passions; in this respect he is rather the descendant of Rembrandt, though at the same time he preserves the decorative and sumptuous side of the Venetians. Most important of all, he was the first of his century to understand the necessity of venturing on an art that should borrow from all the other arts their sources of emotion — a synthetic art, such as Wagner, following Liszt's counsel, was to accomplish a few years later. Delacroix was a musician and, like (1) "River of oblivion, garden of idleness, pillow of fair flesh virhere no man can love." 38 Ingres, had begun by playing the violin. He was exceedingly lettered, passionately devoted to poetry, philosophy, political and religions history; writing was one of his pre-occupations and he succeeded in it, as is proved by his Journal. He did not wish to sacrifice painting and debase it to the rank of illustration, like the school of David and the inferior romantics, such as Deveria, Delaroche and Vernet; his desire was that it should serve, with all the optical magic at its command, those universal feelings, the expression of which should be the essential aim of all artists, while at the same time the passion of painting should be satisfied. For these reasons each one of Delacroix's great pictures is not only a masterpiece of painting but at the same time an expression of power and purpose, which exalts the heart and imagination and kindles in the soul whatever is capable of being kindled by poetry, music and philosophy. This is exactly what Wagner attempted and succeeded in achieving when he treated symphonic music as the connecting link of a whole series of general ideas, which, by passing through its medium acquire new strength. This too is what Berlioz had a glimpse of when he invented the symphonic poem and "programme music", though his work is touched with an exaggeration which was due to the fact that he was rather a poet and a colourist than a really original musician. This, on the contrary, is what Victor Hugo, who was deaf to music and a mediocre connaisseur of the plastic arts, failed to accomplish when he tried to exclude from his poetry every art that was alien to his eloquent rhetoric. Thus Dela- croix belonged both to the past and to the future — to the past in that he looked towards the Venetians and Rubens rather than sought, like Ingres and later Manet, sources that were either unknown to the ancients and primitives, or frankly modern — to the future in that he generalised his art until he brought about a fusion of the different modes of emotion. His symphonic music did not consist of linear harmony such as Ingres conceived it, but of colour. He was a marvellous musician in colour — our greatest together with Watteau. Like Watteau, whom he studied and whose soul his own great soul, with its sadness and LA JUSTICE DE TRAJAN DIE JUSTIZ DES TRAJAN TRAJAN'S JUSTICE LION LOWE LION TIORE TIOER TIGER 41 its depth, could not fail to understand, he considered colour not as a mere pleasure for the eyes, but as a language. This is another difference that proves his originality as regards the Venetians and Rubens, whom he has been accused of re-editing, so simply does he carry on their tradition. These masters were guided solely by their love of fine colour and they chose the subjects that were best fitted to show off the admirable play of colour which was their only ideal. Delacroix, on the contrary, appropriated the mute language of colour to the ideas and passions he wished to express. If his conceptions were those of a painter and not of a poet or philosopher who makes use of colour to express his abstract visions (an error into which so many distinguished artists have fallen) it comes from the fact that he con- ceived the form and chromatic appearance of his ideas simultane ously with the ideas themselves. In short, he was a painter in the whole meaning of the word. Some men conceive forms and harmonies and then look about for subjects to which to fit them; these may produce fine pieces of painting but their pictures fail as compositions; their hands and eyes are more interesting than their minds and they are not so much artists and thinkers as workmen. For others again — and these are infinitely more cultivated and refined than the former the mind is all. They conceive their ideas and then seek to adapt them to plastic forms; they thus produce works which are distinguished but technically feeble, and which, unsustained by plastic expression, lose their interest directly the idea ceases to be comprehensible. Such men would do better to write or to compose symphonies. An enormous number of remarkable persons have come to grief in one of these two manners. Of the former there remain at any rate a few fine fragments; of the latter, nothing. Delacroix is immortal because he possessed both gifls in an equal degree. He demanded from colour the secret of psychological emotion and used it as the language of the passions, while Ingres demanded from line and its subtle inflexions the secret of intellectual emotion and the language of the mind. Delacroix has often been accused of bad drawing, and it is true that there are great shortcomings in his works 42 if one's conception of drawing is linear perfection such as Ingres'. But such an accusation must be withdrawn if the question is considered under another aspect. Delacroix did not believe, like Ingres, in the inherent perfection of drawing for the sake of drawing; in his eyes this notion was something too abstract and frigid. He desired above all to express the life of heroic humanity and he understood that from such a point of view the first quality of drawing is that of movement. Ingres was an indifferent colourist and colouring seemed to him merely an accessory, as also did beauty of surface. Delacroix, on the contrary, by seeking movement in the first place, was led to make no distinction between line and colour and to conceive of the drawing of living creatures as a matter not of line but of volume and plane, like a sculptor. Volumes and planes filled with colour, together with the values of objects and figures, made up for him the whole of drawing, and one may say that as regards these he never went wrong. He indicated values with extraordinary certainty, whilst Ingres expended enormous pains and only succeeded by means of success ively tinting the interior of the outlines he had traced. The dispute over Delacroix's bad drawing is the same as the dispute over the relative merits of drawing by ontline and drawing by volume; it has lasted to the present day and the same difficulties were aroused with respect to Manet and the impressionists. Lastly, Delacroix, unlike Ingres, was greatly pre-occupied with the desire of enveloping his creatures with an atmosphere, and in this he succeeded by means of making the colouring of the surroun- dings re-act on the figures. His first thought was life; Ingres first thought was his theory of aesthetics. That this so called bad draughts- man had a passion for drawing is proved by his six thousand posthumous drawings, his lithographs and etchings. But the tendency of all these is towards the accentuation of movement and character rather than towards an exact reproduction of objects. He did not see things in themselves but as elements of the drama he had conceived. All his irregularities of form are due, not to want of skill but to a deliberate accentuation of movement, and the same may be said of Michael '^>K HAMLET LA GRECE EXPIRANT SUR LES RUINES DE MISSOLONOHI goodoooo GRIECHENLANDS UNTERGANG AUF DEN TRUMMERN VON MISSOLONOHI GREECE'S FALL ON THE RUINS OF MISSOLONOHI 000 = 00100000 CAVALIERS ARABES EN RECONNAISSANCE ARABISCHE REITER REKOGNOSZIEREND RECONNOITRING ARABIAN RIDERS 45 Angelo and Rodin in contradistinction to the ancients. In a word, Delacroix bent nature to his creative purpose; he drew his inspiration from her without ever letting himself be mastered by respect for imitative truth. His faults are the faults of strength not of weakness — the faults of a giant, as are Shakespeares violences. Taine in a page of his Essays has admirably eulogised, even while admitting them. "There was a man whose hand trembled and who expressed his conceptions by vague smears of colour; he was called the colourist, but colour for him was only a means. What he wished to render was the inward soul of things and their living passion. He was not happy like the Venetians; he did not care for the mere pleasure of the eyes — a voluptuous exterior, a gay and splendid display of exuberant forms. His eye pierced deeper; he saw us as we are in ourselves — all our generous ardours, all our torturing qualms. He sought every- where for the most exalted tragedy, in Byron and Dante, in Tasso and Shakespeare, in the East, in Greece, in the realm of dreams, in the domain of history. And always he brought forth pity and despair and tenderness; always some exquisite or heart rending emotion breathes from his strange, empurpled tones, from his wine coloured and smoky clouds, from the hue of his seas and skies, livid as a sick man's fevered skin, from his divine, irradiated depths of blue, where downy clouds float like celestial doves in glory, from the frail, slender forms of his creatures, from their quivering and sensitive flesh which reveals the tumult beneath, from their bodies that are tense with rapture or wrung with agony — from all a like, in animate or alive. And his beings live with so spontaneous and irresistible an impulse, and surrounding nature contributes so powerfully to the impression, that all his faults are forgotten, and we feel that he has gone beyond the painters of old and become the revealer of another world and the interpreter of our age. Chide if you will as you compare him to the great masters, but remember that he has said a thing that is new the one thing that we needed." The criticism is admirable and worthy of Taine's lucid mind. We may endorse it all, with the exception of the first sentence. With the 46 ill health from which he constantly suffered, the great man's hand no doubt trembled at times and there may be found in his works many enfinished and summary figures which seem wanting in balance on account of the very force of their movements. But "vague smears of colour" never satisfied Delacroix. Here Taine speaks as an intellectual, imbued 'with the classical ideal of detailed perfection, and such, no doubt, was the impression produced during his life-time by Delacroix on men who compared him to Ingres. They would have said the same of Rubens. It is enough for us now-a-days to look at pieces of painting like that of the dead student in the Barricade, the nude woman in the Crusaders, the negress in the Women of Algiers. the Trajan and the Lions, to place Delacroix on a level with the most admirable dranghtsmen of all time. As for his small canvasses and the works of his latter years they are treated as sketches. Like Rubens he makes of them above all notes of colour set at unison with the feeling of the piece. As he felt the swifl approach of death his decorator's nature grew impatient of the refinements of execution which are proper to easel pictures. In order to understand we must divine him, we must, like himself, be more attracted by the idea than by the technique; his colouring, however, is always admirable and Taine has described it in words full of significance. In him, as in Watteau, colour becomes an element of the intellect and the passions; it speaks — it gives voice to the idea. It is not flung, like a patchwork garment, to cover over a conception; it is in- corporated with the conception itself. And yet, Delacroix, great colourist and lyric poet as he was, and enamoured of all the sumptuous side of life, never painted for the sole pleasure of painting. For many artists this instinctive pleasure is the whole end of their art, but he invariably sacrificed this pleasure to his idea, as strictly as Ingres himself, though with a totally different intention. The example of the Crusaders is typical. Every thing in such a picture lent itself to a triumphant display of brilliant colouring. But Delacroix's object was not to show off his power of painting horses and armour, banners and nudes, rich garments and imposing landscapes. What he desired LA FIANCEE D'ABYDOS DIE BRAUT VON ABYDOS COLLECTION C. NEURDEIN, PARIS THE BRIDE OF ABYDOS JANISSAIRES A L'ATTAQUE JANITSCHAREN BEIM ANGRIFF JANISSARIES ON TO THE CHARGE ROGER DELIVRANT ANG^LIQUE ROGER BEFREIT ANGELIKA COLLECTION C. NEURDEIN, PARIS ROGER DELIVERING ANGELICA 49 was to express the inherent sadness of conquest, the weariness that comes afler effort, the ennui that overtakes men of violence when the struggle is over. With this intention he has attuned the whole work to a scale of colour which is intense but sombre. Ingres discounted colour, ignored it; his love of line led him to bleach his colour in order to leave all its strength and purity to his form. Eugene Carriere, at a later period, went so far as to restrict himself to brown and white, so as to concentrate the attention on his purpose of expressing soul by means of modelling alone. Delacroix was a marvellons colourist, but not merely a colourist, and he made the tonality of his pictures subservient to their general meaning. This faculty of restraint in the midst of passion of inspiration controlled, but not lessened by logic, is possessed by men of genius alone and by only some of them, such as Leonardo, Rembrandt and Velazquez — men of thought and concentration. This is the race to which Delacroix belongs. The Massacres of Scio is conceived in the same spirit. Any painter of the present day would have seized the opportunity of making the dappling rays of an eastern sun stream down with untempered brilliancy on blood and flesh, on arms and harness. Delacroix has kept the whole work to a colouring which is almost sombre, and which of itself gives the scene its effect of horror. The colour of the sea in the Bark of Don Juan forms the Lett motiv of this drama, like the har- monies of Tristan and Isolde in the Wagnerian poem of accursed and impossible love. But in this deliberately lowered key, amidst this lofly melancholy, in this perpetual twilight, which is the very colour of romantic pessi- mism, there blossoms a world of delicate shades, which by these very means gain greater richness and savour. Some of the greens, some of the carmines are inimitable in their keen acidity. Things like the nude and pearl-coloured torso of the woman who is bound to the Turk's saddle in the Massacres of Scio are unique in the whole of painting; we are reminded of Velazquez and of certain Rubens-but with a difference. Such painting gives proof of an optical sensibility which is astonishing. The skies are as fine, and in a different manner, 50 as the skies of Ruysdael and of Turner. These are indeed those tints of storm and decay which Baudelaire loved, and of which he speaks, when d propos of Edgar Allan Poe, he hails Delacroix as a man who "raised his art to the height of great poetry". From this point of view the man who was the descendant of Veronese and Rubens and who was influenced by Constable, is the true prophet of our modern intellectuality with its love of sumptuousness charged with sorrow; he painted the heavens of an age haunted by the dreams of Schopen- hauer and Nitzsche. He is epic, but, unlike Hugo, not superficial; he bound the heart of humanity to that of nature herself. He and Ingres were the two masters of his period. If the majority of critics and painters persisted in maintaining an opposition between them, instead of admiring in them two equally necessary and logical modes of art, there were still a few men of talent who understood the value of a divided admiration without considering it contradictory. The most remarkable of these was Chasseriau, who died prematurely. He first became a pupil of Ingres' out of enthusiasm for the harmony and purity of neo-Greek art. But his fiery Creole nature and the revelation of the East led him to take his stand beside Delacroix. He saw in Ingres the danger of seeking for inspiration in the past and in an obstinate denial of the present. Delacroix seemed to him to open out the future. A classical follower of Ingres' in his frescoes in the Cour des Comptes, in which he shows himself the precursor of Puvis de Chavannes, and a romantic in his oriental pictures, which reveal him the forerunner of Besnard, Chasseriau was the friend and inspirer of Gustave Moreau. Moreau, through him, was influenced equally by Ingres and Delacroix and aspired to combine the form of the one with the colouring of the other, and to use them in an art that was symbolical — an oriental and antique vision, which grew gradually to be haunted by recollections of the primitives, of Persian miniatures and Hindoo art. Thus little by little the waverings of a mind that was too curiously cultured and learned, and too much taken up with religions exegesis, led him to lose Delacroix's gifl of movement and vitality, without acquiring Ingres' linear perfection; his manner MASSACRE DE SCIO MASSAKER VON CHIOS Collection C. Neurdein, Paris MASSACRE IN CHIOS CHEVAL EFFRAYE PAR L'ORAGE VOM OEWITTER ERSCHRECKTES PFERD HORSE FRIGHTENED BY LIGHTNING LION DECHIRANT UN CADAVRE LOWE, EINEN LEICHNAM ZERREISSEND LION TEARING UP A CORPSE ,S Q UJ r C- O UJ a o o H Ci UJ Q 'UJ i: o o m H >- ODD > > > z z z I m rn 73 ^ O CD m oo m o o m 73 Z C „ CO X o z 55 became frigid and he remained academic in spite of the erudite wideness of his mythical scenes. The romantic historical painters, on the other hand, did not inherit the genius that animated Delacroix's creations and rapidly fell into declamation and hardness, like Benjamin Contant and Gerome. At the present moment, after M. Jeans-Paul Laurens, M. Rochegrosse seems to be the only artist who remembers Delacroix's principles, though attaching more importance to erudition and truth of atmosphere. Ingres influenced Chasseriau and Moreau indirectly. His direct school included men like Amaury Duval and Mottez. But it came to a rapid end and the Academy which had hesitated so long to acknowledge Ingres, and made up its mind to do so only in order to discountenance Delacroix, was quite incapable of understanding the realistic side of Ingres' genius. It confounded this side of him with his sickly Davidian and neo-Raphaelesque ideal, so that we may say with truth that it understood neither Delacroix nor Ingres. The consequences of the antagonism between these two masters were most unforeseen. Ingres' realism came to life again in Manet, whose earliest work was welcomed by the old artist who had painted the portrait of the elder Bertin; again, realists, like Courbet, who was still, however, very romantic, and Manet, whose desire was to be purely modern, detested the Romantics as violently as the academic school had done, though for other reasons. Thus Delacroix, confounded with his worthless imitators, exercised no influence over a generation that had made up its mind to reject historical and allegorical painting in every form and limit its efforts to representing its own age. The lucidety — the truth of Ingres' portraits seemed far more conformable to the new aspirations, and thus the unjust comparison continued its course. By a strange irony it was Ingres, the implacable enemy of the great liberal Delacroix, and the idol of the Academy — it was Ingres who authorised the liberal and anti. Academic movement which was destined to grow and develop until it reached the audacities of impressionism. But when Claude Manet's example drove Manet himself (afler his first characterist and realist' works) to the study of the open air, a 56 new turn of fortune's wheel cast down Ingres influence and set up Delacroix in a place of honour. The theory of complementary tones enabled people to appreciate the daring of the Crusaders, just at the moment when Ingres' inadequacy as a colourist caused disillusioned seekers to turn away from him. At the same time the XVIII*^ century- was discovered. Its glorious resurrection after seventy years' interment was brought about by the efforts of the brothers Goncourt and of Burty; people learned to oppreciate that exquisite and learned period of the French school which had been crushed between the XVII*^ century of Le Brun and David's reactionary teaching. Men recognized in it the first indications of modernism and characterisation, the first gropings after an expression of atmospheric ambience. Fragonard found a successor in Renoir, Boucher in Besnard, Debucourt, Saint Aubin and Cochin in our modern illustrators, Willette, Lepere and Steinlen. People then understood that Delacroix alone had perceived in Watteau and Chardin the value of the new technique and that thus, at a moment when they were in danger of being totally forgotten he re-linked these masters to the XIX^^ century, at the very time too that he was transposing into France Constable's tragic art and Turner's fairy visions. Thus Delacroix set his seal on the second period of the movement originated by Manet, just as Ingres set his on the first. This was the posthumous revenge of the two rivals against Academic art which had made use of each to injure the other and had understood the genius of neither. We live at a moment when the ideal of painting seems to be on an uninterrupted downward grade. Out of hatred for the School and its stereotyped art, people no longer paint compositions; they are afraid of literary painting, which they pretend to confuse with the painting of ideas, though it is only its caricature, and they have carried the imitation of reality to such an extreme that it has become a mere mania for snap shotting. Since the death of the last great French decorator, Puvis de Chavannes, the efforts of Besnard, Henri Martin and M^^^ Dufau to create an art that shall symbolise modern ideas, ODALISQUE ODALISKE ODALISK ARABE COUCHE LIEGENDER ARABER LYING ARAB TETE DE VIEILLE FEMME (ETUDE) STUDIENKOPF EINER ALTEN FRAU HEAD OF AN OLD WOMAN (STUDY) LE COMTE PALATIANO DER GRAF PALATIANO COUNT PALATIANO LA CAPTIVITY DE BABYLONE DIE BABYLONISCHE GEFANGENSCHAFT CAPTIVITY AT BABYLON 59 have unfortunately had no imitators wortlj^r of these fine painters. Modern manners encourage the pursuit of rapid success and people shrink from undertaking works that demand a prolonged effort. Official painting though driven out of serious collections, eclipsed in the Salons and reprobated by the youthful generation, still gets the lion's share of State patronage. Historical painting is discredited and even barred on principle. Every kind of subject' is looked at with suspicion and people only ask from a picture that it should please and surprise the eyes. In these conditions, works like Delacroix's frighten and discourage artists. They see them in the Louvre, surrounded with a halo of glory like the Titians, the Rembrandts, the Rubens and the Veroneses, but they would not venture on an attempt to rival them. But this state of things must come to an end. It is impossible that painting should continue much longer to be so degraded as to produce nothing but mere skilful imitations, whose only object is to illustrate an anecdote with the empty charm of an instantaneous photograph — impossible that the great aims which have made of painting an art as lofty as poetry and symphonic music, should be forgotten at the dictates of fashion. The dilemma will soon have to be faced of considering painting as an art in its decline, or of returning to great compositions that shall express the passions and general ideas of modern humanity. When that day comes, an eternal instinct will set men seeking a connecting link between the past and the promise of the future — a patent of nobility, a worthy genealogy for the new effort and then with a single impulse the world of art will turn towards Delacroix. It will find no nobler, no more significant figure, no loflier teaching than that of the marvellous dreamer whom Baudelaire with his unerring divination placed among the "beacons" that illumine the way of mankind on its march towards infinity. o INDEX OF PICTURES y Self-Picture page 7 From the "Massacre in Chios" , , 8 The Musicians , , 8 Furious Medea , , 11 Rest , P /From "Sardanapals Death" . , , 12 Cromwell in Windsor Castle . , , 13 _, Hamlet before Polonius Body . , , 13 Columbus Return , , 13 -Paganini playing Violin ... , , 14 Magdalen in Prayers .... , , M Wounded Knight , , 14 , Dante and Virgil Crossing the Lake of the infernal City . , 17 Cat , 18 Lioness Ready to jump ... , , 18 Rape of Rebecca , , 21 Don Juan's Boat , 22 /Jewish Wedding in Morocco . , , 22 Hamlet and Horatio .... , , 25 .Sardanapals Death , , 26 ^Algerian Women in their apart- ment , , 26 King Rodrigues , 29 Albanes Rider , , 30 Hores fighting in an Arabian stable , , 30 ■