THE GREAT VENETIANS: The most positive in influence upon his contemporaries of all the great Venetians was Giorgione (1477?-1511). He died young, and what few pictures by him are left to us have been so torn to pieces by historical criticism that at times one begins to doubt if there ever was such a painter. His different styles have been confused, and his pictures in consequence thereof attributed to followers instead of to the master. Painters change their styles, but seldom their original bent of mind. With Giorgione there was a lyric feeling as shown in music. The voluptuous swell of line, the melting tone of color, the sharp dash of light, the undercurrent of atmosphere, all mingled for him into radiant melody. He sought pure pictorial beauty and found it in everything of nature. He had little grasp of the purely intellectual, and the religious was something he dealt with in no strong devotional way. The fete, the concert, the fable, the legend, with a landscape setting, made a stronger appeal to him. More of a recorder than a thinker he was not the less a leader showing the way into that new Arcadian grove of pleasure whose inhabitants thought not of creeds and faiths and histories and literatures, but were content to lead the life that was sweet in its glow and warmth of color, its light, its shadows, its bending trees, and arching skies. A strong full-blooded race, sober-minded, dignified, rationally happy with their lot, Giorgione portrayed them with an art infinite in variety and consummate in skill. Their least features under his brush seemed to glow like jewels. The sheen of armor and rich robe, a bare forearm, a nude back, or loosened hair—mere morsels of color and light—all took on a new beauty. Even landscape with him became more significant. His master, Bellini, had been realistic enough in the details of trees and hills, but Giorgione grasped the meaning of landscape as an entirety, and rendered it with poetic breadth.

Technically he adopted the oil medium brought to Venice by Antonello da Messina, introducing scumbling and glazing to obtain brilliancy and depth of color. Of light-and-shade he was a master, and in atmosphere excellent. He, in common with all the Venetians, is sometimes said to be lacking in drawing, but that is the result of a misunderstanding. The Venetians never cared to accent line, choosing rather to model in masses of light and shadow and color. Giorgione was a superior man with the brush, but not quite up to his contemporary Titian.



That is not surprising, for Titian (1477-1576) was the painter easily first in the whole range of Italian art. He was the first man in the history of painting to handle a brush with freedom, vigor, and gusto. And Titian's brush-work was probably the least part of his genius. Calm in mood, dignified, and often majestic in conception, learned beyond all others in his craft, he mingled thought, feeling, color, brush-work into one grand and glowing whole. He emphasized nothing, yet elevated everything. In pure intellectual thought he was not so strong as Raphael. He never sought to make painting a vehicle for theological, literary, or classical ideas. His tale was largely of humanity under a religious or classical name, but a noble, majestic humanity. In his art dignified senators, stern doges, and solemn ecclesiastics mingle with open-eyed madonnas, winning Ariadnes, and youthful Bacchuses. Men and women they are truly, but the very noblest of the Italian race, the mountain race of the Cadore country—proud, active, glowing with life; the sea race of Venice—worldly wise, full of character, luxurious in power.

In himself he was an epitome of all the excellences of painting. He was everything, the sum of Venetian skill, the crowning genius of Renaissance art. He had force, power, invention, imagination, point of view; he had the infinite knowledge of nature and the infinite mastery of art. In addition, Fortune smiled upon him as upon a favorite child. Trained in mind and hand he lived for ninety-nine years and worked unceasingly up to a few months of his death. His genius was great and his accomplishment equally so. He was celebrated and independent at thirty-five, though before that he showed something of the influence of Giorgione. After the death of Giorgione and his master, Bellini, Titian was the leader in Venice to the end of his long life, and though having few scholars of importance his influence was spread through all North Italian painting.

Taking him for all in all, perhaps it is not too much to say that he was the greatest painter known to history. If it were possible to describe that greatness in one word, that word would be "universality." He saw and painted that which was universal in its truth. The local and particular, the small and the accidental, were passed over for those great truths which belong to all the world of life. In this respect he was a veritable Shakespeare, with all the calmness and repose of one who overlooked the world from a lofty height.



The restfulness and easy strength of Titian were not characteristics of his follower Tintoretto (1518-1592). He was violent, headlong, impulsive, more impetuous than Michael Angelo, and in some respects a strong reminder of him. He had not Michael Angelo's austerity, and there was more clash and tumult and fire about him, but he had a command of line like the Florentine, and a way of hurling things, as seen in the Fall of the Damned, that reminds one of the Last Judgment of the Sistine. It was his aim to combine the line of Michael Angelo and the color of Titian; but without reaching up to either of his models he produced a powerful amalgam of his own.

He was one of the very great artists of the world, and the most rapid workman in the whole Renaissance period. There are to-day, after centuries of decay, fire, theft, and repainting, yards upon yards of Tintoretto's canvases rotting upon the walls of the Venetian churches. He produced an enormous amount of work, and, what is to be regretted, much of it was contract work or experimental sketching. This has given his art a rather bad name, but judged by his best works in the Ducal Palace and the Academy at Venice, he will not be found lacking. Even in his masterpiece (The Miracle of the Slave) he is "Il Furioso," as they used to call him; but his thunderbolt style is held in check by wonderful grace, strength of modelling, superb contrasts of light with shade, and a coloring of flesh and robes not unworthy of the very greatest. He was a man who worked in the white heat of passion, with much imagination and invention. As a technician he sought difficulties rather than avoided them. There is some antagonism between form and color, but Tintoretto tried to reconcile them. The result was sometimes clashing, but no one could have done better with them than he did. He was a fine draughtsman, a good colorist, and a master of light. As a brushman he was a superior man, but not equal to Titian.

Paolo Veronese (1528-1588), the fourth great Venetian, did not follow the line direction set by Tintoretto, but carried out the original color-leaning of the school. He came a little later than Tintoretto, and his art was a reflection of the advancing Renaissance, wherein simplicity was destined to lose itself in complexity, grandeur, and display. Paolo came on the very crest of the Renaissance wave, when art, risen to its greatest height, was gleaming in that transparent splendor that precedes the fall.



The great bulk of his work had a large decorative motive behind it. Almost all of the late Venetian work was of that character. Hence it was brilliant in color, elaborate in subject, and grand in scale. Splendid robes, hangings, furniture, architecture, jewels, armor, appeared everywhere, and not in flat, lustreless hues, but with that brilliancy which they possess in nature. Drapery gave way to clothing, and texture-painting was introduced even in the largest canvases. Scenes from Scripture and legend turned into grand pageants of Venetian glory, and the facial expression of the characters rather passed out in favor of telling masses of color to be seen at a distance upon wall or ceiling. It was pomp and glory carried to the highest pitch, but with all seriousness of mood and truthfulness in art. It was beyond Titian in variety, richness, ornament, facility; but it was perhaps below Titian in sentiment, sobriety, and depth of insight. Titian, with all his sensuous beauty, did appeal to the higher intelligence, while Paolo and his companions appealed more positively to the eye by luxurious color-setting and magnificence of invention. The decadence came after Paolo, but not with him. His art was the most gorgeous of the Venetian school, and by many is ranked the highest of all, but perhaps it is better to say it was the height. Those who came after brought about the decline by striving to imitate his splendor, and thereby falling into extravagance.

These are the four great Venetians—the men of first rank. Beside them and around them were many other painters, placed in the second rank, who in any other time or city would have held first place. Palma il Vecchio (1480?-1528) was so excellent in many ways that it seems unjust to speak of him as a secondary painter. He was not, however, a great original mind, though in many respects a perfect painter. He was influenced by Bellini at first, and then by Giorgione. In subject there was nothing dramatic about him, and he carries chiefly by his portrayal of quiet, dignified, and beautiful Venetians under the names of saints and holy families. The St. Barbara is an example of this, and one of the most majestic figures in all painting.



Palma's friend and fellow-worker, Lorenzo Lotto (1480?-1556?) came from the school of the Bellini, and at different times was under the influence of several Venetian painters—Palma, Giorgione, Titian—without obliterating a sensitive individuality of his own. He was a somewhat mannered but very charming painter, and in portraits can hardly be classed below Titian. Rocco Marconi (fl. 1505-1520) was another Bellini-educated painter, showing the influence of Palma and even of Paris Bordone. In color and landscape he was excellent. Pordenone (1483-1540) rather followed after Giorgione, and unsuccessfully competed with Titian. He was inclined to exaggeration in dramatic composition, but was a painter of undeniable power. Cariani (1480-1541) was another Giorgione follower. Bonifazio Pitati probably came from a Veronese family. He showed the influence of Palma, and was rather deficient in drawing, though exceedingly brilliant and rich in coloring. This latter may be said for Paris Bordone (1495-1570), a painter of Titian's school, gorgeous in color, but often lacking in truth of form. His portraits are very fine. Another painter family, the Bassani—there were six of them, of whom Jacopo Bassano (1510-1592) and his son Francesco Bassano (1550-1591), were the most noted—formed themselves after Venetian masters, and were rather remarkable for violent contrasts of light and dark, genre treatment of sacred subjects, and still-life and animal painting.

PAINTING IN VENETIAN TERRITORIES: Venetian painting was not confined to Venice, but extended through all the Venetian territories in Renaissance times, and those who lived away from the city were, in their art, decidedly Venetian, though possessing local characteristics.

At Brescia Savoldo (1480?-1548), a rather superficial painter, fond of weird lights and sheeny draperies, and Romanino (1485?-1566), a follower of Giorgione, good in composition but unequal and careless in execution, were the earliest of the High Renaissance men. Moretto (1498?-1555) was the strongest and most original, a man of individuality and power, remarkable technically for his delicacy and unity of color under a veil of "silvery tone." In composition he was dignified and noble, and in brush-work simple and direct. One of the great painters of the time, he seemed to stand more apart from Venetian influence than any other on Venetian territory. He left one remarkable pupil, Moroni (fl. 1549-1578) whose portraits are to-day the gems of several galleries, and greatly admired for their modern spirit and treatment.

At Verona Caroto and Girolamo dai Libri (1474-1555), though living into the sixteenth century were more allied to the art of the fifteenth century. Torbido (1486?-1546?) was a vacillating painter, influenced by Liberale da Verona, Giorgione, Bonifazio Veronese, and later, even by Giulio Romano. Cavazzola (1486-1522) was more original, and a man of talent. There were numbers of other painters scattered all through the Venetian provinces at this time, but they were not of the first, or even the second rank, and hence call for no mention here.

PRINCIPAL WORKS: Giorgione, Fete Rustique Louvre, Sleeping Venus Dresden, altar-piece Castelfranco, Ordeal of Moses Judgment of Solomon Knight of Malta Uffizi; Titian, Sacred and Profane Love Borghese, Tribute Money Dresden, Annunciation S. Rocco, Pesaro Madonna Frari Venice, Entombment Man with Glove Louvre, Bacchus Nat. Gal. Lon., Charles V. Madrid, Danae Naples, many other works in almost every European gallery; Tintoretto, many works in Venetian churches, Salute SS. Giovanni e Paolo S. Maria dell' Orto Scuola and Church of S. Rocco Ducal Palace Venice Acad. (best work Miracle of Slave); Paolo Veronese, many Pictures in S. Sebastiano Ducal Palace Academy Venice, Pitti, Uffizi, Brera, Capitoline and Borghese Galleries Rome, Turin, Dresden, Vienna, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Palma il Vecchio, Jacob and Rachel Three Sisters Dresden, Barbara S. M. Formosa Venice, other altar-pieces Venice Acad., Colonna Palace Rome, Brera, Naples Mus., Vienna, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Lotto, Three Ages Pitti, Portraits Brera, Nat. Gal. Lon., altar-pieces SS. Giovanni e Paolo Venice and churches at Bergamo, Treviso, Recanti, also Uffizi, Vienna, Madrid Gals.; Marconi, Descent Venice Acad., altar-pieces S. Giorgio Maggiore SS. Giovanni e Paolo Venice; Pordenone, S. Lorenzo Madonna Venice Acad., Salome Doria St. George Quirinale Rome, other works Madrid, Dresden, St. Petersburg, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Bonifazio, St. John, St. Joseph, etc. Ambrosian Library Milan (attributed to Giorgione), Holy Family Colonna Pal. Rome, Ducal Pal., Pitti, Dresden Gals.; Supper at Emmaus Brera, other works Venice Acad.; Paris Bordone, Fisherman and Doge, Venice Acad., Madonna Casa Tadini Lovere, portraits in Uffizi, Pitti, Louvre, Munich, Vienna, Nat. Gal. Lon., Brignola Pal. Genoa; Jacopo Bassano, altar-pieces in Bassano churches, also Ducal Pal. Venice, Nat. Gal. Lon., Uffizi, Naples Mus.; Francesco Bassano, large pictures Ducal Pal., St. Catherine Pitti, Sabines Turin, Adoration and Christ in Temple Dresden, Adoration and Last Supper Madrid; Savoldo, altar-pieces Brera, S. Niccolo Treviso, Uffizi, Turin Gal., S. Giobbe Venice, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Romanino, altar-pieces S. Francesco Brescia, Berlin Gal., S. Giovanni Evangelista Brescia, Duomo Cremona, Padua, and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Moretto, altar-pieces Brera, Staedel Mus., S. M. della Pieta Venice, Vienna, Berlin, Louvre, Pitti, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Moroni, portraits Bergamo Gal., Uffizi, Nat. Gal. Lon., Berlin, Dresden, Madrid; Girolamo dai Libri, Madonna Berlin, Conception S. Paolo Verona, Virgin Verona Gal., S. Giorgio Maggiore Verona, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Torbido, frescos Duomo, altar-pieces S. Zeno and S. Eufemia Verona; Cavazzola, altar-pieces, Verona Gal. and Nat. Gal. Lon.



CHAPTER XI.

ITALIAN PAINTING.

THE DECADENCE AND MODERN WORK. 1600-1894.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, also General Bibliography, (page xv.); Calvi, Notizie della vita e delle opere di Gio. Francesco Barbiera; Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice; Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses; Symonds, Renaissance in Italy—The Catholic Reaction; Willard, Modern Italian Art.

THE DECLINE: An art movement in history seems like a wave that rises to a height, then breaks, falls, and parts of it are caught up from beneath to help form the strength of a new advance. In Italy Christianity was the propelling force of the wave. In the Early Renaissance, the antique, and the study of nature came in as additions. At Venice in the High Renaissance the art-for-art's-sake motive made the crest of light and color. The highest point was reached then, and there was nothing that could follow but the breaking and the scattering of the wave. This took place in Central Italy after 1540, in Venice after 1590.

Art had typified in form, thought, and expression everything of which the Italian race was capable. It had perfected all the graces and elegancies of line and color, and adorned them with a superlative splendor. There was nothing more to do. The idea was completed, the motive power had served its purpose, and that store of race-impulse which seems necessary to the making of every great art was exhausted. For the men that came after Michael Angelo and Tintoretto there was nothing. All that they could do was to repeat what others had said, or to recombine the old thoughts and forms. This led inevitably to imitation, over-refinement of style, and conscious study of beauty, resulting in mannerism and affectation. Such qualities marked the art of those painters who came in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth. They were unfortunate men in the time of their birth. No painter could have been great in the seventeenth century of Italy. Art lay prone upon its face under Jesuit rule, and the late men were left upon the barren sands by the receding wave of the Renaissance.



ART MOTIVES AND SUBJECTS: As before, the chief subject of the art of the Decadence was religion, with many heads and busts of the Madonna, though nature and the classic still played their parts. After the Reformation at the North the Church in Italy started the Counter-Reformation. One of the chief means employed by this Catholic reaction was the embellishment of church worship, and painting on a large scale, on panel rather than in fresco, was demanded for decorative purposes. But the religious motive had passed out, though its subject was retained, and the pictorial motive had reached its climax at Venice. The faith of the one and the taste and skill of the other were not attainable by the late men, and, while consciously striving to achieve them, they fell into exaggerated sentiment and technical weakness. It seems perfectly apparent in their works that they had nothing of their own to say, and that they were trying to say over again what Michael Angelo, Correggio, and Titian had said before them much better. There were earnest men and good painters among them, but they could produce only the empty form of art. The spirit had fled.

THE MANNERISTS: Immediately after the High Renaissance leaders of Florence and Rome came the imitators and exaggerators of their styles. They produced large, crowded compositions, with a hasty facility of the brush and striking effects of light. Seeking the grand they overshot the temperate. Their elegance was affected, their sentiment forced, their brilliancy superficial glitter. When they thought to be ideal they lost themselves in incomprehensible allegories; when they thought to be real they grew prosaic in detail. These men are known in art history as the Mannerists, and the men whose works they imitated were chiefly Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Correggio. There were many of them, and some of them have already been spoken of as the followers of Michael Angelo.

Agnolo Bronzino (1502?-1572) was a pupil of Pontormo, and an imitator of Michael Angelo, painting in rather heavy colors with a thin brush. His characters were large, but never quite free from weakness, except in portraiture, where he appeared at his best. Vasari (1511-1574)—the same Vasari who wrote the lives of the painters—had versatility and facility, but his superficial imitations of Michael Angelo were too grandiose in conception and too palpably false in modelling. Salviati (1510-1563) was a friend of Vasari, a painter of about the same cast of mind and hand as Vasari, and Federigo Zucchero (1543-1609) belongs with him in producing things muscularly big but intellectually small. Baroccio (1528-1612), though classed among the Mannerists as an imitator of Correggio and Raphael, was really one of the strong men of the late times. There was affectation and sentimentality about his work, a prettiness of face, rosy flesh tints, and a general lightness of color, but he was a superior brushman, a good colorist, and, at times, a man of earnestness and power.



THE ECLECTICS: After the Mannerists came the Eclectics of Bologna, led by the Caracci, who, about 1585, sought to "revive" art. They started out to correct the faults of the Mannerists, and yet their own art was based more on the art of their great predecessors than on nature. They thought to make a union of Renaissance excellences by combining Michael Angelo's line, Titian's color, Correggio's light-and-shade and Raphael's symmetry and grace. The attempt was praiseworthy for the time, but hardly successful. They caught the lines and lights and colors of the great men, but they overlooked the fact that the excellence of the imitated lay largely in their inimitable individualities, which could not be combined. The Eclectic work was done with intelligence, but their system was against them and their baroque age was against them. Midway in their career the Caracci themselves modified their eclecticism and placed more reliance upon nature. But their pupils paid little heed to the modification.

There were five of the Caracci, but three of them—Ludovico (1555-1619), Agostino (1557-1602), and Annibale (1560-1609)—led the school, and of these Annibale was the most distinguished. They had many pupils, and their influence was widely spread over Italy. In Sir Joshua Reynolds's day they were ranked with Raphael, but at the present time criticism places them where they belong—painters of the Decadence with little originality or spontaneity in their art, though much technical skill. Domenichino (1581-1641) was the strongest of the pupils. His St. Jerome was rated by Poussin as one of the three great paintings of the world, but it never deserved such rank. It is powerfully composed, but poor in coloring and handling. The painter had great repute in his time, and was one of the best of the seventeenth century men. Guido Reni (1575-1642) was a painter of many gifts and accomplishments, combined with many weaknesses. His works are well composed and painted, but excessive in sentiment and overdone in pathos. Albani (1578-1660) ran to elegance and a porcelain-like prettiness. Guercino (1591-1666) was originally of the Eclectic School at Bologna, but later took up with the methods of the Naturalists at Naples. He was a painter of far more than the average ability. Sassoferrato (1605-1685) and Carlo Dolci (1616-1686) were so super-saturated with sentimentality that often their skill as painters is overlooked or forgotten. In spirit they were about the weakest of the century. There were other eclectic schools started throughout Italy—at Milan, Cremona, Ferrara—but they produced little worth recording. At Rome certain painters like Cristofano Allori (1577-1621), an exceptionally strong man for the time, Berrettini (1596-1669), and Maratta (1625-1713), manufactured a facile kind of painting from what was attractive in the various schools, but it was never other than meretricious work.



THE NATURALISTS: Contemporary with the Eclectics sprang up the Neapolitan school of the Naturalists, led by Caravaggio (1569-1609) and his pupils. These schools opposed each other, and yet influenced each other. Especially was this true with the later men, who took what was best in both schools. The Naturalists were, perhaps, more firmly based upon nature than the Bolognese Eclectics. Their aim was to take nature as they found it, and yet, in conformity with the extravagance of the age, they depicted extravagant nature. Caravaggio thought to represent sacred scenes more truthfully by taking his models from the harsh street life about him and giving types of saints and apostles from Neapolitan brawlers and bandits. It was a brutal, coarse representation, rather fierce in mood and impetuous in action, yet not without a good deal of tragic power. His subjects were rather dismal or morose, but there was knowledge in the drawing of them, some good color and brush-work and a peculiar darkness of shadow masses (originally gained from Giorgione), that stood as an ear-mark of his whole school. From the continuous use of black shadows the school got the name of the "Darklings," by which they are still known. Giordano (1632-1705), a painter of prodigious facility and invention, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), best known as one of the early painters of landscape, and Ribera, a Spanish painter, were the principal pupils.

THE LATE VENETIANS: The Decadence at Venice, like the Renaissance, came later than at Florence, but after the death of Tintoretto mannerisms and the imitation of the great men did away with originality. There was still much color left, and fine ceiling decorations were done, but the nobility and calm splendor of Titian's days had passed. Palma il Giovine (1544-1628) with a hasty brush produced imitations of Tintoretto with some grace and force, and in remarkable quantity. He and Tintoretto were the most rapid and productive painters of the century; but Palma's was not good in spirit, though quite dashing in technic. Padovanino (1590-1650) was more of a Titian follower, but, like all the other painters of the time, he was proficient with the brush and lacking in the stronger mental elements. The last great Italian painter was Tiepolo (1696-1770), and he was really great beyond his age. With an art founded on Paolo Veronese, he produced decorative ceilings and panels of high quality, with wonderful invention, a limpid brush, and a light flaky color peculiarly appropriate to the walls of churches and palaces. He was, especially in easel pictures, a brilliant, vivacious brushman, full of dash and spirit, tempered by a large knowledge of what was true and pictorial. Some of his best pictures are still in Venice, and modern painters are unstinted in their praise of them. He left a son, Domenico Tiepolo (1726-1795), who followed his methods. In the late days of Venetian painting, Canaletto (1697-1768) and Guardi (1712-1793) achieved reputation by painting Venetian canals and architecture with much color effect.



NINETEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING IN ITALY: There is little in the art of Italy during the present century that shows a positive national spirit. It has been leaning on the rest of Europe for many years, and the best that the living painters show is largely an echo of Dusseldorf, Munich, or Paris. The revived classicism of David in France affected nineteenth-century painting in Italy somewhat. Then it was swayed by Cornelius and Overbeck from Germany. Morelli (1826-[2]) shows this latter influence, though one of the most important of the living men.[3] In the 1860's Mariano Fortuny, a Spaniard at Rome, led the younger element in the glittering and the sparkling, and this style mingled with much that is more strikingly Parisian than Italian, may be found in the works of painters like Michetti, De Nittis (1846-1884), Favretto, Tito, Nono, Simonetti, and others.

[Footnote 2: Died, 1901.]

[Footnote 3: See Scribner's Magazine, Neapolitan Art, Dec., 1890, Feb., 1891.]

Of recent days the impressionistic view of light and color has had its influence; but the Italian work at its best is below that of France. Segantini[4] was one of the most promising of the younger men in subjects that have an archaic air about them. Boldini, though Italian born and originally following Fortuny's example, is really more Parisian than anything else. He is an artist of much power and technical strength in genre subjects and portraits. The newer men are Fragiocomo, Fattori, Mancini, Marchetti.

[Footnote 4: Died, 1899.]

PRINCIPAL WORKS: MANNERISTS—Agnolo Bronzino, Christ in Limbo and many portraits in Uffizi and Nat. Gal. Lon.; Vasari, many pictures in galleries at Arezzo, Bologna, Berlin, Munich, Louvre, Madrid; Salviati, Charity Christ Uffizi, Patience Pitti, St. Thomas Louvre, Love and Psyche Berlin; Federigo Zucchero, Duomo Florence, Ducal Palace Venice, Allegories Uffizi, Calumny Hampton Court; Baroccio, Pardon of St. Francis Urbino, Annunciation Loreto, several pictures in Uffizi, Nat. Gal. Lon., Louvre, Dresden Gal.

ECLECTICS—Ludovico Caracci, Cathedral frescos Bologna, thirteen pictures Bologna Gal.; Agostino Caracci, frescos (with Annibale) Farnese Pal. Rome, altar-pieces Bologna Gal.; Annibale Carracci, frescos (with Agostino) Farnese Pal. Rome, other pictures Bologna Gal., Uffizi, Naples Mus., Dresden, Berlin, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Domenichino, St. Jerome Vatican, S. Pietro in Vincoli, Diana Borghese, Bologna, Pitti, Louvre, Nat. Gal. Lon.; Guido Reni, frescos Aurora Rospigliosi Pal. Rome, many pictures Bologna, Borghese Gal., Pitti, Uffizi, Brera, Naples, Louvre, and other galleries of Europe; Albani, Guercino, Sassoferrato, and Carlo Dolci, works in almost every European gallery, especially Bologna; Cristofano Allori, Judith Pitti, also pictures in Uffizi; Berrettini and Maratta, many examples in Italian galleries, also Louvre.

NATURALISTS—Caravaggio, Entombment Vatican, many other works in Pitti, Uffizi, Naples, Louvre, Dresden, St. Petersburg; Giordano, Judgment of Paris Berlin, many pictures in Dresden and Italian galleries; Salvator Rosa, best marine in Pitti, other works Uffizi, Brera, Naples, Madrid galleries and Colonna, Corsini, Doria, Chigi Palaces Rome.

LATE VENETIANS—Palma il Giovine, Ducal Palace Venice, Cassel, Dresden, Munich, Madrid, Naples, Vienna galleries; Padovanino, Marriage in Cana Kneeling Angel and other works Venice Acad., Carmina Venice, also galleries of Louvre, Uffizi, Borghese, Dresden, London; Tiepolo, large fresco Villa Pisani Stra, Palazzo Labia Scuola Carmina, Venice, Villa Valmarana, and at Wurtzburg, easel pictures Venice Acad., Louvre, Berlin, Madrid; Canaletto and Guardi, many pictures in European galleries.

MODERN ITALIANS[5]—Morelli, Madonna Royal chap. Castiglione, Assumption Royal chap. Naples; Michetti, The Vow Nat. Gal. Rome; De Nittis, Place du Carrousel Luxembourg Paris; Boldini, Gossips Met. Mus. New York.

[Footnote 5: Only works in public places are given. Those in private hands change too often for record here. For detailed list of works see Champlin and Perkins, Cyclopedia of Painters and Paintings.]



CHAPTER XII.

FRENCH PAINTING.

SIXTEENTH, SEVENTEENTH, AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Amorini, Vita del celebre pittore Francesco Primaticcio; Berger, Histoire de l'Ecole Francaise de Peinture au XVII^{me} Siecle; Bland, Les Peintres des fetes galantes, Watteau, Boucher, et al.; Curmer, L'OEuvre de Jean Fouquet; Delaborde, Etudes sur les Beaux Arts en France et en Italie; Didot, Etudes sur Jean Cousin; Dimier, French Painting in XVI Century; Dumont, Antoine Watteau; Dussieux, Nouvelles Recherches sur la Vie de E. Lesueur; Genevay, Le Style Louis XIV., Charles Le Brun; Goncourt, L'Art du XVIII^{me} Siecle; Guibel, Eloge de Nicolas Poussin; Guiffrey, La Famille de Jean Cousin; Laborde, La Renaissance des Arts a la Cour de France; Lagrange, J. Vernet et la Peinture au XVIII^{me} Siecle; Lecoy de la Marche, Le Roi Rene; Mantz, Francois Boucher; Michiels, Etudes sur l'Art Flamand dans l'est et le midi de la France; Muntz, La Renaissance en Italie et en France; Palustre, La Renaissance en France; Pattison, Renaissance of Art in France; Pattison, Claude Lorrain; Poillon, Nicolas Poussin; Stranahan, History of French Painting.

EARLY FRENCH ART: Painting in France did not, as in Italy, spring directly from Christianity, though it dealt with the religious subject. From the beginning a decorative motive—the strong feature of French art—appears as the chief motive of painting. This showed itself largely in church ornament, garments, tapestries, miniatures, and illuminations. Mural paintings were produced during the fifth century, probably in imitation of Italian or Roman example. Under Charlemagne, in the eighth century, Byzantine influences were at work. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries much stained-glass work appeared, and also many missal paintings and furniture decorations.



In the fifteenth century Rene of Anjou (1408-1480), king and painter, gave an impetus to art which he perhaps originally received from Italy. His work showed some Italian influence mingled with a great deal of Flemish precision, and corresponded for France to the early Renaissance work of Italy, though by no means so advanced. Contemporary with Rene was Jean Fouquet (1415?-1480?) an illuminator and portrait-painter, one of the earliest in French history. He was an artist of some original characteristics and produced an art detailed and exact in its realism. Jean Pereal (?-1528?) and Jean Bourdichon (1457?-1521?) with Fouquet's pupils and sons, formed a school at Tours which afterward came to show some Italian influence. The native workmen at Paris—they sprang up from illuminators to painters in all probability—showed more of the Flemish influence. Neither of the schools of the fifteenth century reflected much life or thought, but what there was of it was native to the soil, though their methods were influenced from without.

SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: During this century Francis I., at Fontainebleau, seems to have encouraged two schools of painting, one the native French and the other an imported Italian, which afterward took to itself the name of the "School of Fontainebleau." Of the native artists the Clouets were the most conspicuous. They were of Flemish origin, and followed Flemish methods both in technic and mediums. There were four of them, of whom Jean (1485?-1541?) and Francois (1500?-1572?) were the most noteworthy. They painted many portraits, and Francois' work, bearing some resemblance to that of Holbein, it has been doubtfully said that he was a pupil of that painter. All of their work was remarkable for detail and closely followed facts.

The Italian importation came about largely through the travels of Francis I. in Italy. He invited to Fontainebleau Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea del Sarto, Il Rosso, Primaticcio, and Niccolo dell' Abbate. These painters rather superseded and greatly influenced the French painters. The result was an Italianized school of French art which ruled in France for many years. Primaticcio was probably the greatest of the influencers, remaining as he did for thirty years in France. The native painters, Jean Cousin (1500?-1589) and Toussaint du Breuil (1561-1602) followed his style, and in the next century the painters were even more servile imitators of Italy—imitating not the best models either, but the Mannerists, the Eclectics, and the Roman painters of the Decadence.



SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: This was a century of great development and production in France, the time of the founding of the French Academy of Painting and Sculpture, and the formation of many picture collections. In the first part of the century the Flemish and native tendencies existed, but they were overawed, outnumbered by the Italian. Not even Rubens's painting for Marie de' Medici, in the palace of the Luxembourg, could stem the tide of Italy. The French painters flocked to Rome to study the art of their great predecessors and were led astray by the flashy elegance of the late Italians. Among the earliest of this century was Freminet (1567-1619). He was first taught by his father and Jean Cousin, but afterward spent fifteen years in Italy studying Parmigianino and Michael Angelo. His work had something of the Mannerist style about it and was overwrought and exaggerated. In shadows he seemed to have borrowed from Caravaggio. Vouet (1590-1649) was a student in Italy of Veronese's painting and afterward of Guido Reni and Caravaggio. He was a mediocre artist, but had a great vogue in France and left many celebrated pupils.

By all odds the best painter of this time was Nicolas Poussin (1593-1665). He lived almost all of his life in Italy, and might be put down as an Italian of the Decadence. He was well versed in classical archaeology, and had much of the classic taste and feeling prevalent at that time in the Roman school of Giulio Romano. His work showed great intelligence and had an elevated grandiloquent style about it that was impressive. It reflected nothing French, and had little more root in present human sympathy than any of the other painting of the time, but it was better done. The drawing was correct if severe, the composition agreeable if formal, the coloring variegated if violent. Many of his pictures have now changed for the worse in coloring owing to the dissipation of surface pigments. He was the founder of the classic and academic in French art, and in influence was the most important man of the century. He was especially strong in the heroic landscape, and in this branch helped form the style of his brother-in-law, Gaspard (Dughet) Poussin (1613-1675).

The landscape painter of the period, however, was Claude Lorrain (1600-1682). He differed from Poussin in making his pictures depend more strictly upon landscape than upon figures. With both painters, the trees, mountains, valleys, buildings, figures, were of the grand classic variety. Hills and plains, sylvan groves, flowing streams, peopled harbors, Ionic and Corinthian temples, Roman aqueducts, mythological groups, were the materials used, and the object of their use was to show the ideal dwelling-place of man—the former Garden of the Gods. Panoramic and slightly theatrical at times, Claude's work was not without its poetic side, shrewd knowledge, and skilful execution. He was a leader in landscape, the man who first painted real golden sunlight and shed its light upon earth. There is a soft summer's-day drowsiness, a golden haze of atmosphere, a feeling of composure and restfulness about his pictures that are attractive. Like Poussin he depended much upon long sweeping lines in composition, and upon effects of linear perspective.



COURT PAINTING: When Louis XIV. came to the throne painting took on a decided character, but it was hardly national or race character. The popular idea, if the people had an idea, did not obtain. There was no motive springing from the French except an inclination to follow Italy; and in Italy all the great art-motives were dead. In method the French painters followed the late Italians, and imitated an imitation; in matter they bowed to the dictates of the court and reflected the king's mock-heroic spirit. Echoing the fashion of the day, painting became pompous, theatrical, grandiloquent—a mass of vapid vanity utterly lacking in sincerity and truth. Lebrun (1619-1690), painter in ordinary to the king, directed substantially all the painting of the reign. He aimed at pleasing royalty with flattering allusions to Caesarism and extravagant personifications of the king as a classic conqueror. His art had neither truth, nor genius, nor great skill, and so sought to startle by subject or size. Enormous canvases of Alexander's triumphs, in allusion to those of the great Louis, were turned out to order, and Versailles to this day is tapestried with battle-pieces in which Louis is always victor. Considering the amount of work done, Lebrun showed great fecundity and industry, but none of it has much more than a mechanical ingenuity about it. It was rather original in composition, but poor in drawing, lighting, and coloring; and its example upon the painters of the time was pernicious.

His contemporary, Le Sueur (1616-1655), was a more sympathetic and sincere painter, if not a much better technician. Both were pupils of Vouet, but Le Sueur's art was religious in subject, while Lebrun's was military and monarchical. Le Sueur had a feeling for his theme, but was a weak painter, inclined to the sentimental, thin in coloring, and not at all certain in his drawing. French allusions to him as "the French Raphael" show more national complacency than correctness. Sebastian Bourdon (1616-1671) was another painter of history, but a little out of the Lebrun circle. He was not, however, free from the influence of Italy, where he spent three years studying color more than drawing. This shows in his works, most of which are lacking in form.

Contemporary with these men was a group of portrait-painters who gained celebrity perhaps as much by their subjects as by their own powers. They were facile flatterers given over to the pomps of the reign and mirroring all its absurdities of fashion. Their work has a graceful, smooth appearance, and, for its time, it was undoubtedly excellent portraiture. Even to this day it has qualities of drawing and coloring to commend it, and at times one meets with exceptionally good work. The leaders among these portrait-painters were Philip de Champaigne (1602-1674), the best of his time; Pierre Mignard (1610?-1695), a pupil of Vouet, who studied in Rome and afterward returned to France to become the successful rival of Lebrun; Largilliere (1656-1746) and Rigaud (1659-1743).

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING: The painting of Louis XIV.'s time was continued into the eighteenth century for some fifteen years or more with little change. With the advent of Louis XV. art took upon itself another character, and one that reflected perfectly the moral, social, and political France of the eighteenth century. The first Louis clamored for glory, the second Louis revelled in gayety, frivolity, and sensuality. This was the difference between both monarchs and both arts. The gay and the coquettish in painting had already been introduced by the Regent, himself a dilettante in art, and when Louis XV. came to the throne it passed from the gay to the insipid, the flippant, even the erotic. Shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in court silks and satins with cottony sheep beside them posed in stage-set Arcadias, pretty gods and goddesses reclined indolently upon gossamer clouds, and court gallants lounged under artificial trees by artificial ponds making love to pretty soubrettes from the theatre.

Yet, in spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by Louis XIV. It was more spontaneous, more original, more French. The influence of Italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror French life. It was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic of the time. Moreover, there was another quality about it that showed French taste at its best—the decorative quality. It can hardly be supposed that the fairy creations of the age were intended to represent actual nature. They were designed to ornament hall and boudoir, and in pure decorative delicacy of design, lightness of touch, color charm, they have never been excelled. The serious spirit was lacking, but the gayety of line and color was well given.



Watteau (1684-1721) was the one chiefly responsible for the coquette and soubrette of French art, and Watteau was, practically speaking, the first French painter. His subjects were trifling bits of fashionable love-making, scenes from the opera, fetes, balls, and the like. All his characters played at life in parks and groves that never grew, and most of his color was beautifully unreal; but for all that the work was original, decorative, and charming. Moreover, Watteau was a brushman, and introduced not only a new spirit and new subject into art, but a new method. The epic treatment of the Italians was laid aside in favor of a genre treatment, and instead of line and flat surface Watteau introduced color and cleverly laid pigment. He was a brilliant painter; not a great man in thought or imagination, but one of fancy, delicacy, and skill. Unfortunately he set a bad example by his gay subjects, and those who came after him carried his gayety and lightness of spirit into exaggeration. Watteau's best pupils were Lancret (1690-1743) and Pater (1695-1736), who painted in his style with fair results.

After these men came Van Loo (1705-1765) and Boucher (1703-1770), who turned Watteau's charming fetes, showing the costumes and manners of the Regency, into flippant extravagance. Not only was the moral tone and intellectual stamina of their art far below that of Watteau, but their workmanship grew defective. Both men possessed a remarkable facility of the hand and a keen decorative color-sense; but after a time both became stereotyped and mannered. Drawing and modelling were neglected, light was wholly conventional, and landscape turned into a piece of embroidered background with a Dresden china-tapestry effect about it. As decoration the general effect was often excellent, as a serious expression of life it was very weak, as an intellectual or moral force it was worse than worthless. Fragonard (1732-1806) followed in a similar style, but was a more knowing man, clever in color, and a much freer and better brushman.

A few painters in the time of Louis XV. remained apparently unaffected by the court influence, and stand in conspicuous isolation. Claude Joseph Vernet (1712-1789) was a landscape and marine painter of some repute in his time. He had a sense of the pictorial, but not a remarkable sense of the truthful in nature. Chardin (1699-1779) and Greuze (1725-1805), clung to portrayals of humble life and sought to popularize the genre subject. Chardin was not appreciated by the masses. His frank realism, his absolute sincerity of purpose, his play of light and its effect upon color, and his charming handling of textures were comparatively unnoticed. Yet as a colorist he may be ranked second to none in French art, and in freshness of handling his work is a model for present-day painters. Diderot early recognized Chardin's excellence, and many artists since his day have admired his pictures; but he is not now a well-known or popular painter. The populace fancies Greuze and his sentimental heads of young girls. They have a prettiness about them that is attractive, but as art they lack in force, and in workmanship they are too smooth, finical, and thin in handling.

PRINCIPAL WORKS: All of these French painters are best represented in the collections of the Louvre. Some of the other galleries, like the Dresden, Berlin, and National at London, have examples of their work; but the masterpieces are with the French people in the Louvre and in the other municipal galleries of France.



CHAPTER XIII.

FRENCH PAINTING.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: As before, Stranahan, et al.; also Balliere, Henri Regnault; Blanc, Les Artistes de mon Temps; Blanc, Histoire des Peintres francais au XIX^{me} Siecle; Blanc, Ingres et son OEuvre; Bigot, Peintres francais contemporains; Breton, La Vie d'un Artiste (English Translation); Brownell, French Art; Burty, Maitres et Petit-Maitres; Chesneau, Peinture francaise au XIX^{me} Siecle; Clement, Etudes sur les Beaux Arts en France; Clement, Prudhon; Delaborde, OEuvre de Paul Delaroche; Delecluze, Jacques Louis David, son Ecole, et son Temps; Duret, Les Peintres francais en 1867; Gautier, L'Art Moderne; Gautier, Romanticisme; Gonse, Eugene Fromentin; Hamerton, Contemporary French Painting; Hamerton, Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism; Henley, Memorial Catalogue of French and Dutch Loan Collection (1886); Henriet, Charles Daubigny et son OEuvre; Lenormant, Les Artistes Contemporains; Lenormant, Ary Scheffer; Merson, Ingres, sa Vie et son OEuvre; Moreau, Decamps et son OEuvre; Planche, Etudes sur l'Ecole francaise; Robaut et Chesneau, L' OEuvre complet d'Eugene Delacroix; Sensier, Theodore Rousseau; Sensier, Life and Works of J. F. Millet; Silvestre, Histoire des Artistes vivants et etrangers; Strahan, Modern French Art; Thore, L'Art Contemporain; Theuriet, Jules Bastien-Lepage; Van Dyke, Modern French Masters.

THE REVOLUTIONARY TIME: In considering this century's art in Europe, it must be remembered that a great social and intellectual change has taken place since the days of the Medici. The power so long pent up in Italy during the Renaissance finally broke and scattered itself upon the western nations; societies and states were torn down and rebuilded, political, social, and religious ideas shifted into new garbs; the old order passed away.



Religion as an art-motive, or even as an art-subject, ceased to obtain anywhere. The Church failed as an art-patron, and the walls of cloister and cathedral furnished no new Bible readings to the unlettered. Painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the patron. Nature and actual life were about the only sources left from which original art could draw its materials. These have been freely used, but not so much in a national as in an individual manner. The tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an individual belief. Individualism—the same quality that appeared so strongly in Michael Angelo's art—has become a keynote in modern work. It is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century, nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. We must remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the Greek, Roman, and Italian, which practically ruled French painting in the first part of this century.

FRENCH CLASSICISM OF DAVID: This was a revival of Greek form in art, founded on the belief expressed by Winckelmann, that beauty lay in form, and was best shown by the ancient Greeks. It was the objective view of art which saw beauty in the external and tolerated no individuality in the artist except that which was shown in technical skill. It was little more than an imitation of the Greek and Roman marbles as types, with insistence upon perfect form, correct drawing, and balanced composition. In theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic, the incidents of Greek and Roman history forming the chief subjects, and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural surroundings. It was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly unsympathetic because lacking in contemporary interest; and, though correct enough in classic form, was lacking in the classic spirit. Like all reanimated art, it was derivative as regards its forms and lacking in spontaneity. The reason for the existence of Greek art died with its civilization, and those, like the French classicists, who sought to revive it, brought a copy of the past into the present, expecting the world to accept it.

There was some social, and perhaps artistic, reason, however, for the revival of the classic in the French art of the late eighteenth century. It was a revolt, and at that time revolts were popular. The art of Boucher and Van Loo had become quite unbearable. It was flippant, careless, licentious. It had no seriousness or dignity about it. Moreover, it smacked of the Bourbon monarchy, which people had come to hate. Classicism was severe, elevated, respectable at least, and had the air of the heroic republic about it. It was a return to a sterner view of life, with the martial spirit behind it as an impetus, and it had a great vogue. For many years during the Revolution, the Consulate, and the Empire, classicism was accepted by the sovereigns and the Institute of France, and to this day it lives in a modified form in that semi-classic work known as academic art.

THE CLASSIC SCHOOL: Vien (1716-1809) was the first painter to protest against the art of Boucher and Van Loo by advocating more nobility of form and a closer study of nature. He was, however, more devoted to the antique forms he had studied in Rome than to nature. In subject and line his tendency was classic, with a leaning toward the Italians of the Decadence. He lacked the force to carry out a complete reform in painting, but his pupil David (1748-1825) accomplished what he had begun. It was David who established the reign of classicism, and by native power became the leader. The time was appropriate, the Revolution called for pictures of Romulus, Brutus and Achilles, and Napoleon encouraged the military theme. David had studied the marbles at Rome, and he used them largely for models, reproducing scenes from Greek and Roman life in an elevated and sculpturesque style, with much archaeological knowledge and a great deal of skill. In color, relief, sentiment, individuality, his painting was lacking. He despised all that. The rhythm of line, the sweep of composed groups, the heroic subject and the heroic treatment, made up his art. It was thoroughly objective, and what contemporary interest it possessed lay largely in the martial spirit then prevalent. Of course it was upheld by the Institute, and it really set the pace for French painting for nearly half a century. When David was called upon to paint Napoleonic pictures he painted them under protest, and yet these, with his portraits, constitute his best work. In portraiture he was uncommonly strong at times.



After the Restoration David, who had been a revolutionist, and then an adherent of Napoleon, was sent into exile; but the influence he had left and the school he had established were carried on by his contemporaries and pupils. Of the former Regnault (1754-1829), Vincent (1746-1816), and Prudhon (1758-1823) were the most conspicuous. The last one was considered as out of the classic circle, but so far as making his art depend upon drawing and composition, he was a genuine classicist. His subjects, instead of being heroic, inclined to the mythological and the allegorical. In Italy he had been a student of the Renaissance painters, and from them borrowed a method of shadow gradation that rendered his figures misty and phantom-like. They possessed an ease of movement sometimes called "Prudhonesque grace," and in composition were well placed and effective.

Of David's pupils there were many. Only a few of them, however, had pronounced ability, and even these carried David's methods into the theatrical. Girodet (1766-1824) was a draughtsman of considerable power, but with poor taste in color and little repose in composition. Most of his work was exaggeration and strained effect. Lethiere (1760-1832) and Guerin (1774-1833), pupils of Regnault, were painters akin to Girodet, but inferior to him. Gerard (1770-1837) was a weak David follower, who gained some celebrity by painting portraits of celebrated men and women. The two pupils of David who brought him the most credit were Ingres (1780-1867) and Gros (1771-1835). Ingres was a cold, persevering man, whose principles had been well settled by David early in life, and were adhered to with conviction by the pupil to the last. He modified the classic subject somewhat, studied Raphael and the Italians, and reintroduced the single figure into art (the Source, and the Odalisque, for example). For color he had no fancy. "In nature all is form," he used to say. Painting he thought not an independent art, but "a development of sculpture." To consider emotion, color, or light as the equal of form was monstrous, and to compare Rembrandt with Raphael was blasphemy. To this belief he clung to the end, faithfully reproducing the human figure, and it is not to be wondered at that eventually he became a learned draughtsman. His single figures and his portraits show him to the best advantage. He had a strong grasp of modelling and an artistic sense of the beauty and dignity of line not excelled by any artist of this century. And to him more than any other painter is due the cultured draughtsmanship which is to-day the just pride of the French school.

Gros was a more vacillating man, and by reason of forsaking the classic subject for Napoleonic battle-pieces, he unconsciously led the way toward romanticism. He excelled as a draughtsman, but when he came to paint the Field of Eylau and the Pest of Jaffa he mingled color, light, air, movement, action, sacrificing classic composition and repose to reality. This was heresy from the Davidian point of view, and David eventually convinced him of it. Gros returned to the classic theme and treatment, but soon after was so reviled by the changing criticism of the time that he committed suicide in the Seine. His art, however, was the beginning of romanticism.

The landscape painting of this time was rather academic and unsympathetic. It was a continuation of the Claude-Poussin tradition, and in its insistence upon line, grandeur of space, and imposing trees and mountains, was a fit companion to the classic figure-piece. It had little basis in nature, and little in color or feeling to commend it. Watelet (1780-1866), Bertin (1775-1842), Michallon (1796-1822), and Aligny (1798-1871), were its exponents.

A few painters seemed to stand apart from the contemporary influences. Madame Vigee-Lebrun (1755-1842), a successful portrait-painter of nobility, and Horace Vernet (1789-1863), a popular battle-painter, many of whose works are to be seen at Versailles, were of this class.

ROMANTICISM: The movement in French painting which began about 1822 and took the name of Romanticism was but a part of the "storm-and-stress" feeling that swept Germany, England, and France at the beginning of this century, appearing first in literature and afterward in art. It had its origin in a discontent with the present, a passionate yearning for the unattainable, an intensity of sentiment, gloomy melancholy imaginings, and a desire to express the inexpressible. It was emphatically subjective, self-conscious, a mood of mind or feeling. In this respect it was diametrically opposed to the academic and the classic. In French painting it came forward in opposition to the classicism of David. People had begun to weary of Greek and Roman heroes and their deeds, of impersonal line-bounded statuesque art. There was a demand for something more representative, spontaneous, expressive of the intense feeling of the time. The very gist of romanticism was passion. Freedom to express itself in what form it would was a condition of its existence.



The classic subject was abandoned by the romanticists for dramatic scenes of mediaeval and modern times. The romantic hero and heroine in scenes of horror, perils by land and sea, flame and fury, love and anguish, came upon the boards. Much of this was illustration of history, the novel, and poetry, especially the poetry of Goethe, Byron, and Scott. Line was slurred in favor of color, symmetrical composition gave way to wild disordered groups in headlong action, and atmospheres, skies, and lights were twisted and distorted to convey the sentiment of the story. It was thus, more by suggestion than realization, that romanticism sought to give the poetic sentiment of life. Its position toward classicism was antagonistic, a rebound, a flying to the other extreme. One virtually said that beauty was in the Greek form, the other that it was in the painter's emotional nature. The disagreement was violent, and out of it grew the so-called romantic quarrel of the 1820's.

LEADERS OF ROMANTICISM: Symptoms of the coming movement were apparent long before any open revolt. Gros had made innovations on the classic in his battle-pieces, but the first positive dissent from classic teachings was made in the Salon of 1819 by Gericault (1791-1824) with his Raft of the Medusa. It represented the starving, the dead, and the dying of the Medusa's crew on a raft in mid-ocean. The subject was not classic. It was literary, romantic, dramatic, almost theatric in its seizing of the critical moment. Its theme was restless, harrowing, horrible. It met with instant opposition from the old men and applause from the young men. It was the trumpet-note of the revolt, but Gericault did not live long enough to become the leader of romanticism. That position fell to his contemporary and fellow-pupil, Delacroix (1799-1863). It was in 1822 that Delacroix's first Salon picture (the Dante and Virgil) appeared. A strange, ghost-like scene from Dante's Inferno, the black atmosphere of the nether world, weird faces, weird colors, weird flames, and a modelling of the figures by patches of color almost savage as compared to the tinted drawing of classicism. Delacroix's youth saved the picture from condemnation, but it was different with his Massacre of Scio two years later. This was decried by the classicists, and even Gros called it "the massacre of art." The painter was accused of establishing the worship of the ugly, he was no draughtsman, had no selection, no severity, nothing but brutality. But Delacroix was as obstinate as Ingres, and declared that the whole world could not prevent him from seeing and painting things in his own way. It was thus the quarrel started, the young men siding with Delacroix, the older men following David and Ingres.

In himself Delacroix embodied all that was best and strongest in the romantic movement. His painting was intended to convey a romantic mood of mind by combinations of color, light, air, and the like. In subject it was tragic and passionate, like the poetry of Hugo, Byron, and Scott. The figures were usually given with anguish-wrung brows, wild eyes, dishevelled hair, and impetuous, contorted action. The painter never cared for technical details, seeking always to gain the effect of the whole rather than the exactness of the part. He purposely slurred drawing at times, and was opposed to formal composition. In color he was superior, though somewhat violent at times, and in brush-work he was often labored and patchy. His strength lay in imagination displayed in color and in action.

The quarrel between classicism and romanticism lasted some years, with neither side victorious. Delacroix won recognition for his view of art, but did not crush the belief in form which was to come to the surface again. He fought almost alone. Many painters rallied around him, but they added little strength to the new movement. Deveria (1805-1865) and Champmartin (1797-1883) were highly thought of at first, but they rapidly degenerated. Sigalon (1788-1837), Cogniet (1794-1880), Robert-Fleury (1797-), and Boulanger (1806-1867), were romanticists, but achieved more as teachers than as painters. Delaroche (1797-1856) was an eclectic—in fact, founded a school of that name—thinking to take what was best from both parties. Inventing nothing, he profited by all invented. He employed the romantic subject and color, but adhered to classic drawing. His composition was good, his costume careful in detail, his brush-work smooth, and his story-telling capacity excellent. All these qualities made him a popular painter, but not an original or powerful one. Ary Scheffer (1797-1858) was an illustrator of Goethe and Byron, frail in both sentiment and color, a painter who started as a romanticist, but afterward developed line under Ingres.



THE ORIENTALISTS: In both literature and painting one phase of romanticism showed itself in a love for the life, the light, the color of the Orient. From Paris Decamps (1803-1860) was the first painter to visit the East and paint Eastern life. He was a genre painter more than a figure painter, giving naturalistic street scenes in Turkey and Asia Minor, courts, and interiors, with great feeling for air, warmth of color, and light. At about the same time Marilhat (1811-1847) was in Egypt picturing the life of that country in a similar manner; and later, Fromentin (1820-1876), painter and writer, following Delacroix, went to Algiers and portrayed there Arab life with fast-flying horses, the desert air, sky, light, and color. Theodore Frere and Ziem belong further on in the century, but were no less exponents of romanticism in the East.

Fifteen years after the starting of romanticism the movement had materially subsided. It had never been a school in the sense of having rules and laws of art. Liberty of thought and perfect freedom for individual expression were all it advocated. As a result there was no unity, for there was nothing to unite upon; and with every painter painting as he pleased, regardless of law, extravagance was inevitable. This was the case, and when the next generation came in romanticism began to be ridiculed for its excesses. A reaction started in favor of more line and academic training. This was first shown by the students of Delaroche, though there were a number of movements at the time, all of them leading away from romanticism. A recoil from too much color in favor of more form was inevitable, but romanticism was not to perish entirely. Its influence was to go on, and to appear in the work of later men.

ECLECTICS AND TRANSITIONAL PAINTERS: After Ingres his follower Flandrin (1809-1864) was the most considerable draughtsman of the time. He was not classic but religious in subject, and is sometimes called "the religious painter of France." He had a delicate beauty of line and a fine feeling for form, but never was strong in color, brush-work, or sentiment. His best work appears in his very fine portraits. Gleyre (1806-1874) was a man of classic methods, but romantic tastes, who modified the heroic into the idyllic and mythologic. He was a sentimental day-dreamer, with a touch of melancholy about the vanished past, appearing in Arcadian fancies, pretty nymphs, and idealized memories of youth. In execution he was not at all romantic. His color was pale, his drawing delicate, and his lighting misty and uncertain. It was the etherealized classic method, and this method he transmitted to a little band of painters called the

NEW-GREEKS, who, in point of time, belong much further along in the century, but in their art are with Gleyre. Their work never rose above the idyllic and the graceful, and calls for no special mention. Hamon (1821-1874) and Aubert (1824-) belonged to the band, and Gerome (1824-[6]) was at one time its leader, but he afterward emerged from it to a higher place in French art, where he will find mention hereafter.

[Footnote 6: Died, 1904.]

Couture (1815-1879) stood quite by himself, a mingling of several influences. His chief picture, The Romans of the Decadence, is classic in subject, romantic in sentiment (and this very largely expressed by warmth of color), and rather realistic in natural appearance. He was an eclectic in a way, and yet seems to stand as the forerunner of a large body of artists who find classification hereafter under the title of the Semi-Classicists.

PRINCIPAL WORKS: All the painters mentioned in this chapter are best represented in the Louvre at Paris, at Versailles, and in the museums of the chief French cities. Some works of the late or living men may be found in the Luxembourg, where pictures bought by the state are kept for ten years after the painter's death, and then are either sent to the Louvre or to the other municipal galleries of France. Some pictures by these men are also to be seen in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Boston Museum, and the Chicago Art Institute.



CHAPTER XIV.

FRENCH PAINTING.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY (Continued).

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: The books before mentioned, consult also General Bibliography, (page xv.)

THE LANDSCAPE PAINTERS: The influence of either the classic or romantic example may be traced in almost all of the French painting of this century. The opposed teachings find representatives in new men, and under different names the modified dispute goes on—the dispute of the academic versus the individual, the art of form and line versus the art of sentiment and color.

With the classicism of David not only the figure but the landscape setting of it, took on an ideal heroic character. Trees and hills and rivers became supernaturally grand and impressive. Everything was elevated by method to produce an imaginary Arcadia fit for the deities of the classic world. The result was that nature and the humanity of the painter passed out in favor of school formula and academic traditions. When romanticism came in this was changed, but nature falsified in another direction. Landscape was given an interest in human affairs, and made to look gay or sad, peaceful or turbulent, as the day went well or ill with the hero of the story portrayed. It was, however, truer to the actual than the classic, more studied in the parts, more united in the whole. About the year 1830 the influence of romanticism began to show in a new landscape art. That is to say, the emotional impulse springing from romanticism combined with the study of the old Dutch landscapists, and the English contemporary painters, Constable and Bonington, set a large number of painters to the close study of nature and ultimately developed what has been vaguely called the

FONTAINEBLEAU-BARBIZON SCHOOL: This whole school was primarily devoted to showing the sentiment of color and light. It took nature just as it found it in the forest of Fontainebleau, on the plain of Barbizon, and elsewhere, and treated it with a poetic feeling for light, shadow, atmosphere, color, that resulted in the best landscape painting yet known to us.



Corot (1796-1875) though classically trained under Bertin, and though somewhat apart from the other men in his life, belongs with this group. He was a man whose artistic life was filled with the beauty of light and air. These he painted with great singleness of aim and great poetic charm. Most of his work is in a light silvery key of color, usually slight in composition, simple in masses of light and dark, and very broadly but knowingly handled with the brush. He began painting by using the minute brush, but changed it later on for a freer style which recorded only the great omnipresent truths and suppressed the small ones. He has never had a superior in producing the permeating light of morning and evening. For this alone, if for no other excellence, he deservedly holds high rank.

Rousseau (1812-1867) was one of the foremost of the recognized leaders, and probably the most learned landscapist of this century. A man of many moods and methods he produced in variety with rare versatility. Much of his work was experimental, but at his best he had a majestic conception of nature, a sense of its power and permanence, its volume and mass, that often resulted in the highest quality of pictorial poetry. In color he was rich and usually warm, in technic firm and individual, in sentiment at times quite sublime. At first he painted broadly and won friends among the artists and sneers from the public; then in his middle style he painted in detail, and had a period of popular success; in his late style he went back to the broad manner, and died amid quarrels and vexations of spirits. His long-time friend and companion, Jules Dupre (1812-1889), hardly reached up to him, though a strong painter in landscape and marine. He was a good but not great colorist, and, technically, his brush was broad enough but sometimes heavy. His late work is inferior in sentiment and labored in handling. Diaz (1808-1876) was allied to Rousseau in aim and method, though not so sure nor so powerful a painter. He had fancy and variety in creation that sometimes ran to license, and in color he was clear and brilliant. Never very well trained, his drawing is often indifferent and his light distorted, but these are more than atoned for by delicacy and poetic charm. At times he painted with much power. Daubigny (1817-1878) seemed more like Corot in his charm of style and love of atmosphere and light than any of the others. He was fond of the banks of the Seine and the Marne at twilight, with evening atmospheres and dark trees standing in silent ranks against the warm sky. He was also fond of the gray day along the coast, and even the sea attracted him not a little. He was a painter of high abilities, and in treatment strongly individual, even distinguished, by his simplicity and directness. Unity of the whole, grasp of the mass entire, was his technical aim, and this he sought to get not so much by line as by color-tones of varying value. In this respect he seemed a connecting link between Corot and the present-day impressionists. Michel (1763-1842), Huet (1804-1869), Chintreuil (1814-1873), and Francais (1814-) were all allied in point of view with this group of landscape painters, and among the late men who have carried out their beliefs are Cazin,[7] Yon,[8] Damoye, Pointelin, Harpignies and Pelouse[9] seem a little more inclined to the realistic than the poetic view, though producing work of much virility and intelligence.

[Footnote 7: Died, 1901.]

[Footnote 8: Died, 1897.]

[Footnote 9: Died, 1890.]

Contemporary and associated with the Fontainebleau painters were a number of men who won high distinction as

PAINTERS OF ANIMALS: Troyon (1810-1865) was the most prominent among them. His work shows the same sentiment of light and color as the Fontainebleau landscapists, and with it there is much keen insight into animal life. As a technician he was rather hard at first, and he never was a correct draughtsman, but he had a way of giving the character of the objects he portrayed which is the very essence of truth. He did many landscapes with and without cattle. His best pupil was Van Marcke (1827-1890), who followed his methods but never possessed the feeling of his master. Jacque (1813-[10]) is also of the Fontainebleau-Barbizon group, and is justly celebrated for his paintings and etchings of sheep. The poetry of the school is his, and technically he is fine in color at times, if often rather dark in illumination. Like Troyon he knows his subject well, and can show the nature of sheep with true feeling. Rosa Bonheur (1822-[11]) and her brother, Auguste Bonheur (1824-1884), have both dealt with animal life, but never with that fine artistic feeling which would warrant their popularity. Their work is correct enough, but prosaic and commonplace in spirit. They do not belong in the same group with Troyon and Rousseau.

[Footnote 10: Died, 1894.]

[Footnote 11: Died, 1899.]



THE PEASANT PAINTERS: Allied again in feeling and sentiment with the Fontainebleau landscapists were some celebrated painters of peasant life, chief among whom stood Millet (1814-1875), of Barbizon. The pictorial inclination of Millet was early grounded by a study of Delacroix, the master romanticist, and his work is an expression of romanticism modified by an individual study of nature and applied to peasant life. He was peasant born, living and dying at Barbizon, sympathizing with his class, and painting them with great poetic force and simplicity. His sentiment sometimes has a literary bias, as in his far-famed but indifferent Angelus, but usually it is strictly pictorial and has to do with the beauty of light, air, color, motion, life, as shown in The Sower or The Gleaners. Technically he was not strong as a draughtsman or a brushman, but he had a large feeling for form, great simplicity in line, keen perception of the relations of light and dark, and at times an excellent color-sense. He was virtually the discoverer of the peasant as an art subject, and for this, as for his original point of view and artistic feeling, he is ranked as one of the foremost artists of the century.

Jules Breton (1827-), though painting little besides the peasantry, is no Millet follower, for he started painting peasant scenes at about the same time as Millet. His affinities were with the New-Greeks early in life, and ever since he has inclined toward the academic in style, though handling the rustic subject. He is a good technician, except in his late work; but as an original thinker, as a pictorial poet, he does not show the intensity or profundity of Millet. The followers of the Millet-Breton tradition are many. The blue-frocked and sabot-shod peasantry have appeared in salon and gallery for twenty years and more, but with not very good results. The imitators, as usual, have caught at the subject and missed the spirit. Billet and Legros, contemporaries of Millet, still living, and Lerolle, a man of present-day note, are perhaps the most considerable of the painters of rural subjects to-day.

THE SEMI-CLASSICISTS: It must not be inferred that the classic influence of David and Ingres disappeared from view with the coming of the romanticists, the Fontainebleau landscapists, and the Barbizon painters. On the contrary, side by side with these men, and opposed to them, were the believers in line and academic formulas of the beautiful. The whole tendency of academic art in France was against Delacroix, Rousseau, and Millet. During their lives they were regarded as heretics in art and without the pale of the Academy. Their art, however, combined with nature study and the realism of Courbet, succeeded in modifying the severe classicism of Ingres into what has been called semi-classicism. It consists in the elevated, heroic, or historical theme, academic form well drawn, some show of bright colors, smoothness of brush-work, and precision and nicety of detail. In treatment it attempts the realistic, but in spirit it is usually stilted, cold, unsympathetic.

Cabanel (1823-1889) and Bouguereau (1825-1905) have both represented semi-classic art well. They are justly ranked as famous draughtsmen and good portrait-painters, but their work always has about it the stamp of the academy machine, a something done to order, knowing and exact, but lacking in the personal element. It is a weakness of the academic method that it virtually banishes the individuality of eye and hand in favor of school formulas. Cabanel and Bouguereau have painted many incidents of classic and historic story, but with never a dash of enthusiasm or a suggestion of the great qualities of painting. Their drawing has been as thorough as could be asked for, but their colorings have been harsh and their brushes cold and thin.

Gerome (1824-[12]) is a man of classic training and inclination, but his versatility hardly allows him to be classified anywhere. He was first a leader of the New-Greeks, painting delicate mythological subjects; then a historical painter, showing deaths of Caesar and the like; then an Orientalist, giving scenes from Cairo and Constantinople; then a genre painter, depicting contemporary subjects in the many lands through which he has travelled. Whatever he has done shows semi-classic drawing, ethnological and archaeological knowledge, Parisian technic, and exact detail. His travels have not changed his precise scientific point of view. He is a true academician at bottom, but a more versatile and cultured painter than either Cabanel or Bouguereau. He draws well, sometimes uses color well, and is an excellent painter of textures. A man of great learning in many departments he is no painter to be sneered at, and yet not a painter to make the pulse beat faster or to arouse the aesthetic emotions. His work is impersonal, objective fact, showing a brilliant exterior but inwardly devoid of feeling.

[Footnote 12: Died, 1904.]



Paul Baudry (1828-1886), though a disciple of line, was not precisely a semi-classicist, and perhaps for that reason was superior to any of the academic painters of his time. He was a follower of the old masters in Rome more than the Ecole des Beaux Arts. His subjects, aside from many splendid portraits, were almost all classical, allegorical, or mythological. He was a fine draughtsman, and, what is more remarkable in conjunction therewith, a fine colorist. He was hardly a great originator, and had not passion, dramatic force, or much sentiment, except such as may be found in his delicate coloring and rhythm of line. Nevertheless he was an artist to be admired for his purity of purpose and breadth of accomplishment. His chief work is to be seen in the Opera at Paris. Puvis de Chavannes (1824-[13]) is quite a different style of painter, and is remarkable for fine delicate tones of color which hold their place well on wall or ceiling, and for a certain grandeur of composition. In his desire to revive the monumental painting of the Renaissance he has met with much praise and much blame. He is an artist of sincerity and learning, and as a wall-painter has no superior in contemporary France.

[Footnote 13: Died, 1898.]

Hebert (1817-1908), an early painter of academic tendencies, and Henner (1829-), fond of form and yet a brushman with an idyllic feeling for light and color in dark surroundings, are painters who may come under the semi-classic grouping. Lefebvre (1834-) is probably the most pronounced in academic methods among the present men, a draughtsman of ability.

PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTERS: Under this heading may be included those painters who stand by themselves, showing no positive preference for either the classic or romantic followings. Bonnat (1833-) has painted all kinds of subjects—genre, figure, and historical pieces—but is perhaps best known as a portrait-painter. He has done forcible work. Some of it indeed is astonishing in its realistic modelling—the accentuation of light and shadow often causing the figures to advance unnaturally. From this feature and from his detail he has been known for years as a "realist." His anatomical Christ on the Cross and mural paintings in the Pantheon are examples. As a portrait-painter he is acceptable, if at times a little raw in color. Another portrait-painter of celebrity is Carolus-Duran (1837-). He is rather startling at times in his portrayal of robes and draperies, has a facility of the brush that is frequently deceptive, and in color is sometimes vivid. He has had great success as a teacher, and is, all told, a painter of high rank. Delaunay (1828-1892) in late years painted little besides portraits, and was one of the conservatives of French art. Laurens (1838-) has been more of a historical painter than the others, and has dealt largely with death scenes. He is often spoken of as "the painter of the dead," a man of sound training and excellent technical power. Regnault (1843-1871) was a figure and genre painter with much feeling for oriental light and color, who unfortunately was killed in battle at twenty-seven years of age. He was an artist of promise, and has left several notable canvases. Among the younger men who portray the historical subject in an elevated style mention should be made of Cormon (1845-), Benjamin-Constant (1845-[14]), and Rochegrosse. As painters of portraits Aman-Jean and Carriere[15] have long held rank, and each succeeding Salon brings new portraitists to the front.

[Footnote 14: Died, 1902.]

[Footnote 15: Died, 1906.]

THE REALISTS: About the time of the appearance of Millet, say 1848, there also came to the front a man who scorned both classicism and romanticism, and maintained that the only model and subject of art should be nature. This man, Courbet (1819-1878), really gave a third tendency to the art of this century in France, and his influence undoubtedly had much to do with modifying both the classic and romantic tendencies. Courbet was a man of arrogant, dogmatic disposition, and was quite heartily detested during his life, but that he was a painter of great ability few will deny. His theory was the abolition of both sentiment and academic law, and the taking of nature just as it was, with all its beauties and all its deformities. This, too, was his practice to a certain extent. His art is material, and yet at times lofty in conception even to the sublime. And while he believed in realism he did not believe in petty detail, but rather in the great truths of nature. These he saw with a discerning eye and portrayed with a masterful brush. He believed in what he saw only, and had more the observing than the reflective or emotional disposition. As a technician he was coarse but superbly strong, handling sky, earth, air, with the ease and power of one well trained in his craft. His subjects were many—the peasantry of France, landscape, and the sea holding prominent places—and his influence, though not direct because he had no pupils of consequence, has been most potent with the late men.



The young painter of to-day who does things in a "realistic" way is frequently met with in French art. L'hermitte (1844-), Julien Dupre (1851-), and others have handled the peasant subject with skill, after the Millet-Courbet initiative; and Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884) excited a good deal of admiration in his lifetime for the truth and evident sincerity of his art. Bastien's point of view was realistic enough, but somewhat material. He never handled the large composition with success, but in small pieces and in portraits he was quite above criticism. His following among the young men was considerable, and the so-called impressionists have ranked him among their disciples or leaders.

PAINTERS OF MILITARY SCENES, GENRE, ETC.: The art of Meissonier (1815-1891), while extremely realistic in modern detail, probably originated from a study of the seventeenth-century Dutchmen like Terburg and Metsu. It does not portray low life, but rather the half-aristocratic—the scholar, the cavalier, the gentleman of leisure. This is done on a small scale with microscopic nicety, and really more in the historical than the genre spirit. Single figures and interiors were his preference, but he also painted a cycle of Napoleonic battle-pictures with much force. There is little or no sentiment about his work—little more than in that of Gerome. His success lay in exact technical accomplishment. He drew well, painted well, and at times was a superior colorist. His art is more admired by the public than by the painters; but even the latter do not fail to praise his skill of hand. He was a great craftsman in the infinitely little. As a great artist his rank is still open to question.