A NINETEENTH CENTURY ANTHOLOGY
French Painting of the Nineteenth Century. By S. Rocheblave. (The Commodore Press. 25s.) IN just over a hundred plates this book manages to give perhaps the best anthology of French painting in the nineteenth century that is at present available. The author has avoided one fault which vitiates almost all treatments of this subject, that, namely, of selecting works for reproduction on the single principle of what is at the moment in fashion. The result is that we are here allowed to know that during the nineteenth- century France produced not only Delacroix and Cezanne, but also Hebert and Gustave Moreau. Since these artists, and many others like them who are usually ignored in histories of this period, stand for important movements in painting, it is essential that they should be mentioned in any book which claims to give a complete or historical view of the art of the time.
In this respect, therefore, M. Rocheblave's treatment is historical, but in others he is less scientific in his approach. In general he is concerned more with style than with content, and only occasionally does he try to show what relation exists between the art of a particular moment and the social or political movements of the same moment. When ho does so, he is not always successful. For instance, he seems to suggest that the realism which comes into existence at the turn of the eighteenth century is to be explained by the influence of Napoleon, and he quotes the date 1800 for its beginning. But in David this realism had been apparent in a painting such as the jeu de Paume, painted in 1791, and completely developed in the Marat of 1793. If, therefore, this realism is to be associated with any political or social causes, it must be with the Revolution of 1789 rather than with Napoleon. When David becomes the official painter of the latter he tends to give up his realism, at any rate as his master turns from First Consul into Emperor. M. Rocheblave would find the solution to this and many other problems connected with the painting of the First Empire it he turned to the two articles entitled Reflections on Classicism and Romanticism, by F. Antal, published in the Burlington Magazine for 1935, which contain the most important treatment of this particular period and are not mentioned in the biblio- graphy in the book.
However, the book is clearly meant to stand by its illustrations and on these it must receive the highest praise. It has already been said that they are well selected, and it must be added that they are extremely well reproduced. The few in colour are not entirely successful, but those in photogravure are of exceptional quality. This is said to be the first of a series, so that it may be as well to point out what failings there are in the production in the hope that they may be avoided in the later volumes. There are a few errors of fact, such as the date 1855 for Courbet's Enterrement a Ornans instead of 1849 ; a few misprints, from one of which Millet's masterpiece The Gleaners emerges happily as The Cleaners ; a few misstatements of the provenance of paintings (e.g., Seurat's Baignade is in the Tate and not in a private collection, and Corot's La Toilette has for years belonged to Messrs. Wildenstein). Of the mistransla- lions one is worth mentioning, namely, the substitution of Hippolyta for Hippolytus in Guerin's painting of Phaedra, which adds inversion to an already incestuous story.
ANTHONY BLUNT.
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