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71'INB ARTS SECTION OE THE PARIS EXHIBITION—NO. ITL THE picturesque school of French painting may be said to include all that is much worth looking at in the nation's art beyond the pale of the severer historic school. Of French genre pictures, and landscapes, and animal-pieces, enough and to spare are not good; but, among those that are, the great majority strike at once by conspicuous and generic pictur- esqueness —a quality which the reader will have mush less difficulty in understanding than critics experience in defining it.
Eugene Delacroix has rendered himself one of the leaders.of European art by carrying the picturesque style to its- acme in application to his- torical subjects. Nor these alone has he treated, but subjects of all kinds; as a running selection from the thirty-six examples is the French exhi- bition will show. We find there " Christ in the Garden of Olivet" ; " Christ on the Cross" ; " The Sibyl" ; " Medetanfuriate " " Dante and Virgil, conducted by- Phlegyas, traverse the lake surrounding the In- fernal, City of Dia" ; " The Justice of Trajan"; " The Emperor Jus- tinian composing his Laws " ; " The Taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders" ;. "The Execution of Marino Faller° " ; "Scene. in the Mas- sacre of Scio " ; " The 28th July 1830 " ;. " Combat of the Giaour and the Pasha " ; " Algerian Women in their Apartment " ' - " The-Convul- eionists of Tangiers" ; "Romeo and Juliet " ; "A Lion Hunt" ; "Head of an Old Woman" ; " Flowers and Fruit:" Religion, history, poetry, romance,, drama, legend, still-life, wild sports, national manners, public events of the day, are all laid under contribution. All are moulded by a wild magnificent energy, which courts difficulties and laughs them to scorn, delights in pomp and in rags, chivalry and barbarian, tears and. blood, whirlpools of confusion, passion intensified to delirium and action to dis- tortion; an energy which pierces to the- heart of the subject, seizes it as a whole, and never pauses till every corner of it has been stamped with the spirit which is its life. For this result the artist's means are various and arbitrary. He -oommands a knowledgeof form and action apparently derived.from indefatigable early study; and which now seems to be used almost, often quite, independently of immediate reference to nature; the faculty of a true colourist, whose colour is not seldom execrable ; a vi- gour of handling whose very excess frequently sinks- it into complete insipidity ; and a power of thought at once raised and enthralled by ex- treme susceptibility to the romantic. To talk of the originality of Dela- croix is a commonplace. His faculties are of that order to which success in asmall thing; calmness, or a rapt contemplation and intelligence of minute beauty, is-impossible. He challenges Nature rather than worships her; • and from such a manNature guards jealously that loveliness which the humbler-minded find the least occult. The consequence is obvious : where Delacroix fails, which he does at least once to every success, he fails egregiously and perversely ; and.when he attempts the beauty of a simple subject or such matter as still-life, he "lies in cold obstruction," and sprawls in unmitigated vulgarity. His genius, moreover, has nothing of the sacred ; and such very limited'attainment as may be recognized in his religions subjects resides wholly in the qualities of passion and imagi- nation common to his other themes. Delacroix may be called a French Ruben of the nineteenth century. For the-spurious mythological feeling he substitutes the feeling of chivalry and romance—genuine, though pertaining to the past ; for the lumbering hugeness of the Fleming he substitutes the Frenchman's suppleness, andthe rude health of the seven- teenth century is "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" in the nineteenth. But to both painters belong the exultant energy of life and motion, the prodigal exuberance, the large capacity for entering into all phases "of human life, and the audacious obtuseness as to the limits within which that capacity, unhallowed by awfuLreverence-ean be exercised. As colourists also their resemblance partly holds : Ruliens has.more of ame- nity, Delacroix of depth ; both affect variegation and brightness of tint. We cannot part from Delacroix without dwelling, though for a moment, on a few pictures individually. The "Execution. of- Faliero " however rapid and even careless may probably have been the mode of produc- tion, ranks-among the wonderful achievements-of art of whatever period —gorgeous, terrible, and epic. In this and other works the master shows the same faculty that we noted in Ingres of embodying an sera of: history in a moment:. here the subtile, exalted, and merciless. aristocracy of Venice, grown into a caste, incapable of further development, and fated, through epochs of crime and splendid debasement, to live itself out to ex- tinction, stands before us. Less intellectual, but not less intense, is the murder of "The Bishop of Liege" by William de is Merck, as described in Quentin Durward. The riotous and bloody debauch, the crowd and turmoil with flashes of lamp-light on the mailed limbs, the' doomed bishop brought to the slaughterhouse in his episcopal robes, are. rendered with terrible vigour: and similar qualities are displayed- in the -sketch of "Boissy Dangles," menaced by the mob in the National Convention. " Tasso in Prison," seated in dejection while madmen are about hinigib- bering, is replete with dreadful reality. These four are small works, but none are more vital with the peculiar genius of Delacroix. Among, the large canvasses, we may single out the renowned subject of Dante and Virgil, from the Luxembourg ; the "Taking of Constantinople by the Crusaders," with its yet half-barbaric chivalry, the heirs of sea-kings and Norman devastators; the "Death of Charles the Rash at the Battle of Nancy,"—a mighty battle-piece; and the "Algerian' Women in their Apartment." The background to the Constantinople picture has some- thing of the old-world truth -of- Van Eyck, and is- ono of the most beau- tiful matters of detail that linger along the burning track- of vehement Delacroix.
One might thinle.tbat Delacroix went far enough as a professor of the. picturesque principle; but its extreme incarnation is Decamps, This painter's many-fine gifts in colour, character, manipulation, invention, or chiaroscuro, may all be summed up in the word picturesque. His fi- gures run out of the canvass; he affects arid landscapes, competitions of consummate skill broken by some abrupt eccentricity, lurid sunlights; white light bounded by shadowiinpenetrably black, and all that is most recherche in singularity or abandon of costume- Orientalism is his special province. He may exaggerate for effect; but he does it legiti- mately to make his own style of art supreme, and he never sinks into mere extravagance or grimace. The nine designs from the history of Samson, much as they lose of resource by being mere crayon drawings, are amazing in savage sombre strength. It is laughable to note that this tearing Orson has come out of the studio of M. Abel de Pujol, the most sheepish of tame allegorists and members of the Institute.
Courbet is another representative man of the school; but so exalte, that; shooting out of sight of such men as might be called his colleagues, he represents little except himself and his direct imitators. His " Burial at Omens," exhibited in 1850, created that amount of noise, abuse, and disputation, which is immediate fame; and he has since occupied in France, as the apostle of "Realism," a position somewhat analogous to that of the PrEeraphaelites in England. Admiring Courbet as we heartily do,. both from sympathy with the movement which.be belongs to and on compulsion from his own force, we cannot admit the analogy, however, without very serious restrictions. Actual resemblance in method there is none. whatever : the Frenchman is the roughestof the rough, the English- men the most exquisite of the elaborated. The first paints with a scrub- bing-brush clotted with coarse paint and chalk-grits; the second, with a fine camel's hair dipped in the choicest and purest tints of the palette. A more radical difference even is in the mode of looking at nature, and the conception of the thing to be achieved. Courbet seems to think that whatever he sees is what he ought to paint ; he never invents a subject, but copies a fact. "The Stone-breakers" is a couple of men breaking stones, painted on a large scale broadly ; and absolutely nothing more. "The Young Village Ladies" is a conversation of these damsels with a peasant-girl in a mountain valley ; a dog beside the ladies, and two cows beyond. the intersecting- stream. The merit of the picture is great ; but it is nothing beyond the merit of literality—the colour not even truthful, a The Meeting" is Courbet, on a hot day, walking a dusty country-road in his shirt-sleeves, with sturdy staff and slung knapsack, who meets two acquaintances, one red-bearded, one a prosaic bourgeois-looking person. age. It is just as any one might see the unexciting incident, provided he looked merely to broad features and overlooked the details. Next come "The Wheat-Sifters,'-' "The Spinner," and so on • the title containing literally the entire subject of the picture, and the details being so gene- ralized as to add little or nothing to in A head of " A Spanish Lady," however, and "The Dix-Heures Rock, Loue Valley," are admirable pieces of dashing sparkling colour,-=the former steeped in national cha- racter and supple abandon; the latter a glorious snatch of landscape, as real as stones and grass, of which Anthony might be proud. In most of the pictures the colour is low and chalky, yet dignified; the appreciation of general natural effects is correct; and the look of se, cessories is given, however flat and hurried: Composition is not only neglected, but evidently eschewed ; a point which shows only a half-grasp of Realism, as Nature; in her most casual combinations, is generally strik- ing and peculiar, and abhors straight rows of heads or figures almost as much as an eternal pyramidal composition or the flaccid waviness of a Cor- reggio. Courbet, by his portraits and his works, seems to us a jolly, care- less, pipe-smoking French painter ' • a man. of enormous vigour, ease, and will ; hard-headed also and. able, but by no means thoughtfuL He sees as far into a millstone as another man—and no further ; and is honest enough to paint, with a rough and ready freedom, exactly what he sees. But it never seems to occur to him that real sincerity in art must be ex. excised first of all in the invention of the subject ; that his function is to translate the sentiment of things as well as to exhibit their conformation ; or that love and reverence, far rather than the " hail-fellow-well-met " spirit, is the true artist's relation to Nature. The vitality of the English Prseraphaelites consists in their having remembered these fundamental truths. With all his shortcomings, however, and what may be called his impenetrable toughness, Courbet commands wonder, and merits honour: He appears even to imagine himself possessed of theoretic principles, -whereas he really owns, if we read him aright, nothing but eyes and hands ; and, to avoid doing him any unintentional injustice,. we subjoin an extract from his own profession of principles. "I have studied, apart from any spirit of system, and without preconception, the art of the an- cients and the art of the moderns. . . . . To know in order that I might be able to do, such has been my idea. To be qualified to transcribe the manners, the ideas, the aspect, of my time, according to my perception— to be not only a painter, but also a man—in a word, to practise living art —such is my aim." Thtse words are extracted from the catalogue of an evhibition of his collected works which Courbet has opened close to the Palais des Beaux Arts, and which contains his two most remarkable pro- ductions-0 The Burial at Ornans," and " The Painter's Study, a real allegory, terminating a seven-years phase of my artistic life,"—painted in the present year.
From Gustave Courbet to Jean Louis. Hamon is the stride from one pole of art to another; from a digger's tent to a lady's boudoir ; from the clenched fist, whose knuckles are yet red with knocking down a bul- lock, to a long, white, consumptive hand. Hamon is one of the most de- licious of idyllic painters ; the most charming of French classicists, the most child-like and child-loving of Parisians. There is just a touch is him of dandyism—which one has scarcely heart to condemn. Pale tints, faces more vaporous than any other part of the picture—a mannerism irr. which Jobbe-Duval, Picou, and some other painters, share—chaste, white, boneless forms, the nicest delicacy in touch, the most impeccable taste in accessory—distinguish our gentle Ramon. The "Comedy of Human Life," where Diogenes, Dante, Homer, antique warriors, little children, and modern portieres, hover about a Punch-and-Judy show, seems to be rather too infantine for any one to take the trouble of fathoming its shal- lowness. But then there is the lovely child's-play idyl, "My sister is not at home "—tbe sweet quaint composition and innocent feeling of "A Girl in charge of Children." Both yield to " The Orphans " ; which is certainly one of the most placidly lovely among pictures, and somehow,. spite or because of its naïve treatment, so different from what the com- mon sentimentalist would have chosen, one of the most touching. Two beautiful girls, pale is their tender bloom, with their golden hair and deep mourning, are in a room of the einrpleat elegance. One is threading her needle;, one has fallen into slumber. Behind her their little brother stands on tiptoe, about to tickle the sleeper with some long grass. There is no mother to kiss him for being mischievous. Futile and, inexpressive, of its subject tut the picture may appear from verbal description, it is quite the reverse in reality; solemn, hushed, and exquisitely domestic', Every feature of it marks the last touch of artistic refinement. The microscopic Meissonnier is another example of wonderful delicacy.; a man who elevates a diminutive canvass, with no subject, into high art by the perfection of his handling. As a colourist; he leaves nothing to Complain of, unless sometimes when he a little exceeds his. ordinary al, lowance of square inches ; but colour is not the strong point It is the handling and the light and shade ; of which a faultless specimen is the picture of " A young man reading-at breakfast." Meissonnier, however, is too well appreciated to detain =longer.
Bids, Thomas, Valerio, and Dehodeneq, deserve record as excellent Orientalists, following the path pioneered by Decamps; Fontaine, as a talented Realist ; Janmot, for his series of " The Soul," which, without much direct invention, shows great artistic ability,in some instances, for conveying a sensation of. the mystic and imaginative; Victor Muller,.for a singularly well got-up Titianism ; and Rivard and O'Connell, as port. trait-painters,—the first refined, and penetrative, the second coarse, but sometimes brilliant.
Of the French school of landscape we have before spoken in general terms. Its sentiment is in the main solemn, and even gloomy; its style broad, trenchant, and striking ; and it catches effects with singular readi- ness and power. Its strength, indeed, lies in effects rather than exact rendering ; and-this system, spite of a very-pronounced generic character,
preserves strong individuality in the several The school is, on the whole, a noble one; which Englishmen, addicted to an opposite prin- ciple, are far too chary-of admitting. The style is finely exemplified in the brilliant flock of clouds, deep and grand, which seem to advance im- pending over the foreground. of Dargent'e " Last Rays of the Sun—a Souvenir of Brittany" ; in.the daguerreotypin truth of nervier's " Til- lage of Quevilly—Autumn effect" ; and in the struggling luminousness of Ziem's " Venetian Evening." Dark green trees, gray shadows, and bluish white sky, produce a-startling effect in Lapierre's " Sully Avenue —Park of Fontainebleau " ; and the two lines of gloom, a terrace and an arcade of trees, leave a brilliant middle distance in Trouve'a " View in Palmy." Lambinet and Loubon take after Courbet The power over peculiar effects, rendered sketchily- but vividly, appears in Varennes's "Autumn—Morning effect," with the dew-spangled spider-webs in the long grass ; and in Lafage's " Close of Autumn," where the grey vista of forest-trunks is true in idea, though expressed so hurriedly as to look rather an expedient than an actual atmospheric appearance. Hosts of other landscape-painters remain, each of whom has studied faithfully, and reported-with vigour and animation ; Theodore Rousseau, Aig. uier, Leroux, Palizzi, Castelnau, Balleroy, Belly, St. Marcel Cabin, Simon, Tillot, Woets, &c. Isabey is the special and recognized professor of the picturesque in landscape, as Decamps in figure-subjects. Rosa Bonheur and Jadin are two great names in animal-painting. Of the lady all London has been talking of late ; and we need only say that her " Haymaking in Auvergne," with its-sultry depth and expanse of blue sky, and its richly-laden cart, is at least as fine a picture as the " Horse, Fair in Paris." Jadin, in the specialty of dog-painting, stands, to our apprehension, unparalleled. He seems to work as much in the spirit of a sportsman as of an artist ; so much so that some of his pictures—and one especially where scores of hounds- are assembled for the chase—are lettered all over with the names of the distinguished. animals. " Tippoo at the age of sixteen" is marvellous for life,. force, character, and paint- ing ; and the " Return Home," after a day's hunting, is not only full of the most impetuous motion and spirit, but rendered quite grand in feel- ing by its sky flaring with " a last remains of sunset." Troyon is an- other man of immense energy and skill; both in. dogs and other animals and in out-doors effects ; and Haffner, Philippe Rousseau, and Saizard, are such a triad of.brute-painters as is-not easily to be encountered out of prolific France.
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