第21章 ON THE FRENCH SCHOOL OF PAINTING:(4)

A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the catalogue, are by the students whose works we have just been to visit at the Beaux Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage to Rome, have taken rank among the professors of the art.I don't know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest showing great skill and smartness of execution.

In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man could be a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the tradition is kept up among the painters, and we have here a vast number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical length and nakedness.The anticlassicists did not arise in France until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have here the old classical faith in full vigor.There is Brutus, having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father, and then, calling for number two; there is Aeneas carrying off old Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots, and many more such choice subjects from Lempriere.

But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders, with which the catalogue swarms.Here are a few extracts from it:--7.Beaume, Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur."The Grand Dauphiness Dying.

18.Blondel, Chevalier de la, &c."Zenobia found Dead."36.Debay, Chevalier."The Death of Lucretia."38.Dejuinne."The Death of Hector."

34.Court, Chevalier de la, &c."The Death of Caesar."39, 40, 41.Delacroix, Chevalier."Dante and Virgil in the Infernal Lake," "The Massacre of Scio," and "Medea going to Murder her Children."43.Delaroche, Chevalier."Joas taken from among the Dead."44."The Death of Queen Elizabeth."

45."Edward V.and his Brother" (preparing for death).

50."Hecuba going to be Sacrificed." Drolling, Chevalier.

51.Dubois."Young Clovis found Dead."

56.Henry, Chevalier."The Massacre of St.Bartholomew."75.Guerin, Chevalier."Cain, after the Death of Abel."83.Jacquand."Death of Adelaide de Comminges."88."The Death of Eudamidas."

93."The Death of Hymetto."

103."The Death of Philip of Austria."--And so on.

You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are decorated with knighthood.They are like the Black Brunswickers, these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort.Idon't know why the merriest people in the world should please themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder, or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and poetical.It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone, the mind is prepared for it.But these men will have nothing but fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances leading to them.This, however, is part of the scheme--the bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which your humble servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily, according to the strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down.

What, for instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of Eudamidas? What was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay a wager that neither of them ever conjugated [Greek text omitted], and that their school learning carried them not as far as the letter, but only to the game of taw.

How were they to be inspired by such subjects? From having seen Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes, and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the "Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge, gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lempriere, and copied, half from ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling and sixpence the hour!

Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his "Medea" is a genuine creation of a noble fancy.For most of the others, Mrs.

Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well as the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted].M.

Delacroix has produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp of genius on all of them,--the great poetical INTENTION, which is worth all your execution.Delaroche is another man of high merit; with not such a great HEART, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful draughtsman, and an excellent arranger of his subject."The Death of Elizabeth" is a raw young performance seemingly--not, at least, to my taste.The "Enfans d'Edouard" is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred different ways in print.It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and merits fully its high reputation.This painter rejoices in such subjects--in what Lord Portsmouth used to call "black jobs." He has killed Charles I.and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I don't know whom besides.He is, at present, occupied with a vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honor of seeing him,--a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in height.He wore, on this important occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act of smoking a cigar.

Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman, who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the Grenadier Francais under all sorts of attitudes.