ARTS

Exhibitions 1

Tradition and Revolution in French Art 1700-1880 (National Gallery, till 11 July)

Lessons from

Elizabeth Mortimer

It seems unexpectedly auspicious that the first fruits of the Channel Tunnel should be a rich and broad-ranging exhibition of French paintings at the National Gallery. Not that they came by that route. They are from the Lille Museum, which is being refurbished because Lille has been desig- nated as the new hub of the northern Euro- pean railway system and is expecting a lot of visitors as a result. Many French paint- ings have crossed the Channel before and played a part in the development of British art, but they have inevitably reflected the taste of British patrons, which gives our collections a different bias from those formed by the French themselves.

In France the great provincial museums were mostly founded just after the Revolu- tion. Napoleon made available 846 canvas- es confiscated from churches or the homes of émigrés to 15 large towns, on condition that the town councils made proper arrangements to house them. One of these was Lille, and from this nucleus a succes- sion of energetic and dedicated curators, supported by an enthusiastic public, built what is today one of the best collections outside Paris. It is also an authentic reflec- tion of public taste in the 18th and 19th centuries. The National Gallery has chosen samples of French work from this period to show the context in which painters worked and art was debated.

The chief forum of the art establishment in France was the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. Set up in self- defence in the mid-17th century by artists wishing to regulate their own affairs and improve their status, it held that the high- est form of art was history painting. This meant a narrative subject taken from classi- cal literature or the Bible, involving many figures engaged in heroic action. To foster the study of this difficult genre the Acade- my arranged life classes and ran a competi- tion, for which the first prize was a scholarship to study in Rome. Other gen- res, such as portraiture, landscape and still life, were seen as incidental to history painting, and so inferior. These tenets were accepted by artists and critics alike, and works continued to be judged in these terms, and prizes awarded, at exhibitions held in the Salon Carre of the Louvre until the state ceased to sponsor them in 1881.

Although the Academy was abolished during the Revolution, the system contin-

'The Triumph of Mare, by Louis-Leopold Boi147

ued in similar form, with the principal pro- fessors ruling from the Institute instead, while the state maintained its position as chief patron of the arts, both buying works and commissioning them. The art schools survived virtually intact and continued with the rigorous teaching methods that were based on the study of the human figure. Though by the beginning of the 19th centu- ry Romantic artists like Gericault and Delacroix were fighting their way out of the straitjacket, they at first aimed to re-define history painting, not do away with it. As time wore on, however, landscape painting gained the ascendant until the hierarchy of the genres was comprehensively routed by the Impressionists.

The exhibition begins at a low point in the first half of the 18th century. The sub- jects from the antique show how the grand ideals have been trivialised and reduced to the loves and squabbles of the gods. The technical skill of the figure drawing and aerial perspective in Suvee's prize-winning 'Combat between Minerva and Mars' emphasises the bathos. The biggest picture in the room is a vapid and vaporous altar- piece, in which a simpering, fair-haired Christ, swathed in pale pink and baby blue, reveals his divinity at Emmaus amid wreaths of smoke, beneath a heavy and crumpled awning. On a neighbouring wall is a still-life by Chardin, whose dignified simplicity puts the rest to shame.

In the next room things start to look up. David has found his form, or rather, a good reason for using a subject from history. It is the parallel between the unjust treatment of the loyal general Belisarius by the Emperor Justinian and the execution of a contemporary hero of the French army. The low evening sunlight, the calculated poignancy of the play of hands as a woman puts alms into the helmet held out for the old blind soldier by a young boy, the beau- tifully painted figures and draperies lead the viewer's eye across the scene at a medi- tative pace, overlooking the theatrical double-take of a passing veteran who stifles a 'Mon Dieu!' as he recognises his old commander. The sternly literal rendering of every crack in the pavement tempts one to believe in the impartiality of the painter, though in fact the subject is sentimentally idealised — a perfect piece of propaganda from a painter who was to play an active political role in the coming Revolution. , On the wall opposite is Delacroix! 'Medea', a perverted version of an allegori- cal figure of Charity. The ferocious mother. grips her struggling children, her evil designs suggested by the shadow falling across her face and the dagger clenched her fist. Three studies for the painting show

Delacroix compressing and dramatising the composition, the shadow apparently an inspired afterthought. Nearby hangs one of Gericault's small oil studies for an intended large canvas of the 'Race of the Riderless Horses in Rome', where the flickering light reveals the elemental power of the untamed animals.

After touching on the grand themes of Neo-Classicism and Romanticism, we get some light relief among the minor masters of the period, notably the accomplished and graceful Boilly, who was a native of Lille. Nothing could be more satisfyingly effete than the small portrait of a gentle- man perplexed by his attempt to build a rustic bridge with the aid of a little chop- per. Equally delightful is the 'Triumph of Marat', in which the benign and vindicated leader is carried high above a crowd where old and young, male and female, culotte and sans-culottes, all perfectly formed and chic according to their station, signal their delight with dignified enthusiasm.

By now we are well prepared for a reac- tion against the Academy, ready to con- front Courbet's great Realist manifesto,

Apres-Diner a Ornans', where four friends enjoy a quiet evening together in the country, smoking and playing the fid- dle. This was the element of rebellion: the picture was on the heroic scale of a history painting, but instead of performing noble deeds clad in togas, ordinary people are doing nothing much in coats and even a hat. In fact, the subject seems to be the enthralling power of music, which is time- less enough. The strong brushwork suits the rustic setting, but the picture is much darkened because of the use of unstable ingredients in the paint. It was shown to critical acclaim at the Salon of 1849 and was bought by the Republican government, which allotted it to Lille. Hanging to the right of it is 'The Sleeping Man' by Carolus-Duran, a fictionalised self-portrait, in which the different whites of shirt and pillow are set off by a red cravat, in a virtu- oso display of creamy paint. Other works are more conventional, like Amaury- Duval's 'Birth of Venus', which shows what Second Empire man meant by a really gor- geous girl, and no doubt sent the ladies flocking to their corsetieres. It is strange to reflect that this smoothly perfect being is the contemporary of the gauche nymphs and bony virgins of the Pre-Raphaelites.

The last group of paintings are land- scapes, ranging from a choice Arcadian landscape, with an elegant diversity of trees, rocks, buildings and figures, to a fea- tureless stretch of the Seine by Sisley, where the subject is the early morning sun- light filtering through the trees and reflect- ing off the water and the frosty grass. The exhibition ends with a room of drawings. Some illustrate the direct response of artists to the model, others the stages of preparation for a painting, including a few of those in the other rooms, using the stan- dard academic method. These are impres-

sively thorough and laborious.

What emerges most clearly from this very varied group of works is the cohesive power of the Academy. French artists, as products of the same system of training, share a common language. They address their protests, whether in favour of return- ing to a purer state of the art, like Neo- Classicism, or against the current ortho- doxy, like the Romantics and the Realists, to their peers. Even the state is not able to impose itself without their co-operation. Ironically, the result is that the arts in France get far more support from public funds than they do here. Lille Museum is a fine example in more ways than one.