GÉRICAULTTHE revolutionary movement of the Romanticists, which was to find a strong leader in EugÈne Delacroix, may be said to have been initiated by GÉricault’s epoch-making picture The Raft of the Medusa (No. 338, Plate XLVI.). ThÉodore GÉricault (1791–1824), a pupil of Carle Vernet and GuÉrin, was an unusually gifted draughtsman, who from the outset strove to go beyond GÉricault was a passionate lover of horses; but his knowledge of equine anatomy did not prevent him, in his portrait of an Officer of the Guard (No. 339), from exaggerating the action of the charging horse to a point dangerously near the border-line between the sublime and the ridiculous. Most of his other pictures at the Louvre are studies of soldiers, and horses on the race-course or in the stable. He died in 1824 from the effects of a fall from a horse. DELACROIXThe topical interest of the Raft of the Medusa had caused the public to receive this picture with favour, in spite of its daring departure from the generally accepted canons of the “grand style.” The case was different when Delacroix showed at the Salon of 1822 the Dante and Virgil (No. 207, Plate XLVII.), which was inspired by GÉricault’s great picture, but applied that artist’s principles to a subject taken from literature,—from Dante’s “Inferno,”—and was therefore considered as a direct challenge to the academic host. To-day it is difficult to understand the indignation aroused by the young artist, who became forthwith the acknowledged head of the so-called Romanticist school, although he refrained from taking part in any propaganda. In this, his first important exhibited picture, he proved himself PLATE XLVI.—JEAN LOUIS ANDRÉ THÉODORE GÉRICAULT (1791–1824) No. 338.—THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA (Le Radeau de la MÉduse) The raft of the wrecked Medusa, with the survivors of the crew, is floating on the stormy sea. In the foreground on the left, surrounded by dead sailors, a father is holding with his left hand the nude body of his dying son. On the right, a corpse is partly resting on the raft, partly floating on the water. Farther back the officer, CorrÉard, is seen pointing out to the surgeon, Savigny, the brig Argus, which appears on the far horizon under the clouded sky. At the far end of the raft a mulatto and a sailor have hoisted themselves on to some barrels to wave some rags, so as to attract the attention of the distant ship. Painted in oil on canvas. 16 ft. 1½ in × 23 ft. 6 in. (4·91 × 7·16.) EugÈne Delacroix (1798–1863), who belonged to a family that had given to France many distinguished statesmen and soldiers, was a pupil of GuÉrin, whose conventional teaching, however, was little to the taste of a young man whose passionate nature had been fired by his extensive reading of romantic literature, and who preferred to form his style on the works of Rubens and other old masters at the Louvre, and to benefit from his intercourse with GÉricault and Bonington. The Dante and Virgil, which is now in a deplorable state of neglect, was bought by the State at the not very generous price of £50. Delacroix’s next Salon picture, The Massacre of Scio (No. 208), caused an even greater storm of abuse of the young artist who had dared to depict the horrors of this scene from the Greek War of Independence, as it was thought, in all their crudeness, without the heroical and theatrical poses that were deemed necessary for pictorial “histories.” The magnificent atmospheric background owes its origin to Delacroix’s first acquaintance with the Hay Wain and two other pictures sent by Constable to the Salon of 1824, which caused the impetuous young artist to repaint in a few days the sky and landscape. The picture was again bought by the State, the price this time being raised to £240. A superb study for the dead mother and child in the right-hand corner has been bequeathed by M. Cheramy, the present owner, to the National Gallery, where it is to be hung next to “the best Constable.” It is impossible here to give a full account of the twenty DELACROIX’S ORIENTAL PICTURESDelacroix’s journey to Morocco, with Count Morney’s mission in 1832, was of the greatest benefit to the artist’s progress as a colourist. although he had no time during his travels to paint any pictures, he brought back with him a wealth of rapid sketches which, with his vivid recollections of Eastern life and colour, led to the production of such masterpieces as the Algerian Women in their Apartment (No. 210), the Jewish Wedding in Morocco (No. 211), and The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (No. 213). In the sumptuous scheme of Crusaders the last traces of the influence of Gros’s colourless palette have vanished. The picture was commissioned by Louis Philippe for the ChÂteau at Versailles, the remuneration being fixed at £400. A copy of the picture is in one of the Salles des Croisades at Versailles, and a small sketch is at Chantilly. The Algerian Women is particularly remarkable for the luminous sparkle of rich pigment through the ambient of silvery atmosphere. Among Delacroix’s masterpieces must be counted the Portrait of the Artist (No. 214), which he left on his death to his servant, Although, on the whole, an unsatisfactory picture, Delacroix’s Roger delivering Angelica (No. 2845) may serve to illustrate the true significance of his art in its relation to the official school, as there is in the same collection another rendering of the identical subject (No. 419) by his great antagonist Ingres, the greatest draughtsman of his century, and the acknowledged leader of the Classicist school. Comparison between the two works will show that Delacroix’s version, with all its obvious imperfections, far surpasses Ingres’s in emotional intensity and fierce vitality. The academic perfection and exquisite finish of Ingres’s picture only accentuate the dulness and lifelessness of his conception. PLATE XLVII.—FERDINAND VICTOR EUGÈNE DELACROIX (1798–1863) No. 207.—DANTE AND VIRGIL (Dante et Virgile aux Enfers) In a boat, steered by Charon across the river Styx, Virgil, laurel-crowned and dressed in a red cloak, holds with his right hand the left hand of Dante, who, in a blue cloak with a red hood, raises his right arm in a gesture of horror at the sight of the Damned, who, half-buried in the turbulent waters, cling despairingly to the sides of the boat. In the background are seen the towers of the burning city of Dite. Signed:—“eugÈne delacroix.” Painted in oil on canvas. 5 ft. 11 in. × 7 ft. 10½ in. (1·80 × 2·40.) INGRESJean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was a pupil of David. Having gained the Prix de Rome in 1801, he did not leave for Italy until 1806, but spent the next eighteen years in Rome and Florence, returning to Paris in 1824. Although Ingres was brought up in the cold tradition of the David school, he had a much clearer perception of the true spirit of Greek art than his master. When he became acquainted with the Yet Ingres, when he applied himself to portraiture, was as uncompromising a realist as Holbein, of whose sensitive, subtle drawing and plastic modelling, without the introduction of entirely unnecessary shiny high lights, we are forcibly reminded by the Portrait of the Painter’s Friend, M. Bochet (No. 428a). Something of the same perfection of modelling, suggested rather by the sensitive contour than clearly stated by pronounced lights and shadows, is to be noticed in the nude figure of The Odalisque, and in the creamy white drapings of the oval Portrait of Mme. RiviÈre (No. 427). Perhaps his best portrait at the Louvre is the one of M. Bertin, Founder of the Journal des DÉbats (No. 428b), a masterpiece of character painting, in which the marvellously drawn fleshy hands, with their tapering fingers, are as expressive as the fine head. This portrait was acquired in 1897 for the sum of £3200. The less admirable side of Ingres’s talent is illustrated by the circular composition of the Virgin of the Host (No. 416), a PLATE XLVIII.—JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINIQUE INGRES (1780–1867) No. 422.—THE SPRING (La Source) A nude figure of a fair-haired young maiden stands facing the spectator, the background being formed by a perpendicular rock partly overgrown with clinging plants. She raises her right arm over her head to hold the foot of a tilted vase, the mouth of which is supported by her left hand, and from which issues a streamlet of water that falls into a pool at the base of the rock, in which are reflected the feet of the maiden. Signed on a stone on the left:—“ingres, 1856.” Painted in oil on canvas. 5 ft. 5 in. × 2 ft. 7½ in. (1.65 × 0.80.) DELAROCHE AND SCHEFFERAmong the painters who were influenced by Delacroix, and whose name was associated with the Romanticist movement, none rose to greater fame than Paul Delaroche (1797–1856), a pupil of Gros, and the Dutchman Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), who, like Delacroix, studied under GuÉrin. But neither of these artists managed wholly to shake off the trammels of the academic tradition, and both became popular for the very reasons for which a more critical generation has denied them the right to figure among the world’s great artists: Delaroche for the theatricality of his historical anecdotes, of which The Death of Queen Elizabeth (No. 216) and The Princes in the Tower (No. 217) are typical examples; and Scheffer for the sickly sentimentality displayed in such pictures as St. Augustine and St. Monica (No. 841). Contemporary with the fighters in the great battle between the Romanticists and the Classicists were a group of able painters who were not connected with either of these main currents of artistic thought, but drew their inspiration from the Dutch genre painters. The Arrival of a Diligence at the Messageries (No. 28), by Louis Leopold Boilly (1761–1845), and The Interior of a Kitchen (No. 261), by Martin Drolling (1752–1817), may be quoted as characteristic instances of these “small masters” without possessing the luminosity of their Dutch exemplars. DECAMPSSomething of the precious quality of pigment and of the luminosity of these Dutchmen is to be found in the genre pictures of Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), of which a large number form part of the Thomy ThiÉry Bequest—notably The Knife-Grinder (No. 2831) and The Gipsy Encampment (No. 2833). Decamps owes his historical importance to his position as the head of the Orientalists. Unlike his contemporary explorer of the East for pictorial purposes, Delacroix, he found the facts of Eastern life, scenery, and customs sufficiently attractive to be satisfied with the realistic statement of his visual impressions, instead of making them the basis for the invention of romantic incidents. Yet the Street in Smyrna (No. 2827) and similar works are by no means of merely topographic interest, for Decamps was a great painter to whom pigment yielded beauty independent of the subject represented. The Rat retired from the World (No. 2834) vies in quality with the still-life pictures of Chardin. Decamps was also the greatest animal painter of his time, as may be gathered from his Chevaux de halage (No. 204), The Bull-Dog and Scotch Terrier (No. 206), and the precious little genre piece, The Kennel-Boy (No. 2838). THE ORIENTALISTSBrought up in the tradition of the Classicist school, Prosper Marilhat (1811–1847) only “formed himself” when the world of colour was discovered to him under the glowing sky of the Holy Land and Egypt, where he painted The Mosque of the Khalif Hakem, at Cairo (No. 615). Another Orientalist of great distinction, who, after being a favourite pupil of Ingres, became attracted by the fiery romanticism of Delacroix, was the Creole ThÉodore ChassÉriau (1819–1856). His works at the Louvre illustrate the earlier better than the later phase of his art. ChassÉriau was still entirely under the spell of Ingres when he painted, in 1844, the decoration of the Cour des Comptes, which building was destroyed under the Commune. Peace (No. 121a) is a fragment of this important decorative work, which may be said to constitute a link between Ingres and Puvis de Chavannes. The Chaste Susannah (No. 121) and the Portrait of Father Lacordaire, Dominican Preacher (No. 121b), are again clear evidence of Ingres’s influence upon ChassÉriau at the beginning of his brief career. A man of profound culture and rare critical acumen, EugÈne Fromentin (1820–1876) was perhaps greater as a critic than as a painter. He, too, travelled repeatedly in Algeria and Egypt, where he found abundant material both for his brush and pen. He did not look upon the East with the curiosity of the traveller, nor did he let the strange land work upon his romantic imagination. His pictures, somewhat timid in technique but marked by great refinement, reveal, on the other hand, a thorough understanding of the sad monotony of the sun-parched desert, and the chivalrous, noble bearing of its Arab inhabitants. His refined talent shows to best advantage in Hawking in Algeria (No. 305). REGNAULTThe Orient was by no means the uncontested field of the Romanticists. But the followers of the official school who devoted themselves to the depicting of Eastern life and scenery, approached these subjects in the same spirit of parti pris which robs all their work of real significance—unless, like Henri Regnault (1843–1871) in his famous and often reproduced Moorish Execution (No. 771), they treated them as rank melodrama. Regnault is, however, not to be judged by this overrated piece of sensationalism. Killed in the Franco-German War in 1871 at the early age of twenty-eight, this young painter gave rare promise of brilliant achievement in an altogether unacademic direction in his superb equestrian portrait of General Prim (No. 770). There is something truly heroic in the way the Spanish general sits his horse, arresting its forward movement with a sudden jerk at the reins; but the ruggedness and unkempt appearance of the rider displeased General Prim to such an extent that Regnault, who would not alter the picture, preferred to keep it on his hands. ACADEMIC PAINTERSIt will suffice here merely to indicate the names and chief works at the Louvre of the principal artists who carried on, about the middle of the nineteenth century, the academic tradition,—capable painters all, but without clearly-marked individuality. Thomas Couture (1815–1879), a pupil of Gros and of Delaroche, in painting the huge composition, Romans of the Decadence (No. 156), produced a picture which may be taken as typical of the ambitions and failings of the whole school—of their literary tendencies, theatricality, and uninspired dulness. He was, however, an accomplished master of technique, which is more than MICHEL AND HUETIn the much-neglected branch of landscape painting the classic tradition of Claude ruled supreme until a new conception arose with the victory of the romantics in the third decade of the nineteenth century. Two names only need be mentioned before we pass on to the new movement—the return to nature—which was inaugurated by the group of painters vaguely known as the Barbizon school. Both Georges Michel (1763–1843) and Paul Huet (1804–1868) may be regarded as forerunners of that great movement; and both have only in recent years received the recognition which is their due. Michel developed his style in copying and closely studying the Dutch landscape masters, and must in his maturity have been well acquainted with the art of Constable, who exercised, together with Bonington, a prodigious influence on the whole course of French landscape painting. If Michel’s breadth of style, which may be judged from Near Montmartre (No. 626), had been accompanied by a greater range of subject-matter, he would probably rank more highly in the roll of French artists; but he contented himself with the endless repetition of the same motifs which he found close to Montmartre, where he spent his whole life. The care with which he studied Huet, again, learnt more from the old masters and from his friends, Bonington and Delacroix, than from his actual teachers. He, too, thrust aside the recipes of composing classic or “noble” landscapes, and was inspired by an altogether emotional outlook upon nature, calm and serene, as in The Still Morning (No. 413), or threatening and tempestuous, as in The Inundation at St. Cloud (No. 412), or in his masterpiece, The Breakers at Granville (No. 2952). THE BARBIZON SCHOOLThe term “Barbizon school” has been extended from its narrower meaning, in which it merely comprises Rousseau, Diaz, Millet and the disciples who joined them, to form a little artistic colony on the edge of the Forest of Fontainebleau, to a less accurate but now generally accepted wider application, embracing “the men of 1830,” who collectively and individually set out, inspired indirectly by Constable, upon the conquest of light and atmosphere through intimate communion with nature. In a pedantic survey of this Barbizon school, Rousseau would have to take honour of place as the leader of the group, whilst Corot and Daubigny, neither of whom actually worked at Barbizon, would have to be altogether excluded. But in the more liberal interpretation of the term, which we have here adopted, Jean Baptiste Camille Corot (1796–1875) must be given first place as the doyen of the whole group, since he alone was born before the eighteenth century had run its course. COROTCorot, the son of a coiffeur and a modiste in comfortable circumstances, was destined in his youth for the drapery trade, From the precision of his early manner Corot gradually advanced to freedom and airy looseness of touch; from statement of fact, to the suggestion of the very spirit and essence of nature in terms of paint that, more than any other artist’s work, justify the expression “colour music.” His later canvases are filled with the soft shimmer of vibrating atmosphere and with the tender poetry of dawn and dusk. Whilst retaining a truly classic sense of style, and adapting nature to his purposes by arrangement and generalisation, he never fails to convince the beholder of the reality of the scene represented. Even if his glades are peopled with dancing nymphs and satyrs, as in A Morning (No. 138), these mythical beings no longer suggest classic statuary, but they belong as much to the landscape as do the trees and shrubs T. ROUSSEAUThe real head of the Barbizon school was ThÉodore Rousseau (1812–1867), who was one of the first exponents of the “romantic” as opposed to the “classic” landscape. If Corot was the lyric, Rousseau was the epic poet of Nature. In his early works he was considerably influenced by Constable, but he failed for a long time to gain the approval of the public and of the Salon juries. Fourteen times in succession his pictures were refused admission to the Salon, and success only came to him late in life. In 1851, at about the same time as Millet, he settled at Barbizon, on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where henceforth he found the subjects for his pictures. Rousseau was a most conscientious artist, who “constructed a group of trees with the care that an Academician puts into the construction of a nude figure.” His love of accurate detail did not, however, make him lose sight of the general effect. His insistence on bold silhouettes made him favour the sunset hour when, as in his masterpiece, An Opening in the Forest at Fontainebleau (No. 827), the trees would form effective dark masses against the glowing sunset sky. More characteristic of his favourite manner of composition is the imposing group of oak trees in the middle of a plain in the picture known as Les ChÊnes (No. 2900). In this, as in Marais dans les Landes (No. 830), which was bought in 1881 for £5160, and, indeed, in all the pictures where cattle are introduced, it will be noticed PLATE XLIX.—JEAN-BAPTISTE CAMILLE COROT (1796–1875) No. 2801.—THE DELL (Le Vallon, avec des paysannes et une vache) A grass-covered hill descends from the horizon line on the left to the right-hand bottom corner of the picture. A low hedge with a clump of trees in the centre divides the grassy plot from the field rising beyond towards the horizon-line, from which projects a church in the far distance. The sun is behind the trees, which throw a deep shadow on the dale. A cow occupies the centre of the foreground. To the left a group of three peasant women and a child; to the right a farm labourer. Signed on left:—“corot.” Painted in oil on canvas. 1 ft. 1¾ in. × 1 ft. 9¼ in. (0·35 × 0·54.) C. TROYONThis oneness of inanimate and animate nature is less completely realised in the art of Constant Troyon (1810–1865), who, having been trained as a porcelain-painter, was subsequently attracted by the romanticism of DuprÉ, but followed such Dutch masters as Paul Potter in subordinating the landscape to the cattle. It is for this reason that Troyon is known to the public as a “cattle-painter” rather than as a landscape painter. At the same time, he was a close observer of the effects of light on fields and meadows, which he rendered with a skill only rivalled by the solidity, the suggestion of weight and movement, the well-accentuated forms and sinuosities of his cattle. The huge canvas Oxen going to Work (No. 889) is an unrivalled achievement of its kind—a piece of realism that is not without poetry and grandeur. Next to it in importance ranks the Return to the Farm (No. 890). Among the eleven Troyons (Nos. 2906–2916) of the Thomy ThiÉry Bequest, the Morning (No. 2909) strikes a more cheerful and hopeful note than is this artist’s wont. Another artist of this group, who devoted himself almost exclusively to the painting of sheep, is Charles Jacque (1813–1894), from whose brush the Louvre owns the Flock of Sheep in a Landscape (No. 430a), a characteristic work of unusually large dimensions. J. DUPRÉJules DuprÉ (1811–1889) began, like Troyon, as a china-painter, and, like Rousseau, with whom he was for years on terms of intimate Before turning to Diaz, who has been aptly called “the most romantic of the Romanticists,” we must briefly mention EugÈne Isabey (1804–1886), who connects the art of the First Empire with Romanticism, and who knew how to invest his historical paintings with genuinely pictorial interest at a time when that class of subject was generally treated from the literary and anecdotal point of view. His exuberant temperament led him not infrequently to exaggerated movement. The twelve pictures which bear his signature at the Louvre (Nos. 2878–2884, 2953–2956, and 2953a) are illustrative of every phase of his art. As a landscape painter he may be considered a forerunner of Rousseau. DIAZNarcisse Diaz de la PeÑa (1809–1876) was born at Bordeaux, the son of political fugitives from Spain, and, like so many artists PLATE L.—JULES DUPRÉ (1811–1889) No. 2867.—THE POND (La Mare) Autumnal landscape with a pond in the middle distance on the left, bordered on the right, in the centre of the composition, by a group of oak trees. In the foreground some cattle and a cowherd. Cloudy sky. Signed on left:—“jules duprÉ.” Painted in oil on canvas. 1 ft. 1 in. × 1 ft. 6½ in. (0·32 × 0·46.) DAUBIGNYOf all the Barbizon painters and their artistic kinship, Charles FranÇois Daubigny (1817–1878) is the one who approached nature with the most reverent spirit. He is in a way the least subjective of them all, because his love of nature even in her simplest aspects prevented him from imposing his own personality upon her; and for this very reason he is more varied in his range of landscape subjects than any of the other masters of this important group. The most fugitive effects of light and atmosphere were seized by him with a masterly sureness which found expression in every touch of his summary brush. Every hour of the day, every season of the year, every mood of nature appealed to him with equal intensity, although the choice of his subjects is most frequently inspired by serene optimism. Daubigny belonged to a family of artists. He received his first instruction from his father, and afterwards studied under Delaroche. Before he began to paint landscapes in the neigh MILLETThe Louvre is fortunate in possessing no fewer than a dozen pictures by Jean FranÇois Millet (1814–1875), the great painter of the peasant’s unceasing struggle with the forces of nature to gain his livelihood from the soil. Millet himself was the son of a peasant, and was kept busy with farm work until he had attained the age of twenty, when he began to study art at Cherbourg. His studies were repeatedly interrupted before he definitely took up art as his profession. Before he went to Barbizon, in 1849, to devote himself exclusively to the genre in which he was to achieve immortal fame, he gained popular favour and admission to the Salon by following the eighteenth-century tradition of mythological art, and painted a number of nude studies PLATE LI.—CHARLES FRANÇOIS DAUBIGNY (1817–1878) No. 2818.—THE WEIR GATE AT OPTEVOZ (La Vanne d’Optevoz) In the limpid clear water of the river, in the foreground, are reflected the blue sky and the opposite river bank, which, from a grassy slope on the left changes abruptly, near the weir gate, into a steep, low, sandstone cliff, on the crest of which some trees and bushes are silhouetted against the sky. On the left some ducks are swimming on the mirror-like water. Signed on left:—“daubigny, 1859.” Painted in oil on canvas. 1 ft. 7¾ in. × 2 ft. 4¾ in. (0·49 × 0·73.) After he had settled at Barbizon, Millet, whose peasant origin was probably the cause of his intense sympathy with the struggles and hardships of the field labourers’ fatiguing work, devoted his brush to creating that profoundly moving record of labour and toil which constitutes his claim to be considered one of the world’s great masters. He knew how to invest scenes of humble life with truly monumental grandeur, and brought out the hopeless monotony and cruel hardships of the life led by the tillers of the soil with such incisive strength, that he was accused of propagandist tendencies. Nothing, however, was further from his aim. He was an artist pure and simple, who, in following his own unpopular ideal, preferred to suffer neglect and extreme poverty to a compromise with the taste of the vulgar. The Women Gleaning (No. 644, Plate LII.) may be considered his supreme achievement, and an epitome of his whole art. Millet alone could have invested so bald and unpromising a subject with so much epic grandeur. There is in the rhythmic repetition of the action of the two women in the centre of the composition a sense of the inevitable hopeless monotony of labour in the fields, even if the picture is not “a plea against the misery of the people.” The same struggle for existence and the resulting physical fatigue are admirably expressed in the statuesquely silhouetted figure of The Weed-burner (No. 2890). The Woodcutter (No. 2895), The Strawbinders (No. 2892), and The Winnower (No. 2893) all exemplify this phase of Millet’s art. The domestic life of the peasantry is treated with equally profound sympathy in Maternal Precaution (No. 2894), La Couseuse (No. 644a), and La Lessiveuse (No. 2891). Among his comparatively rare pure landscape subjects The Church of GrÉville DAUMIERWhat Millet did for the life of the country, HonorÉ Daumier (1808–1879) did for the life of the town, of which he was a shrewd and critical observer. But his long practice as a caricaturist made him look upon the types that engaged his brush with a certain cruel bitterness which is far removed from Millet’s human sympathy. With a palette restricted almost to black and grey, Daumier yet proved himself a great colourist through the infallible accuracy of his tone-values and the suggestion of rich colour in his almost monochrome schemes. His design is as massive and monumental as Millet’s. The touch of the macabre, which is so characteristic of Daumier’s art, is very evident in The Thieves and the Donkey (No. 2937). The Portrait of the Painter ThÉodore Rousseau (No. 2938) holds a hint of the caricaturist’s vision. COURBETEqually far removed from, and hostile to, Classicism and Romanticism was Gustave Courbet (1819–1877), who as head and founder of the Realistic school exercised a prodigious influence upon nineteenth-century art. He was essentially a fighting spirit, determined to overcome official hostility to his revolutionary principles. Excluded from public exhibitions, he held a private show of his own works, and defended his theories by spoken and PLATE LII.—JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET (1814–1875) No. 644.—WOMEN GLEANING (Les Glaneuses) In a harvest-field three female gleaners, seen in profile to the left, are occupied with picking up blades of corn. Two of them are bending right down, with their right hands touching the ground; the third woman is half erect. In the background some ricks, a cart and horses, harvesters, a farm building, and a horseman. Signed on right:—“j. f. millet.” Painted in oil on canvas. 2 ft. 8¾ in. × 3 ft. 8¼ in. (0·82 × 1·12.) By far his most famous picture is the gigantic Funeral at Ornans (No. 143), which, as a study of the life and types in a small French provincial town, has aptly been compared with Flaubert’s great novel Madame Bovary. Each individual head in this vast composition is a marvellous study of facial expression. In his landscapes, again, he was by no means photographic, and he never failed to consider the decorative effectiveness of his pictures. His influence upon Whistler’s early work is to be judged from The Wave (No. 147a). If his landscapes retain to a certain extent the atmosphere of the studio, such pieces as La Remise des Chevreuils (No. 145a) and Le Ruisseau du Puits noir (No. 146a) clearly show that he possessed a sound understanding of the way in which colours react upon, and modify, each other. Courbet’s revolutionary tendencies made him take part in the political movement of the Commune, and forced him to leave his native country. He died in Switzerland in 1877. MEISSONIERIt was realism of a very different kind that made public opinion place Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815–1891) on a RICARDIf Meissonier is beginning to find his proper level after having been grossly overrated, Louis Gustave Ricard (1824–1873), one of the most remarkable portrait painters of his century, has only just in recent years been rescued from almost complete MANETWe must close this necessarily fragmentary survey of French art at the Louvre with the mention of Edouard Manet (1832–1883), whose Olympia (No. 613a, Plate LIII.) is the first, and so far the only painting of the Impressionist school that has gained access to this gallery. It was formerly exhibited at the Luxembourg. Hung as it is now in Gallery VIII. amid the works of David, Gros, Ingres, Delacroix, Delaroche, and other early nineteenth-century painters, this Olympia fully explains the sensation, but certainly not the indignation, caused by its first appearance at the Salon of 1865. It sings out with such brilliant A nude woman, with blue-edged yellow satin slippers on her feet, a narrow black riband round her neck, and a gold bracelet on her right arm, is reclining on a bed, her right arm resting on the cushion. Beneath her is spread a yellowish, flowered Indian shawl. A black cat with raised tail stands at her feet on the bed. Behind the bed is seen a negress, who brings a large bouquet of flowers to her mistress. Signed on left:—“ed. manet, 1865.” Painted in oil on canvas. 4 ft. 2 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (1·27 × 1·90.) |