ILLUSTRATED "BIOGRAPHIES OF 
 THE GREAT Q^RTISTS. 
 
 JEAN LOUIS ERNEST MEISSONIER 
 
ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 New Series. 
 
 Bound in Ornamented Cloth, Crowjt 8m Price 2s. 6d. each. 
 
 MEISSONIER. A Memoir, drawn from various sources. 
 By J. W. MOLLETT, B.A., Officier de 1' Instruction Publique 
 (France) ; Author of ' Life of Rembrandt, ' &c. Illustrated with 
 eight reproductions of Meissonier's well-known paintings, includ- 
 ing the Chess-Players, La Rixe, the Halt at the Auberge, the 
 Reader, the Flemish Smoker, and a Portrait of the Artist. 
 
 MURILLO. A Memoir derived from recent Works. By 
 Ellen E. Minor. Illustrated with eight Engravings after the 
 Master's celebrated paintings, including the Immaculate Concep- 
 tion, in the Louvre ; the Prodigal Son, at Stafford House ; the 
 Holy Faniily (with the scodella), at Madrid ; the Beggar Boy, in 
 the Louvre ; and a Portrait of the Artist. 
 
 THE EARLY ITALIAN SCULPTORS, Niccola 
 PiSANO, Ghiberti and Donatello. By Leader Scott, 
 Author of "Fra. Bartolommeo, " &c. Illustrated with engravings 
 of the marble pulpit of Pisano, the bronze Gate of the Baptistery 
 at Florence, by Ghiberti; the "St. George" of Donatello, and 
 ten other examples of the sculptor's art. 
 
 OVERBECK. By J. Beavington Atkinson. Com- 
 prising his early years in Liibeck, Studies at Vienna, Settlement 
 at Rome, and the Rise of the New School of Christian Art. His 
 works at Assisi, Frankfort, and Cologne. Illustrated with eight 
 Engravings after some of his most noted paintings, including 
 Christ blessing Little Children, the Holy Family, &c. • 
 
 ROMNEY, HOPPNER and LAWRENCE. Me- 
 moirs, by Lord Ronald Gower, Author of ' Figure Painters of 
 Holland.' Illustrated with reproductions of the Artists' most 
 popular works, and Portraits of the Painters. In preparation. 
 
 ROUSSEAU and MILLET. By W. E. Henley, 
 
 Author of ' Millet : a Memoir.' Illustrated with Engravings. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
 CORREGGIO. By M. Compton Heaton. Illustrated 
 
 with Engravings from La Notte, II Giorno, and other paintings. 
 
 In preparation. 
 
A^E : S S ONIE 
 
The whole world without Art would be one great 7mlderness.'\ 
 
 MEISSONIER 
 
 JOHN W._MOLLETT, B.A. 
 
 OFFICIER DE l'iNSTRUCTION PUBLIQUE, FRANCE 
 AUTHOR OF 'LIFE OF SIR DAVID WILKIE ' 
 ETC 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON 
 
 :CROWN BUILDINGS, FLEET STREET 
 1882 
 
{All rights reserved.) 
 
 CHISWICK 1 PRESS :—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, 
 CHANCERY LANE. 
 
 THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSCL .. . JSRARY 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IN all matters of disputation I think that the biographer 
 and the critic should be two persons : the witness should 
 not assume the function of the advocate. 
 
 There is no greater temptation than hero-worship to the 
 student of the life of a man of genius and industry and 
 worth, and it is impossible to study the history of such a 
 life as the following without becoming filled with sympathy 
 for its subject. 
 
 I should, therefore, had I attempted criticisms of my own, 
 have been a partial and worthless judge. The question of 
 M. Meissonier's merit in the great arena in which his tem- 
 porary, or permanent, victory has been won will not be 
 decided in our day. He represents a method of dealing 
 with art which is, and will always be, detestable to one 
 school of thought, and admirable to its opposite. He is 
 essentially, if I may use the expression, a party painter, and, 
 as the permanent victory of his school would represent the 
 overthrow of the whole system of theories and principles 
 which the lovers of the " Ideal " call the Renaissance of 
 Art, so the history of his success, in the judgment of the 
 academic writers of his own country, offers only a new 
 application of Voltaire's celebrated mot, "Demandez au 
 crapaud ce que c'est que la beaute," &c. 
 
 For the conflict which will rage over his memory, as it 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 does to tMs day over that of many an ancient master, I 
 contribute a few tumbrils of ammunition to either side, 
 and have found the impartial setting down in order of a 
 selection of conflicting criticisms the most convenient form 
 of doing so. The work, as happily the life, is far from 
 complete. Unlike the work of the Master himself, the 
 details are only indicated, but they refer the student who 
 cares to go deeper into the subject, to sources which will 
 lead him further; and, I hope, supply the less careful 
 reader with a general idea of the significance, for good or 
 for evil as he may have been led to regard it, of Meissonier's 
 mission in art. 
 
 J. W. M. 
 
 Blackheath, 
 
 October, 1881. 
 
 LB BON COUSIN. 
 
 From cue •* (jouitu liemois." 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. — "Le Milieu expliqub l'Homme, 
 l' Atelier commente l'CEuvke." 
 
 Lb Milieu. — Description of M. Meissonier's Houses at Paris and Poissy, 
 and of his Pictures, Models and Collections (1-5). Portrait of M. 
 Thiers (4 ), The Prussians at Poissy (5). The " All^gorie Ven- 
 geressc" (5). 
 
 L'Homme. — Eai-ly Life and first steps in Art (6-7). Tony Johannot (7). 
 Leon Cogniet (7). Two personal descriptions of M. Meissonier 
 (8). Biographical Notices by M. Gautier and M. Burty (9-10). 
 
 L'GEdvre.— Early Works (10), Engraved Work (10). Earliest paint- 
 ing (11). Woodcuts of The Old Bachelor (11). Discours sur I'His- 
 toire universelle (12). Chute d'uu Ange (12). English Engravers 
 of French designs (12). Orlando Furioso (12-13). Paul and Vir- 
 ginia (13). La Chaumiere Indienne (13-16). French Humour and 
 Sentiment (16). Les Franpais peints par eux memes (17-21). 
 Lazarillo de Tormes (21-22). Historical paintings (23). 
 
 CHAPTER IL— L'CEuvRE. 
 
 Stages of Criticism (24-25). Works of 1839 (25). Of 1840-43 (27). 
 Salon of 1848-49 (28). Of 1852 (29). Of 1853 (29-31). Criticisms 
 of the Comte de Vie! Chastel (29). Of M. Gautier (30). Deca- 
 meron picture in the manner of Watteau (31). Landscape (31). 
 The " Athenaium Frangais " on the " Chatoyants " (32). Opinions 
 on the New Style in 1855 (33). Universal Exhibition, 1855 (33). 
 Work in the style of Rembrandt (37). Exhibition of the "Caisse 
 des Secours/' 1860 (37-38). The Romantic School (38). The In- 
 genious Publisher (39). Remarkable Criticisms (39-41). Salon of 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 1861 (41). M. Meissonier as a Portrait-Painter (42). Works of 
 
 1861 (43). More Remarkable Criticisms (43-44). M. Meissonier 
 elected to the Academy (44). English International Exhibition of 
 
 1862 (44-45). Exhibition of the " Cercle de I'Union Artistique," 
 1862 (45). La Halte (45). Brussels Exhibition, 1863 (46). Illus- 
 trations to the " Contes Remois " (47-48). Eugfene Delacroix (48-49). 
 Edmond About on Meissonier (50-52). Decamps (51). Minute 
 Study of Detail ; the English Pre-Raphaelite School (53). " 1807" 
 and "1814" (54). M. Charles Meissonier in the Salon of 1866 
 (55). Numerous Exhibitions at Paris in 1867 (56). 
 
 CHAPTER III. — The International Exhibition op 1867. 
 
 Polemics in Criticism (57-58). Government Patronage of the Fine Arts 
 (58). Jury Awards (59). The " Times " Critic (60-61). Ge'rome 
 — Cabanel— Rousseau (61-62). Collection of Criticisms (62-65). 
 Official Catalogue of Meissonier's Works (65). Sketch of the His- 
 tory of the French School from 1867 to 1878 (66-67). Exhibition 
 of the Collections of Sir Richard Wallace, at Bethnal Green, 1872 
 (68-70). Analogy between the methods of Millais and Meissonier 
 (69). Collection of M. Laurent Richard, illustrating French Art 
 from 1830 to 1860 (70). Criticisms of M. Rene Menard (70-71). 
 Vienna Exhibition, 1873 (72). Conclusion (72-73). 
 
 Index of Paintings by Meissonier 74 
 
 Index of Books containing Illustrations by Meissonier 75 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1, Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier from an etching hy L. Massard Front. 
 
 2. Le Bon Cousin 
 
 3. Le Bon Hotelier . 
 
 4. The Chess-players 
 
 5. The Reader . 
 
 6. La Rixe 
 
 7. Le Faucon . 
 
 8. The Flemish Smoker 
 
 9. The Halt . 
 
 1 0. Le Bon Docteur . 
 
 11. Une Halte . 
 
 12. Le Malentendu . 
 
 from the " Contes Etmois" 
 
 from the " Contes JRemois" 
 
 In the posfsession of H.M. the 
 Queen. From- a Drawing 
 
 from an etching hy P. Bajon 
 
 In the possession of H.M. the 
 Queen. From a Drawing 
 
 from the " Contes Eemois " 
 
 from an etching hy P. Eajon 
 
 from the painting in the Hertford 
 House Gallery 
 
 from the " Contes E6mois" 
 
 In the possession of Mr. Mackay. 
 From an etching^ hy Lalause . 
 
 from the " Contes Eeniois" 
 
 13. Le H^raut d'Ai'mes de Murcic from '■ Paris- Mtircie" Numero 
 
 uniqioe, Dec. 1879 . . , 
 
 14. La Culotte des Cordeliers . from the " Contes Ehnois" 
 
 via 
 xii 
 
 10 
 
 18 
 
 26 
 36 
 40 
 
 46 
 49 
 
 52 
 61 
 
 66 
 69 
 
 ^ Given in the Sale " Catalogue de Tableaux, composant la gallerie 
 de M. John W. Wilson " (March, 1881). 
 
 The etchings numbered 5,8,11 are published by Messrs. Goupil 
 et Cie. of Paris, and Bedford Street, Covent Garden. 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 CHAPTER l' 
 
 IT has happened to M. Meissonier, perhaps, as often as 
 to any living man of celebrity, to have the pleasure of 
 reading the history of his own life, written from the point 
 of view of a biographer constrained by a necessity, which 
 must have been very amusing to his subject, to evolve the 
 greatest part of his work out of a process of imagination 
 and conjecture. The life of the Nestor of French art is 
 not yet public, and it is to be hoped, in consideration of the 
 important epoch that his works mark, that his Boswell will 
 in due time arise. In the meantime his works are before 
 the world, and among them, the most characteristic and 
 interesting, his houses. Every biographical notice of M. 
 Meissonier begins with a description of his ateliers at Paris 
 or at Poissy, in the arrangement and decoration of which 
 he has expressed in the concrete the ideal of his earliest 
 pictures, " Le milieu explique I'homme, I'atelier commente 
 I'oeuvre." The saying of Diderot, with which M. Jules 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 MEISSONIF.R. 
 
 Claretie heads his recently-published biographical sketch, 
 has more truth with reference to M. Meissonier than in 
 general. 
 
 The Paris house of M. Meissonier is in the Boulevard 
 Malesherbes, near the Pare Monceau ; a brilliantly- written 
 description of it has appeared in " The World " (of June 2, 
 1880). It is in the heart of the artists' quarter, and the 
 architecture of the whole neighbourhood is as characteristic 
 of its inhabitants as our own Hampstead and other quarters 
 where artists congregate. M. Meissonier has built his 
 house in the style of the Italian Renaissance : — 
 
 " There is little to see outside, beyond a large expanse of 
 masonry as neatly joined as a piece of cabinet-work: but 
 within, you have the terraces and the arcades which form suck 
 charming backgrounds in the pictures of the Italian School. 
 It is the Italian Renaissance adapted, of course, to modern 
 French needs. The porte cochire is very much like any other 
 jporte cochere, and seems only to promise you a mansion of the 
 common type ; but pass through it and you are in a spacious 
 courtyard, in one corner whereof you see a richly-carved Gothic 
 stau'way, with an arched terrace forming the boundary on the 
 other side. There is little ornamentation on the outside of the 
 turret ; just as much as the style permits, no more : but what 
 there is, is simply as delicate in workmanship as a bit of em- 
 broidery painted by Meissonier's own hand. This is true of all 
 the place. The owner has chosen a style which admits but 
 sparingly of ornament, and which depends chiefly for its effect 
 on the purity of unbroken line. But where the ornament comes 
 in, he has taken care to have it of the best. He has been his 
 own designer. For the years during which the house has been 
 in progress, he has worked as an architect as well as a painter. 
 Not a bit of the decoration in galleries, staircases, and rooms 
 but has been done from his own designs. He has kept rigorously 
 to the laws of his design. You pass from the courtyard to the 
 studio, through a pillared hall, and up a staircase rich in carved 
 panelling, for in the interior the style admits of somewhat 
 greater luxuriance. Then you come to the prime wonder of 
 the house — its immense studio. There are two ateliers ; but 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 3 
 
 the larger one, for some reason best known to the painter, 
 serves as a kind of antechamber to the smaller. The latter 
 is a retreat to which Meissonier, who is one of the shyest of 
 men, escapes from the world. It is difficult to give an idea of 
 the amplitude of the great one without going into measure- 
 ments ; but certainly it would hold the deliberative assembly of 
 a small State. Here again a rich panelling runs round the 
 walls, and the place looks too fine for daily work. From the 
 smaller studio we may pass out into the open air by a gallery 
 which forms the roof of the arcade, and make the round of the 
 premises to the coach-houses and stables, all in perfect keeping 
 of style. Even the back stairs are, in their way, exquisite 
 specimens of early Italian work." 
 
 The hall is hung with curtains and tapestry, the windows 
 are shaded by finely- interlaced ornaments of ironwork; 
 but M. Jules Claretie, in his visit to Meissonier in 1871, 
 which he describes, was most astonished at the works of 
 art with which the studio, large as it is, was " encumbered :" 
 sketches, small panels, and wax models, the instruments of 
 his daily work, and among the pictures hanging upon the 
 walls, a water-colour portrait of the painter himself, 
 seated, wearing a pair of high shooting-boots, with a dog 
 at his side ; a landscape of Italy, glowing with sunHght, a 
 grove of enormous olive trees dappling the pathway with 
 shadow ; a portrait of Meissonier's medical attendant, hung 
 by the side of a picture by Metsu ; and, " in the centre of 
 the wall, opening it out like a window, a canvas of enormous 
 dimensions, representing the demoKshed palace of the Tui- 
 leries, the heap of ruins that were left from the wreckage 
 of May 1871, and, dominating the mounds of grey or gilded 
 fragments, the bronze chariot on the Arc du Carrousel 
 appearing through a break in the cloud of smoke, sharply 
 outlined against the blue sky behind it." Masterpieces of 
 art are scattered broadcast over the room : a courtyard of 
 the time of Louis XIII., brilliantly crowded with figures in 
 
4 
 
 MEISSONIEE. 
 
 gala dress ; a bride of the same period, stepping into an 
 elegant carriage of a crimson colour, for which Meissonier 
 had a miniature model, built by a coachmaker, to study 
 from; a superb work of Titian— a figure of an Italian 
 woman, in a robe of green velvet, the classic outline of her 
 head shown against a crimson velvet curtain in the back- 
 ground ; a sketch of Bonaparte, on horseback, at the head 
 of his picturesquely -dressed staff, reviewing the young 
 conscripts of the army of Italy, who are cheering as he 
 passes, waving their hats and bayonets in the air "in a fever 
 of enthusiasm, youth, and victory ;" a company of dragoons 
 of the Imperial army descending a hilly path in an Alsatian 
 forest, under the guidance of a peasant ; of which picture 
 M. Claretie remarks that " every soldier has a distinct and 
 special type of countenance;" and, in addition to the pic- 
 tures, the hall is crowded with small statuettes of wax, 
 modelled by Meissonier himself for his studies, representing 
 such subjects as men on horseback and horses in various 
 forms of motion, the muscles of which are modelled with a 
 perfection of anatomical accuracy and boldness. Amongst 
 the other objects collected in this remarkable museum are 
 a number of bridles of black leather, with sHver ornaments 
 and curious bits, which were once the property of Murat— 
 and a remarkable miniature portrait of M. Thiers, taken 
 from the body after death, by Meissonier, at St. Germains, 
 which M. Claretie describes as follows :— 
 
 " A head with closed eyes, an expression of irony still re- 
 maining about the lines of the mouth, and of sarcasm or banter 
 (' quelque chose de narquois ' ) upon the waxen and motionless 
 face ; the silvery grey colour of the hair responding to the tone 
 of the white drapery. . . . But one of the most remarkable 
 ornaments of this atelier, crowded as it is with exquisite works 
 of art, is the first sketch of the picture which Meissonier 
 painted at Poissy in 1871, when his house was crowded with 
 
MEISSONIEK. 5 
 
 German soldiers. To escape their company, in the rage that 
 he experienced at the national defeat, he shut himself up in his 
 studio and threw upon the canvas the most striking, the most 
 vivid, the most avenging (vengeresse) of allegories : he painted 
 Paris, enveloped in a veil of mourning, defending herself against 
 the enemy, with her soldiers and her dying grouped round a 
 tattered flag; sailors, officers, and fusiliers, soldiers, national 
 guards, suffering women, and dying children ; and hovering in 
 the air above them, with the Prussian eagle by her side, was 
 Famine, wan and haggard Famine, accomplishing the work that 
 the bombardment had failed to achieve. . . . Henri Kegnault 
 is represented on this canvas, dying at the feet of the veiled 
 figure of Paris." 
 
 Besides his Paris mansion, Meissonier has another at 
 Poissy, where he lives in the summer time. Here there are 
 two studios, one at the top of the house, and the other 
 adjoining the stables, for use in inclement weather. " The 
 Salon at Poissy has those quaint little square windows 
 which so often figure in the backgrounds of his pictures. 
 He built the country house as he built the house in town, 
 and he fitted it up with artistic luxuriance, designing most 
 of the furniture himself, notably the silver services of the 
 table. Each place has cost him something in millions. 
 The bill for the house in Paris was augmented by his reso- 
 lution to have all the work of the very best. He takes a 
 peculiar pride in the thoroughness of the mechanical part 
 of it. The stones are beautifully fitted and joined,^ and the 
 building has scarcely settled an inch since the foundations 
 were laid."^ 
 
 Having thus far satisfied the maxim of Diderot, in a 
 short description of the " milieu," we will, still profiting 
 by the indiscretions of his friend M. Claretie, make ac- 
 quaintance with the man whom it "explains," and after- 
 
 ' " The World," June 2, 1880. 
 
6 
 
 MBISSONIER. 
 
 wards with his work — wMcli will be a far more complex 
 and difficult task to accomplish. "We have already seen 
 him in his patriotism, shutting himself up in his studio away 
 from the contact of the Prussians, and there devising the 
 allegory " vengeresse," which he intendeds should cut them 
 to the heart. It is not derogatory to the truth and earnest- 
 ness of his patriotism that he should now be " a very good 
 Republican ;" although, in the time of the Empire, there is 
 no doubt that he was attached to the dynasty of which every 
 Frenchman, whatever he may choose to say to the contrary, 
 is proud ; if any other evidence of this were wanting, it 
 would be found in the spirit with which he has treated the 
 grand historical pictures that he has painted of incidents in 
 the histories of the two N'apoleons. The intense expression 
 that he has given to the enthusiasm of the attachment of 
 the army to their great leader, is a monument of glory to 
 the first Napoleon that was not designed by a lukewarm 
 partisan ; nor the dignity of his sorrow in " 1814," (La 
 Betraite de Bussie) for which Meissonier dressed himself in 
 an old coat of the Emperor's, and sat on a saddle on a 
 housetop in the falling snow of a gloomy day in winter, 
 and so, with a mirror before him, painted in the sombre 
 tints of the winter sky on the flesh of his face, and the 
 flakes of snow on his coat- sleeves ; nor the trumpet-toned 
 triumph of the Battle of Solferino, nor the other historical 
 pictures which will perpetuate the old stories of victory and 
 domination which must have become familiar to the painter 
 in his cradle. 
 
 He was born at Lyons in the year 1811. One writer says 
 1813 ; but M. Claretie tells us very briefly that, after an 
 infancy of poverty, a difficult entrance into life, at the age 
 of nineteen he came to Paris, in the year 1830 ; an arrival 
 full of vicissitudes, and dangers, and sorrows. 
 
MEISSONTER. 
 
 7 
 
 " Well for him that he was born robust — but what is a 
 struggle, even in misery, for a true-boru artist ? ' L'art vit de 
 misere, il meurt de richesse ! ' says M. Alexandre Dumas. I 
 have read somewhere, I do not remember where, that in these 
 dark days of his d£buis, Meissonier used to work, side by side 
 with Daubigny, at the production of pictures for five francs per 
 square metre, for export. It is perhaps only a studio tradition. 
 But it is a fact that Tony Johannot, to whom Meissonier ex- 
 hibited his studies at that time, gave him encouragement, and 
 that Leon Cogniet opened his studio to him. But he had 
 nothing to gain from Cogniet ; he brought to his earliest works 
 his master qualities, his gift of seeing and describing objects 
 with originality, an incomparable understanding of physiog- 
 nomy and of costume, refinement of touch, extraordinary 
 accuracy of drawing, the sharp expression of mental emotion in 
 the expression of the features, strict truthfulness in the painting 
 of accessories. He was Metzu, Mieris, or Terburg, possessing 
 besides qualities peculiarly his own, elegant, very fascinating, 
 and very French." 
 
 Of his early life lie is said to be reluctant to speak, 
 and, as we have seen, even the date of his birth is not free 
 from a slight mystery of uncertainty. A French writer, 
 we are told, who went to him for the first biography which 
 appeared, was astonished at his reluctance to furnish any 
 details of his life. His natural love of retirement is at- 
 tributed by the writer to timidity, and to the fact that he 
 has been severely and, with his peculiar temperament, ex- 
 ceptionally, tried by the misfortunes of his country ; but 
 when one has studied through the long line of his works of 
 art, and has noticed how completely they are characterized 
 by the quality of individuality, uninfluenced by any of the 
 currents of opinion and taste that have flowed round them, 
 another reason appears for the separation or solitude of such 
 a life as his. His art, and the means by which he pursued 
 it, being the whole of his life, and differing in its nature 
 from the art that he saw prevailing around him, he seems 
 
8 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 to have set himself to a steady, self-contained careei, de- 
 veloping with unsparing industry his own methods, and 
 probably not less happy, as he certainly is not less emiaent, 
 in his life than the most festive or the most political cf his 
 colleagues. However this may be, M. Claretie says of him 
 that — 
 
 " That which is most pleasing with Meissonier, is the frank 
 cordiality with which he explains his plans, and looks in your 
 face the while with his deep, clear eyes (de son ceil profoide et 
 franc) for the truth of your meaning in reply. This mar, who 
 lives in a palace, is as moderate as a soldier on the march. This 
 artist whose canvases are valued by the half million is as gene- 
 rous as a nabob. He will give to a charity sale a picture ivorth 
 the price of a house. Hospitably friendly (accueillant) co all, 
 and praised as he is by everybody, he has less conceit n his 
 nature than a wholesale painter (que des barbouilleurs a la 
 toise). With his hair growing thickly above his broad and 
 open forehead, his beard flowing down over his breast ike a 
 river, his robust activity 'de bon cavalier,' he is at the ige of 
 sixty-eight as solid and as active as at forty. You see him to 
 be 'well-seasoned,' sympathetic, and safe; a man who loves 
 his friends as he loves the Truth, with all the passion of i man 
 of twenty years." 
 
 This is his compatriot's description of M. Meissorier's 
 personality, and I think it is a better one than the folloving 
 by the writer in " The World." 
 
 " He is as short as the average French linesman, bul very 
 broad. There is nothing of the typical genius about the outer 
 man. He has but to sit opposite a looking-glass to have in ex- 
 cellent model of a professor of gymnastics, or a fencing-naster 
 growing old. He has a round full face, plenty of colour n his 
 cheeks, and a bright eye, so animated in its expression tiat it 
 makes you entirely forget the effect of his grey hair and leard. 
 Intellectually and physically he would seem to be still n his 
 prime. A friend who is modelling a statuette of him, vhich 
 stands in the studio, has admirably caught this effect of wiry 
 robustness which is the note of the figure. He has pu; him 
 in the short pilot-jacket in which he usually works, ani has 
 
MEISSONIEE. 
 
 9 
 
 planted him very firmly on his legs. He has seized, in fact, 
 the expression of a body as well as the expression of a face, and 
 this is one of the rarest things in portrait art." 
 
 In tlie " Grazette des Beanx Arts" for 1862, the May 
 nnmber is almost entirely devoted to M. Meissonier ; it 
 contains first a sketch of his life and work as a painter, by 
 M. Theophile Gautier, and immediately following upon 
 that an account of his engraved work. It is to this last 
 that we now turn for the clue to the story of the steady 
 progress of Meissonier's skill and success, and especially 
 for the influence that kept him aloof from all the theories 
 and novelties of his time and started him at the threshold 
 of his career upon a course clearly indicated in his earliest 
 works, and from which he seems never to have been tempted 
 to deflect. It is in the quality of his earliest illustrations 
 that the germs of that of his latest and most successful 
 paintings are to be found; and the methods of careful 
 elaboration and conscientious combination of detail that he 
 applied to his earliest culs de lam'pe foreshadow -the brilliant 
 successes of his pencil when years of practice had grafted 
 boldness and freedom upon the unerring precision of truth- 
 fulness " en gros et en detail " with which he seems to have 
 been gifted in the cradle. The earliest beginnings of M. 
 Meissonier's work are surrounded with obscurity, and it is 
 not accurately on record by whom he was first employed. 
 " Seven cities of Grreece," says M. Burty, " disputed the 
 glory of producing Homer : and several editors now claim 
 the honour of having encouraged the first beginnings of 
 M. Meissonier." Assuming the date of the master's birth 
 to be accurately fixed at 1811 (although even this detail is 
 disputed, some authorities giving 1813), he would be already 
 twenty-four years of age upon the publication of the 1835 
 edition of the Bible of the Sieur Raymond (" Hist, de 
 
10 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 I'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament represente par des 
 figures," etc. Paris, L. Curmer, editeur, rue Sainte Anne, 
 1835), to which he contributed designs, on page 289, o£ 
 Solo/ernes invading Judea, and Judith appearing before Holo- 
 f ernes, and on page 347 of the Death of Eleazer. 
 
 These designs, JVI. Burty assumes to have been the first 
 from Meissonier's pencil that were actually published, 
 although, he adds, there was a day during the early years 
 of the reign of Louis Philippe, when, at the instigation of 
 Trimolet, M. Meissonier went to knock at the door of an 
 editor in the Rue St. Jacques, taking with him four little 
 sepia drawings destined, in his di-eams, to illustrate a fairy 
 tale in some children's magazine. The editor, a man of 
 sense, said that the drawings were charming, but he drew 
 back before the outlay of having them engraved, and " avec 
 mille politesses, congedia le jeune artiste." 
 
 M. Gautier mentions as the first paintings exhibited by 
 M. Meissonier, those of 1836, The Chess Players and 
 Tlie Little Messenger, which, he says, attracted a crowd 
 of admirers, and in which he struck at once his true line as 
 the conscientious and skiKul painter of miniature subjects, 
 in the exquisite finish of which he has been thought equal 
 to Terborch and Metsu. The period of exquisite finish and 
 minute detail will, however, be best studied in the engraved 
 work of the master, which has the further great value of 
 indicating ah initio his higher quality of sympathy, and of 
 that so-called grandeur which can be found in the smallest 
 as well as in the largest works, and in simple domestic 
 subjects or objects of still life as well as in the highest 
 classical school, which is really the distinguishing charac- 
 teristic of Meissonier and his peers in art, and implies in 
 the artist the existence of a true vocation for his pursuit. 
 
 M. Gautier was, however, apparently, mistaken in assum- 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 11 
 
 iug the pieces he names to have been the first exhibited by 
 M. Meissonier ; for there is in the collection of Sir Richard 
 Wallace a small picture, called The Visitors, of an interior, 
 with an old gentleman receiving two visitors — all in the 
 costume of the period of our James I., which is not remark- 
 able so much for the finish of its detail, as for a Rembrandt- 
 like management of the light falling on the heads and white 
 ruffs of the figures, and reflected from a claret-jug and 
 glasses on a table. To the back of a photograph taken 
 from this canvas M. Meissonier has been good enough to 
 attach the following autograph memorandum : — " Mon. 
 premier tableau expose en 1833 ou 1834 ; achete cent francs 
 par La Societe des amis des Arts a Paris, et adjuge a M. 
 Poturle, qui I'a toujours garde. Apres sa mort il a ete 
 achete par Sir Richard Wallace." — 3M. 
 
 M. Burty describes five woodcuts, of a very early date, 
 which he found torn from the leaves of some scrap book or 
 journal ; representing in a mingled humorous and pathetic 
 sentiment as many scenes from the life of " The Old 
 Bachelor." They will show the class of work to which 
 the young painter first bent his energies, in which, if he 
 Kad persevered, he might have achieved a success for which 
 tlhe nation would have had reason to be grateful, as it 
 might have tended to preserve the school of comic illus- 
 tration in France from the utter degradation of pruriency 
 a-nd brutalism into which it has subsequently sunk. In the 
 fiirst of the series we are introduced to the Old Bachelor 
 at his toilette, in front of his mirror, his wig on the com- 
 mode in front of him. In the second he is dining with two 
 friends, who have the air, says M. Burty, of " de fieffes 
 parasites," in the next he is abused by his housekeeper, and 
 in the fourth the poor old gentleman is seen on his death- 
 bed surrounded by greedy relations eager for the succession. 
 
12 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 to his estate ; in the last, Death has released him from his 
 solitude, and his servants in the death chamber are already- 
 ransacking his property. There is in all this a combination 
 of the humour of Hogarth with the sympathetic quality of 
 the more refined humorists of our subsequent period which 
 was developed to great promise in Meissonier's later works 
 of illustration. The young painter was already gifted with 
 a considerable portion of that versatility of talent which is 
 an attribute of real genius, and showed this in the next 
 series of illustrations, published again by his friend, M. 
 Curmer to the " Discours sur I'Histoire universelle," for 
 which he drew the figures of the Prophet Isaiah, St. Paul, 
 and Charlemagne, besides a considerable number of tail- 
 pieces, headings for chapters, and ornamental letters. He 
 was engaged at the same time upon the illustrations to a 
 new edition of Lamartine's " Chute d'un ange," of which 
 the woodcuts were most unsatisfactorily engraved. It 
 appears from the narrative of M. Burty, that the art of 
 wood engraving was not at that time much cultivated at 
 Paris, and the blocks of this and other early works of M. 
 Meissonier were sent to England to be engraved, and the 
 English engravers, says M. Burty, massacred them. M. 
 Lavoignat had not yet been discovered, whom M. Burty 
 describes as the most faithful interpreter of the works of 
 Meissonier; "who, by details of which the caprice is as- 
 tounding and the execution a miracle of rashness and 
 refinement froze the blacks into greys, and developed all 
 that the furia Frangaise contains of calculated impetuosity 
 and serious levity.'" It is not easy to follow this criticism 
 unless by attributing to the writer some of the paradoxical 
 qualities that he describes. 
 
 An edition in Erench of the "Orlando Furioso," pub- 
 lished at this time with illustrations by Eran9ais, Karl 
 
MEISSONIEE. 
 
 13 
 
 Girardet, Baron, and others, contains two woodcuts from 
 Meissonier's designs representing (No. 1, chapter I.) Ferra- 
 gus in the wood : (No. 2, chapter II.) Bradamante discover- 
 ing Pinahel. 
 
 It is a most interesting occupation to follow through this 
 series of early works the apprenticeship of a genius, in the 
 tentative efforts of which the qualities of humour, invention, 
 sympathy, and keen apprehension of detail are manifested, 
 for which the master is still unrivalled, and in the com- 
 panion works published under the same covers to find in 
 Tony Johannot and the other group of illustrators with 
 whom he was associated, the tone and character of the 
 school in which his early years of work were principally 
 passed. This interest especially attaches to a beautiful edition 
 of "Paul and Virginia," and the " Chaumiere Indienne," 
 pubhshed in 1838 by M. Curmer, profusely illustrated with 
 the assistance of a very powerful staff of artists and en- 
 gravers. This very beautiful and fascinating volume con- 
 tains forty-three woodcuts from Meissonier in the text, 
 besides innumerable ornamental letters, emblematic designs 
 called "attributs," landscapes, plants, foliage, and a few 
 compositions ; and one important vignette of the " Bay (or 
 Valley) of the Tomb," which is a breezy and spacious land- 
 scape, finished with close fidelity both to the character and 
 details of the tropical vegetation, and to the sentiment of 
 the subject ; the general combined effect of solitude and 
 desolation in the midst of tropical luxuriance intensifying 
 the pathos of the incident that it illustrates. This land- 
 scape of Meissonier's impressed the other artists engaged 
 in the work so favourably that, among the " attributs " of 
 the book itself : — a little emblem picture at the head of the 
 Table of Contents : — along with the portraits of Fran9ais 
 and Tony Johannot, the painter's easel and other accessories, 
 
14 
 
 MEISSONIBR. 
 
 a miniature reproduction of " The Bay of the Tomb " has 
 been inserted ; as though it were regarded among the illus- 
 trations as the gem of the collection. In the floral and 
 other ornaments of initial letters, and head and tail pieces 
 of chapters, Meissonier's minute attention to I^ature pro- 
 duces the happiest effects. " These engravings," says M. 
 Burty, "have a peculiar interest, because they are the work 
 of the master's youth ; and they show him already render- 
 ing Nature in a style quite his own ; to look through them 
 is like turning over a volume of his 'cahiers d'etudes.' 
 They contain evidence of long and careful work in the 
 hot-houses of the ' Jardin des Plantes,' and in front of the 
 old bric-a-brac dealers' stalls which used to stand about 
 the entrance to the Louvre. And how admirably, with the 
 help of these slowly and scrupulously finished studies, he 
 could reproduce in an ornamental letter or floral ornament, 
 a lily broken by the storm, or a sheaf of Indian arms and 
 musical instruments ! " 
 
 To the " Chaumiere Indienne," published in continuation 
 in the same volume, Meissonier contributed no less than 
 eighty-six woodcuts, which lighten up the gentle pathos of St. 
 Pierre's work with humour and manliness, and leaving it as 
 delicate and tender as before, bring into the foreground all 
 that is quaint and humorous in its incidents. In the scene 
 for instance, where the brave old English Doctor sits on the 
 wharf and recalls to mind his wanderings in many lands in 
 search of truth, we have a panoramic procession of the 
 images passing through his mind: the "Jewish Eabbis," 
 in hats and beards and an air of shrewdness and wealth 
 about them— with whom the Doctor is friendly and per- 
 suasive; "the Protestant ministers," clean shaven and cold 
 of humour, attired in black skull caps and Geneva gowns ; 
 the "overseers of the Lutheran Church" in Elizabethan 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 15 
 
 frills — with whom the Doctor is disputatious ; and the smug 
 and trim " Catholic Doctors," orthodox and respectable 
 from their wigs to their shoe-buckles, with whom he is 
 co'ortly and polite. Then the " Academicians of Paris, La 
 Crusca, the Arcadi, and the twenty-four other most cele- 
 brated Academies of Italy," all snoring round a table in 
 every imaginable attitude of repose, under the Doctor's 
 lougiloquence, from whom the Doctor is departing in a huff, 
 with his wig awry. And this is followed by the long pro- 
 cession of Greek Popes, Turkish MoUahs, Arab Sheikhs, 
 Parsees and Indian Pandects, each one of whom is recog- 
 nizable, and characteristically distinct. 
 
 Many might read Bernardin de St. Pierre without enter- 
 ing fully into the fun of his pedantic periods, but the 
 humour of Meissonier's illustrations, as soberly and seriously 
 expressed is as obvious as it is original and sympathetic. 
 The marvellous skill with which he can arrange a large or 
 complicated subject in a nutshell, is exemphfied in these 
 little woodcuts. 
 
 There is one, not an inch square, containing no less 
 than eleven typical heads of Indians, each characteristically 
 distinct, where " the Pandects, the Fakeers, the Santons, 
 the Joguis, the Brahmins, and their disciples," all cry out 
 at once against the Doctor when he protests against 
 the shutting up of knowledge in their privileged caste ; 
 and there is an admirable individuality in the person of 
 the good impassible Doctor himself, who is always the 
 same old friend, in his varied perplexities — bewildered 
 amongst the fascinating Bayaderes ; or patiently under- 
 going purification in the Ganges ; or striding up to the 
 audience of the priest of Juggernaut enveloped in a cotton 
 sheet ; or sitting at home among his books and remembering 
 his friend the Pariah. Some critic, most imfairly judging 
 
16 
 
 MEISSONIBE. 
 
 Meissonier by a conventional rule, has pronounced him 
 devoid of sentiment. But what more maulj or pathetic 
 sentiment can be desired than that which lurks beneath 
 the humour of a little vignette of the incident of the Pariah ? 
 The whole picture, an inch in height, scarcely crosses a 
 page. It represents a slip of wall, with a picture at either 
 end, one labelled "The Pariah thinking of the English 
 Doctor," and the other, " The English Doctor thinking of 
 the Pariah," and in the middle on a nail driven into the 
 wall hang the pipes that they exchanged at parting. " The 
 Doctor's pipe of English leather with a mouthpiece of 
 yellow amber," and " The Pariah's pipe of a bamboo stem 
 and & furnace of clay," and underneath the pipes a paper is 
 pinned to the wall with the inscription " La pipe du Docteur 
 et celle du Paria, tires du cabinet de M. Meissonier." The 
 drawing of the Pariah's hut, minute as it is, is really 
 beautiful : a quiet and cool interior with a sunny landscape 
 of plaintains and palms revealed through the open door ; 
 and the Doctor's library is a paradise of books and papers, 
 and what may be called " Meissonier " furniture and acces- 
 sories. This microcosm is very typical of the painter's 
 subsequent work, and from this his exhibited picture of 
 "The Doctor" was suggested.^ That the sentiment of 
 Meissonier 's work is not, and never was, in harmony with, 
 that predominant in French art, is a fact emphasized by his, 
 persistent avoidance of female subjects; and, as to its 
 humour, when we see what French " humorous " art of the 
 present day is, we may be permitted to regret that it ever 
 supplanted his. 
 
 In 1840, in an official account, published by Curmer, of 
 
 1 The edition of 1839 in which the above iHustrations occur is not 
 rare book. A later edition of 1863 contains many of the same plates. 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 17 
 
 the transfer of the remains of the Emperor N'apoleon I., 
 from the island of St. Helena to Paris, two woodcuts from 
 Meissonier illustrate the Entrance into Havre, and The 
 Quays at Bouen; and during the years 1841 to 1843, he 
 contributed regularly to a serial publication, also edited by 
 Curmer, called " Les Fran9ais peints par eux memes : En- 
 cyclopedie morale du xix''. siecle." (Paris, L. Curmer, 
 editeur, 1841-] 843.) Every one of his studies in this work 
 will repay the trouble of referring to it, and the whole 
 collection, in the great variety of subjects that it includes, 
 is a striking evidence of the versatility of his genius. In 
 the first volume (p. 333, "Le maitre d'etudes") we have 
 a full-length figure of a schoolmaster; a man clumsily 
 framed, and dressed with that combination of precision in 
 style and slovenliness in detail, and expressing in his atti- 
 tude and face that hard sort of weariness by which the 
 inferior members of his profession are distinguished. The 
 drawing is amazingly coloured, and is attributed in the 
 index to Gavarni, but it is signed by Meissonier, In the 
 second volume the story of " The Artist's Model " has a little 
 vignette by Meissonier, of a poor little drudge of a girl, 
 pathetically weary, posing, partly unclad, showing the thin- 
 ness and feebleness of her form, in a constrained attitude 
 to a fat, coarse painter, who seems himself half asleep over 
 his work; and a head-piece (to "L'agent de change "), full of 
 animation and incident, of the frantic Babel of shouting 
 and gesticulations that goes on at the busiest period of the 
 day round the ring in the centre of the Bourse. This little 
 piece is crowded with figures of whom each has its inde- 
 pendent character and action ; and near it is another minute 
 vignette representing the proud and sagacious stock-broker 
 driving home in his gig. These drawings are free from 
 exaggeration or forced humour, but far more lively and 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 comic in effect than the wildly drawn caricatures that were 
 published in "Punch" and Dickens's works, and other 
 serials in England at the same time. 
 
 " The Poet," in an attitude of painful expectation, trying 
 to stare down a thought from the ceiling ; the " Pecheur a 
 la ligne," a broad and sunny view of the quays and barges 
 on the Seine, and of the sleepy riverside life of the " He de 
 Paris ;" and the head-piece to the " Sportsman Parisien," 
 a stable interior, very beautifully finished, follow in suc- 
 cession in the same volume, as though Meissonier had 
 determined to run through the whole range of possible 
 subjects for his pencil in the shortest possible time. The 
 horses, in form and in the texture of their coats, approach 
 perfection. There is a little ornamental 0 close by, repre- 
 senting the sportsman, " displayed " in a most natural 
 attitude on the broad of his back, and his horse throwing 
 up his heels as he plunges through the initial letter, which 
 is very full of humour. In the third volume, published 
 also in 1841, he illustrated the " Mendiants " with a figure 
 of an old fiddler ; and the " Amateur de livres " with 
 another of an old bookworm ; and in the fourth volume 
 there is an initial vignette to " Les Pauvres," of a blind 
 beggar, of the able-bodied, ruffianly sort, led by a delicate 
 boy, which suggests his subsequent illustrations to " Laza- 
 rillo ; " and a coloured full-length of an old-clothes dealer, 
 which is smothered in the colouring. 
 
 This volume, however, contains two gems in illustration 
 of " The Cobbler," called, in Parisian argot, " Le Gniaffe," 
 a term of abuse, if we may judge from the quotation 
 attached, " c'est lui M'sieu le Commissaire qui a k'mmence 
 par m'appeler gniaffe.'" 
 
 The first, a full-length coloured print, represents, we are 
 told, not the servile and obsequious species, but the gniaffe 
 
THE READER 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 19 
 
 pur sang, " au cceur noble, a Tame elevee et ombrageuse, qui, 
 en depit de toutes les sirenes de la corruption, s'est maintenu 
 dans I'indepen dance la plus absolue et la plus primitive ; " 
 obviously a surly old republican, a lean man with gnarled 
 and knotted hands and bunioned feet, and a truculent 
 mouth and chin. The second figure is of the species gorret, 
 which, we are told, is a derisive corruption of the word 
 correct, applied in several trades to the chief of the journey- 
 men apprentices — the gorret again being of two kinds, the 
 pasting (a la pate), and the cutting out gorret. 
 
 The gorret d la pate, says the author, " whom we have 
 selected for one of our types, and whom M. Meissonier, 'ce 
 jeune peintre du plus bel avenir,' has reproduced with a 
 remarkable truth to nature, belongs to a 'berloque de 
 boueux," which is, in ordinary language, a bootmaker's 
 shop." The sturdy old patriarch is represented, as he is 
 described in the text, sitting at his " veilloire," or little 
 square table, " surrounded," as Mr. Venus would say, " by 
 the trophies of his art," sometimes singing and working, 
 and beating time on the leather, letting his last word fall 
 with the last blow of the hammer ; or, at other times, dis- 
 coursing gravely from the depth of his philosophy, as, for 
 instance, " Our religion is absurd, and good for the people. 
 The Protestant religion a la bonne heure ! En voila une de 
 religion ! ils adorent un cochon, c'est vrai ! mais c'est plus 
 naturel ! " 
 
 Another series of " Les Fran9ais " was issued at the same 
 time, illustrating the provincial and foreign types of French 
 subjects, and to this Meissonier contributed some remark- 
 able drawings, of which the chief in interest are landscape 
 and sea-pieces. For " Le Lutteur," in the first volume of 
 this series, he drew a moonlight view of the ruins of the 
 arena of the Roman amphitheatre at Nismes ; on one side 
 
20 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 the darkness of the shadow of the circular walls is inter- 
 rupted by the moonlight streaming through the arched 
 doorways and windows, and its irregular outline is con- 
 trasted against a bright but stormy sky above ; on the op- 
 posite side, where the hght falls full on the whiteness of the 
 crumbling masonry, these apertures are so many black sha- 
 dows, and the sky over this part is dark with driving clouds. 
 In the interior of the deserted arena there is an expression 
 of solitude and sleep ; and in rising to the sky overhead 
 the eye seems to escape out of an oppressive enclosure. 
 
 In the same volume is " Le Religieux," a figure of a 
 monk, described as a portrait of Dom Francois et Char- 
 treux, in an attitude of submissive devotion, illustrating 
 the motto, from the " Album de la Chartreuse " : — 
 
 " illis summa fuit gloria despici : 
 illis divitiae, pauperiem pati : 
 
 illis summa voluptas, 
 Longo supplicio mori." 
 
 " Le Capitaine de Commerce," in the same volume, is 
 illustrated by Meissonier with a view of the entrance to the 
 harbour at Havre. A fresh breeze is blowing, and a lively 
 chopping sea is beating against the pier ; a boat, crowded 
 with men, is so microscopically finished that, in figures the 
 size of a pin's head, the different actions of rowing and 
 steering can be distinguished ; and there is some wonder- 
 fully minute and accurate work among the tangled forest of 
 masts and spars in the inner harbour, and truthfulness in 
 the ship righting herself on her keel as she brails up or 
 lowers her canvas, and comes under the lee of the buildings 
 on entering the inner harboiir. Then, anybody who knows 
 Havre would recognize the picture as a portrait of the 
 prettily crowded town and the hills beyond it. 
 
 In the second volume is a stately view of the broad river 
 
MEISSONIEE. 
 
 21 
 
 and quays at Rouen, a study of I^ormandy pippins, and a 
 sea-piece. Also a landscape (to " Le Foresien a view of 
 Montbrison, Forez, a district remarkable for the smoke of 
 its iron manufactories. Here, on a small engraving, we can 
 see miles upon miles of level plain, extended under a murky 
 sky, and bordered by mountains in tbe distance ; churches, 
 villages, chalets, smoking factories, and groves of poplars, 
 indicate the middle plans ; as you look, a black speck de- 
 velops into a window, a few scratches above into a roof, a 
 group of houses starts up, and village after village, with 
 here and there a tall chimney vomiting smoke, carry the 
 eye forward across the Lilliputian landscape towards the 
 forest at the base of the mountain. In the third volume 
 we are taken to Algeria; and Meissonier has drawn an 
 Arab encampment, with camels as true to nature as those 
 of Herr Gentz, in Ebers's "Egypt." This should have 
 been an important drawing, but, as M. Burty very justly 
 remarks, it has been massacred by the engraver. "It may 
 be noticed, once for all," he adds, "that all the English 
 engravers who have touched the woods of M. Meissonier, ' en 
 ont retire lafleur,' under their burin everything disappears ; 
 refinement of tone, harmony of design, spirit of detail." 
 
 Two little children's books, published about 1845, by 
 Hetzel, were illustrated by Meissonier ; an edition of the 
 "He des Plaisirs," of Fenelon, and the "Story of a Doll 
 and a Leaden Soldier," by P. Stahl. These little stories 
 were republished in the " Nouveau Magasin des Enfants," 
 Paris, Hachette, 1861. The illustrations have no impor- 
 tance at all. 
 
 In the following year a new edition of " Gil Bias " was 
 preceded by an introduction by M. L. Viardot, and a trans- 
 lation of the story of " Lazarillo de Tormes," which was 
 illustrated with nine small woodcuts in the text, and one 
 
22 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 large cat apart, Ly Meissonier ; the latter represents Laza- 
 rillo in his Spanish cloak, rapier at his side, and square hat. 
 All of the cuts were engraived by Layoignat, are very full 
 of humour, and suggestive of the influence of Velazquez, 
 The first shows Lazarillo, as a child, eating his mother's 
 cakes. In the second, in his service of the blind man, he is 
 leading his master abroad and begging for him ; in the next 
 the blind man is jealously holding a cup of wine with 
 both hands, from which Lazarillo is sucking the contents 
 through a straw ; the fourth is a figure of the tinker who 
 lends him a key for the strong box of his master, the priest, 
 who is leaving him to starve of hunger ; the next is the 
 squire who, without a maravedi in his pocket, figures for a 
 man of fashion ; the next, the villainous monk, who gives 
 Lazarillo his first pair of shoes, is said to be a copy from a 
 painting of the same dimensions by Karel Dujardin. In 
 the following sketch we have Lazarillo after his accession 
 to fortune, when he is fitting himself out at the clothes- 
 shop with the "costume d'un homme de bien," — a doublet 
 of faded plush, a well-worn cloak of cloth, and a sword of 
 the period of the Cid. The series finishes with the entry of 
 Lazarillo and his Grerman friends of the suite of Charles Y. 
 into one of those cabarets which " they went into on their 
 own legs, but left on those of other people." The last 
 series of illustrations of this kind that require notice are 
 those of the " Contes Remois " and of the " Comedie Hu- 
 maine" of Balzac, published in 1855 ; in the latter of which 
 the freshness of humour remarkable in his former work has 
 given place to a gloomy spirit of caustic satire, by no means 
 so agreeable ; indicating that perhaps it was all for the best 
 that the master, now grown eminent as a painter, determined 
 to relinquish this branch of his art to others. 
 
 I have mentioned, upon the authority of the master 
 
MEISSONIEE. 
 
 23 
 
 himself, that M. Gautier and M. Claretie are both mis- 
 taken in assuming that the Chess-Players and the Little 
 Messenger, in 1836/ were his first exhibited pictures ; but 
 that in 1833 or 1834 he exhibited the group described upon 
 page 11. With reference to the dates of other works, there 
 exists a similar uncertainty, increased by the repetition of 
 favourite subjects, amongst which SmoJcers, Headers, Chess- 
 Flayers and Sentinels abound ; and the methodical compila- 
 tion of his (Buvre is a labour that could not be successfully 
 undertaken without his own assistance. M. Claretie informs 
 us in his pamphlet that, in the intervals of his painting, M. 
 Meissonier is actually compiling a series of " Souvenirs." 
 
 Such a work, even apart from its art interest, will be 
 strikingly interesting from the pen of one who has stood 
 aloof, as Meissonier appears to have done, and observed, 
 with the attention of an artist interested in the picturesque 
 feature of events, the series of catastrophes and changes 
 that his native country has gone through during his lifetime. 
 The incidents which he has seized upon and illustrated are 
 already prominent landmarks of such a history, and are 
 obviously painted from a close study and familiar knowledge 
 of their circumstances and the men engaged in them : — 
 Moreau and Vessoles, on the eve of the battle of Hohen- 
 linden ; Napoleon in triumph, in " 1807," and in defeat, in 
 the Eetreat from Russia, in 1814 ; the Em,peror at Solferino, 
 and the incident of the civil war at Paris, are the most 
 prominent of these, and deserve to be studied in the first 
 place by the student of the biography of Meissonier, to 
 dissipate the common delusion that he could produce nothing 
 but the celebrated genre subjects in the province of the 
 " infiniment petits." 
 
 1 In the catalogue Les Joueurs d'cchecs, " sujet flamand," Le Petit 
 Messager, idem — each of them sold at 100 francs! 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE writer of tlie article in " The World " runs 
 through, the various stages of the criticism that has 
 at different times been passed upon Meissonier's work. 
 He is speaking of the allegorical subject which was designed 
 at Poissy during the German occupation, and intended to 
 be of colossal dimensions : — 
 
 " The critics have hitherto said that Meissonier cannot dis- 
 tinguish himself on any canvas much larger than his thumb-nail. 
 It is their last ditch, and that is no doubt what makes him so 
 anxious to storm it. They have been talking in that way about 
 him all along ; and, one by one, he has confounded them by 
 doing the very things they have said he could never attempt. 
 His earlier style, and, as some think, his best, was a frank study 
 of character and costume for its own sake. He painted pictures 
 without any thought of a motive, for nothing but the delight 
 of representing simple subjects with sincerity and force. The 
 figures that then sat to his imagination were topers, (shess- 
 players, serenading cavaliers, bibliophiles ensconced in snug 
 corners of seventeenth-century libraries, and so on. It was 
 impossible to contest their supreme excellence in their own 
 kind ; so some few captious critics declared that, while he was 
 unrivalled in this branch of art, he could never attain to the 
 grand style. He could do studies ; he would never do historic 
 work. He replied by the Diderot, which, it is hardly too much 
 to say, gives you the pictorial epitome of an epoch in its group 
 of eager encyclopaedists listening to a reading of the last new 
 thing. Losing this position, his assailants took up another. 
 
MBISSONIER. 
 
 25 
 
 Most of his scenes were interiors, because here he found the 
 best opportunity for the treatment of those minute accessories 
 of costume and furniture in which he has such exquisite skill. 
 So it struck them as an ingenious thing to say that he could 
 do nothing but interiors, and that unless he had his subjects in 
 a faint subdued light, he would be altogether lost. He said 
 nothing, but quickly went to work and produced the Portrait 
 of the Sergeant. Now the Portrait of the Sergeant is one of the 
 most daring experiments in the painting of light, in modern art. 
 The man stands out there in the open by himself, literally 
 bathed in light, and he makes a perfect picture. There was 
 one more charge to make ; and somebody made it. He could 
 paint history; he might even paint light ; but he could not paint 
 movement. (We are not now taking up these follies in their 
 chronological order, but simply as they turn up in the memory.) 
 He replied to this by painting the ' Bixe.' How shall we trans- 
 late it? — The Tavern Bow — two picturesquely-attired ruffians, 
 who have drawn on each other, and are straining in the hands 
 of cooler-headed friends to fly together for a deadly embrace. 
 We in England ought to know this picture, for we have the 
 good fortune to possess it. It was Louis Napoleon's truly im- 
 perial gift to the Prince Consort. The ' Bixe ' finished Meis- 
 sonier's series of triumphant demonstrations — at least it should 
 have finished them ; but, as we see, he is likely once more to be 
 tempted out of his beaten path by the desire to prove that he 
 can paint on a colossal scale. Let him beware : here he might 
 find his Waterloo ! " 
 
 His works in the Salon of 1839, which first arrested the 
 attention of the general public, a long time before they 
 attracted the notice of the critics, were The Doctor and the 
 Monk at the bedside of a Patient ; obvionsly inspired by the 
 sentiment of Bernardin de St. Pierre, for whose Paul and 
 Virginia he was drawing illustrations at the time. These 
 works are (as M. Grautier points out) in no way connected 
 with the so-called "Romantic" movement of his period ; 
 they are rather, as we should say, in the manner of Wilkie, 
 of what Bulwer calls the " benevolent " school, and are 
 remarkable for the expression of an intensity of sympathy 
 
26 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 which has subsequently disappeared from Meissonier's 
 work. 
 
 " He had nothing in common with the Romantic moyement, 
 or the school of Delacroix, Decamps, Ary SchefFer, Dupr6, 
 Deverier, Boulanger, Roqueplan, and the rest ; although the 
 date of his appearance might seem to suggest this. His literary 
 sympathies were with the ' Ecole du bon sens,' he liked Ponsard 
 and Augier, and he drew their portraits and the costumes 
 described in their works, and put themselves into his Decameron 
 of poets." 
 
 Of the same date is the first Smoker (Homme fumant sa 
 pipe), and shortly later a Buveur de Here ; the heralds of a 
 long line of similar studies. The smokers are of t"wo 
 distinct types, of which we have a spirited description by 
 M. Grautier : the first — 
 
 " Placed well in the centre of the picture, sits with an elbow 
 resting t»n the table, legs carelessly crossed, and a hand thrust 
 into the folds of his waistcoat; his head throw dreamily back. 
 The accessories explain him. He is dressed in a roomy coat 
 of antique cut and modest grey colour, bonneted with a 'lampion' 
 carefully brushed, and swings in the air a well-shod foot with a 
 silver buckle on the instep. He exhales, with the calm of a 
 good conscience, an immense ' bouffee ' of smoke. His measure 
 of beer is frothing at his side. ' Satisfaction intime ' radiates 
 from his honest face, wrinkled deeply with calculations and 
 methodical habits of the strictest probity. This is an honest 
 man to whom you would freely entrust your cash-box ! The 
 Other Smoker, dressed in scarlet, also has a pipe, and is 
 acting in a similar manner, but his dress is disorderly and 
 crumpled, and buttoned awrj', his cocked hat is thrust down 
 upon his forehead, his lace sleeves and his frill are plucked by 
 his twitching fingers, the attitude of his body indicates trouble 
 and excitement, the ' tic ' (crib-biting trick) of his lip chewing 
 morsels of clay from his pipe-stem, the hand desperately (m- 
 geusement) plunging into an empty pocket, all betray the 
 adventurer, the cleaned-out gambler. He is obviously reflecting 
 ' where the deuce can I borrow me a louis, or a five-franc- 
 piece ? ' 
 
MEISSONIBR. 27 
 
 " If we study the locale it tells the same story. We miss the 
 precise grey panelling, the decent mahogany brown woodwork, 
 and find in their place a wall that is dirty and covered with 
 scratches, and marks of charcoal and grease proper to the obscure 
 pothouse, and the ' taudis' of doubtful reputation." 
 
 The Salon of 1840 contained (says M. Claretie) The 
 Header, " since become famous ; " an Isaiah and a St. Paul 
 from his illustrations of the Bible of the Sieur Raymond. 
 
 In 1841 there was a typical study of Chess-Players, and 
 in 1842 another Fumeur, and the Player on the Violoncello, 
 which a friendly critic in the " Beaux Arts " declared to be 
 worthy of Metsu and of Grerard Dou. With reference to 
 the resemblance of Meissonier's work to that of the Dutch 
 School of the 17th century, M. Ernest Chesneau ("La 
 Peinture Fran9aise au XlXme Siecle ") says : — 
 
 " He only took the sanction ; he was no imitator of the Dutch 
 School of the 17 th century. With great patience and energy 
 he rivalled, in their own method, Terburg, Metzu, Gerard Dow, 
 Mieris and Slingelandt ; and beat them. . . . His minute- 
 ness of accuracy, which is attributed to him as a reproach, 
 springs merely from the love of perfection, to be attained only 
 by long and conscientious labour. . . , He is superior to 
 Gerard Dow by his constant and careful study of human ex- 
 pression, &c." 
 
 The volume of the " Beaux Arts" for 1843 contains a wood- 
 cut from a design by Meissonier (engraved by Orrin Smith) 
 of a religious piece, an Adoration, with a remarkable design 
 of ornamentation on the frame. A collection of Meissonier's 
 designs in decorative art would be valuable and interesting. 
 As we have already mentioned, the edition of " Paul and 
 Virginia," to which he contributed illustrations, abounds 
 with the most beautiful specimens of his work in this 
 branch. 
 
 His principal pictures for 1843 were the Amateurs of 
 
28 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 Painting,'^ and The Painter at his Easel ^ (Le Peintre dans 
 son Atelier) , and a Portrait d'homme. The friendly critic of 
 the "Beaux Arts" describes the former of these pictures 
 as : — 
 
 "A chefd'oeuvre of six inches in size, at the most ; twin-brother 
 to the Violoricello Player and the Chess-Flayers — a painter of 
 the last centui-y — Greuze, perhaps — seated in his studio, which 
 is hung with sketches, drawings, and finished pictures on the 
 wall, in front of his canvas, and putting the finishing touch to 
 a new work. His whole attention, mind and soul, are engrossed 
 by his painting. Seated behind his chair are the two amateurs 
 — the Paul Perrier and the Paturle, of 1765 — watching his 
 work." Of the Portrait d'homme the same writer says : " It 
 makes us regret that the man who was happy enough to sit to 
 such a painter, had not taste enough to induce a young lady to 
 sit in his stead. We do not assert that this gentleman, with his 
 grey trousers, his embonpoint ' plus que naissant,' his corpulence 
 and his aged features, is absolutely disagi'eeable to look at ; on 
 the contrary, he has, for his friends, a frank and hearty ex- 
 pression, which tells of a life of happiness, and would beautify 
 the ugliest features ; but it is nevertheless certain that M. 
 Meissonier would have been better pleased if his subject had 
 been the smiling head of some beautiful child," &c. 
 
 Amongst the works noticed in the Salon of the year 
 1848 are a Guard Souse ; a Toung Man looTcing at draw- 
 ings ; and a Game of Piquet; and, in 1849, the Skittle- 
 Players (La Partie des Boules) which is regarded as a chef 
 d'ceuvre. M. Gautier describes the first of these, La Garde 
 Bourgeoise flamande, as : — 
 
 " A subject analogous to Rembrandt's celebrated Sortie of the 
 Banning Cock Company : brave citizens, caparisoned in buff, 
 armed with halberts, advance towards the spectator with a de- 
 bonnaire awkwardness worthy of such soldiers. What an 
 
 ' Sold at the Khalil Bey sale, in 1868, and bought by M. Leon Say, 
 for dt'1,272. X 
 2 Sold at the Lehon sal^ at Paris, in 1861, for 11,200 francs. 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 29 
 
 example is this of the infinite variety of art! That which 
 Eembrandt overwhelms in fitful shadows, interspersed with 
 reflected lights, Meissonier isolates, detaches, expresses with 
 precision and detail ; and each of them produces a master- 
 piece ! " 
 
 In the Salon of 1852 were Sundaxj, and An Incident of 
 Civil War,^ by Meissonier. At tMs period the critics of the 
 old school were thoroughly aroused on the subject of what 
 the Comte de Viel-Castel, writing in the "AthenEeurti 
 !Pran9ais," calls " the invasion of the miniature " in every 
 department of art. 
 
 " The sentiment of grandeur," he says, " is lost to our epoch. 
 Nowhere but in the Salons and the churches are there any 
 broad walls fit to receive monumental works of painting and 
 sculpture ; and the artist, living in a contracted world, degrades 
 his art to the proportions imposed by the mean necessities that 
 he is subjected to. Some painters there are who still struggle 
 to resist the invasion of the miniature — such as Glaize and 
 Gallait. But the painters of genre and of marine subjects are 
 daily wasting their talents upon little works which are assured 
 of their sale. These artists are not required to wait for en- 
 couragement, they have the public who are their ' liste civile. ' 
 Under the pressure of circumstances art grows little, and in 
 diminishing its pi'oportions it loses its breadth, &c. M. Meis- 
 sonier is an artist of great talent. M. Plassan and M, Fauvilet, 
 his imitators, are refined and graceful, but they are founding a 
 school which will be lost in a dry and minute miniaturisni, and 
 will give birth to * imperceptible painters,' who will send to the 
 exhibitions works in imitation of Van Blarenberg. 
 
 " The school of Meissonier studies the arrangement of ac- 
 cessories, the texture of stuffs, &c., and a still-life to which ' la 
 Nature vivante ' is only introduced as a accessory." 
 
 The same critic writing on the Salon of the following 
 year, 1853, which contained Rosa Bonheur's celebrated 
 
 ' This last was subsequently exhibited, in 1863, at Brussels, and a 
 writer in the " Chronique des Arts" alludes to it as having figured in the 
 Salon of 1850-51, 
 
30 
 
 MEISSONIBR. 
 
 Horse Fair, and Delacroix's most important work of the 
 Pilgrims of Emmaus, painted in the manner of Rembrandt, 
 and from Meissonier A Man cJwosing a Sword, a Young Man 
 Studying, The Bravos, and the scene from the " Decameron " 
 of Boccaccio (a V ombre des iosquets chante un jeune poete) : 
 
 " A different school of genre painting is represented by Mes- 
 sieurs Fauvelet, Plassan, Fiehel and Cliavet. These four artists, 
 at whose head is M. Meissonier, pass their lives contemplating 
 nature throngh the small end of a telescope. Stuffs, gildings, 
 interiors of rooms, play a principal part in their compositions, 
 and they generally select the 1 8th century for their theatre." 
 Of The Young Man Beading, he says, " The figure and acces- 
 sories are treated more artistically ; the fineness of detail has 
 not impeded a certain breadth of the whole, and the light is 
 well distributed." 
 
 The Bravos, which M. Gautier describes as one of the 
 most important compositions of the master, containing a 
 whole drama in two figures, was in the International Exhi- 
 bitions of Paris in 1855 and of London in 1862. It re- 
 presents two murderers, in an attitude of strained suspense, 
 waiting for their victim to emerge from a door in front of 
 them. It was exhibited in the collection of Sir Richard 
 Wallace, at the Bethnal Green Museum, in 1872. I have 
 before me the photograph of a Chess- Players, signed and 
 dated 1853. It represents an elaborately-wrought interior 
 of an artist's studio, richly furnished, but in great disorder 
 and uncarpeted ; a large picture on an easel seems to be 
 falling forward and supported by the richly-brocaded arm- 
 chair of one of the players ; the dress of this figure, and the 
 chair coverings, are elaborately worked with flowered de- 
 signs. An ecclesiastic, with one of those thick long clay 
 pipes of France which are such singularly disagreeable 
 smoking, seems to be claiming a victory in the game. A 
 fine Scotch deerhound is peacefully slumbering on the 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 31 
 
 boarded floor. Tlie general effect is one of great richness 
 and profusion of ornament, which does not, however, divert 
 the attention from the central action admirably conveyed in 
 the attitudes and expression of the players. 
 
 The panel picture from the " Decameron " is important 
 among Meissonier's works, from the circumstance of its 
 containing a number of female figures. It is quite in the 
 manner of Watteau. It represents four or five ladies lis- 
 tening to the recitation of a poet, who, on a bench in the 
 background, is reciting his verses to the accompaniment of 
 a guitar. A loving couple are wandering in an affectionate 
 posture to the shadows of the wood. In the foreground 
 some fruits diaper a table of white marble with their velvety 
 colours. Some noble specimens of dogs are introduced. 
 The whole picture is most beautifully delicate and refined, 
 and, free from the mannerism of Watteau, rivals in all 
 other respects his best productions of the kind. 
 
 Another important picture of this year was Moreau et 
 Dessoles — M. et son chef d'etat D. avant Hohenlinden, re- 
 presenting a bleak and desolate snow-covered landscape, 
 the clearing of a forest, on a high hill. The two generals 
 have advanced to the edge of a precipice, and are surveying 
 the field of battle with a glass. Two sergeants mounted 
 hold the horses at a short distance ; the trees are bending 
 under a strong gale of wind, the horses turn their tails 
 towards the wind, the cloaks of the generals are flut- 
 tering before them like flags, and one feels alarmed lest 
 they should be carried over the cHff. This painting is an 
 admirable example of Meissonier's power in the treatment 
 of atmospheric effects, and of imparting to a landscape a senti- 
 ment harmonizing with and intensifying that of his subject. 
 
 A critic in the " Athenseum Fran9ais," writing in 1854, 
 says : — 
 
32 
 
 MBISSONIEU, 
 
 " Many talented artists since 1836 " (obviously the year of 
 Meissonier's introduction) " have been ruined by their connec- 
 tion with literary men, inspiring their work from books and 
 poems rather than from the traditions of their art. They have 
 grouped themselves under a representative master, in imitation 
 of the poetical and literary movement of the period. The last 
 traces of this epidemic remain in certain bizarre groups ; e.g. 
 the Sect of the Regenerated Antique, or the pagans of colour ; 
 a sort of ' ecole de bon sens ' of painting ; the party of the 
 ' Chatoyants,' honest people, who conceive they have done 
 everything when they have represented the trailing of a silk 
 robe upon marble stairs, and to whom a plumed imbecile play- 
 ing a guitar, while he dips his feet in a vasque, is the height of 
 the picturesque ; the nichee of the infinitely little, headed hy M. 
 Meissonier." 
 
 The writer is M. Charles Asselineau ; and a very similar 
 strain of criticism is adopted by a "foreign correspondent" 
 to the " Athenseum " of about this date (March 24, 1855), 
 -who, after deprecating with considerable discretion and 
 judgment, in a general way, the rage for novelty that is 
 chronic in France, unfortunately falls foul of M. Meissonier: 
 
 " ' I can't be original in cookery {cn cuisine) : I will be so in 
 carpentry,' soliloquises M. Meissonier, who has founded what 
 may be called the Infinitesimal School. ' I will make the 
 smallest panels that ever were made. I will paint the Days of 
 June — the whole of that terrible and sombre scene — soldiers 
 and insurgents, streets blocked up, barricades stormed and 
 bloody — all on a surface not larger than my hand.' Is not this 
 original — very original ? Down comes the amateur with his 
 money ; up goes the lo pcean of criticism ! " 
 
 But the lo pcean of criticism had yet to be heard, and M. 
 Meissonier was making his method prevail in the teeth of 
 adverse criticism. We shall very soon now have the plea- 
 sure of recording a period of unanimous tergiversation in 
 this respect ; and, to make that pleasure the greater, it is 
 worth while, at the risk of tedious iteration, to put first 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 33 
 
 upon record a j&aal protest, in the " AtlienEeum Fran9ais," 
 made by the Comte de Viel-Chastel, on the occasion of the 
 collection of the works of Meissonier, and his now firmly- 
 founded " School," at the Universal Exhibition of 1855. 
 After a very scholarly allusion to the manner in which the 
 Fine Arts, "the hieroglyphic poetry of their period," pass 
 the same changes and vicissitudes, and have their periods 
 of decadence and renaissance together, with poetry : — 
 
 " Now," he says, they renounce the idealization of matter, 
 after having renounced the ideahzation of thought, and sacri- 
 fice to painted and carved records of material facts: they 
 flatter the passions of the mob whom they court, and condemn 
 the pencil and the chisel to the unintelligent reproduction of all 
 that the artist can see." (I have put the " words of prejudice " 
 in appropriate italics.) Alluding to the renaissance of the 
 Christian School in Germany—'- Not produced by vulgar ad- 
 miration of brutal reality, but rather by exaggerating the idea, 
 the dream, at the expense of the form ; of the poetry, at the 
 cost of the execution," he calls the contrary tendency now- 
 exhibited in the French School, " a new theory destructive of 
 all art, by the exorbitant pretension of liberating it from every 
 rule, from every idealization. The Exposition Universelle finds 
 the new school of the Trivial rising up on the field of battle, 
 protesting, by its tendencies and its works, against all the illus- 
 trations of modern art : denying art, genius, inspiration, poesy 
 to hold to an impossible ' caique ' of Jieality." 
 
 There is no doubt that the Count was a representative 
 critic ; or that the followers of Overbeck (who boasted that 
 he never used a model) had no place in their minds for 
 Meissonier. 
 
 M. Meissonier elected to be represented at the Universal 
 Exhibition by four small panel paintings. La Bixe, the 
 JBravos, La Lecture chez Diderot, and the Sldttle Flayers 
 (Joueurs de Boule sous Louis XV.), all of which have been 
 already alluded to. 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 ^EISSONIER. 
 
 I will, however, insert here an interesting description of 
 the Diderot picture, from the pen of Mr. Charles Blanc. It 
 appeared in a feuilleton of the " Temps," in 1867. 
 
 " On a canvas of a few centimetres, he presents us with a 
 whole group of philosophers of the seventeenth century; 
 amongst whom we seem to recognize Baron Holbach, Grimm, 
 D'Alembert, and Diderot himself, with his friendly figure, his 
 eye so prompt to brighten with the fire of genius. In the 
 attitudes and expressions of the reader and his hearers, the 
 degree of attention is marked in each. Diderot stands in the 
 foreground, leaning upon a chair which he is balancing to and 
 fro ; another is bending over a manuscript and eagerly atten- 
 tive ; a third, in an abstracted mood, has thrown himself back 
 in his chair, putting his little finger into his ear ; a fourth, 
 behind the table, is leaning against the library shelves, and the 
 different bindings are distinguished, some of them faded and 
 worn, and a row of small volumes, bound in red, with white 
 labels, yellow with use. 
 
 The criticisms of M. Edmond About are always lively 
 and independent, but representative of a high order of 
 thought. He says:' — 
 
 " Since the Salon of 1852, M. Meissonier, although he has by 
 no means abandoned his pleasure in ' tours de force,' has shown 
 that he is not alarmed at a larger canvas, and was not lost in 
 the middle of a vaster frame. The same perfection of finish 
 that formed the charm of the smaller pictures was found in The 
 Bixe and The Bravos, with the addition of vigour and energy, I 
 had almost written of rage. His talent has grown with his 
 pictures, and if he is always to progress in this proportion, I 
 would advise M. Meissonier to borrow a great canvas from M. 
 Horace Vernet, or from M. Diaz . . . htlas! To cover M. 
 Meissonier's pictures with gold pieces simply, would be to buy 
 them for nothing ; and the practice has now been established of 
 covering them with bank notes. Messieurs Chavet, Fauvelet, 
 
 ' " Voyage k. travers I'Exposition des Beaux Arts, 1835." Edmond 
 About. 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 35 
 
 Plassan and Andrieux follow ' spiritually' the manner of M 
 Meissonier. Their pictures do not sell badly, and in a short 
 time no others will be saleable, for life is drawing in its limits, 
 and apartments are growing smaller every day. M. Pezous is 
 a Meissonier on a smaller footing, with a great deal less in his 
 drawmg and a little more in his colour." 
 
 In the Salon of 1857 we find the Confidence, A Painter, .^ 
 A Man in Armour, An Amateur of Pict ures in the Studio of L ' 
 Painter} The first of these, which M. Gautier apostrophizes 
 as "a pearl and a marvel among pictures," is one of those 
 dramatic efforts in which, as in the Bravos, an incident of 
 romantic interest is narrated thoroughly, by sheer force of 
 expression, in a most simple and obvious method. It repre- 
 sents a young man, "i' Amoureux candide," foolishly and 
 exuberantly confiding the secrets of his heart to a hardened 
 roue, middle aged, who is plainly bored by the confidence. 
 There is more than talent, there is a great deal of pathos in 
 the picture, to those who have not lost their sympathy in 
 the generous illusions of youth. 
 
 Of the same year, 1857, is the Drajpeau, a finely-posed 
 figure of a young man, in armour to the thighs, supporting 
 the immense folds of a standard. He has a classic head and 
 short curled hair and beard, and the whole form would 
 bear comparison with any productions of the school of the 
 idealized "antique." The picture was in the Demidoff 
 sale, in 1862, and is described in the " Chronique des Arts " 
 of that date. 
 
 The Amatezir of Pictures— a. blonde young man, in black 
 breeches, white waistcoat, and coat of rose-coloured taffeta, 
 examining a drawing from a portfolio on a chair— was 
 
 > The official catalogue gives also Vattcnte; Un homme a sa fenkre ■ 
 Jeune homme du temps de la R6gence ; Portrait d' Alexandre Batta; Joueurs 
 d'tchecs [dessin). 
 
36 
 
 MEISSONIKII. 
 
 originally in the Morny Gallery, and was sold at a sale in 
 Paris, in 1863, for 9,400 francs. The Man in Armour of 
 1857, an upright figure, helmeted, cuirassed, with yellow 
 sleeves, grey breeches, and red stockings, the left hand on 
 the guard of his rapier, and holding a lance in the other, 
 was sold in Paris at an auction held in December 1861, for 
 
 LE FAUCON. 
 
 From the " Contes B^mois." 
 
 9,000 francs. A Harquehuder, in grey buff, red stockings, 
 felt cap, upright, shouldering his weapon, also of 1857, was 
 sold in January 1862, for 6,100 francs. A picture of 1858, 
 Soldiers at Cards,' 27 by 21 centimetres (the Demidoff one), 
 
 ' Sold by the artist for £1,000, and, at the Wertheimber sale, bought 
 by M. Demidoff for 28,000 francs. Sold at New York, in 1876, for 
 11,500 dollars. 
 
MEISSONIBR. 
 
 37 
 
 representing a band of " Reiters," in the great hall of a for- 
 tress, has a likeness to the works of our English Cattermole. 
 
 A critic, dissatisfied with it — it is curiously divergent from 
 Meissonier's usual finesse of style, — says : " M. Meissonier 
 has accustomed us to more freshness in the shadows, more 
 air in the background, more freedom in the composition, 
 and especially to less vulgarity (hanaUte) in the choice of 
 subject and sentiment." In effect it is a typical work, re- 
 presentative of a side not sufl&ciently illustrated of Meisso- 
 nier's versatile genius. It reminds us of the work of 
 Rembrandt, and there is something quite remarkable in the 
 manner in which the lights and shadows are utilized to 
 heighten the facial expression of the figures. The features 
 of the loser, who sits with his back to the light, appear en 
 silhoioette, while the bland mockery of his smiling opponent 
 is placed opposite to a strong light. On the back of the 
 mount of the photograph of this picture before me, M. 
 Meissonier has written : " ce tableau a ete fait pour Lord 
 Hertford en 1858." 
 
 About this period M. Meissonier was much noticed by the 
 p]mperor, and we read in the " Gazette des Beaux Arts," of 
 September 1869, that he was at that time just finishing the 
 sketch of The Battle of Solferino ; and had received a com- 
 mission for another historical picture of the meeting of the 
 two Emperors of France and Austria, on horseback ; and 
 was about to return to Italy to take the sketch on the precise 
 spot where this historic incident occurred, and to proceed 
 from thence to Vienna to take the portrait of the young 
 Emperor. 
 
 In January, 1860, a very remarkable exhibition was held 
 on the Boulevard des Italiens, of modern works of art lent 
 by private collectors, for the benefit of the Caisse des 
 Secours, or Artists' Benevolent Fund; "which," says M. 
 
38 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 Grautier, " did not contain one bad or mediocre picture." 
 Here the progress of the " Romantic School," created in 
 Meissonier's early days, was represented in an interesting 
 collection of examples of various epochs : of Bonnington, 
 Delacroix, Decamps, Jules Dupre, Theodore Rousseau, Bou- 
 langer, Isabey, Robert Eleury, Camille Roqueplan, Diaz, 
 Riesener, and others ; whose works, remarkable for brilliance 
 and intensity of colour, seemed to clothe the walls with a 
 glowing and luxurious tapestry, and contrasted strongly 
 with the cold, pale colours for which the annual exhibitions 
 at the Palais de I'lndustrie had been remarkable. Other 
 leading masters of the Trench School represented at this 
 Exhibition, were : Ingres, Hipp. Flandrin, Meissonier, 
 Gudin, Troyon, Rosa Bonheur, Brascassat, Isabey, Ary 
 Scheffer, Marilhat, Charlet, &c. 
 
 " Never," says M. Gautier, was the work of Meissonier 
 more favourably represented : he is there in every shade of his 
 genius, and with the most curious variations of style. The 
 little world of his creation is increased with new and welcome 
 inhabitants. Signor Polichinello makes his entrance among 
 the studious and sedate amateurs, painters, smokei's, beer- 
 drinkers, violoncellists, and others. Besides the Decameron we 
 have there the Ne])hew of Bameau, one of those drinkers, ' qui 
 jettent la bouteille apres le premier veiTe ; qui cassent une pipe 
 apres avoir fume,' " &c. 
 There were several repetitions of the Polichinello. I have 
 before me a photograph of one, a specimen of animated 
 wood or wooden humanity, bedizened in satins and em- 
 broidery, with immense bows of ribands at the knees ; a 
 thing half man and half doll, sprawling on futile legs, and 
 obviously pendent from the back of his neck ; his hands are 
 clasped over his ridiculous stomach, his club is hugged 
 under his arm, and he cocks his head, surmounted by a tall 
 fool's cap, at an angle, and grins at the spectator with a 
 pucker in the left eye in the highest degree ludicrous. On 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 39 
 
 the back of this photograph M. Meissonier has attached a 
 pencil memorandum in his own writing : — " Ce tableau 
 a etc paint par plaisanterie sur une porte. La peinture a 
 ete coupee a la vente de la personne qui possedait la porte. 
 Sir R. Wallace I'a achetee." This is the PolicUnel on panel, 
 which figured as the number 521 of the works exhibited 
 at Bethnal Green in 1872. Another PolicMnello (if not the 
 same) is mentioned in a sale of the modern pictures be- 
 longing to M. Alexandre Dumas fils, in 1865, where it was 
 bought for £280. 
 
 M. Meissonier had always a habit of occupying himself in 
 drawing upon any material that lay at hand in his moments 
 of enforced inaction ; and M. Claretie mentions a publisher 
 with whom he had dealings in his youth, who made a prac- 
 tice of keeping him waiting in an ante-room in which the 
 table was supplied with pencils and strips of paper, which 
 M. Meissonier regularly covered for him, without noticing 
 what he was doing, with valuable sketches which the 
 ingenious publisher as regularly converted into money. 
 
 The Nephew of Bameau mentioned by M. Grautier is a 
 production of the year 1860 ; it represents merely " a man 
 at a table smoking a pipe," but it is an immortal character- 
 sketch worthy of Velazquez himself. It is the typical 
 vagabond, or Other Smoker, described by M. Grautier (see 
 page 26).' Among the most amusing of the critiques 
 evoked by the Exhibition in 1860, is that of M. Cordier, 
 in the " Beaux Arts," who is humorous on the subject of 
 Meissonier's selection of a period in the past century, and 
 prophesies that in the future : — 
 
 " Genius, never satisfied with the present, will find its subjects 
 in memories of 1860, which will render it dissatisfied with 1960, 
 
 ^ See " Gazette des Beaux Arts," Feb. 1860. 
 
40 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 which, in its turn, will be envied by 2060, and so on ad infinitum. 
 Oui- ghosts, one day returning to an Exhibition of the next 
 century, will be singularly flattei-ed to read on the labels of 
 pictures two or three inches in diameter such inscriptions as ' A 
 Critic composing an Article for a I?eview,' ' A Young Man 
 mixing his Absinthe,' or ' A Lecture cAp2 Alexandre Dumas.'" 
 Carrying out the comparison of Meissonier with Watteau, 
 suggested by the Decameron subject in this Exhibition, he goes 
 on to say: "M. Meissonier has not selected the pleasant and 
 lively features of the age of Louis Quinze ; he takes no delight 
 in those delicious butterfly scenes of bright colours gaily glit- 
 tering in the sun, voluminous silks falling in a thousand pleats 
 and shining like the facets of a diamond. The false but elegant 
 life, of which Watteau painted the pleasures, with its ' grandes 
 dames coquettes, filles rieuses," and young lords glittering with 
 gold: all that 'cohue fanfreluchonnee' has been far from his 
 mind ; he has seized upon one idea, to represent the minute 
 details of real life in its working aspect. He is not the painter 
 of the fites galanies, but of the life of labour, of the life which 
 existed with, and finally overwhelmed, the festive existence of 
 last century. He is not to be seduced by rouge and patches ; 
 philosophers and artists are his subjects, men elaborating 
 thought in the silence of labour." 
 It will now he observed that thoughtful writers began to 
 regard the message of Meissonier as something secularly- 
 significant, — beyond the mere accident of a charge of fashion 
 and tendency of art, — representative of a wave of progress 
 in the civilization of the nation. 
 
 M. Chesneau, also a thoughtful writer, dealing with the 
 subject from this point of view, shows how the Romantic 
 School represented by Delacroix was too earnest, too frankly- 
 sentimental, for the character of the nation, and speaks of 
 the realism of the Dutch School, represented by Courbet, 
 as a transition between what he calls the heroic and the 
 human periods of French art. 
 
 " Fi'ance, from geographical position and the character of her 
 people, always vacillating between the North and the South, 
 has had her heroic period with Poussin> Lesueur, Lebrun, 
 
THE FLEMISH SMOKER. 
 
MEISSONIEE, 
 
 41 
 
 David, Ingres, and even with her last great artist, Eugene 
 Delacroix, whoso genius was but a variation of the ancient 
 classical tradition. Twice or thrice her art has struggled to 
 enter into the human period, and has failed to do so, in spite of 
 the efforts of the brothers Lenain, of Chardin, and of Gericault. 
 To Courbet is to be attributed the continuation of these 
 efforts," &c ; — 
 
 And their triumph to Meissonier, whose work combining 
 artistic with so-called literary excellence, completely over- 
 shadows such productions as the Demoiselles de Village, and 
 the Gasseurs de Pierres, of Courbet. 
 
 M. Chesneau makes the happy remark, that whereas there 
 is breadth and grandeur in Meissonier's smallest panels, 
 David and his school had the art of imparting littleness 
 to (rappetisant) canvases of the greatest dimensions. He 
 points out that the work of David was always cramped by 
 the shackles of tradition and heartless conventionality, and 
 that of Meissonier, elaborated in search of an ideal perfection 
 by long and conscientious labour, 
 
 " Evidences a superhuman patience, an unconquerable longing 
 to do well, a persistence and continuity of purpose in his mind, 
 most rare in themselves, and in him happily combined with a 
 constant study of the expression of feeling in humanity, and 
 especially of the refinements of the intellect {esprit). Thought, 
 meditation, serious or wandering, of the philosopher or of the 
 lover, have supplied him with motives for the most charming, 
 often pathetic, compositions. He can express in his art the 
 sensual satisfaction of the musician, and the naive indications 
 of foolishness (as in The Confidence)," &c. 
 
 The official catalogue of the Salon of 1861 mentions The 
 Emperor at Solfei'ino ; tm marechal f errant ; un musicien ; 
 un peintre ; Portrait de M. Louis Fould ; Portrait de 
 Madame T — } The Solferino was not however ready. At 
 
 ' Madame Henri Thenard. It was one of Meissonier's fourteen pic- 
 tures in the Universal Exhibition, 1867 (see page 42), 
 
42 
 
 , MEISSONIEU. 
 
 the private view a jealous critic, M. Lamquet, expecting 
 that it •would be admitted by favour after the appointed 
 term, cries : — 
 
 "At the moment we are writing this article, M. Meissonier's 
 picture has not arrived. Why this favour refused to so many 
 others ? If a little more time was to be granted to any, it should 
 have been to those whose reputation was still to make." 
 
 M. Jules Claretie speaks in enthusiastic terms of Meis- 
 sonier's excellence as a portrait painter "penetrant et 
 vivant;" and makes this excellence an answer to such 
 criticisms as that of M. Cordier (see page 39), objecting to 
 his choice of a period in the past century, " when Meissonier 
 paints modem and contemporary persons," he says, " il est 
 plus contemporain et plus moderne que personne." The 
 portrait of Mdme. Henri Thenard is also adduced, as an 
 additional instance, confirming that of the Decameron and 
 his illustration work, of his excellence in painting women. 
 
 " What pretty rose tints beaming with life and truth ! What 
 a study of drawing and painting that hand veined with blue ! 
 what a charm, touched with melancholy, in the features ! And 
 when the beautiful Titianesqne girl that he is finishing shall be 
 exhibited, it will be seen what a painter of women is this man, 
 who designed the exquisite and seductive figures in the ' Contes 
 Eemois ' of M. de Chevigne. 
 
 " The Portrait of M. Belahante, among many others that he 
 has signed — such as those of his son, of M. Fould, of M. Battu, 
 and others — is one of the most ' solides.' The man is powerful, 
 of athletic build ; but there is a touch of refinement still in this 
 ' taille de colosse.' He luxuriates more in vitality than in 'em- 
 bonpoint.' The head is full of energy and a latent gaiety." 
 
 This Portrait of M. Delahante was one of the works by 
 which Meissonier was represented in the Exhibition of 1867. 
 In the background of the picture was a miniature reproduc- 
 tion of the Charge of Cuirassiers at Friedland, in the picture 
 called " 1807 " (described on page 54). 
 
MEISSONIKK. 
 
 43 
 
 Of the works of the year 1861, there is another Card 
 Party, the figures of which might be taken for English 
 cavaliers of the civil wars, distinguished bj long hair, 
 flapping boots with great spurs, slovenly costume, and a 
 character of free-hearted, reckless gaiety. Each of these 
 figures is a remarkable study in itself of the expression of 
 character and emotion, not in the features alone, but in all 
 the details of attitude, costume, and, in short, individuality. 
 A contrast to this roystering scene is The Audience (engraved 
 for the " Gazette des Beaux Arts," 1861, by Ch. Carey, a 
 pupil of Tony Johannot), illustrating the polished punctilio 
 of an oflBcial reception ; and a third, totally different subject 
 of the same date is The Blachsmith (Le Marechal ferrant) 
 drawn from Meissonier's illustration to the " Contes Re- 
 mois," a scene of humble life, in the open air ; a blacksmith 
 shoeing a patient old cart-horse — (Meissonier's horses are 
 simply perfect for anatomy, expression, and texture of their 
 coats) — in a picturesque corner of a yard, where vines 
 clamber about a trellis overhead, and soften the light with 
 their green and partial shade. It was one of the pictures 
 exhibited in London in 1862. 
 
 The "Beaux Arts" (not the Gazette), formerly, as we 
 have seen, so friendly, was very severe upon Meissonier in 
 the criticisms of the Salon of 1861 — and says of this 
 picture : — 
 
 " This is one of the mfiniment jpetits ; with much pains we 
 have discovered in it, great skill in the composition, great re- 
 finement (finesse) in the details, but not the least kind of per- 
 spective ; " and of The Musician ; " he is well posed and is 
 handling his instrument with ease ; which must be all the more 
 difficult for him to do, because the floor is on a slope, like that 
 of a gothic roof, and he is in danger of slipping down it and 
 breaking his neck: the pieces of furniture charmed with his 
 melodj are all dancing on different legs ; ' mais Amphion en a 
 
44 
 
 MEISSONIKR. 
 
 bien fait d'autres!' There is less perspective in ths picture 
 than the other. ' 
 
 M. P. Bucliere, to whom we owe this criticism, was en- 
 gaged at the time in a series of articles in the same journal 
 upon the subject of Chinese Art, which may ha\e com- 
 plicated his study of the Laws of Perspective. 
 
 Towards the end of 1861 Meissonier was elected to the 
 
 Academy, in place of M. Abel de Pujol. This honmr was 
 
 contested by M. Auguste Hesse, a former holdei of the 
 
 " Prix de Rome." The " Chronique des Arts," December 
 
 8, 1861, makes a curious allusion to this election, as though 
 
 the specialists were not yet reconciled to the popularity of 
 
 M. Meissonier, won without their help : — 
 
 " However great the talents of M. Hesse, he is not nearly so 
 ivell known as his competitor, and it must be admitted that a 
 great notoriety is, in itself, a motive for preference, i.ccording 
 to the list drawn up by the Section for Painting, it ii evident 
 that the majority of votes obtained by M. Meissonier, vere given 
 to him by the Sections of Architecture, Engraving, ard Music ; 
 that is to say, by those who, being unconnected with painting, 
 represent opinion: the sentiment of the world it large." 
 
 M. Ernest Chesneau comments upon the circumstance, as 
 
 fortunate, that Meissonier was not called upon to pr)nounce 
 
 an eulogy upon his predecessor in the academical chiir, who 
 
 differed, in his views of art, toto ccelo, from himsdf ; and 
 
 had " adopted and diverted towards religious painiing the 
 
 narrow tradition and cold conventionality of Davie." 
 
 Extracted from the official catalogue of the English Inter- 
 national Exhibition, 1862 are 
 
 187. The Student. i , ^ . j at 
 
 ^ , „ ( le Comte de Mony. 
 
 188. Breakfast. \ •' 
 
 189. H.M. the Emperor at the Battle ) H.M. the Empe-or of the 
 
 of Solferino [7iot sent). ) French. 
 
 190. H.M. the Emperor Napoleon I. H.I.H. Prince Nipoleon. 
 
 191. The Bravos. le Comte de Momy. 
 
MEISSONIEE. 45 
 
 Mr. F. T. Palgrave says in his remarks introductory to 
 the oflS.cial catalogue of the French School, that 
 
 " England possesses, in the domestic branch of subjects, no 
 painter equal in truth and tenderness of feeling to Edouard 
 Frere. His works, with those of Plassan, Trayer, Troyon, and 
 others, display another excellent national quality ; tact and ease 
 in telling the story, and a determination not to exceed the limits 
 of the style adopted by the artist."^ 
 
 But he does not mention Meissonier. 
 
 At the exhibition of the " Cercle de I'Union Artistique," 
 held in the Rue de Choiseul in 1862, Meissonier was repre- 
 sented by the Gorps de Garde, the Lecture chez Diderot, 
 already mentioned, and another picture called Le Oapitalne, 
 representing a veteran officer in military costume of the 
 17th century, descending a bai'onial staircase, with an air 
 of mingled familiarity and swagger in the highest degree 
 humorous. An article in the " Chronique des Arts," May, 
 1863, adds that to these were subsequently added a copy of 
 the Nafpoleon during the Campaign of France, the property 
 of Prince Napoleon ; which was painted "en camaieu gris," 
 and sold to M. Delahante for the price of £1,000. 
 
 The "Gazette des Beaux Arts" of this year (1862) 
 contains a very good etching by Flameng of a picture, then 
 just completed, La Halte, and an able commentary upon it 
 by M. Leon Lagrange : — 
 
 " This is such a picture as we would fain have more frequently 
 from M. Meissonier. Each figure, man or beast, has its own 
 very remarkable individual value ; and all combine in one 
 common action composing an animated scene. The necessity 
 of grouping together a number of living figures has stimulated 
 the efforts of the painter in search of expression ; and the ne- 
 cessity of binding a variety of tones has stimulated his study 
 of colour. The white horse is mounted by a man dressed in 
 blue ; the bay, by a man in green ; the black, by a rider in 
 
46 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 red. The red roof of the inn, the dress of the man smoking, 
 the grey robe of the woman, the white linen, the poultry, the 
 walls, the trees, are so many separate notes mingling through 
 light demi-tints to a harmonious ensemble." 
 
 This picture was painted for the Due de Morny. On the 
 photograph of this picture M. Meissonier has written 
 the following interesting note : " Ce tableau a ete achete 
 primitivement par M. de Morny, qui quelque temps apres 
 I'avoir acquis m'a prie de I'agrandir : pour lui etre agreable 
 j'ai fait aj outer du bois au panneau. II a du etre achete a 
 la vente du Due par Lord Hertford." It was exhibited at 
 Bethnal Green, under the title of Travellers halting at an 
 Inn. It has the French alias of L'Auberge. 
 
 In 1863, on 19th April, a notice in the " Chronique des 
 Arts," informs us that M. Meissonier had "that moment " 
 finished the Battle of Solferino. In the same journal it is 
 recorded, in July, 1863, that this picture, although it was 
 inserted in the Catalogues of the Salons of 1861 and 1863, 
 and in that of the English International Exhibition of 1862, 
 had not appeared at either. It was, however, at that date, 
 1863, on view in the studio of M. Bingham. It was 
 exhibited in the Salon of 1864, and the International Ex- 
 hibition of 1867, and is now in the Luxembourg Gallery. 
 
 It was one of the pictures by which Meissonier was re- 
 presented at the Brussels Exhibition of this year. The 
 others were the Souvenir of the Civil War, 1850-51, and the 
 Young Man reading near a Window, which had been sold 
 at the Le Hon sale of 1862. Both of these last-named 
 pictures were at that time the property of Mr. Van Praet. 
 The last must be the picture originally christened the 
 Bibliophile, a picture described by M. Gautier — 
 
 " Of Meissonier's golden age, of Louis Qninze, when men wore 
 full curled wigs, or powdered hair drawn back, giving every- 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 47 
 
 one a disguised air and appearance of being made up and 
 middle-aged. 
 
 " The young man turns his head towards his book ; the day- 
 light is fading, and the grey of the evening is seen in the sky 
 outside, the shutter being partially closed." 
 
 In 1861, Meissonier made the illustrations to a new 
 edition of the " Contes Remois," by the Comte de Chevigne, 
 of which there is a friendly notice, illustrated with cuts, in 
 M. Piot's " Cabinet de 1' Amateur." M. Piot informs us 
 that the Comte de Chevigne secured the co-operation of 
 Meissonier at a lavish price, and ensured the success of 
 his publication by doing so. Of the illustrations, speci- 
 mens of which will be found at pages 36, 49, 61, 69, &c., 
 M. Piot says :— 
 
 "La Culotte des Cordeliers and Le Mart Matinul carry our 
 memory back to the pretty etching of The Smoker, made fur 
 the first number of our ' Cabinet de I'Amateur,' now twenty- 
 two years ago ; and looking at Le Bmi Bocteur and the Ciiig^ 
 Layettes, we are again in his society of Philosophers and Chess- 
 players, whose honest faces redeem the character of the calum- 
 niated eighteenth century; and was it not yesterday that 
 English and French buyers were contending at the Hotel 
 Drouot for possession of the persons of the Gros Bogue, Be par- 
 te Eoi, or the Falcon ?" 
 
 Le Bon Cousm is the original idea of the picture of Le 
 Marechal f errant, of 1861 (described on page 43). La 
 Culotte des Cordeliers is given on page 69, and Le Bon Bocteur 
 on page 49 of this work. Be par le Boi was a characteristic 
 scene of a company of Harquebusiers knocking at the low 
 vaulted door of a mediaeval house. Other fine illustrations 
 in the " Contes Remois " were Le Mari Borgne, a crowded 
 scene of a wedding-party emerging from the church, where- 
 doubtless the ceremony had just been completed ; Le Mari 
 Matinal, an enthusiastic amateur gardener, digging in 
 
48 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 an open flower-garden, witli a gabled mansion in the 
 background; and Le PeUrinage, a landscape scene in a 
 finely timbered park, with two female figures of peasant 
 girls. 
 
 The year 1863 was marked by the death of the great 
 .eader of the Eomantic School of painting, Eugene Dela- 
 croix. He died on the 13th August, at the age of sixty-four. 
 He made his debut in art, in 1822, with a masterpiece, 
 the Barque of Dante, and exercised probably more influence 
 on the course of the art of his country than any other living 
 painter of his time.^ M. Jules Claretie tells us that " the 
 painter whom this impassioned {fougueux) and vast genius 
 loved and admired above all others, was Meissonier. ' Meis- 
 sonier,' said the author of the Massacre de Scio one day, ' est 
 le maiti-e le plus incontestable de notre epoque. 
 
 We are indebted to M. Claretie for an account of the 
 following incident: — Another Souvenir of the Civil War, 
 called La Bairicade, was standing in M. Meissonier's studio 
 one evening that Eugene Delacroix had dined with him. 
 " C'est superbe ! " s'ecria I'auteur de la Barque du Dante. 
 " Yous trouvez ? Eh bien, dit Meissonier, si cela vous 
 plait, prenez-le ! " and Delacroix carried home the Barricade. 
 
 ' Ferdinand Victor Eugene Delacroix was born at Charenton, in 
 1799 ; his father had been minister during the Directory, but he was left 
 very poor ; lie studied under Guerin, and soon became a chief leader of the 
 Romantic (or Anti-classic) school [see page 26]. In 1822 he exhibited 
 the celebrated scene from Dante's " Inferno," now in the Luxembourg 
 Gallery ; in 1834 decorated the Chamber of Deputies with allegoric 
 figures, and exhibited the Battle of Taillebourg, now at Versailles ; in 
 1848 he decorated the Chamber of Peers; his paintings are very nu- 
 merous. (C. C. Black.) Those exhibited to the British public at Bethnal 
 
 Green, in 1872, by Sir Richard Wallace, are well-chosen specimens of his 
 power in pathos and expression, the Beath of Marino Falicro and Faust 
 and Mephistopheles. 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 49 
 
 At the Delacroix sale' it was bought, for 3,600 francs, by 
 .M. Steinhell, the brother-in-law of M. Meissonier, who 
 ofEered it at the same price to M. Reiset, for the Louvre. 
 M. Reiset, after some hesitation, declined, and M. Steinhell 
 subsequently re-sold the picture for 6,000 francs. M. 
 Claretie adds that the picture was never exhibited excepting 
 
 LE BON DOCTEUK. 
 
 From the " Contes B^mois." 
 
 at the Delacroix sale ; it cannot therefore be the same 8ou- 
 venir of the Civil War that figured at Brussels in 1862. 
 The frank interchange of gifts of such value is charac- 
 teristic of the friendship that existed between the two great 
 masters. 
 
 ^ The catalogue of this Sale is one of the valuable collection of Art 
 Sale Catalogues in the Art Library at the South Kensington Museum, 
 
 E 
 
60 
 
 MBISSONIER. 
 
 In the "Cabinet de I'Amateur " of 1863, M. Eugene 
 Piot remarks :— 
 
 "The mixch-affected crowd of artists who thronged to the 
 obsequies of M. Eugene Delacroix, saw with pain that no official 
 recognition was added to this public mourning. Let us close 
 up our ranks (' serrons-nous') around our illustrious dead; let 
 us study to make their funeral honours worthy of France and 
 their own genius ! Indifference gains upon us on every hand, 
 and every day narrows the fatal circle within which French art 
 is perishing (ce cercle fatal ou I'art fran^ais agonise et se 
 meurt)." 
 
 The Salon of 1864 contained the two greatest of Meis- 
 sonier's series of eight pictures, illustrating the "Napoleonic 
 cycle " (as M. Claretie calls it) ; from the defeat of the 
 Austrians at Lodi in 1796, to the retreat from Russia, or 
 the campaign of France, in 1814. 
 
 "With reference to the refusal of the jurors to award the 
 medal to Meissonier on this occasion, M. Edmond About 
 says (Salon de 1864) : — 
 
 " The painters have been more naively personal, if one may 
 say so, in their decision than even the sculptors. Not having a 
 single deceased member to reward ; fearing beyond anything- 
 else to do justice to Meissonier, who has exhibited two master- 
 pieces, or to two or three other eminent artists such as Jules- 
 Breton and Amaury Duval, they have had the heroism and the 
 egotism to declare that there would be no ' Grande Medaille ' 
 awarded. And for fear that public opinion would force their 
 hand at the end of a fortnight's exhibition, they juggled away 
 the medal of honour on the 6th of May, six days after the 
 opening, . . . Two admiring groups, incessantly renewed 
 from the time of opening the doors until the closing, indicate 
 the places where Meissonier's two pictures are hung. And it 
 is to these two pictures that the jury has i*efused the Grande 
 Medaille ! It was awarded to M. Yvon some years ago. And 
 Meissonier has not had it. Oh Frenchmen of Paris ! Athe- 
 nians of the La Villette suburbs ! You do not deserve great 
 
 r mi 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 61 
 
 artists, as you do not know how to reward them ! . . . 
 . . We had^w painters in the year of the I^xhibition of 1855, 
 who held in their sphere the rank held by Scribe in the drama, 
 or George Sand and Dumas in romance, or Rossini and Auber 
 in the musical world. J^eath has since robbed us of thi'ee — 
 Decamps,^ Vernet, Delacroix ; and two are left, Ingres and 
 Meissonier. 
 
 " A bourgeois notion is abroad in certain classes that Meisso- 
 nier's genius consists in painting very httle pictures. His 
 principal merit, on the contrary, is that his work is greater, 
 and especially more solid, than that of our soi-disant historical 
 
 painters Look at the Emperor at Solferino. The 
 
 principal personage, posted in front of his staff, is looking on 
 at the battle as a cool player studies a chess- board. A score of 
 officers around him, all like himself on horseback, are waiting 
 his orders. In the distance a regiment is seen escalading, in 
 order of battle, a breastwork crowned with poplars. On the 
 right, in the foreground, some artilleiymen are manoeuvring their 
 guns, the corpses of a French soldier and two white Austrians, 
 torn' to rags by some explosion, show where the battle has 
 passed b}'. Even if you have no knowledge to appreciate the 
 truth of drawing, the solidity of execution, sincerity of colour, 
 the pictm-e will impress you profoundly ; it will be greater in 
 the tablets of your memory than it is within its frame. You 
 understand now, perchance, for the first time, the movement — 
 tranquil and profoundly melancholy — of a general staff, that 
 mainspring of battles. In any case you will be charmed with 
 the truth, the simplicity of the characters, &c. 
 
 " Now, having studied this familiar victory ' presente'e sans 
 emphase ' — recross the room and look at the Retreat o/" 1 814. It 
 hangs exactly opposite to make an antithesis. It is also a 
 picture of a general staff, but of a staff in defeat. Napoleon 
 
 • Alexandre Gabriel Decamps was born in Paris, in 1803 ; he studied 
 under Bouchat and Abel de Pujol ; he disliked severe classicism, and 
 preferred a realistic style ; painted much in Turkey, the Levant, and 
 Egypt ; and shows a fondness for introducing scriptural figures in his 
 Eastern sketches. He died atFontainebleau, 1860. — (C. C. Black.) SirR. 
 Wallace is the possessor of a large collection of his works, principally of 
 Scriptural or Oriental subjects, and a number of water-colour drawings, 
 the whole of which were exhibited at Bethnal Green Museum in 1872. 
 
52 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 conquered, but firm and resigned, is at the head of a group of 
 the generals and marshals of France. His fine head is crowned 
 with that ' aureole de malheur,' which outlives all other crowns 
 in history. In a melancholy manner he presses his horse 
 along a road where the snow is heaped up and stained and 
 trampled by the wheels of the tumbrils and the feet of the 
 soldiers of the army. This road of the French campaign is the 
 lamentable track on which our fortunes were spilled. A grey 
 sky hangs like a shroud over the disgrace of the favourite of 
 the gods. The companions of his glory — for none has yet 
 betrayed him— follow him sadly, sick in body and soul. A 
 chilling wind makes them shudder beneath theu* cloaks. "We 
 recognize Drouot, M. de Flahaut, Berthier, Avho is sleeping iu 
 his saddle and sinking with fatigue. The hardiest of all is Ney , 
 ' nature rustique,' he will certainly never die of cold. The body 
 of the army is advancing in a crowd, ' en tas, en pate, sur une 
 ligne parallele.' The eye distinguishes muskets, drums, rags. 
 This troop of obscure heroes appear to be closing up to each 
 other in their distress for mutual warmth. But the ranks are 
 unbroken ; it is a retreat, not a disbandment ; the enemy would 
 still find qui parler, s'il tombait sur ces gaillards-la ! ' Never, 
 I think, has Meissouier been better inspired than this year ; 
 never has he attempted such great things ; never has his genius 
 taken so high a flight. 
 
 " You may criticise, in the Solferino, a certain appearance of 
 d6cousu, which is the efi'ect of the cannon smoke spread here 
 and there in white patches," &c., &c. 
 
 M. Claretie informs us that, for the " 1814 " picture, 
 Meissonier borrowed the identical coat of Napoleon from 
 the " Musee des Souverains," and had it copied by a tailor 
 with "une exactitude Chinoise;" crease for crease, button 
 for button. He then put it on himself, in his studio, and, 
 sitting on a wooden horse saddled in imitation of the white 
 charger of the Emperor, he studied his own figure in a 
 mirror. M. Ph. Burty found him in this attitude one day, 
 stifling in a hot summer's day, under the heavy " redingote," 
 studying the fall of the skirt over the crupper of his wooden 
 horse. 
 
MEISSONIER, 53 
 
 He also prepared in his studio, with infinite pains, an 
 arrangement of a miniature landscape, strewn with a white 
 powder resembling snow, and models of tumbrils and 
 waggons on heavy wheels, which he drew through the lanes 
 of his powdered landscape, that he might study the furrows 
 and the fall and deposit of the scattered snow at leieure. 
 
 Mr. F. Gr. Stephens, in his "Flemish and French Painters," 
 mentions that the Emperor N'apoleon, engaged at the same 
 time upon his "Life of Ceesar," used similar methods of 
 models of Roman encampments and strategic works, to 
 produce in his mind a full realization of the scenes he 
 wished to describe. 
 
 In either case, and in the case of the so-called pre- 
 Raphaelite school which had its time in England, the 
 conscientious labour and minute study of detail so cheaply 
 censured by those who are too vain or too idle to submit to 
 it, produced results in immortal works which are finally 
 judged by the elevation of their general aim and its suc- 
 cessful attainment ; and not by the valuation of their parts, 
 as the critics hostile to this method assume. The pre- 
 Raphaelite works of Millais, Holman Hunt, Walker, and 
 others, live by the soul that is in them ; and there are no 
 works of Meissonier which contain a deeper sentiment and 
 a better refutation of the common accusation against him, 
 of want of feeling, and contentment with material ends, 
 than these Napoleonic pictures of " 1807," and " 1814," and 
 Solferino ; upon the details of which he expended such an 
 unsparing amount of labour. 
 
 In the number of " L'Art," for January, 1876, there is a 
 very full notice of the two Napoleonic pictures, " 1814 " 
 {La Eetraite de Bussie) and " 1807 " (Friedland)— illustrated 
 by several enlarged cuts of the details— from which I have 
 extracted the following : — 
 
MEISSONIEE. 
 
 " 1807," like " 1814," is a page of history, but it is of triumph. 
 T\iGBetrLatfrom Moscow showed Napoleon returning painfully 
 across the steppes, covered with snow, under a low grey sky, 
 followed by his staff, gloomy and discouraged. It was the 
 crumbling of the Imperial fortunes. Here, on the contrary, we 
 see their culmination . Buonaparte is at the apogee of his power. 
 The whole scene is glistening in the light of the sun of victory ; 
 its radiance floats over the plain and the horizon, and enfolds the 
 army in a vast aureole; the cuirasses scintillate, helmets glitter, 
 the swords reflect lightnings from the sky— and yet, simulta- 
 neously with this scene of triumph at Friedland, who shall count 
 the stifled sobs of France ? The painter has addressed himself 
 to the expression of this idea. Look over the vast plain 
 stretched out 'a pcrte de vue,' h^ivvm of foliage and of vege- 
 tation. The burning breath of the cannon has consumed and 
 ruined it all. No— one field of rye was left verdant, and that 
 now is being ruined— trampled under the feet of the triumphant 
 army. The Emperor, on a rising ground, is surrounded by his 
 staff, amongst whom are his marshals, Bessieres, Duroc, and 
 Berthier. Although he is in the middle distance, he is the 
 soul of the picture, and fixes the attention and the look of the 
 spectator, towards whom he appears to be advancing. On 
 his left and rear, Nansouty is waiting with his division for 
 the signal to defile ; further back is seen the ' Vieille Garde, 
 with their grenadier caps and white breeches ; behind them, 
 squadron after squadron of troops, and an infinite perspective 
 dotted with men as far as the eye can follow it into the 
 distance." 
 
 A principal feature in the foreground of this picture is 
 the charge of the regiment of cuirassiers, passing at full 
 gallop in front of the Emperor, who salutes them ; and 
 each, as he passes the mound on which Napoleon stands, 
 turns round and rises in the stirrups, and waves his sword 
 in the air. As M. Claretie says : " L'elan, la fougue, I'em- 
 portement de tout ce regiment au galop, voila qui est ad- 
 mirable et intraduisible." 
 
 The picture deserves to be re -christened from the signi- 
 ficance of this incident alone, Morituri te salutant!" 
 
MEISSONIEK. 
 
 55 
 
 Meissonier is said to have worked upon this picture for 
 fifteen years : he modelled all the horses in wax, and eve)-y 
 figure was drawn from the life. It was sold to Mr. Stewart, 
 of New York, for about 300,000 francs. 
 
 A very humorous character-picture of the year 1865, is 
 is called Une Chanson, and represents a scene in a spacious 
 guard-room, heavily vaulted like a crypt, and rudely fur- 
 nished with a wooden table and benches. A soldier of the 
 sixteenth century, apparently passing through a sentimental 
 stage of drunkenness, is sitting on the table, with a guitar 
 of many strings,and chanting at the top of his voice a song 
 of a melancholy or maudlin character ; his comrade, astride 
 of the bench, is listening and watching with a comical ex- 
 pression of amusement. L' Ordonnance, of 1866, is a very 
 celebrated picture, and is also a military piece, of the period 
 of the Revelation. It represents three figures of soldiers 
 in the richly decorated ante-room of some palace, or private 
 mansion, their temporary quarters ; and an orderly deliver- 
 ing a despatch. The ofiicer, with his back to the fire, 
 reading the despatch with all the arrogance of ephemeral 
 rank, is the ideal of Scott's inimitable creation, Dugald 
 Dalgetty. The soldiers wear long plaited locks of hair and 
 pigtails, and the details of the costumes and the furniture 
 are almost microscopically rendered, and the textures and 
 the "chatoyants" effects are such as Meissonier alone can 
 produce. Of the same year, 1866, is the picture of Marshal 
 Baxe and his Staff, which was sold, at a sale in New York, 
 for 8,600 dollars. 
 
 In the Salon of 1866, two pictures of M. Charles Meis- 
 sonier were spoken of with very favourable criticism, 
 containing, M. Edmond About says, "a little of the bril- 
 liancy which ' superabounds in the work of his illustrious 
 father,' and attracting attention not only for the spirit that 
 
66 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 they display, but for the special qualities of a painter wliich 
 the public recognizes in them." 
 
 Our narrative has now arrived at the great year 1867 ; 
 when, as M. Theodore Duret remarks (Les Peintres Frangais 
 en 1867), the Universal Exhibition of living artists at the 
 Champ de Mars, and the Annual Exhibition of the Champs 
 Elysees ; the Exhibition of the works of Ingres at the 
 " Palais des Beaux Arts," and of Theodore Rousseau at 
 the "Cercle" of the Rue de Choiseul; and the Private 
 Exhibitions of MM. Courbet and Manet, brought under 
 the eyes of the public a series of works of French painters, 
 which permitted a judgment to be passed on the school in 
 general and the principal characteristics of its members. 
 
 It was at the Annual Exhibition at the Champs Elysees 
 of this year, that M. Fichel came forward with a picture 
 in the style of M. Meissonier, which attracted a great deal 
 of attention, and of which the " Athenaeum " says : — 
 
 " Among getire pictures of this peculiar kind, M. Fichel oc- 
 cupies, in the absence of M. Meissonier, a prominent place with 
 his capital Amateurs before a Picture : an old subject, but filled 
 here with new matter." 
 
 Of the same year is M. Meissonier's Cavalry Charge; 
 sold to Mr. Probasco, of Cincinnatti, for 150,000 francs. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 I HAVE before me a collection of magazine notices, in 
 all the languages of Europe, of the Fine Arts Section 
 of tlie International Exhibition of 1867. The painters of 
 England and France appear to have entered into the rivalry 
 of this occasion with all 
 
 " The stern joy which warriors feel 
 In foemen wortliy of their steel ; " 
 
 and the critics of each nationality are patriotic in their 
 valuations. 
 
 An example of the conduct of their polemics on the side 
 of the French, is given by the " Times " correspondent, 
 who afterwards turns round and retaliates : 
 
 " One wise critic declared that ' when he came to write 
 about the English pictures he was in a difficulty ; for, properly 
 speaking, there were no pictures, and there was no school of 
 painting to write about. Nevertheless, as a chemist would un- 
 dertake to analyse any unknown substance put into his hands, 
 no matter how unpleasant to his senses, he would undertake to 
 examine this not very pleasing nondescript which the English 
 painters put forward as Art.'" 
 
 I have not been able to discover the original of this quo- 
 tation, or it would have been interesting to analyse the 
 national idiosyncrasy that the foreign critic objected to. 
 The " Times " correspondent considers that all the foreign 
 
^8 
 
 MBISSONIER. 
 
 nations showed in their collections the influence of the 
 French style, and that there were, properly speaking, only 
 two distinct schools of art represented : the English and 
 the French ; but that the character of the French art was 
 to be described as " the formulated wisdom of a school ; " 
 to which, rather unhappily, he applies the name of chic. 
 Alluding to the organized system of training arranged for 
 students of painting in France, under the bureaucratic 
 direction of the G-overnment, he says : — 
 
 "We see more of chic in French pictures than in English, 
 because the influence of School is more felt in France than in 
 England. It is suggested to the young French painter what 
 he shall see in Natui-e, and how he shall paint it ; there is a 
 danger, ever afterwards, that he will see and paint nothing 
 else ; and he has more or less of chic, according as he follows 
 more or less freely the receipts of the School to which he 
 belongs." 
 
 The system of Government patronage of the fine arts in 
 action in France at this date, was the subject of a great 
 deal of comment in pamphlets and magazine articles, of 
 which the following is a specimen : — 
 
 " The State alone is in a position to maintain the arts in the 
 loftiest phase of their development, and its intervention, disas- 
 trous in all other quarters, is indispensable in this ; for this 
 reason it grants a subvention to the lyrical and literary theatres 
 of the first order, and maintains the unriA'alled establishments 
 of Sevres and the Gobelins. The ' Grand' painting is essen- 
 tially in the same position ; it can only subsist with the support 
 and encouragement of the State. But what is the Government 
 doing ? It is abandoning the class of ideas of which it ought 
 to be the guardian, even if all the world else deserted them ; 
 and is redoubling the impulse of the ' gdut hourffcois.' by appear- 
 ing, with its own purchases and rewards, as a competitor to the 
 buyers of easel pictures. In acting thus it is blind to the ele- 
 mentary fact that this kind of painting has sufficient encourage- 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 69 
 
 ment of its own, from the profits that it gives to its authors, 
 without State intervention."— ies Beaux Arts en 1867, par M. 
 Eaymon. 
 
 These remarks have reference in part to the patronage of 
 Meissonier and his followers, by the purchase of their works 
 for the Emperor's presents. An English critic, of the same 
 date, says that "the thirty-five or forty pictures marked as 
 presents from the Emperor, are unquestionably the very 
 worst in the collection." 
 
 In the jury awards of the Exhibition eight grand prizes 
 were allotted in the first two classes of the first group, 
 which comprised not only paintings in oil, but other paint- 
 ings and drawings. Of these, four went to French jurors, 
 and the other four to foreigners : Kaulbach, of Bavaria ; 
 Knaus, of Prussia; Leys, of Belgium; and Ussi, of Italy. 
 After these great or exceptional prizes, about sixty lesser 
 ones of three different grades were decreed, out of which 
 one of the first order went to Mr. Calderon; one of the 
 second, to Mr. Erskine Nicol ; and two of the third to other 
 Englishmen, Messrs. Orchardson and Walker; and some 
 little scandal was created at the time by the circumstance 
 that Meissonier, Gerome, Cabanel and Eousseau,^ who were 
 all upon the jury, all obtained grand prizes, while the other 
 French painters on the jury, Fromentin, Bida, rran9ais and 
 Pils, were also distinguished by medals. 
 
 " While in some of the classes we have suffered througli the 
 jurors themselves being disqualified for prizes, in the depart- 
 ment of painting, where it was of most consequence that such 
 a rule should prevail, we have to complain grievously of the 
 operation of the opposite rule. Of the eight great prizes for 
 painting, all of them were taken by Jtirors. It is hardly sur- 
 
 > Born 1812. Pupil of Gros and Bertin ; well known as a landscape 
 painter. Died 1868. 
 
60 
 
 MEISSONIEK. 
 
 prising, in these circumstances, that four fell to France and 
 none to England. 
 
 "Besides the eight principal pi-izcs, there were sixty others 
 of three different grades, of which only four were given to 
 Englishmen." — Stmularcl, July 3, 1867. 
 
 The English jurors, however, frankly repudiated the 
 imputations thrown upon the acts for which they were 
 responsible with their colleagues ; but they, on the other 
 hand, were accused of indifference and inaction in the 
 matter. There were twelve jurors of the French, and only 
 fourteen of other nations. The " Times " correspondent 
 makes the following comments upon the awards of the 
 " grands prix" : — 
 
 " Wonderfully minute are the works of Meissonier, and they 
 convey a great number of facts in a very small compass. But, 
 alter all, what are these facts ? What does he really tell us of 
 the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, loves and hates of human 
 kind ? Much as we may admire his little bits of painting, does 
 he ever touch our hearts ? He never attempts to do so. All 
 that he attempts is to bring a number of ex,tremely placid 
 people before us, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups ; all 
 these placid people are remarkable for faces of the hottest 
 colour, and so far as there is any activity of interest in the 
 pictures, it is only the activity of light and shadow — the play 
 of colour in dress and furniture. This play of light and 
 shadow, and graduating and interchanging colours, is often 
 very pretty and sometimes very true ; " (this is an obvious pla- 
 giarism of M. du Viel Chastel's allusion to the School of the 
 Chatoyanti) " but it would not be difficult to take picture after 
 picture of Meissonier's, and to show his lapse from truth and 
 the failure of his cTiic. There is the little picture marked 162, 
 where the French General Desaix, with the Army of the Rhine, 
 is represented as giving directions. There is such a want of air 
 in this picture that a ciu*ious illusion is produced in it. There 
 is a bay horse in the middle of it with its quarters to the spec- 
 tator. Some thirty feet on this side of it there is a soldier 
 pointing to something, who has his arm raised above the croup 
 of the horse. That arm seems to be in the same plane with the 
 
MEISSOKIER. 
 
 61 
 
 horse's bead, instead of being thirty feet ou this side of the 
 horse's tail. . . . There is the Battle of Solferino: the 
 treatment is unusually hard, and as for the subject, if it be 
 indeed a battle, it is a battle at such a safe distance that no one 
 need know anything about it." 
 
 It is amusing to turn back from this criticism to tlie 
 description of the picture, by M. Edmond About, given on 
 
 LE MALENTENDU. 
 
 From the " Contes Bemois." 
 
 page 51. The writer next attacks Gerome, who, he says, 
 " is not afraid to grapple with a moving theme ; but the only 
 themes that he thinks moving are themes of lust or horror." 
 The celebrated Phryne before the Judges, less in the nude figure 
 than in the features of the judges, had a revolting intention 
 that would have degraded the most consummate perfection 
 
62 
 
 MBISSONIER. 
 
 of technical skill. Of CabaBel's Paradise Lost, he asserts 
 that, " the sole motive of the picture, notwithstanding the 
 solemnity of the subject, was the display of Eve's legs." 
 Rousseau was a landscape painter, and he compares his 
 works unfavourably with those of Mr. Vicat Cole. And 
 in this manner the battle of the critics was waged. 
 
 Their attention, however, is on both sides more generally 
 directed to the schools of " JiigJi, historic, and sacred art," at 
 that period everywhere in perigee (and especially so in 
 France, since the death of Del iroche, Ary Scheffer, and 
 riandrin) ; or to the so-called romantic school extinguished 
 with Delacroix ; or to the realistic school led on by Geri- 
 cault. (The mere vocabulary of the classifications is 
 bewildering, and the selections of representative leaders are 
 as diverse as the definitions of the catch-words that are 
 nsed.) M. Meissonier, however, tmd voce escapes classifica- 
 tion. He is regarded by none as either high, or romantic, 
 or realistic; he is certainly never accused of cold clas- 
 sicism, nor, on the other hand, is he an " ardent realist." 
 "When it is desired to speak evil of him he is mentioned 
 with a mob, as one of them ; but no two among the 
 critics select the same associates or imitators of him. Mr. 
 Beavington Atkinson, in the " Contemporary Review," 
 says : — 
 
 " There are no more sparkling pictures in the whole world 
 than the small cabinet works of Meissonier, Plassan, Fichel, 
 Vetter, Toulmouche, Duverger, Frere, Hillemacher and Le- 
 leux," and proceeds to point out his cleverness in the ti'eatment 
 of trivial subjects, his heartlessness as compared especially with 
 Edouard Frere ; " each of these paintei's, however, is avowedly 
 inimitable in his wayT 
 
 But Meissonier's he has shown to be a worthless way. 
 Mr. H. O'Neil, in the " Fortnightly Review," less tenderly 
 
MEISSONIEE. 63^ 
 
 minded, attributes the " increasing popularity of Frencb 
 Art " to the circumstance that — 
 
 " Its professors content themselves with small efforts, attempt 
 ing only what is capable of bping effected without much thought 
 or lahour," (this of Meissonier!) "The subjects generally 
 are of the most trivial nature, requiring none of the highest 
 powers of the mind in their elucidaticm. Such are the works- 
 of Meissonier, Fichel, Tlassan, Chavct, and what may be termed 
 the boudoir school. , , , AVhen, however, the}' attempt 
 anything of a wider range, as Meissonier, in his picture repre- 
 senting the Emperor at Solferino, the result is a failure. 
 Meissonier's art is always too positive. mptalUc, hard, and flt- 
 ficient in air ; and his faults are all the more conspicuous when 
 he attempts a composition of more than a few figures." 
 
 The pictures of Frere, of Jules Breton, of the Prussian 
 Knaus, and of the Dutchman Israels, are everywhere com- 
 mended for the quality of sympathy and pathos, which 
 is with almost equal unanimity assumed to be absent from 
 those of Meissonier. In the " Quarterly Review " of this- 
 date, there is a short and lively article, headed the " Pic- 
 tures of the Year," in which comparisons are drawn be- 
 tween 'pairs of representative painters, English and French : 
 Edouard Frere is opposed to Mr. T. Faed, R.A., who has the 
 English desire of finding a moral in everything (like Alice's 
 " Countess," in Wonderland), and, in his eagerness to teach 
 a lesson, misses the Frenchman's charm of simplicity. The 
 humour of Knaus is, on the other hand, pointed out as a- 
 quality which separates him entirely from the French 
 school, who " in painting unaccountably neglect the com- 
 ical side of things." The above are the principal criticisms 
 that affect Meissonier, — as to pathos and humour, quot 
 homines tot sententioe, and almost the same may be said of 
 the technical stricture as to his paintings being too "posi- 
 tive, metallic, &c.," but the imputation that he painted 
 
64 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 without thought or labour appears to be rash, and answerable 
 bj a reference to facts. 
 
 From the Official Reports made under the direction of 
 our own Government by Mr. Cope of the Royal Academy, 
 I extract the following : — 
 
 " The number of oil pictures exhibited by France is no less 
 than 625. France has, in fact, considered this as a great inter- 
 national competitive trial of strength ; and we find that gal- 
 leries, palaces, churches, and museums have poured forth their 
 treasures to swell the amount of works, and to assert the su- 
 premacy of France in matters of taste. The works were most 
 carefully selected out of (it is stated) the number of 10,000, by 
 a jury composed of the very ablest painters in France." 
 
 After noticing the absence of representatives of the severe 
 classic style of -David, and the gap caused in the branch of 
 religions or Christian art by the death of Ingres and Hip- 
 polyte Flandrin, and the failure of Cabanel to maintain this 
 style, Mr. Cope goes on to add : — 
 
 " But if we turn in another direction, and inquire into the 
 condition of the modern ' romantic' and ^ genre' school, we get 
 a very different result ; for we find a long list of names of very 
 excellent artists. Conspicuous among them are Meissonier and 
 G6r6me. The former contributes fourteen, the latter thirteen 
 works; and, although their pictures are of cabinet proportions, 
 they may be considered the principal upholders of French art 
 in the Exhibition. 
 
 " As excellent examples of the talent of Meissonier, may be 
 mentioned the following pictures, although all of them are more 
 or less stamped with his peculiar microscopic genius : The Em- 
 peror at Solferino, one of his most complett; and important 
 works ; the extent of space, the minute accuracy and finished 
 di'awing, the variety of character in the figures of men and 
 animals, the quiet grey sky, and the spu'ited execution, are all 
 admirable. Equally good is Napoleon I. in Bussia : the severe, 
 leaden, cold sky ; the advancing Emperor and his staff, muffled 
 and stern ; the tramping mass of troops in the middle-distance ; 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 65 
 
 and the broken, hard, cloddy ground, half covered with snow, 
 are excellent. 
 
 " The same qualities are equally apparent in the natural 
 look and truth of effect in the picture of Gentml Btsaix lis- 
 tening to a peasant who is giving intelligence. The simple 
 action and character of the countryman are as characteristic 
 as the group of generals round the fire in the country wood. 
 
 " In his pictures of figures somewhat larger in scale, Meisso- 
 nier is less excellent, and we miss that peculiarly focussed look 
 which is one of his great excellencies ; as, for instance, in his 
 Portrait of Mr. G. JDelahante, and, in a lesser degree, in his 
 Lecture and V Ordonnance." 
 
 . Extract from the oflB.cial catalogue of the Exhibition : — ■ 
 
 Meissonier (Jean-Louis-Ernest), ne a Lyon, el^ve de L. Cogniet. Me'd. 
 
 Se cl., 1840; 2e cl., 1841 ; 1" cl., 1843, croix de la Legion 
 d'honneur, 1846; med. Pe cl., 1848; gr. me'd. d'honneur, 
 1855 ; officier de la Legion d'honneur, 1856; membre de 
 ITnstitut, 1861. A Poissy (Seine et-Oise). 
 
 449. L'Attente. Salon de 1857. Appartient a Mme. Meissonier. 
 
 450. Le Marechal ferrant. Salon de 1861. App. a M. Bianchi. 
 
 451. Portrait de Mme. Henri Thenard. Salon de 1861. 
 
 452. S. M. I'Empereur a Solferino. Salon de 1864. Musee du Lux- 
 
 embourg. 
 
 453. " 1 814," Campagne de France. Salon de 1864. App. a M. G. 
 
 Delahante. 
 
 454. " 1807." 
 
 455. Lecture cliez Diderot. Appartient a M. P. Demidoff. 
 
 456. Le Capitaine. App. a M. le Marquis d'Hertford. 
 
 457. ' Cavaliers se faisant servir a boire. id. 
 
 458. Corps de Garde. id. 
 
 459. Portrait de M. G. Delahante. 
 
 460. Lecture. Appartient a M. X — . 
 
 461. L' Ordonnance. Appartient a M. Prosper Crabbe. 
 
 462. Renseignements : le G eneral Desaix a I'arme'e de Khin et Moselle. 
 
 The Exhibition of 1867, the culminating incident of the 
 Empire, may be regarded as that also of the triumph of 
 the career of M. Meissonier. 
 
 ' Cav. a la porte d'une auberge, or La Halte, mentioned on page 45. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 MEISSONIEE. 
 
 For good or for evil, it was abundantly evident that 
 his influence had come to prevail at this date very widely, 
 not in France alone, but throughout Europe; in the ab- 
 sence of Delaroche and the other great masters recently 
 deceased, he had become de facto, if not de jure, the tacitly 
 recognized leader of French Art. The critics would not 
 have it so, to whom he represents the ultimate verdict 
 of the " uninstructed people," and the fallacy of cherished 
 traditions, but his success was already too plainly on record 
 to be ignored by them. 
 
 In the pompous closing ceremony of the presentation of 
 the prizes by the Emperor, his Battle of Solferino was the 
 central object of the Art Trophy erected in the space cleared 
 for the ceremony, along with works of Eeimers, the Russian 
 painter ; Knaus, of Prussia ; Rousseau, the French landscape 
 painter ; and others. In the subsequent exhibitions of the 
 Salon, Meissonier is represented rather by the works of his 
 pupils and imitators than by his own. During the war he 
 laid down his brush and joined the army as a volunteer. 
 Interesting anecdotes will, no doubt, be brought to light in 
 his memoirs ; of his adventures on this occasion, and of his 
 narrow escape of being shut up in Metz with General 
 Bazaine ; and there is no doubt that a much larger work 
 than the present might be filled with a retrospect of his 
 work under the Republic. 
 
 A valuable sketch of the course of the French School in 
 general during the decade that intervened between the two 
 International Exhibitions of 1867 and 1878, is given in a 
 re-publication of the letters written by M. Lafenestre to 
 various journals, on the annual Salons. 
 
 ^ L'Art Vivant. La peinture et la sculpture aux Salons de 1868- 
 1877. 
 
LE H^RAUT d'ARMES DE MURCIE. 
 From Paris-Miircie" — Ntiniero unique, Dec. 1879. 
 
MEISSONIBR. 
 
 67 
 
 It opens gloomily in 1868, when the writer is alarmed at 
 a lethargy, or a spirit of hesitancy, or a subservience to 
 passing fashion, in the disciples of the two great leaders, 
 Ingres and Delacroix, recently deceased : — : 
 
 " Powerful as were these great masters, there was in each 
 of their methods {prganization) a vice that opened a door, in 
 the face of their works, to false theories in art. Under the 
 pretext of style, the pupils of Ingres become careless in their 
 study of luminous effects, of solidity of forms, and of truth of 
 relief; and those of Delacroix, engrossed in the pursuit of 
 COLOUR harmonies, have rapidly lost their respect for truth of 
 drawing." 
 
 This is the eternal balancing between the cold classicism 
 of form and the sensual cultivation of colour, that besets 
 the mere student of a school in art, and from which the man 
 of genius escapes by his apprehension of the higher qualities 
 of "sentiment and expression." The equally well-known 
 separation of the peintres emus and the peintres habiles, 
 supplies a better test for the detection of a genius that will 
 survive its contemporaries, and seize, as Meissonier has done, 
 the sympathies of the uninstructed first, and the critics 
 afterwards. 
 
 In the Salon of 1869 M. Lafenestre finds his hero, 
 destined to redeem the French school by a bold idealism, 
 in M. Chevenard, whose works are very resembling in 
 character the grand religious subjects of our Mr. Herbert, 
 B.A.; but he gives a good part of his attention (though 
 otbviously contre gre) to the steadily prevaiUng style of Meis- 
 .sonier. He makes his criticism of a picture, in minute 
 p)roportions by M. Detaille (whom he alludes to as a pupil 
 of Meissonier), the occasion of separating the works of 
 Meissonier himself, and of those really appreciating his 
 unfluence, from the crowd of imitators who are producing 
 
68 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 little " scenes of family life unworthy of the interpretation 
 of painting," or fitter for illnsti^ation by the " prestesse du 
 crayon." 
 
 " A picture ought, in the first place, to he a picture, i.e., to 
 charm the sight by harmony of colours, accuracy of drawing, 
 logic, and composition. A fine touch of the pencil, a lifelike 
 attitude, an effect of true light, are worth more in a picture 
 than all the ingenious subtleties and delicate refinements of the 
 finest wit. An interior of Chardin, not larger than a hand, 
 will be often m<ire interesting than a most complicated melo- 
 drama of Greuze. . . . The influence of M. Meissonier, 
 strikingly obvious in the case of M. Detaille, re-appears in most 
 of our painters of familiar subjects ; it is not a thing to be 
 surprised at or to complain of. M. Meissonier, an artist of un- 
 derstanding {esprit), has never fallen into the error commented 
 above. He has never confounded the literary with the pic- 
 turesque. His pictures are valuable as pictures ; not on account 
 of their subjects (which, for the most part, ai'e common and 
 insignificant), but for the vivacity and the precision of their 
 execution. His imitators — imitators though they be — have 
 therefore always a chance of being artists ; for they have ac- 
 quired of him the habit of looking at the expressive side of 
 nature." 
 
 The English public had never a better opportunity for 
 the study of the history of the development of the French 
 school of painting, and Meissonier' s position in it, than was 
 afforded by the Exhibition of the collections of Sir Richard 
 Wallace at the Bethnal Green Branch of the South Ken- 
 sington Museum, in 1872 ; and the contemporary notices 
 (which we have not space to transcribe) are full of in- 
 structive commentaries on this exhibition. It was as 
 obvious on this occasion that Meissonier was facile princeps 
 in his own style, and that his genius was independent of 
 any preceding school or master; as it had been in 1867 
 that his influence was spreading widely in France and 
 Germany, as well as in England and the rest of Europe. 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 69 
 
 Those who were accustomed to the closer study of the 
 works of Mr. Millais, found much analogy between his 
 methods and tendencies and those of Meissonier, a resem- 
 blance carried into the details of their work, and especially 
 obvious during the pre-Raphaelite period of Mr. Millais's 
 
 LA CULOTTE DES CORDELIERS. 
 
 From the " Contes Bemois." 
 
 career, in their common quality of utter conscientiousness 
 in detail. The works by which M. Meissonier was repre- 
 sented, were the JPoUcJiinello, of 1860 (mentioned on page 
 38) ; Throwing Dice; The Connoisseurs ; Napoleon I. and 
 Staff; the Visitors, the picture mentioned on page 11 as 
 being the first exhibited by the artist at his debut in 1834 ; 
 A Cavalier of the time of Louis XIV.; the Decameron scene 
 
70 
 
 MEISSONIER, 
 
 of 1 853, described on page 31 ; St. John in Patmus ; The 
 Roadside Inn ; ^ Sentinel and a Cavalier of the time of Louis 
 XIII., and a Musqueteer of the time of Louis XIII. ; the 
 Bravos, of 1853, described on page 30 ; Gamblers, and La 
 Halte, or L'Auherge (see page 44). It will be seen from 
 this catalogue that Sir Richard Wallace may claim to pos- 
 sess a perfectly historical series of Meissonier's work, repre- 
 senting each of the different phases of his art. 
 
 The " Gazette des Beaux Arts," for 1873, contains a series 
 of ably- written articles, by M. Rene Menard, upon the col- 
 lection of M. Laurent Richard, in which the movement of 
 contemporary French art was illustrated by well-selected 
 examples. The school of landscape painting was the most 
 thoroughly represented in this collection, which included 
 eleven pictures of Theodore Rousseau, twelve of Jules Dupre, 
 six of Troyon, four of Corot, besides specimens of Diaz, 
 Ziem, Fromentin, and Marilhat, and was thus a most inter- 
 esting field of study for the illustration of the "epoch" of 
 1830 to 1860. But, although landscape was the chief 
 subject represented, it was not alone ; Eugene Delacroix, 
 Decamps, Millet, Meissonier, and, among the artists of 
 another period, Chardin, Prud'hon, and Gericault were 
 there, in works which, far from affecting the homogeneity 
 of the whole collection, represented identical efforts in 
 another direction to those in landscape. 
 
 Meissonier's two representative pictures in this collection 
 were the Joueur de Guitare and the Soldat sous Louis XIII. 
 
 " The Joueur de Guitare is of M. Meissonier's favourite class 
 of subjects, but he does not interpret it in the Dutch manner. 
 Terburg or Mieris would have introduced an audience, and 
 placed a young person in satin by the musician's side, with an 
 accessory individual in the background. All the world knows 
 that M. Meissonier is not fond of painting women, and the 
 
MEISSONIER. 
 
 71 
 
 number of those that figure in his pictures may be counted upon 
 your fingers. The guitar-player is alone, in a room decorated 
 with subject tapestries, and studying his piece of music alone. 
 He is a young man in a blonde wig, dressed in a. haid-de-chatossc 
 tied with streaming ribands, and a chemisette of swelling sleeves. 
 On the red cloth of the table at which he is seated are a few 
 papers, a glass, and a metal ewer, the refined and conscientious 
 execution of which must be appreciated by the lovers of art. 
 Still the ensemble of this picture is defective in that precision 
 which is generally characteristic of the artist ; and we find in 
 the other specimen, the Soldat sous Louis XIII., a firmness and 
 decision which are more clearly expressive of the real tem- 
 perament of the painter. 
 
 " Conceived in a tone of colour that is almost metallic in its 
 brilliancy (con9U dans une tonalit6 eclatante et meme un peu 
 metallique) the Soldat is a 'tableau type' in the mtvre of 
 Meissonier. Every detail is emphasised, and the spectator 
 may pause and examine each with the microscope, in admira- 
 tion of the dexterity of the execution. 
 
 "But this is a merit of secondary degree, and Eembrandt 
 was right in his saying that ' painting is not made to be smelt 
 at.' Poussin, who agreed with Rembrandt in this respect, used 
 to saj' that, to see a picture to advantage, yoii should stand at 
 a distance from it equal to three times its size. Let us examine 
 this work of M. Meissonier upon these conditions, and, putting 
 on one side the magnifying glasses, let us see whether it fulfils 
 the programme of the artist: to paint grandly on a canvas of 
 microscopic dimensions. 
 
 " First, we ai-e struck with the proud bearing of the soldier, 
 who is standing erect in a paved courtyard, with a thin cane in 
 his right hand, his left resting on the hilt of his sword. His 
 felt bonnet, slightly thrown back, is plumed with red and white 
 feathers ; he wears a broad white collar which falls over a steel 
 gorget, a buff jerkin, red breeches, and big boots. The head is 
 painted with extraordinary firmness, and, fine as the execution 
 is, there is in every part of it a decision of touch which ac- 
 centuates the niceties of expression without any trickery, &c.'' 
 
 The criticism is accompanied by a very pretty vignette 
 [graving of the Soldat sous Louis XIII. 
 
72 
 
 MEISSONIER. 
 
 At the Vienna Exhibition of 1873, M. Meissonier was 
 represented by the Napoleonic pictures, " 1807 " and 
 " 1814," and Solferino, the Peintre cVEnseignes, the Tourne- 
 hride, the Petit poste de grand' garde, the Partie de Boules, 
 the Route de la Salice aux Antibes, and the Fin d'une partie 
 de cartes. The Vienna " Tageblatt " calls him the " ace of 
 trumps " of the Trench Section, of Fine Arts ; and his 
 seven pictures " the constellation of seven stars of the Fine 
 Arts Gallery." 
 
 The French School generally was, in the opinion of 
 everybody, admirably represented in its own section ; and 
 its influence (as in 1867) in the galleries of other countries; 
 and M. Rene Menard says, in the " Grazette des Beaux 
 Arts:"- — -"Although we may not completely approve the 
 tendency of art with us, yet we cannot but acknowledge 
 that Europe follows us wherever we go." 
 
 In Germany especially it was noticed at this time that 
 easel pictures had completely banished the great symbolical 
 school of Cornelius and Kaulbach. The leader of the 
 German artists in this direction was rather M, Knaus than 
 Meissonier, but the influence of Meissonier on Knaus 
 during the residence of the latter in Paris, must have been 
 important, if not absolutely decisive. 
 
 It would be useless to carry the record further. As I 
 have stated before, on the authority of M. Claretie, we are 
 promised memoirs in due time from M. Meissonier's own 
 hand. In the meantime, all that could be added is recent 
 in recollection of the public, and that which is not public — 
 M. Meissonier's patriotic devotion and adventures during 
 the war, his domestic and personal experiences of more 
 recent date, and so forth — have, it is to be presumed, been 
 withheld from publicity at his own desire. For he lives in 
 
MBISSONIER. 
 
 73 
 
 the full light of popularity and eminence, and surrounded 
 by friends ; and the imperfect sketches of his life that have 
 appeared in pamphlets and periodicals are numerous, though 
 they all deal with the subject under a reserve that it is ob- 
 viously not yet the time to break through. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 It has been announced that an exhibition of the works 
 of Meissonier is to take place in the new building of the 
 Societe des AquarelKstes, near the Madeleine, Paris, in the 
 spring of 1882. 
 
 A series of photographs of Meissonier's " CEiivres com- 
 pletes " is now in course of publication in parts. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Paintings by Meissoniee. 
 
 Amateur of Pictures in the Stu- 
 dio of a Painter (1857) . . 35 
 Amateurs of Painting (1843) 28, 35 
 Attente, L' (1857) .... 65 
 Audience, The (1861) ... 43 
 
 Barricade, La ..... . 48 
 
 Blacksmith 43 
 
 Breakfast 44 
 
 Bravos, The (1853) 30, 33, 34, 44, 70 
 Buveur de Bi^re 26 
 
 Capitaine, Le (1862) . . .45, 65 
 Card Party (1861) .... 43 
 Cavalier of the time of Louis 
 
 XIII 70 
 
 Cavalier of the time of Louis 
 
 XIV. ........ 69 
 
 Cavalry Charge (1867) ... 56 
 Chanson, Une (1865) .... 55 
 
 Chess-Players (1836) . . 10, 23, 30 
 Chess-Players (1841) ... 27 
 
 Confidence (1857) 35 
 
 Connoisseurs 69 
 
 Corps de Garde .... 45, 65 
 
 Decameron, Scene from the 
 
 (1853) 30, 69 
 
 Doctor, The (1839) . . . 16, 25 
 Drapeau (1857) 35 
 
 Fin d'une Partie de Cartes . , 72 
 Flemish Smoker . . . . 26, 27 
 Friedland [" 1807 "] 23,42, 53, 65, 72 
 
 Game of Piquet (1848) ... 28 
 
 Gamblers, The 70 
 
 G6n6ral Desaix and the Army 
 
 of the Ehine 65 
 
 Guard House (1848) . . 
 
 PAGE 
 . 28 
 
 Harquebusiers (1857) ... 36 
 Halt, Tlie (1862) . 45, 46, 65, 70 
 
 Joueurs de Boule (1849) 28,33,72 
 Joueur de Guitare .... 70 
 
 Lecture 65 
 
 Lecture chez Diderot 
 
 24, 33, 34, 45, 65 
 Little Messengers (1836) . 10,23 
 
 Man in Armour (1857) . . 35,36 
 Man choosing a Sword (1853) . 30 
 Marechal ferrant (1861) . 41,65 
 Marshal Saxe and his ^taff 
 
 (1866) 55 
 
 Monk at the Bedside of a Pa- 
 tient (1839) 25 
 
 Moreau and Dessoles (1853) 23, 31 
 Musician (1861) . . . . 41,43 
 Musqueteer of the time of Louis 
 XIII 70 
 
 Napoleon 1 44 
 
 Napoleon I. and his Staff . . 69 
 Nephew of Kameau [Flemish 
 
 Smoker] (1860) 39 
 
 Ordonnance, L' (1866) 
 
 55, 65 
 
 Painter, A (1857) .... 35 
 Painter at his Easel (1843) . 28 
 Peintre d'Enseignes . . . . 72 
 Petit Post de Grand' Garde . 72 
 Playeron the Violoncello (1842) 27 
 Portrait of M. Delahante . 42,65 
 
INDEX. 
 
 75 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Portrait of M. Louis Fould 
 
 (1861) 41 
 
 Portrait d'homme (1843) . . 28 
 Portrait of the Sergeant . 24,25 
 Portrait of Madame Thenard 
 
 (1861) 41,65 
 
 Portrait of Thiers [taken after 
 
 death] 4 
 
 PolicMnello (1860) . 38, 39, 69 
 
 Reader, The (1840) - ... 27 
 Eetreatfrom Russia ["1814"] 
 (1864) . . 6,23, 50, 64, 65,72 
 
 Roadside Inn 70 
 
 Route de la Salice aux Antibes 72 
 Rixe, La 25, 33,34 
 
 St, John in Patmos .... 70 
 
 Sentinel 70 
 
 Smoker, The (1839) .... 26 
 
 Smoker, The Flemish (1842) 26, 27 
 Soldats sous Louis XIII. . . 70 
 Soldiers at Cards (1858) . . 36 
 Solferino (1861-63) 
 
 23, 37, 41, 44, 46, 50, 64-66, 72 
 Souvenir of the Civil War, 
 
 (1850-51) 29, 46 
 
 Student, The 44 
 
 Sunday (1852) 29 
 
 Throwing Dice 69 
 
 Tourne-bride 72 
 
 Visitors, The (1833 ?) . 11, 23, 69 
 
 Young Man looking at Draw- 
 ings (1848) 28 
 
 Young Man reading near a 
 Window 46 
 
 Young Man studying (1853) . oO 
 
 Books containing Illustrations by Meissonter. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Beaux Arts (1843) .... 27 
 
 Chaumiere Indienne (1839) 13,14, 15 
 
 Chute d'un Ange 12 
 
 Comedie Humaine (1855) . . 22 
 Contes Remois (1861), 4""" eU 
 
 22, 43, 47 
 Discours sur I'Histoire Univer- 
 selle 12 
 
 rran9ais, Les, peints par eux 
 mfemes (1841-43) . . . 17-21 
 
 PAGE 
 
 He des Plaisirs (ab. 1845) . . 21 
 Lazarillo de Tonnes (1846) . 21 
 
 Official Account of the Transfer 
 of the Remains of Napoleon I. 
 from St. Helena to Paris 
 
 (1840) 17 
 
 Old Bachelor 11 
 
 Orlando Furioso 12 
 
 Paul and Virginia (1838) . 13, 25 
 
 Histoire de I'Ancien et du Nou- 
 veau Testament (1835) . . 10 
 
 Story of a Doll and a Leaden 
 Soldier (ab. 1845) . . . . 21 
 
ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF THE 
 GREAT ARTISTS. 
 
 THE intention of the projectors of this Series has been to produce, in an 
 easily accessible form, and at a price within reach of every one, the results 
 of the recent investigations which have been made by many well-known English 
 writers, as well as the critics of Germany and the Netherlands. 
 
 Each volume is very fully illustrated ; but as cheapness of price has been 
 especially aimed at, electrotypes of the best engravings have been sought in 
 many instances from the most important art-publications in France and Germany. 
 Bound in Cloth. Crown Zvo. Price ^s. 6d. eacli, 
 ITALIAN PAINTERS, &^c. 
 
 1. GIOTTO. By Harry Quilter, M. A., Trinity Coll., Cambridge. From 
 
 recent investigations at Padua, Florence, and Assisi. With many illustra- 
 tions. 
 
 An Edition de luxe, with 13 photographs taken direct from his most cele- 
 brated paintings at Padua and Assisi. Crown 4to. Price I2j-. 6^/. 
 
 2. FRA ANGELICO and the EARLY PAINTERS of FLORENCE, 
 
 By Catherine M. Phillimore. With 16 Illustrations. 
 
 3. FRA BARTOLOMMEO and ANDREA DEL SARTO. By Leader 
 
 Scott, Aiithor of "A Nook in the Apennines." With 16 Illustrations. 
 
 4. MANTEGNA and FRANCIA. By Julia Cartwright. With many 
 
 Illustrations. 
 
 5. LEONARDO DA VINCI. By Dr. Paul Richter, Author of "Die 
 
 Mosaiken von Ravenna." With 16 Illustrations. From recent researches. 
 
 6. MICHELANGELO. By Charles Clement, Author of " Michel-Ange, 
 
 Leonard et Raphael." With many large Engravings. 
 
 7. RAPHAEL. From the text of J. D. Passavant. By N. D'Anvers, 
 
 Author of " An Elementary History of Art." With 20 Engravings. 
 
 8. TITIAN. From the most recent researches. By Richard Ford Heath, 
 
 M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. 
 
 9. TINTORETTO. From investigations at Venice. By W. RoscoE Osler, 
 
 Author of occasional Essays on Art. With many Engravings. 
 
 10. VELAZQUEZ. By Edwin Stowe, M.A., Brasenose College, Oxford. 
 
 With many Illustrations. 
 
 11. VERNET and DELAROCHE. From Charles Blanc. By J. Ruutz 
 
 Rees, Author of various 'Essays on Art. With 16 Engravings. 
 
Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists. 
 TEUTONIC. 
 
 12. ALBRECHT DURER. From recent authorities. By R. F. Heath, 
 
 M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. With many Illustrations. 
 
 13. HOLBEIN. From the text of Dr. A. WoLTM ANN. By Joseph Cundall, 
 
 Author of "Life and Genius of Rembrandt." With 20 Engravings. 
 
 14. THE LITTLE MASTERS OF GERMANY. By W. B. Scott, 
 
 Author of " Lectures on Fine Arts." With 16 Engravings. 
 
 An Edition de luxe, with 14 extra plates from rare engravings in the 
 British Museum, bound in Roxburghe style, price los. 6d. 
 
 15. REMBRANDT. From the text of C. Vosmaer. By J. W. Mollett, 
 
 B.A., Officier de I'lnstruction Publique (France). With 16 Engravings. 
 
 16. RUBENS. From recent authorities. By C. W. Kett, M.A., Hertford 
 
 College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. 
 
 17. VAN DYCK and HALS. From recent authorities. By Percy R. Head, 
 
 Lincoln College, Oxford. With 16 Engravings. 
 
 18. FIGURE PAINTERS OF HOLLAND. By Lord Ronald Cower, 
 
 Trustee of National Portrait Gallery. With 18 Engravings. 
 
 ENGLISH. 
 
 19. HOGARTH. From recent researches. By Austin Dobson, Author of 
 
 "Vignettes in Rhyme." With 16 Illustrations. 
 
 20. REYNOLDS. From the most recent authorities. By F. S. Pulling, 
 
 M.A., Exeter College, Oxford. With 16 Illustrations. 
 
 21. GAINSBOROUGH and CONSTABLE. By C. Brock-Arnold. 
 
 M.A., Hertford College, Oxford. With many Illustrations. 
 
 22. TURNER. From recent investigations. By Cosmo Monkhouse, Author 
 
 of " Studies of Sir E. Landseer." With 20 Engravings, oh/',' ' ^ 
 
 23. WILKIE— A Memoir, by J. W. Mollett, B.A., Officier de I'lnstruction 
 
 Publique (France). With many Illustrations. 
 
 24. LANDSEER— A Memoir, by Frederic G. Stephens, Author of 
 
 "Flemish Relics," &c. With many Illustrations. 
 *^* An Edition de luxe, containing 16 photographs from the best engravings, 
 in crown 4to., handsomely bound, price 2IJ. 
 
 From a Review in the Spectator, July 5, 1879. 
 "It is high time that some thorough and general acquaintance with the works 
 of these mighty painters should be spread abroad, and it is also curious to think 
 how long their names have occupied sacred niches in the world's heart, without 
 the presence of much popular knowledge about the collective works of their 
 lives. ... If the present series of biographies, which seems to be most tho- 
 roughly and tastefully edited, succeeds in responding to the wants of modest, if 
 ardent, art-knowledge, its aim will be accomplished. " 
 
 SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIVINGTON, 
 crown buildings, 188, fleet street. 
 
 6U