Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/553

Rh We still see the works of some of the staunch Romanticists: Jean Gigoux (d. 1892), Robert-Fleury (d. 1890), Jules Dupre (d. 1889), Lami (d. 1890), Cabat (d. 1893) and Isabey (d. 1886); and with these, though they did not follow quite the same road, may be named Frangais (d. 1897) and Charles Jacquc (d. 1894). Next to them, Meissonier (d. 1891) crowded into the last twenty yearsof his life a mass of work which, for the most part, enhanced his fame; and Rosa Bonheur (d. 1899), working in retirement up to the age of seventy-seven, went on her accustomed way unmoved by external changes. Hebert, Harpignics, Ziem and Paul Flandrin survived. Among the generation which grew up under the Second Empire we find men of great intelligence and distinction; some, like Alexandre Cabanel (1824-1889), by pictures of historical genre, in a somewhat insipid and conventional style, but more particularly by female portraits, firm in flesh-painting and aristocratic in feeling; others, like Paul Baudry (1828-1886, q.v.), whose large decorative works, with their pure and lofty elegance, secured him lasting fame, and whose allegorical compositions were particularly remarkable; not less so his portraits, at first vivid, glowing and golden, but at the end of his life, under the influence of the new atmosphere, cooler in tone, but more eager, nervous and restless in feeling. Leon Gerome (b. 1824, q.v.) was the originator, during the Second Empire, of the neo-Greek idea, an Orientalist and painter of historic genre, whose somewhat arid instinct for archaeological precision and finish developed to better ends in sculpture during later years. William Bouguereau (b. 1825, q.v.) painl:ed symbolical and allegorical subjects in a sentimental style. Jules Lefebvre (b. 1836) had a brilliant career as a portrait painter, combined, in his earlier years, with admirable studies of the nude. These were followed by Benjamin Constant (d. 1902), a clever painter of past ages in the East and of modern Oriental life, who latterly directed his powers of vigorous and rapid brushwork to portrait painting; Fernand Cormon, the inventive chronicler of primeval Gaul, and a solid and learned portrait painter; Aime Morot, a man of versatile gifts, a painter of portraits full of life and ease. These formed the heart of the Institut. On the other hand, we find a group who betray a close affinity with the realist party — rejecting, like them, tradition at second-hand, though returning for direct teaching to some of the great masters: Leon Bonnat (b. 1833), educated in Spain, and preserving through a long series of official portraits an evident worship of the great realists of that nation; and again, under the same influence, Jean Paul Laurens (b. 1837), who has infused some return of vitality into historical painting by his clear and individual conceptions and realistic treatment. Jean Jacques Henner (b. 1829, q.v.), standing even more apart, lived in a Correggiolike dream of pale nude forms in dim landscape scenery; his love of exquisite texture, and his unvarying sense of beauty, with his refined dilettantism, Unk him on each side to the great groups of realists and idealists.

About the middle of the 19th century, after the vehement disputes between the partisans of line and the votaries of colour, otherwise the Classic and the Romantic schools, when a younger generation was resting from these follies, exhausted, weary, devoid even of any fine technique, two groups slowly formed on the opposite sides of the horizon — seers or dreamers, both protesting in different ways against the collapse of the French school, and against the alleged indifference and sceptical eclecticism of the painters who were regarded as the leaders. This was a revolt from the academic and conservative tradition. One was the group of original and nature-loving painters, keen and devoted observers of men and things, the realists, made illustrious by the three great personalities of Corot {q.v.), Millet (q.v.) and Courbet {q.v.), the real originators of French contemporary art. The other was the group of men of imagination, the idealists, who, in the pursuit of perfect beauty and an ideal moral standard, reverted to the dissimilar visions of Delacroix and Ingres, the ideals of rhythm as opposed to harmony, of style versus passion, which Theodore Chasseriau had endeavoured to combine. Round Puvis de Chavannes {q.v.) and Gustave Moreau {q.v.) we find a group of artists who, in spite of the fascination exerted

of their intelligence by the great works of the old masters, especially the early I'"Florentines and Venetians, would not accept the old technique, but strove to record in splendid imagery the wonders of the spiritual life, or claimed, by studying contemporary individuals, to reveal the psychology of modern minds. Among them were Gustave Ricard (1821-1873), whose portraits, suggesting the mystical charm sometimes of Leonardo and sometimes of Rembrandt, are full of deep unullered vitality; Elie Delaunay (1828-1891), serious and expressive in his heroic compositions, keen and striking in his portraits; Eugene Fromenlin (i 820-1 876), acute but subtle and silvery, a man of elegant mind, the writer of Les Mailres d'autrefois, of Sahel and of Le Sahara, the discoverer — artistically — of Algeria. And round the loud and showy individuality of Courbet — healthy, nevertheless, and inspiring — a group was gathered of men less judicious, but more stirring, more truculent, thoroughly original, but not less reverent to the old masters than they were defiant of contemporary authorities. They were even more ardent for a strong technique, but the masters who attracted them were the Dutch, the Flemish, the Venetians, who, like themselves, had aimed at recording the life of their day. Among these was Franfois Bonvin (1817-1887), who, following Granet, carried on the evolution of a subdivision of genre, the study of domestic interiors. This Drolling, too, had done, early in the 19th century, his predecessors in France being Chardin and Le Nain. This class of subjects has not merely absorbed all genre-painting, but has become a very important factor in the presentment of modern life. Bonvin painted asylums, convent-life, studios, laboratories and schools. Alphonse Legros {q.v.), painter, sculptor and etcher, who settled in London, was of the same school, though independent in his individuality, celebrating with his brush and etching-needle the life of the poor and humble, and even of the vagabond and beggar. There were also Bracquemond, the reviver of the craft of etching; Fantin-Latour, the painter of highly romantic Wagnerian dreams, figure compositions grouped after the Dutch manner, and flower pieces not surpassed in his day. Ribot, again, and Vollon, daring and dashing in their handling of the brush; Guillaume Regamey, one of the few military painters gifted with the epic sense; and even Carolus Duran, who, after painting " Murdered " (in the Lille Museum), combined with the professional duties of an official teacher a briUiant career as a portrait painter. A later member of this group, attracted to it by student friendship in the little drawing-school which under Lecoq de Boisbaudran competed in a modest way with the Ecole des Beaux Arts, was J. C. Cazin, well known afterwards as a pronounced idealist. Finally, there was Manet, a connecting link between the realists and the impressionists. These two radiant focuses of imagination and of observation respectively were to be seen still intact during the later period, as represented by the most energetic of the masters who upheld them.

After the catastrophe of 1870, French art appeared to be reawakened by the disasters of the country; and at the great exhibition in Vienna in 1873 Count Andrassy exclaimed to Leon Bonnat, " After such a terrible crisis you are up again, and victorious ! " Immense energy prevailed in the studios, and money poured into France in consequence. The output increased rapidly, and at the same time study became more strenuous, and ambition grew bolder and more manly. Renewed activity stirred in the pubUc academies, and a crowd of foreign students came to learn. Two great facts give a characteristic stamp to this new revival of French art: I. In the class of imaginative painting, the renewed impulse towards monumental or decorative work. II. In the class of nature studies, the growth of landscape painting, which developed along two parallel Lines-Impressionism; and III. the " Open-air " school.

I. Decoration. — In decorative painting two men were the soul of the movement: Puvis de Chavannes and Philippe de Chennevieres Pointel. As we look back on the last years of the Second Empire we see decorative painting sunk in profound lethargy. After Delacroix, Chasseriau and Hippolyte Flandrin, and the completion of the great works in the Palais Bourbon, the Senate