BOOKS OF THE DAY
278 279 279 280 282 The Journal of Eugene Delacroix (Anthony Blunt) The Case for Collective Security (J. L. Hammond) Salisbury's Choristers (Professor E. F. Jacob) . .
Race (E. L. Woodward) .. . .
Japan Over Asia (Guenther Stein) . . Hellenizers and Modernists (H. St. L. B. Moss) 284 My House in Malaga (Kate O'Brien) ..
284
EScape from Baghdad (Christopher SylteS) 286 Fiction (Forrest Reid) .. 288 Current Literature .. . 290
DELACROIX AND THE ROMANTICS
By ANTHONY. BLUNT
How simple the history of French painting in the early nineteenth century used to be ! Two giants, pure and opposed in their principles, dominated the field ; and the whole story could be worked out in terms of their struggle. On the one hand was Ingres, the classical artist and the supporter of pure draughtsmanship ; on the other Delacroix, the romantic and the champion of colour. Each was believed never to have wavered in his views, or to have admitted any merit in his opponent. But a closer study aroused doubts about this majestic generalisation. Critics began to study the paintings and opinions of the two artists more exactly, and found that, far from being unadulterated, the views and methods of each painter contained a regrettable number of elements which had hitherto been associated only with his opponent. And so the history of this period of art had to be rewritten.
The confusion was really very great. Ingres was found to have shown markedly romantic tendencies, for instance in his paintings of scenes from Ossian. Delacroix was even worse. His classical preqection in all forms of art was disturbing. Could a man who preferred Mozart to almost all other corn- posers—including Rossini, and even Beethoven—be counted as a Romantic at all ? Moreover, Delacroix showed a strong dislike for some of the most typical representatives of the Romantic movement in France—saying, for instance, of Victor Hugo that he never came within a hundred miles of truth or simplicity—and for some of the most fundamental tenets of Romantic theory, such as the mixture of the comic and the tragic. And, most disturbing of all, Delacroix was
detected describing a painting by Ingres as charming. ...,• The most important document for studying Delacroix' complex state of mind is the journal which he kept, with some gaps, for nearly forty years of his life, and of which an English, or rather American, translation has just been published.* It is a valuable record of the artist's feelings and views on all subjects, and throws as much light on his character as on his art.
The first impression which it produces is of the difference between Delacroix' view of life and that of most of the Romantics. There is no trace here of the mal dir siècle which tortured Constant, of the overwhelming passions which made life miserable for Musset, or of the withdrawal into nature which consoled Lmnartine. In fact, the only one of the French Romantics whom Delacroix calls to mind is Vigny. They have the same aristocratic aloofness, and the same realisation that this aloofness, though rather splendid, cuts them off from all that they want. And yet neither of them could conquer it. It led to a marked timidity which comes out in the case of Delacroix above all in his relations with women. He writes with captivating simplicity of the desires which he feels, of the terror which he experiences in trying to satisfy them, and of the shame which he feels at this terror. And all this without any attempt to dramatise his . emotions. There is something pathetic in the envy with which he writes of M. Gros, whom he met n Cadiz : "What a life of pleasure this man really has led ! " He knew that he was not capable of a really vicious
existence. „ Delacroix' attitude towards _the_arts-shows something of the same compromise. Baudelaire says of him : "He was pas- sionately in love with passion, and coldly set on seeking the means of expressing passion in the clearest manner" That is to say, Delacroix felt himself by instinct an artist whose achievement depended on enthusiasm and energy, but he did not dare to give a free hand to his imagination, since his natural respect for reason and a formally correct method of expression *The Journal of Eugene Delacroix. Translated by Walter Pach. (Cape. 30s.) forbade him to do so. Corot said of him—and Delacroix did not deny it—that in spite of his desire to systematise, he would always be swept along by instinct. At one moment he says : "I do not care for reasonable painting at . all. I can see that my turbulent mind needs agitation. . If I am notquivering like a snake in the hands of the Pythoness, I am cold." At another he talks of the need for " prudent distribution," intends to copy Poussin to overcome his natural facility, and attacks Malibran's acting as being not calculated enough. His taste in the arts contains the same sort of apparent contradictions. Rubens is "that Homer of painting " ; but Poussin is spoken of in terms of almost equal enthusiasm ; Puget and the Elgin Marbles come in for the same praise ; he describes Rembrandt as "a far greater painter than Raphael," but at once adds: " Rembrandt has not . . . the absolute elevation of Raphael." Voltaire and Shakespeare, Homer and Racine, all seem to him deserving of some approval.
The one thing that Delacroix hated steadily was affectation, and one of the refrains throughout the Journal is his detestation of the Rococo. It can therefore, in a certain sense, be said that he was always on the side of realism ; but his attitude on the matter is extremely complicated. When he first saw the paintings of courbet he was appalled at their common realism ; but after a more careful study he came to admire them deeply and was one of Courbet's first defenders. On the other band, the realism of Babne was in general too much for him. Eugenie Grandet seemed to him a muddle, and the detail in Les Pays= irrelevant and disturbing. - And yet he was perspicacious enough to approve. of the early English...Pre-Raphaelites for pursuing a kind otrealisur which put them above the archaising Frenchmen of the time, who adopted a "primitive" manner only as a kind of novelty. Moreover, be saw the elements of realism in the great writers and painters of the seventeenth century. He records a conversation with Dumas in which he defended the classical dramatists against the charge of being conventional, saying that Dumas and his kind could never see the inconsistency of giving the most exact settings but the most improbable sentiments to their characters.
The fundamental divisions in the mind and character of Delacroix have their source in the historical situationin which he found himself. His instincts were aristocratic, but he *as' too intelligent to be a whole-hearted reactionary. He had aspira- tions towards an improvement of the world, and for a time' he thought that the July Monarchy would bring about such an improvement. But later, as the regime of Louis Philippe gave place to the Second Empire, Delacroix' disillusionment "in- creased. "This gilded 'abjectness is the saddest of alt," he wrote of a ball at the Tuileries. And in his later years he lived more and more tetired life, devoting himself entirely to the pursuit of his art, and praying, rather uselessly, for the return of the Orleans dynasty.
But alas ! this is not a character sketch of Delacroix, but a review of the translation of iis Journal, and it is painful but necessary to end on, a note of protest—against both, translator and publisher. The latter is presumably responsible for the badness of the illustrations; and the former must be charged with the liberties: which he has taken with the text.. His method of abridgment Must be allowed to be a matter of taste;, but the same cannot be said of his misdating some of the entries; and his transferring of passages from one entry to another. The Americanisms will, I dare say, only jar on a puristically English ear.; but nothing can , justify,, the, mis- translations which abound, and which sink to the school-boy level of turning gorge 'into throat in all contexts, cksald, intp. desolate, and trouble into iroubled. But even . blemishes such as these cannot obscure .r.h.e. interest of the journal AS a *hole. .
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