Nineteenth-Century Painting (Compass History of Art)

nineteenth
compass
Books century-
painting
georges peillex
compass history of art
$2.25
COMPASS HISTORY OF ART
Nineteenth- Century Painting

Compass History
of Art
Edited by Andre Held and D. W. Bloc menu
The complete series includes:
Greek Painting
Roman and Etruscan Painting
Early Christian Painting
Christian and Byzantine Painting

Romanesque Painting
Gothic Painting
Gothic and Romanesque Manuscripts
Renaissance Painting
Seventeenth-Century Painting
Eighteenth- ( \ntury Painting
Nineteenth- ( entury Painting
fury Painting
Nineteenth-Century
Painting
Georges Peillex
THE VIKING PRESS

New York
© 1964 by J. M. MeulenhofT, Amsterdam
English translation I 1964 by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd.
Photographs 1-149, 156-161, 163, 165-171, 173-176
© 1964 by André Held
Translated by Angus Malcolm
A COMPASS BOOKS original edition
Published in 1965 by The Viking Press, Inc.
625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022
OngTCSa catalog card number: 64-19703
lolland.
Contents
Introduction 1
Neo-Classicism 4
David - Prud^hon - Ingres
Romanticism 8
Gros - Géricault - Delacroix - Chassériau
The Birth of Landscape Painting 16

Constable - Turner - Bonington - Corot
Realism 21
Courbet - Daumier - Millet
The Landscape Painters Barbizon and Honfleur

: 29
Théodore Rousseau - Dàubigny - Boudin - Jongkind
Impressionism 32
Monet - Pissarro - Sisley - Manet - Renoir - Degas - Cézanne
Towards the Twentieth Century 41

Gauguin - van Gogh - Redon - Seurat and Pointillism - Toulouse-
Lautrec - Henri Rousseau, the 'Douanier''
The Nineteenth Century in Europe 48

England - Germany - Switzerland - Italy
The Year 1899 51
Illustrations
Biographical Notes
Captions
Nineteenth-Century Painting
Introduction
In the history of painting, the nineteenth century is of capital importance ;
such were the developments it brought forth, such was the scale and im-
portance of their repercussions, that it deserves to be called 'unique'. That
century saw the end of one age and the opening of another - one whose
discoveries, inventions, novel problems and expedients can be compared
to mines of unknown ores, to windows opened wide upon a future whose
astounding richness we can begin to estimate only today. This was the
great century of revolutions. It turned its back upon the past, it sounded
the doom of unendurable conventions, and it made an effort greater than
any that had gone before to break the tyranny of habit and burst the
shackles by which art was bound. The nineteenth century did for art what
the French Revolution had done for politics and social life. It brought,
beyond all doubt, a transition from one world to another, and it launched
an irrevocable process in which one idea after another was overthrown
and replaced by concepts that left no single aspect of life the same.
The nineteenth century gave birth to modern times. However, this is
far from being an adequate statement, for the century presents us with a
spectacle made up of the richest and most varied elements, densely packed,
yet torn by violent contrasts and collisions - the products of the very
things thatmade it great. Death is rarely welcome, and the tenacity with
which the poor, surviving legacy of Michelangelo and Raphael was de-
fended by its dwindling band of champions served only to show how
hopeless their cause was.
Only perhaps, if it erupts with sufficient violence, can we tell a revolu-
tion for what it is. Such eruptions, nevertheless, are not spontaneous
events. They should be seen, rather, as the outcome of a series of isolated
and often unrelated happenings. The result is a state of apparent con-
fusion, and time alone can resolve it by the process of slow precipitation,
a crystallization of obscure phenomena, each one of which is a different
NINETEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING 2
aspect of some great idea that is advancing irresistibly into human con-
sciousness. In the nineteenth century, therefore, two things can be
observed in coexistence or in conflict: the last exemplars of a moribund
tradition, and a new art, vehement in its self-assertion, aiming at the
conquest of freedom, and engaged in the greatand salutary task of re-
establishing the virtues of creativeness. Feeble as the old tradition had
become, it was buttressed by the bourgeoisie of the time (no matter
though their own traditions went no further back than 1789), and when
modern art had at last emerged triumphant, the bourgeois world was still
there, unsubdued.
The movement which set painting in the nineteenth century on the
road to such intoxicating possibilities was a great deal more than just a
change in taste. Its roots went very deep indeed, deep into the philosophic
flood that had overwhelmed the ancien régime. Not France alone, but
Europe and the whole of the western world, were in a state of radical
transformation, and one feature of this general metamorphosis was the
change that took place in the very fundamentals of art. Mankind's new
situation and the possibilities that now lay open to the art of painting
were both products of the same set of principles. To gain some notion of
their range and impact one need only recall that art had always in the past
been harnessed to some purpose which was not her own - to religion or
mythology or the \ agarics of princes.
It was not the citizen alone whose independence was assured by the
Declaration of the Rights of Man; the artist was emancipated too, set
free to thinkand paint as he pleased and to pursue whatever line his own
perceptions might suggest, in total liberty from all accepted canons. Pre-
viously unsuspected paths now disclosed themselves, roads leading to a
land too vast to be immediately surveyed. Never again was the artist to
be indentured to the powers that be, a slave bound hand and foot to aca-
demic rules whose deeper raison d'etre had long since disappeared. The
days of strictconvention, the days at force majeure, were over. The artist
was now called upon to answer for himself, to bring forth the fruit of
personal experience and give expression to the thoughts which his com-
merce with nature and with life had engendered deep within him. A task
was laid upon him now, both taxing and inspiring; side by side with phi-
losophers and social thinkers, with economists and men of science, he
was to take an equal share in the building of modern times. Countless
disco v e made in the pursuit of this vocation. New ideas, theories,
and methods emerged, and a whole range of possibilities was revealed
that widened the field of his enquiry and experiment far beyond its accept-
ed bounds he mould in which modern art is cast represents the aggre-
I
luci of all these developments.

Wh .
ne means, the sometimes devious routes, by which the nine-
INTRODUCTION 3
teenth century attained the place we assign to it today ? It is difficult to

establish a date of birth for a century that constitutes a 'period' in the
history of art. Every criterion we adopt is arbitrary, for dates have no
relevance to the definition of stages in artistic evolution, and the lines
that bound two differing modes of thought are fluid in the extreme. As
for the period that concerns us here, it is less an exception to the rule than
any other. We may be able, nonetheless, to catch a glimpse of the truth
if we examine the art of the expiring eighteenth century. There, one paint-
er, Jacques-Louis David, dominates the rest. David, a pupil of Boucher's,
cannot, of course, be described as typical of the movements that made

their appearance in his lifetime. Yet, by the Neo-Classical austerity that
marked his style, he did at all events put an end to the frivolous seduction
of the Rococo.
A handful of dates at this point can give us some useful landmarks, and
enable us, to some extent, to gauge the situation. In the year 1800, Goya
was fifty-four, and painting his celebrated Majas. David, at fifty-two, had
almost finished Madame Récamier. Constable was twenty-four, Turner
twenty-five, Ingres twenty; Géricault was nine, Corot was four, and De-
lacroix was only two. Each of these names is directly linked to some par-
ticular aspect of painting in the early part of the nineteenth century. David,
who served successively the Monarchy, the Republic, and the Empire,
ranked as the unchallenged head of the Neo-Classical school, with Ingres
and Prud'hon as its greatest figures after him. In Spain, Goya, who was
two years older, had long ago been the first to violate the conventions of
the day and 'invent' the Romantic movement, to which Baron Gros,
Constable, Géricault and, above all, Delacroix belonged. Corot was no
more the founder of a school than was Prud'hon. Nevertheless he was a
great independent figure who paved the way for the schools of Barbizon
and Honfleur, with their 'open-air' approach. The 'open-air' painters, in
turn, pointed forward towards Impressionism, but the route was already
marked by the footsteps of Turner, whose genius, a generation earlier,
had raised the question of the influence of light on colour.
The range of sources and countries from which modern art derives is
thus apparent. No one can deny what we owe to Spain and Goya, to
England and Constable. Yet France was the country where these various
movements developed most fruitfully. In that fact again appears the essen-
tial character of the many phases through which the art of the nineteenth
century was to evolve. Since the Renaissance, the fountainhead of art

had been Italy. Italy was the Mecca to which all eyes were turned, where
every foreign artist went as a pilgrim to breathe the sacred air of its tra-
ditions and submit himself to the magic of the Masters. David, Ingres,
and Corot (to name but a very few) all went through the hallowed
ritual in their day, although the effect it had on them was not identical.
Then the pole that attracted painters began to shift. Little by little, but
irresistibly, it moved, and soon the world was acknowledging the primacy
of France.
Neo-Classicism
David {fig. 1)
When David started painting, fashion was still far from abandoning the
superficial charms of the Rococo, and the style of Fragonard was the
one in which David adorned Monsieur Ledoux's new house. It required
a visit to Italy two years later to show him where his true vocation lay. He
did not greatly like the antique at first, alleging that it lacked warmth.
Soon, however, the Graeco-Roman spirit proved too strong for him, and
he spent the next five years in Rome, Naples, and Pompeii, in a ceaseless
effort to penetrate the secret of its grandeur. He discovered Caravaggio
too, and was tempted for a w hile by the art of the Baroque, but the classic
order regained its hold on him in the end. After a visit to Flanders, where
he studied the work of Rubens, he went back to Italy to carry out a royal
commission. This was the Serment des Horaces (The Oath of the Horatii)
which Pans acclaimed, in 17S5, as the banner of the new classical school.
Indeed, it ma) have needed all the rigour of the cold intellect which was
at the core of Da\ id's nature to sweep away the simperings that still suf-
ficed for current taste. DavicTs incursion, therefore, seemed like an out-
burst of energy, a stern determination to re-establish order in thought
and works betray, for all that, the marks of the social
feeling alike. His
class for which the) were designed. His style, severe when handling
subjects taken from antiquity, full of feeling when concerned with the
emotions o( the common people, was always adaptable; he could cele-
brate Imperial pomp when required, just as he could be #0/0/// in his youth
when called on to adorn the apartment of some actress. Yet reason, that
same reason which the Jacobins had deified, never left him for a moment.
David knew nothing of nature or of man as an individual. Like his style,
he was shackled to the past, a prisoner of a pre-conceived 'grandeur'.
He can he considered a man oi' the nineteenth century, for he took part
in its events and gave account of them, but, in general, he was
a pictorial
less a member its pioneers. His powerful sense
o( the centur> than one of
o( design, lor example, invested the structure of his compositions with a
strict geometry which, to the lasting profit of his pupils, rescued many a
principle from neglect. It should also be noted that he made one capital
contribution to sending the new art on its way - not by any pictorial
achievement but by a far-reaching act m the realm of politics. In 1793, the
Convention, acting on his proposal, abolished the Royal Academy and
peak, proclaimed the emancipation of painting.
NEO-CLASSICISM 5
There is no denying
that David's work is of uneven quality, and the
reason for this fact deep in his own temperament. Inspiration was too
lies
often second to dogma and to theory because of David's desire to figure

as a thinker. Unemotional as he was, however, there were times when
passion touched him with her wing, although it took the whole hysteria
of the revolutionary years to crack his formalist mask. The best part of
his work between 1784 and 1794 was done under the influence of the stir-
ring spirit of the times. His works, which had previously been betrayed
by an excess of cunning in their composition, were then invaded by gen-
uine human feelings and a certain sense of joy; a direct experience of
life mysteriously disturbs the over-careful calculation of a picture to the
point of giving it a moving nobility, reminiscent of the Primitives. An
example of this type of work is the vivid Marat Assassiné {The Death of
Marat) which he painted in 1793: Baudelaire thought it the best thing
David ever did - 'one of the great curiosities of modern art'. Attention
must also be drawn to his portraits, for in them he felt less bound to strict
observance of the theories he held. Madame Récamier is the work of a
sensitive observer of his fellow-creatures.The style, although careful to
maintain a sense of unity, is relaxed, and it conveys by formal means a
sense of character and psychology that places David among the really
great portraitists.
He was the great Neo-Classicist at all events, the master of the school.
Prud'hon and Ingres were Neo-Classicists as well, but with differences
and reservations. Many pupils passed through David's hands, perhaps as
many as four hundred, but none was his equal. Among them, Gros and
Ingres (a far greater artist) were to follow rather different paths. His con-
temporary, Pierre Guérin, was another who imparted Neo-Classical
principles to his pupils, but he left nothing that excites our admiration
today. His one claim to fame is that two of the very greatest Romantics,
Géricault and Delacroix, were among his pupils.
Prud'hon {fig. 6)
Although the power of Neo-Classicism may have seemed absolute, on a
closer view its influence was small and its reign was relatively short. It
aroused no powerful echo outside France, and at home it was soon en-
gaged in a furious struggle which it lost. It was never more than a move-
ment of transition. With David and the Revolution it had its moments,
but it succumbed to the very ideas which the Revolution had proclaimed.
Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, one of its most talented adherents, showed himself
unorthodox to the verge of heresy. He was a Burgundian of modest birth
and had visited Italy like the rest, but archaeology was not the source of
the impressions he brought back. Canova, the Neo-Classic sculptor, was
his friend, but Raphael, Correggio, and Leonardo were his heroes, and
with them he felt himself to some extent in harmony. He was acutely sen-
sitive, and he charged the forms of compositions with quivering
his
emotion, while the velvety manner of his modelling lent them a quality
of poetry and freshness. Among his portraits, that of the Empress Marie-
Louise, in particular, shows remarkable sympathy between artist and
sitter, with a sensitive feeling for nature. Indeed, his works as a whole are
marked by delicate sensuality, a certain aura of nostalgia, and a sense of
humanity, all of which point towards Romanticism.
Ingres {figs. 12-16)
The same is true of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, although there was
much which he and Prud'hon differed from each other. Ingres was a
in
painter whose work and personality were the subjects of misunderstand-
ing - for which Ingres himself was partially to blame - and it was not
until the present century that the true purposes and results of his work
were freed from the controversy that had so long obscured them. The
essential thing about him was that his nature was at war with his convic-
tions. Both sides of him were equally domineering. His nature, impulsive,
nervous, sensual, easily provoked, and very disinclined to moderation,
could have gamed him admission to the ranks of the Romantics, but his
convictions made him David's heir as chief of the Neo-Classicists.
'Monsieur Ingres', of course, was essentially a bourgeois, a man with
vigorous appetites. Earthly pleasures attracted him far more than the
raptures of the mind, and his imagination worked, by preference, on
concrete things. The theme of all his work, of all his thought, was woman,
woman most carnal form. She and she alone was his concern, in-
in her
deed very nearly his obsession. Hypnotised by the female body, he never
tired of studying its lines, its softly rounded forms, placing them again
and again in every possible pose as a means of renewing ad infinitum the
exquisite pleasure they afforded him. Two factors combined in aid of his
predilections: the study of the human nude was part of the classical tra-
dition, and Napoleon's campaign in Egypt put a sort of orientalism into
fashion. Nowhere could Ingres have found a better way to assuage his
irresistible desire than by conjuring up those harem scenes, those Turk-
ish baths, where logic could not hinder the accumulation of pearly, soft,
and tender flesh, the very food of his wish-fulfilling dreams. Ingres was,
in fact, a Jekyll and Hyde figure. At night, and in imagination, the faith-
fulbourgeois husband lived the voluptuous life of a satiated sultan and
sometimes, in that role, he struck a balance between form and feeling
that deserve* the name of greatness. One might almost say that he con-
trived to sublimate his instincts into purely formal terms. There is, at all
event v no better way to state the dualism of his nature or to point the
mce and the difference it made between him and David. Moreover,
NEO-CLASSICISM 7
this is what explains why people were so slow to grasp the true merit of
his work.
Official art no sooner scented the Romantic danger in the air than it
organized resistance and sought out a leader, a painter who would be the
Neo-Classicist incarnate. Ingres was appealed to and accepted, for he had
ardently absorbed all the principles of David, although he was unaware
that he did not always follow them and that his lapses were caused by his
very nature. He attached the greatest importance to his task. Soon he was
locked in mortal combat with Delacroix and the Romantics, flushing
deep with rage against all who dared assert (not without reason) that
more than one own style, too, had the Romantic look he so
feature of his
abhorred. Two
conceptions of art were face to face, yet the reasons did
not always strictly tally with the facts. As general of an army that was not
really his, Ingreswore the colours of an academic; however, his realism
(as everyone agrees today) made him the enemy of the school he led, just
as much as Delacroix's Romanticism. It is true, of course, that Ingres
claimed the heritage of the ancients and, indeed, much of what they had
to teach he had absorbed, notably a sense of pure design and of solid
form. This, however, did not last. He was the first to discover the Primi-
tives (barbarians, they were considered in those days), and from them he
learned that love of forms and of psychology - keys to a truly expressive
style - which weaned him from the false idealism of David and his follow-
ers.Realism is what makes Ingres one of the first of modern painters. It
isobvious in his numerous drawings, and it breathes a sense of life into
his most carefully constructed compositions. The point is proved by his
influence on posterity. With Courbet it turned into Naturalism, with
Monet into Impressionism and with the Cubists, as Apollinaire has ob-
served, became Surrealism.
it
work was certainly not all of equal value. As a history-painter

Ingres'
he smacks too much of learning and virtuosity, as can be seen in the Apo-
theosis of Homer, the Sabines, the Martyrdom of Saint Symphorian and
the Apotheosis of Napoleon. As a bourgeois portrait-painter - a thing he
never admitted being - he was the last to show real genius, for portraits
such as those of Mlle Rivière (fig. 15), Mme de Sennones, the painter
Granet, or the famous portrait of Bert in (fig. 1 3) left his hands as images of
the whole social class to which the sitter belonged. However, the theme
that brought out work of the very highest merit, painting of real original-
ity, one might almost say abnormal painting, was the female nude. Of
these, the Bain Turc (fig. 12), which he completed at the age of eighty-
two, is a magnificent example.
Here and there among Ingres' followers of the Neo-Classical school
were men of talent, yet none of them left a single work deserving to
outlive its time. Names that at most can bear a mention are those of Paul
Delaroche, skilful in compromise, or Leopold Robert and Charles Gleyre,

although they show very little of their master's solid virtues. Many years,
in fact, were to pass before a true successor to the man who painted
Ossians Dream made his appearance. Did not Matisse himself rate the
Odalisque higher than Manet's Olympia!
Romanticism
The Romantic Movement that dominated art between 1820 and 1850 was
the first revolutionary explosion of the nineteenth century. In every way
it was the opposite ofthe theory ruling at the time when it appeared. It was
an individualist an. an art whereby each man gave free expression to his
feelings and to his personal approach to life, the fruit of his endeavours
to achieve the closest possible understanding of reality. Its origin lay in a
wholly new outlook on the painter's part. In aesthetic terms, it required
that painting should divorce itself from sculpture, exploit the suggestive
power of Cok)ui 10 the lull, and abolish the hard outline that imprisons
form. The conventional appearance of objects and bodies was gradually
broken up b\ the impact of emotion, while a certain sense of exaltation,
a specifically visionary gift, altered and substantially enlarged the psycho-
logical dimensions o\' the picture.
Despite the methods which it brought to bear and which did, indeed
prolong its life, Nec-ClassicisnVs war against Romanticism was bound to
end in defeat. or p\oo\ we need only recall that the best ofthe talent it
1
recruited passed over to the enenn camp. It was David's studio that gave
Gros his training, and it was Ciuerin's, where David's principles were
taught, that trained Ciencault and Delacroix. Thus, Romanticism was
born of Neo-Classicism, its enemy. The three names quoted, with the
addition of some dates, should enable us to fix the début of this new theo-
ry of art. Antoine-Jean Gros painted the Pestiférés de Jaffa {The Victims
ofthe Plague at Jaffa) in 1S04. Ten years later, when Géricault was enter-
ing the studio o{ Guérin, Gros was at the height of his success. In 1815
Delacroix, aged seventeen, entered the same studio himself, just as Géri-
cault was setting out for Italy. In 1N22 Delacroix exhibited his first im-
portant picture. Dante and J 'irgil Crossing the Styx, which caused a sen-
sation. On the death o\' Géricault, was Delacroix who
two years later, it
became comple-
the accepted 'leader of the colounst school', having just
ted the Massacre of Chios (tig. 23). Thus, two pictures, the Pestiférés and
the Massacre, twenty years apart, mark the birth o\' Romanticism and its
full development.
ROMANTICISM 9
Gros (fig. 3)
When Gros, aged twenty-two, set out for Italy in 1793, David had recog-
nized his and he was the master's favourite pupil. After visiting all
gifts,
parts of Italy he settled at Genoa, full of admiration for the great works
by Rubens and van Dyck which he found in the principal collections
there. A providential meeting with Josephine Bonaparte in 1796 rescued
him from the obscurity of his existence. She was attracted by his looks as
much as his talent, and carried him off to Milan to present him to her
dazzling husband. Gros lost no time in painting Bonaparte on the Bridge
at Areola (fig. 3). Thereafter, until 1801, Gros followed the army in each
campaign, and was present at the siege of Genoa. His memories of that
event, heightened by his visionary gifts, were a source of inspiration to
him later. Through the whole series of great compositions which Gros
produced in honour of his hero's deeds he put fresh life into history-paint-
ing. However, his enthusiasm made him forget the precepts of his vener-
ated master. Under the pressure of emotion, the theories preached by
David fell to pieces. The act outstripped the intention, and care for histor-
ical truth, far from acting as a damper, served only to fan the ardent
spirit of the painter, until its flights, although taking no account of detail,
lent these records of sublime events a vivid sense that they had actually
occurred.
Within Gros was a ferment of creativity that drove him on to new de-
partures in technique, fresh innovations from which a new art was to
develop. Vigorous design was allied with the expressive force of colour,
and by painting the various parts of the composition as simultaneously as
possible Gros secured its general cohesion. Above all, there was that very
negation of David's principles which consisted in working from internal
structure outwards, instead of inwards from the outline. Napoleon on
the Battlefield of Eylait, the masterpiece which he showed at the Salon
of 1808, has an unforced grandeur; it is alive with telling detail and
shows no inclination to idealize the horrors of war and the human
suffering it entails. Delacroix was full of admiration for it. The picture is
part of life itself, the hard reality of human fate, with no admixture of
pathos or of false 'literary' qualities. The price of glory is set down with
such frankness that Gros must be called the ancestor of Daumier. His
search for truth anticipates Géricault and Delacroix, and opens up the
way for many of the modern schools.
Unfortunately, Gros was unable to sustain this level of achievement.
The devotion he felt for David was so great that he began to see his own
audacity as something very close to treason. This, at least, must be the
cause of the concessions he made to his old master's teaching, although
fame could not be sought in that direction now. The inescapable dilemma
grew too great, and Gros committed suicide, perhaps with his thoughts
on Delacroix, whose genius he had recognized in public. The year was

1835. In that year and the next, two of his pupils drew attention at the
Salon, each with a scene drawn from the retreat from Moscow: one was
Boissart de Boisdenier, who painted no other work of importance, and
the other was Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet (fig. 4), whose memory was pre-
served for a time by his lithographs and portraits of Napoleonic veterans.
Géricault (figs. 7-11)
Romanticism has been called a sickness, a distemper. Had this been the
case,it would have been an obvious epidemic, striking at all and sundry,
leaving its stigma on every hand and imposing its manner not on art
alone but on every aspect of contemporary life. Géricault is its symbol,
not only by virtue of his particular kind of art, but because his personal-
ity and were themselves typically romantic. With talents
his tragic destiny
such as his, the question ine\ itably arises of what heights he might have
scaled, what influence he might have had upon the future course of art,
if he had not been suddenly struck down at the age of thirty-three.
Everything about him tended to excess: a questing spirit, a thirst for

the absolute, and an insatiable curiosity which drove him furiously on-
ward. Each moment of Ins life was lived to the utmost. Warm-hearted,
tender, and sensitive to a fault, he loved 'not wisely but too well'. The
figure he cuts is H> ionic to the highest degree, even to the desperate love-
affair that caused his flight to Italy. There he saw Ingres, whose drawings
he admired and Michelangelo's frescos literally overwhelmed him. But

this was all the profil his Italian journey paid. He cut it short and hurried
back to Paris, to the woman he loved so abortively. What the Masters
had to teach he had learned already at the Louvre, where he had studied
and copied them with his characteristic zeal. Among his many gifts was
an almost intuitive power of absorbing anything that caused his sensitive
nerves to \ ibrate, whether it came from the Venetian masters of colour or
the Flemings, from Caravaggio or from Rubens, or even from his own
contemporaries. Géricault was endowed with an immense capacity for
assimilation, >et the effect it had on him was indirect. What it did was to
stimulate the profound originality that shot into view in 1812, when he
was twenty-one, with his first exhibited painting. This work, the Chasseur
de la Garde, was painted with such dash and was so vigorous in colour
that it caused a sensation. Two years later, the H ounded Cuirassier did the
same. Géricault then exhibited no more until 1819, when he showed the
Radeau de Méduse The Raft of (he 'Medusa*), a work he had painted in
... (
eight months of visionary fever.

n seeing the ( 'hasseur, was astounded by its vehemence. 'Where
does from?' he asked, and added, 'I never saw such brushwork
•
work was calculated to upset the elderly painter, it was this,

ROMANTICISM H
for had a spontaneity, a warmth, and a rush of movement taken straight
it
from In actual fact, what had enabled Géricault to work, as it were,

life.
'from life' when painting his Chasseur, was a magical transmutation of

something he had seen in the street: a high-mettled horse impatiently
pulling a dog-cart in a cloud of sun-lit, sparkling dust. The Cuirassier
has some fine passages too, although its quality is less even and the paint-
er himself was merciless in criticism of it afterwards.
Géricault's masterpiece was the third and last of the pictures he showed
at the Salon, The Raft of the 'Medusa'. It was a flash of lightning, a major
phenomenon. The artist's aim in painting it shows his courage and inde-
pendence of mind as well as the way he grappled with contemporary
events. In all this, he was plainly among the moderns. The subject of The
Raft of the 'Medusa' was an incident that had some political importance,
for the commander, a former émigré whose incompetence had caused the
frigate's wreck, was a symbol of the Bourbon restoration, the target of
Géricault's attack. Indeed, the title of the painting had to be altered be-
fore the Salon would exhibit it. In the eyes of his contemporaries, the pic-
ture pointed to Géricault as the man who was going to reform painting,
while the political Opposition, for whom the horrors of the shipwreck
symbolized France's own suffering from misgovernment, hailed the paint-
er as their spokesman. Indeed, his patriotic indignation had much to do
with the vigour of his style. Onto this enormous canvas Géricault poured
the full measure of his genius. Five years later he was dead, and this pic-
ture, having reigned for many years as his one undoubted masterpiece,
now forms, as it were, his testament. With
it, he ruthlessly swept away the
finalremnants of the old academic style, and showed himself every whit
as great as the drama that had moved the whole of France. The hand
that grasps the ensign is the despair that grips the doomed and ship-
wrecked sailors. The image is a bold and powerful one. The lyric surge
miraculously sustains it without doing violence to the composition, in
which every figure is involved in a single and embracing situation. The
painting was a manifesto, and Géricault used its vigour and its bold design,
its brilliant colour and the pathos it portrays, as a way of implicitly pro-
claiming the right to freedom of inspiration. He thereby gave a new con-
ception of beauty to the world.
The uproar caused by the picture had still not quieted down a year
later, when Géricault went off to England. There, for the next three years,
he lived as a man of fashion and indulged his great love of horses. Horses
played for him the role that women played for Ingres. His sketch-books
were full of them they often appeared on whatever canvas was on his
;
easel. Cart-horse, pure-blooded Arab, English thoroughbred, he painted

them all from every angle. Part of his reputation was due to them, and so
was his death, for he never recovered from the long illness caused by the
neglected consequences of a fall. On the eve of his own first great success,
Delacroix paid him a and recorded in his diary his sense of sorrow
visit
and of admiration 'I : came away filled with enthusiasm for his painting -
"Study for the Head of a Rifleman". Remember
especially the it : it is out-
standing. splendid studies! What strength! What mastery! And to
What
think of his dying - with all he did in the vigour and impetuosity of youth
- and now he cannot even move in his bed unless someone helps him!'
Yet the two men, although they had much mutual regard, were never
intimate friends, and there was more than a touch of formality in their
manner to one another. They are linked in the history of painting none-
theless, for it is impossible to escape the thought that the dreams which
the older man took with him to the grave were fulfilled with genius in the
younger's work.
Delacroix {figs. 22 27)

This was not the end of the links, or resemblances, between the pair, for
Delacroix was also a romantic figure. He was tall and slim, with jet-black
hair and brlliam eyes, a harassed look and a generally exotic air. He had
a sickly constitution and was perpetually beset by fever. Even his birth
was a subject of mystery and legend, for people alleged that he was an
illegitimate son of Talle>rand, both men being of exceptional intelligence
and poor physique. Excitable, irritable, violently impulsive, his defence
against his character (which he knew all too well) and against the egotism
that was part of it, la> in his robust intelligence. The Self-Portrait as Ham-
let, or 'Ravenswood* is an excellent picture of an enfant du siècle; slim,
with his natural pallor shown off by the black he always wore, aristocra-
and faintly spectral. His diary describes him very well: 'Reality, for
tic,
me, consists of the illusions I create by painting.'

His gifts were countless, and among them was the gift of synthesizing
his many inconsistencies of character. Yet his history is that of a perpe-
tual struggle: with adversity, with obstacles raised by others, with him-
self, with illness and with death. He was a passionate man, in love with
life, but driven to protect his health if he was to achieve his ends. His one
concern was painting; all else he denied himself. He was called the chief
of the Romantic school, but he did not want the title, for he knew it de-
rived from only one side of his personality. A classicist is what he claimed
to be by virtue of his mind and his lucidity, his thirst for order and for
discipline, his constant struggle to dominate his violent emotions. How-
ever, the truth of the matter is that his 'temperament' was so abundant and
its eftVct upon his work so great that he was plainly cast for the role of
the hero of the Romantic movement, the man who made a certainty of its
ifetu ithout his 'classical' side his genius would have lacked some
of itsbrilli. ice, and his work would not have achieved such greatness. He
ROMANTICISM 13
was immensely cultivated, and not in humanism alone, thanks to the

open receptivity of his mind. Although he drew and had a passion for
painting from his earliest years, his musical interests were active too. This
taste for knowledge, combined with his critical sense, enabled him to
extract everything that served his purposes from the work of others -
Rubens, Michelangelo, or his contemporaries. His admiration for Géri-
cault we know already he expressed his admiration, too, for Gros, who
;
repaid it handsomely by having the Barque du Dante framed at his own

expense. Delacroix sang Prud'hon's praises too, and was enthusiastic
about the landscapes of Constable, Bonington, and Turner, perhaps be-
cause they showed a sense of nature that was lacking in himself.
The deepest impression of all was made on him by Goya. If the civil
registers did not inexorably place Goya in the eighteenth century there
would be a special chapter on him in this nineteenth-century study. Goya,
with his energetic style and free conception of painting, was the first to
come out squarely and forcefully against the classicism of the academies.
He cannot therefore be ignored in any sketch of the revolutionary move-
ments that led to modern art. Indeed, the very notion of the painter's in-
dependence is Spanish. There, in Spain, it governed the lives, if not all
the works, of artists who had no fear of originality or imagination and
who had no hesitation in refusing honours to preserve their freedom. This
was the climate into which Goya was born in 1746 near Saragossa. At
fifteen he was painting his first pictures, and at twenty he went on a visit
to Italy, where he remained for five years. There, without falling victim
to the power of the antique, he won the second prize at a competition at
Parma. However, the chief thing he brought back from the Emilian capi-
tal was the example of Correggio. On his return to Saragossa he painted
monumental frescos, as well as a most telling portrait of a canon. From

1776 to 1791 he made designs for the tapestry factory at Madrid, using
the motifs of games and dances which he used again so often in an ever-
growing tragic or satiric guise. Thereafter, he gained entry to the Court,
for Goya, eternal rebel though he was, did not disdain the service of the
great: Charles III, Charles IV and their ministers, the Duke of Alba, and
especially the Duchess, who allegedly refused him nothing. He even paint-
ed Joseph Bonaparte, who governed Spain by military force, and when
the Spanish Bourbons were restored, he painted Ferdinand VII too.
Although he bowed his knee to the invader, he had other interests as
well, for these were the years when he was working on the Desastres de
la Guerra (The Horrors of War). In this series of etchings he evolved a
succession of unforgettable images to record the shootings, the refugees,
the heroism of the Spanish women, and the brutal cruelty of the French.
All this material he used again for paintings, among them the Execution,
the Charge of the Mamelukes, and the heart-rending Fusillade of the 3rd
May, 1808. Goya was a complex man, and his work, for all the unity of
its style, contained discordant elements. He painted scenes of popular
life, Majas, rustic games, and craftsmen at work in the open air. He was
a portrait-painter too, as well as a gripping realist of ferocious cruelty;
he was also a religious painter and, as the frescos in San Antonio de la
Florida testify, a magnificent decorator. He was a visionary as well. But
more than anything else he was the freest painter of his day, more free
than Delacroix since he allowed no theory to restrain him nor any system
to interfere with his work. Goya's was a many-sided genius whose great-
est strength lay in the unbridled expression of the ego, which makes him
the very incarnation of revolt against the conventions of the eighteenth
century. He recognized no source of inspiration but the realities of human
life.These he rendered with a pitiless and ever-growing penetration, and
it was this that determined his technique. Sometimes his drawing was at
fault, sometimes there was a lack of skill about his colour, but both these
faults were part of his brusque and powerful genius. To that genius we
owe the revelation o\~ a world of forms that transcends everyday reality
and reveals a vision that is very close to prophecy. 'All I see', he used to
k
say, are planes receding and planes advancing, salients and hollows.
Neither line nor colour exist in nature! Give me a bit of charcoal and I
will make you a picture. All painting is made up of what you keep and
1
what you throw away.
Goya's observation was not lost on Delacroix, and the art of throwing
away became a part o\' his technique. He studied the Caprichos with care;
he made a comparative study of Goya and Michelangelo, copied some
of Goya's punts and. incidentally, admitted a desire to May about me
like Goya absorbed from Goya were the vi-
does". \\ hat Ciuerin's pupil
sions of Hell, a feeling for abrupt transitions, for the bold patch of co-
lour and the violent contrast. These were already the means by which in
1N22 he Staggered painters and public opinion alike with his Dante and
Virgil Crossing the Styx, and he did it again two years later with the
Massacre of Chios. Alter that came his visit to England, and a few years
later, in 1832, he made a journey to Spain, Morocco, and Algeria that
had \\\v greater aesthetic repercussions. There he discovered the Levant,

its colour and its poetry, and in these Moslem lands he found true, an-
cient nobility intact. His knowledge, education, and the visions he con-
m the studio, were all transcended now by an experience that went
t
head: 'the sublime itself, alive and dazzling' beneath the radiant
S
Mediterranean sun, the very quintessence of reality. We can read about

it in his diary: 'I laughed at David and his Greeks...
the thought of
know them now : you must know how to
these marbles are the truth, but
read wl there; all that our poor moderns saw in them was hiero-
glyph i. the miracle we call Delacroix was this: he was faithful
ROMANTICISM 15
to the ideal of the ancients, but unlike his predecessors he conceived it

not as a standard fixed for ever, a literary ideal, but as a living reality, a
thing he had seen with his own eyes in the folds of the gandouras which the
Berbers wear with such nobility. He came back from Africa with a mass
of sketches and water-colours, notes and details taken from life. All this
treasure, rapidly absorbed, was the ultimate enrichment of a mind in full
maturity. The year 1833 marks the beginning of a cycle of decorations -
at the Palais Bourbon, the Luxembourg, the Paris Hôtel de Ville and the
Church of Saint-Sulpice - that went on until 1 861 If these projects showed
.
him to be the greatest decorator of his age, his scenes of lion-hunts and
tiger-hunts, the famous Women oj Algiers, the Sultan with his Bodyguard
(fig. 22), and many others, proved him its greatest orientalist as well.
Delacroix's achievements are beyond compare. They are the outcome

of a triumph, a task pursued with fervour and lucidity of mind and with
a single end in view devotion to the ideal he had within him. His natural
:
gifts, his originality of outlook, his acceptance of intellectual discipline

along with the demands laid upon him by imagination, all these enabled
him to reach his goal while giving a supreme example of the universal
human being. He resolved the artistic contradictions within himself and,
by the perfect subordination of detail to the great ends of harmony, unity
of concept, and of mood, he sought to satisfy the mind and heart alike.
His painting was simultaneously grandiose, carefully planned, and human,
and he used it to create not merely masterpieces but a whole new field of
poetry. No man before him had spoken of the poetry of form and colour.
Chasser iau (figs. 17-20)

Delacroix, although the leader of a school, stands in splendid isolation.
Among his direct none was more than a poor imitator, with the
disciples
sole exception, perhaps, of Théodore Chassériau, whose short career (he
died in 1856, aged thirty-seven) deserves some notice. Born in the West
Indies and brought to Paris at the age of three, he was only eleven when
he entered the studio of Ingres, whose favourite pupil he was destined to
become. The first two pictures he sent to the Salon ( Vénus Marine in 1836
and Susanna and the Elders in 1 838) each attracted attention by their hand-
ling of paint and by their style. They had a certain elegiac charm that
linked the artist more with Prud'hon than with Ingres, although it was
the latter whose influence was the stronger in 1840, in the portrait of
Father Lacordaire (fig. 18). From then onwards his manner became more
like that of Delacroix. He did an equestrian portrait of the Caliph of Con-
stant ine (fig. 19) and in 1846 he, too, visited Algeria. His painting duly
assumed an oriental air (very different, however, from that of Delacroix)
with Hellenic and exotic elements combined. Some admirable paintings
followed, such as the Baigneuse Endormie près d'une Source (fig. 20), in-
However, the mu-

spired by the beauty of a past lover, the actress Alice Ozy .
ral painting that filled his life from 1843

what displays the best
to 1854 is
of his talent. The pathos of the Descent from the Cross in the church of
Saint-Philippe-du-Roule is memorable, but the War and Peace he painted
in the 'Cour des Comptes' (only the wrecks of them survived the burnings
of the Commune) are charged with such classic and symbolic grandeur as
to constitute his masterpieces. Chassériau here applied the principles of
Ingres, but he did so with greater suppleness and with more variety of
rhythm. Moreover, he used emotion with a touch both firmer and more
sometimes echoing Géricault and sometimes Prud'hon. But, like
delicate,
Gustave Moreau (rig. 58) after him. tie was too inclined to compromise,
and the effect he made might have been greater if he had projected his
own personality more strongly.
The Birth of Landscape-Painting
Landscape, for Centuries, was nothing more than decoration, a useful

kind oï background for scenes and figures which themselves bore the full
expressive powers. From the times oï the Primitives onwards, it is true,

nature was e\ermoreclosel> studied, more accurately rendered, and assign-
ed a more important role. Vet landscape remained no more than an
indispensable adjunct. Monumental, idealized, or frankly artificial, the
place it occupied was humble, and in the hierarchy of art the Neo-Classi-
cists still ranked it last. It was not e\en thought of as a possible subject in
At most, only a handful of exceptions can be cited. Poussin gave
itself.
some thought to landscape, but he kept it in the realm of the imaginary.

Claude Lorrain did the same, but always needed a few figures. The first
artists tolook at landscape with the eye oi realism were the seventeenth-
centUT) Dutch. The British school, however, had always shown a passion-
ate concern w ith the phenomena of nature, and in the eighteenth century
British painters took the lead. New
and felicitous departures made by
the more original of British painters,above all, Constable and Turner, pro-
moted landscape-painting to the rank of an autonomous branch of art.
Along with Goya, Constable and Turner represent a total disregard of
classicism. They had a wholl> d liferent conception of painting, one that
was quite unconnected with developments in France. There, as we have
seen, the concept o( nature and o\' realism gradually loosened the bonds
of the idealist tradition, but even with Géricault and Delacroix itsinflu-
ence showed itself onl) h> degrees, [n the case of the two Englishmen, how-
openl) proclaimed itself, regardless of everything else. England
i
and Frana ire, of course, ver) different countries, and this, no doubt,
relj one product of" the différence between the British and the
THE BIRTH OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING 17
French mentality. Be that as it may, the attitude of Constable and Turner

to art, to pictorial phenomena, was not in any kind of conflict with the
humanist tradition, since that tradition, purely and simply, did not exist
for them. Their attitude resulted from a Weltanschauung, a congenita lly
romantic outlook, which was purely national and related to hardly
any others except those of Holland and Flanders. Empiric as the British
character itself, this attitude to art could logically end in one thing only:
an absolute réfutai of system, with acceptance of one single law, nature
herself, with all the simplicity and innocence the word implies. Nature, for
Turner and Constable, was the only book, and they had no need to drop
the blinkers of culture in order to regain their capacity for freshness of
impression. All they cared for was their feelings, their reactions, and
sensations, and these, reinforced by unusual instinct and outstanding gifts,
enabled them to do the greatest service for the painting of their time. They
rid it of its shadows and its bitumen, and opened the door to the radiance
and light that gradually dominated art from their day onwards until it
reached its final triumph with the Impressionists.
Constable (figs. 156-158)

John Constable was born in Suffolk in 1 776, and came to London at nine-
teen years of age. From Farington's studio he went to the Royal Aca-
demy, and then, after a brief experiment with religious painting, he
returned to painting landscapes for the rest of his life. In 1802, aged
twenty-seven, he wrote that he had spent two years running from one
picture to another, pursuing truth at second hand. Now he was going
back to Bergholt, he said, where he would try to paint, simply and honest-
ly, whatever he saw in front of him. That was the right place for a painter
of nature. He never abandoned this attitude, but he never felt that he was
doing anything revolutionary either. What moved him was simply com-
mon sense and a desire to do the best he could. His ambitions were mod-
est. All he really loved were the changing aspects of the English country-
side and the charm of meadows, trees, and streams; all he needed were
light and air. The picturesque and the literary left him cold; he asked no
more than to set his easel up in front of nature. He was the first to paint
in the open air. This immediate contact with nature from the beginning
of a picture to its end brought with it a degree of realism that was the
prelude to Impressionism. One day, or even one hour, he said, was never
like the next, and two leaves had never been the same since the Creation.
Constable was thus the first who tried to catch the fleeting moment,
the ever-changing scene before his eyes. To give expression to what he
he invented new techniques, but he never formulated any theory. He
felt,
medium, bothered little about composition, and relied

acted rather like a
on love and admiration for the beauty of nature to inspire him, with the
result that without ever seeking to be spectacular (indeed he was averse

to any kind of showiness) he unwittingly produced the boldest rhythmic
innovations. With such a combination of gifts and artlessness he achieved
a success that no one could have foreseen, both at home, where he became
a Royal Academician in 1829, and on the Continent, where the seeds
borne by his painting began to germinate almost everywhere. At the Sa-
lon of 1824 Delacroix exhibited the Massacre of Chios and Constable
showed three pictures, A View near London, An English Canal and, especi-
ally, The Hay-Wain, which made a great impression on many French
painters. When Delacroix saw it, he said: 'Constable is good for me', and
retouched the sky of the Massacre. Its message certainly was not lost on
Corot; Courbet, Boudin, and Monet derived great benefit from it too.
Turner {figs. 150, 151, 153-155)

The roads by which Constable and Turner led the way towards modern
art ran roughly parallel, although Turner's was the broader of the two.
However, as men they were very different indeed. Constable came of a
well-to-do family and received many legacies, while Turner was born in
obscurity and want. Constable's life was calm and untroubled by worries,
whereas Turner, the Soho barber's son, sought in art the light that was
missing from his grim and sombre life. The good sense, modesty, and
prudence of the one contrasted with the soaring visions, the lyrical intox-
ication of the other. Joseph Mallord William Turner was born in Lon-
don in 1775. His drawings were noticed while he was still in his youth,
and he entered the Soho Academy, from which he passed to the Royal
Academy School. At first he practised drawing alone, and it was only
towards S(X) that he began to paint in oil. There was an interval before
1
he found a personal style, and he spent a long time in experiments that

failed to give him satisfaction.
Form, and colour: he put the emphasis on each in turn. Then he
line,
tackled the problem of light and atmosphere until, in water-colour or in
oil, he hardly needed a foundation of drawing and could capture the
flicker and undulation of the elements by using innumerable delicate
washes of colour. By the time this triumph was achieved, he was fifty
years old. Atmospheric effect! he then heightened to the utmost possible
degree, so that first they smothered and then annihilated all but what was
directly relevant to the truly cosmic dramas that absorbed his vision.
was this more the ease than when he discovered Venice. It sent his
imagination reeling; to him it was like a world of dreams, and no man
ever equalled him as its interpreter. His painting thus entered a phase of
dream- in te rotation, of Traumdeutungt where colour alone appeared
througt et of ever-greater abstraction. This was, beyond question,
the first tiple of pure painting. It anticipates the Impressionists by
THE BIRTH OF LANDSCAPE-PAINTING 19
fifty years, and reaches forward into that realm of ambiguous, suggestive
imagination which the tachistes and a whole swarm of lyrical abstrac-

tionists were to explo it in the twentieth century. In one of his last works, the
famous Rain, Steam and Speed, landscape has vanished entirely. Full
credit for pointing out a genius thathad too long remained unknown
abroad due to Ruskin, who wrote that his generation was not yet ripe
is
for Turner's work, that Turner was too far above their heads.
Bonington {figs. 159-163)

Yet another artist took a hand in France with the English con-
fertilizing
ception of landscape-painting, although he did so more as an intermedi-
ary than by the direct influence of his work, for he died at the early age
of twenty-six. Richard Parkes Bonington was born in England in 1801/02.
While still very young he settled at Calais, which was then a centre of
British culture and smart life, where two of his fellow-countrymen had
started a landscape-painting school. He studied with them for a time, and
then moved on to Paris, where he rounded off his training at the Louvre
and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He also worked in the studio under Gros,
where David's principles were instilled into him. However, his response
to them was cool, and his English temperament prevailed. He found an
abundance of subjects that made a deep appeal to him in France and,
with his superb command of technique, he used them to make wonder-
ful renderings of the limpid atmosphere of countrysides wide open to
the sky. Water-colour he handled like a master, and his skill in getting
the same fluid qualities in oil aroused the admiration of Delacroix. The
Paris Salon of 1824 showed several of his works as well as Constable's,
and thus they both helped to spread the gospel of English landscape-
painting. Many artists received that gospel in France, among them Fran-
çois-Marius Granet (whose portrait Ingres painted), Paul Huet, Jean-
Baptiste Isabey and especially Georges Michel.
Corot (figs. 38-43)

Although his personality prevents our fitting him into any school and his
approach was different from those described above, Corot's name stands
first on the long list of great French landscape-painters. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau had already made nature the fashion, of course, but it was only
with Corot that landscape-painting came of age. Before then, it was bound
hand and foot to the academic rules, or else it was spent on artificialities
and decorations that had no connection with genuine feeling. As a genre,
it fully justified Constable's gibe at those who did their work with draw-
ing-boards and plaster-casts, and knew no more about nature than a

cab-horse knew about meadows. A slight exception might, at best, be
made for Georges Michel (fig. 5). He was one of the first Frenchmen who
had a feeling for nature, but he suppressed it out of respect for the old
principle that the subject must be idealized.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was born in 1796 of a family of shop-
keepers. He was a simple man, a good man, who had few needs and hated
any kind of complication. He led a quiet life wholly devoted to his work,
and his work turned out to be among the greatest of the century. A small
allowance from his family enabled him to give himself up entirely to what
he called his 'madness*, and he had no need to sell his paintings or attract
attention. Indeed, he did not sell a single picture until 1852 when he was
sixty-six. The buyer was an American who had climbed the stairs to his
studio. Corot was both indifferent and surprised; in fact he was rather
puzzled. 'Oh well', he said as his customer went away, 'it's his look-out.'
Unlike the other painters of his time, Corot started painting rather late,
for he was twenty-six before he resolved to abandon business. The only
lasting result of his studies under two rather academic painters was a
sound piece of ad\ ice from one of them which he never forgot. His men-
tor was a man named Michallon, brilliant and wealthy and about the
same age as himself, who urged him to stick to nature and simply copy
what he saw. Tins, in fact, was all that Corot did; the rest was done by his
natural talent and his concentration on the task in hand.
In 825 he made the first of his three famous visits to Italy. There, even
1
face to face w ith his subject, he could preserve his feeling for classical tra-
dition from the artificialities in which convention still required the histor-
ic scencr\ of Italy to be disguised. These were years of exciting discover-
ies and hard schooling. The Roman sun, pitiless and almost white, was
enough to make him despair, as he said, but he was undeterred. He

went on making studies direct from nature until he had mastered every
problem and produced some miracles of painting in the process. The first
group of landscapes he did in Ital> are among the most sensitive of all his
works. The perfect organization of their rhythms owes nothing to acad-
emic rules, but derives from the unerring instinct that chose his subjects
for him, from the elimination o\' unwanted detail, and from a divinatory
kind of sense that led him straight to the very heart of places, regardless
of cliches and appearances. Corot thus made a wholly fresh approach to
themes which the painters of all Europe had been handling for centuries,
and bestowed an aura of ingenuous freshness upon scenes long over-bur-
dened with historic grandeur. He abhorred violent contrasts. He limited
his range o( tone, and bent all his powers on rendering the exact play of
light upon volumes. In theend. he developed a sense of values that enabled
him to give a Living, accurate account of atmosphere while paying all pos-
sible attention to reality. No painter ever got closer to nature or had more
intimate relations with her. By scrupulous observation, by refusing
all preconceptions, he worked out his techniques and formed a style
REALISM 21
which eventually gave birth to a wholly new conception of landscape-

painting.
For all the depth of the convictions that inspired him, Corot could
never bring himself to utter them in public. When it came to sending pic-
tures to the Salon he kept his triumphs to himself. All he sent in were
paintings of a neo-classical kind that gave no hint of what he was actually
doing. In consequence, although he had already painted the Colosseum,
the Forum, the Island of San Bartolommeo and the Promenade du Poussin,
(masterpieces, every one) his genius long remained unrecognized.
Back in his native land in 1828, he responded to the gentler light of the
Ile-de-France. There he began a series of his loveliest paintings, in a mood
of delicate haze, with pale greys lightly veiling the colours of nature. His
study of light was thus taken a step further on the path that led to Impres-
sionism.
Chartres Cathedral (1830) (fig. 38), Honfleur Harbour (1830), Gardens
of the Villa d'Esté (1843) and Mantes Harbour (1870) are the pictures
that mark the stages in the expansion of an ever-widening horizon. But
he was still almost unknown in 1846 when Baudelaire and Champfleury
noticed him and showed some interest. Even so, it was some time before
anyone realized he had always painted figures too, and that these were
marked by the same grace and sense of poetry as his landscapes.
The three thousand odd paintings that Corot left behind can be grouped
under various headings sketches and paintings done from nature in Italy
:
France, Switzerland, and Holland; large compositions intended for the

Salons; figure-studies and figure-compositions done from models, some
indoors and some in the open air; and, from 1850 onwards, canvases
painted from memory in the studio. Taken all together and regarded as a
single whole, Corot's work was the product of a solitary genius. His his-
torical importance, on the other hand, rests entirely on the works he paint-
ed direct from nature in the open air, and it is to these, with their full
translation of visual experience, that he owes his place in history as an
independent pioneer of realism in landscape-painting and his rank as one
of the founders of modern art.
Realism
With Corot we can close what may be called the first chapter of the nine-
teenth century. The line is arbitrarily drawn, of course, but the charge
can be made against any other attempt at chronological classification in a
century so marked by cross-currents, overlappings, and parallels, both in
the development of the various artistic trends and in the field of biogra-
phy. Corot, indeed, lived long enough to see the advent of Impressionism.
However, by his approach to art and the place which his painting holds
in it, he is really the last of the avant-garde that led the way from the
eighteenth century to the various schools which form the immediate
background to the twentieth. If, then, we consider the outstanding paint-
ers of 1800 to 1850 we shall find they are the sources of all succeeding
movements. For all their differences of approach, the general phenomenon
that dominates their work is an unmistakable urge towards reality and
nature, a shift of balance from technique to feeling, with a gradual loss of
respect for all conventions. The lesson which these artists had to offer was
accepted in varying degrees by their successors, irrespective of adherence
to principle, and hence we can imagine the prodigious ferment their dis-
coveries set up. Some broad and general groupings can be made never-
theless. A concern for reality was general, true enough, but it took a number
of different paths. Starting with the English landscape-painters, it led via
Corot, touched Delacroix and passed through the schools of Bar-
Lightly,
bizon and Honfleur to the Impressionists. Géricault and Delacroix took
a route of which one fork ended in the Symbolists, while the heritage of
Goya, having first caused Delacroix to paint the Women ofAlgiers, passed
into the magisterial hands of Courbet and Daumier, the two great realists
of the age.
Courbet ( figs. 51 55)

\\ hen c iprès-dlnée à Ornons appeared at the Salon of 1849, the
bill bet's
effect produced on Ingres and Delacroix was one of astonishment and
it
admiration. Delacroix could not contain himself: 'Did you ever see any-
thing like it.' he exclaimed, 'anything so powerful-and derived from no-
body? This man reall> is original, a revolutionary too. He has burst upon
us, out of nowhere, quite unknown.' Gustave Courbet had been discov-
ered, a man whose art was to prove itself close kin with those of Dela-
croix and Ingres, yet very different from both. Ingres claimed to have
found the ideal in nature, while Delacroix, who was not so favoured,
filled the deficiency w ith his imagination. Courbet,
on the other hand, had
no imagination and a different notion of the ideal. As he saw it, every-
thing in nature was beautiful, and greatness was to be sought in the stark-
est realism. What Delacroix was driven to invent, Courbet took direct
from life. Above all, he took the world as he found it, and when he showed
Baigneuses at the Salon of 1853 he drove Delacroix himself to
protest that the subject and the forms alike were vulgar. That fact alone
shows what an advance Courbet had made at a single leap. Beauty was
no longer to be thought of in relation to the subject. A new freedom had
conquered: freedom of subject and treatment. Moreover, realism
uses to be real women, intent on basing their bath: the)
lj pretexts l'or a graceful displa> o\' academic poses.
REALISM 23
Courbet stated his position several times, although he had no taste for
theory and was more a peasant than an intellectual, despite the time he
had spent studying law. 'Beauty', he said, 'is in nature and is to be found
in reality, in every sort of form. Once found, it belongs to the domain of
art, or rather it belongs to the artist who knows how to find it there. When
beauty has become real and visible it contains its own expression in art.
But the artist has no right to add to that expression. Touch it, and you
risk altering its nature - and in the end you weaken it. The beauty offered
by nature rises above all the conventions of artists.'
As is almost inevitably the case, this doctrine was rooted in the painter's
origins and character. Courbet came of a family of wine-growers in the
Franche-Comté and he never ceased to be a countryman at heart rough, :
a little simple perhaps, and direct, as was only natural. He was strongly
built, and his health was superb; in brief, he was a piece of nature her-
self. Even the long years in Paris, where he had his studio, had no effect
upon the tastes and habits of his youth; his understanding of peasants,
workmen and other humble folk he portrayed was therefore natural, and
he was in perfect communion of spirit with them. Add this to a somewhat
anarchistic temperament, and one has the key to his political views. Al-
though, by his own admission, he never tried to do any 'committed' paint-
ing, he became the symbol of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's brand of social-
ism. He confessed that when painting the Stone-Breakers, which was
regarded in its day as a socialist manifesto, he was inspired by nothing
more than pity for the sad and hopeless lot of two workmen he had seen
one day. Yet he put so much feeling for truth and humanity into the pic-
ture that it emerged as a stinging rebuke to the bourgeoisie of the time.
The Funeral at Ornans breathes the same feeling for humanity, expressed
with a simple, natural grandeur. Sorrow pervades every corner of the
picture. Despite the overpowering atmosphere of the central drama,
every figure in it is distinctly seen as a separate character with his own
peculiarities broadly indicated in each detail of his nature and emotions.
All thisis done with a perfect reticence of intention and effect and with
a sort of calm objectivity quite different from Daumier's passion.

Courbet has been charged, of course, with thinking he was painting
reality when he clearly saw was the externals. The truth, however, is
all
that he rise far above the level of appearances by virtue of his
was able to
massive personality. He had learned a great deal from his study of the
Masters, but he was essentially a man of instinct, an empiric, who did not
so much apply the Masters' theories as their spirit. Proof of this can be
found in VAtelier {The Artist' s Studio) (fig. 55), one of his most magister-
ial works, in which he combines his sense of the real with a consummate
skill in composition. Countless artists have painted studio-scenes in the
course of recent centuries, and have usually made them an excuse for
showing what they could do way of an intimate, informal atmos-

in the
phere. But Courbet never did what others did. His studio-scene was a
bravura piece, exceptional from every point of view, including even his
own.
The painting is an immense affair - ten feet by nearly twenty - a size
that is normally reserved for history or mythology. The large canvas was
chosen as a new vehicle for his sense of reality, his reaction to the passing
scene. The figures in it represent real people as Courbet saw them. There
is the poet Baudelaire, the writer Champfleury, the collector Bruyas, and
so forth. But the scene itself, the whole conception of the picture, belongs
to the realm o\' pure imagination. This duality explains the self-contradic-
tory Label, '
Real Allegory', which he attached to the picture -when he
I
showed it. with some forty more, under the general title 'Realism: G.
Courbet' at a one-man exhibition in 1855. Among the other pictures
there was La Rencontre (The Meeting), otherwise called "Bonjour, Mon-
sieur Courbet*, which had to o\o with an actual event. In The Artist's Stu-
dio, however, the painter was inconsistent with himself, and for once he
tackled a theme based on an idea, an allegory in which every figure, him-

self included, is an actor. What he did was to bring together on one can-
vas all the people who were his closest friends or who had professional
connections with him. In an enormous studio, with walls that vanish into
the shadows, the) are ranged in a semi-circle, mere 'supers' in a scene
where the centre of the stage is held h> the Master. Courbet is painting a
landscape at Ornans under the admiring eyes of his naked model and of
a shepherd bo> from his native province. No single work could give a
better or fuller definition o\ the man. his life, and his ideas than this mon-
umental self-portrait It shows the fullness of his stature and reveals
what he. the prophet of the direct image, could do when matched with the
greatest masters of composition. Delacroix, on seeing it, had no hesitation
in saying, 'I recognize a masterpiece.' a tribute all the more impressive
when one considers that Courbet had condemned Delacroix's Romanti-
cism to death.
Courbet's vigorous, uncomplicated character, and his involvement in
the turbulent political events o\' his times have made him a somewhat
legendary figure, a son o\' tribune of the people. He has been charged
with basing toppled the Column in the Place Vendôme from its pedestal
during the Commune, and he very likely did so. However, it would be
misleading to regard such an act as anything more than the outcome of an
impulsive nature, detonated b> the electric atmosphere of the moment.
At all events he tied to Switzerland. He was then proscribed in France,
an J the Courbet legend grew even greater. For our present purpose we
necci onl> note that exile provided him w ith fresh horizons, and the land-
that resulted are by no means the least impressive of his works.
REALISM 25
Courbet's revolutionary role was not simply political; it was far more
important than that. It is certainly true that popular feeling crystallized
around his work and that his power of expression and his spirit gave
additional impetus to ideas of great political importance. However, what
is is that he caused a decisive revolution in the
of greater significance
painter's artby propounding objectives and conceptions, an entire aesthe-
tic ethos, whose novelty was absolute. The work of Courbet, in fact, is
one of the strongest links in the chain of reactions which was to replace
one kind of art by another in the course of less than a century.
Daumier (figs. 28-32)

Courbet may have tasted exile at the end of his life, but Honoré Daumier
endured a taste of prison in Sainte-Pélagie at the age of only twenty-six.
This was in 1832, when a caricature of King Louis-Philippe put him be-
hind bars for six months. There were many similarities between the two
painters. The talent of each was in the service of realism, and each was a
determined opponent of the established order. They were both men of
instinct, ruled more by the heart than by the head, and they were equally
in debt to Goya and, of course, to Géricault. In many other respects, how-
ever, they were very dissimilar, and the gulf between them looms much
larger in the light of their origins and their careers. Courbet was every inch
a countryman, but Daumier was a thoroughly urban creature. The man
from the Franche-Comté had a self-assurance and a rather simple vanity
that matched his stature and robust good health, but the little marseillais
who settled in Paris was artless, shy, and rather delicate. Courbet was
'born with hay in his boots', as the French saying goes, but Daumier, the
son of an impoverished writer, bowed down by hard luck and adversity,
was doomed to be perpetually short of money. Finally, Daumier was
much the more sensitive of the two: more easily moved, more deeply
committed by his feeling for humanity. Because of his background, he
was more conscious of his solidarity with the victims of the social injusti-
ces he exposed so well in his art (he himself was of their number), whereas
Courbet's life, if we except his political mishaps, escaped the harder blows
of fate. Daumier, moreover, was unusual among the artists of his day in
that painting played only a small part in his life, not that his merit or im-
portance are the less for that.
The Gens de Justice was eleven years older than Cour-
portraitist of the
bet. He was born and was only eight when his fami-
at Marseilles in 1802,
ly brought him to Paris. He had to go to work at an early age, first with
a bailiff and then with a bookseller, and each of these jobs brought him
into contact with the sort of characters that were to provide his subject-
matter at a later stage. Soon he began to draw, and his talent for it decided
his career. At sixteen he was contributing to the press, and thus began a
career as draughtsman and lithographer that lasted fifty years. This was
the time when lithography was still in its early stages. Géricault, Dela-
croix and Goya had all experimented with it, but the hand of Daumier
was the one that made it an independent art. By his death he had produced
some four thousand prints, mostly of a satirical kind. When he joined the
Charivari he took up politics and harassed the Government with his
cartoons. Brushes with the law then made some caution seem advisable,
and although he went on caricaturing parliamentary deputies and office-
holders he began to enlarge his field of subjects to include the Bench, the
manners and customs of the Courts, and so on. Eventually, every type of
citizen in the city was his subject.
It was the breadth of his style as much as the warmth of his sympathies
that enabled Daumier to raise the standing of the cartoonist's art. He

was a shrewd and perspicacious observer, moved by a deep concern for
justice remarkably free from rancour or ill-will. Forain's (fig. 84) remark
is always quoted in this context: 'Oh,' he said, 'Daumier, he was quite
different. He was a generous man.' Ferocity was quite alien to him, how-
ever deeply he was bent on vengeance. There was nothing negative or
destructive in his make-up; his aim was simply to present a lucid and
impartial view of things in the hope of stirring the public conscience to
reform abuses inimieal to the interests of the ordinary citizen. This is
the most revealing light in which to view his work: the ceaseless critical
campaign he waged against the bourgeois society of the time in a succes-
sion of celebrated series ranging from the Rue Transnonain to the Gens de
Justice. In the course of these attacks, he often dwelt with genuine pathos
on the sufferings of the poor, while he also invented such immortal cha-
*
racters as RatapoiV and 'Robert Macaire*.
However, drawing was not the whole of Daumier's activities. He went
in for sculpture too,having studied the sculpture of the Masters in the
Louvre. The most distinctive characteristics of his lithographs are his
wonderful gift for drawing and his amazing sense of black-and-white.
His statuettes in bronze and the bas-relief of the Emigrants also show
decisiveness, with an accuracy ofline and a spasmodic kind of movement
that make them intensely alive. It has been said in this connection that
during the tir st part of his career he saw lite with a sculptor's eye, and in
facthe was over forty before he turned to painting. Here he was influ-
enced by his Barbizon friends, especially Daubigny. Because of all the other
work that claimed his attention, he was never able to give as much time
to painting as he ver> likel> should have. Between 1X48 and 1870 he did
only about a hundred paintings, and that was all he ever produced. In
he submitted a sketch to a competition for a figure of the Republic,
but he did not compete for the commission itself. This was also the year in
he did the sketches lor La Barricade (The Riot), which was intend-
REALISM 27
ed as a symbol of the Revolution of 1848 and a sort of companion -piece

to Liberty leading the People, which Delacroix had painted in 1830. The
following year he sent The Miller, His Son and a Donkey to the Salon, with
further paintings in 1850, 1852, 1861, 1864, and 1868. His fellow artists
were greatly impressed by his paintings, but the public cared only for his
lithographs and drawings. The artists not only recognized the influence
of Rembrandt and of Rubens in his work, but, more than that, they saw
a new kind of strength in the astonishing freedom of Daumier's style,
with its impetuous, dynamic brushwork, its dramatic harmonies of muted
colour, and its use of figures and faces in shadow against blazing back-
grounds. But the public took a different view they completely missed the
;
point of this abrupt, allusive manner, and were shocked by what they
thought was slovenly technique, the apparent lack of interest in 'finish'
that makes all his paintings look like sketches.
It is not true, as has sometimes been alleged, that Daumier was un-
known as a painter. The truth is simply that his paintings were not as
popular as his drawings, and many of his contemporaries, with better
judgement than the crowd, regretted that his paintings were so few. Some
at least had recognized the humanity and poetry which his work dis-
played the indignation, for example, in The Rising or The Emigrants
:
(subjects he treated several times in different media), or the pity for street-
urchins, laundry-women, and strolling musicians, notably in The Circus
Parade, the last picture he ever painted. Then there were the allegorical
and mythological subjects (Oedipus and the Shepherd), scenes from fami-
ly-life (The Third-Class Carriage), scenes from the world of art, (The Print-
Collectors (fig. 28) and The Sculptor's Studio), theatrical scenes, subjects
taken from circuses and fairs (The Melodrama and The Acrobats' Parade),
and scenes from the law-courts. Lastly, there are the admirable, fantastic,
rather dizzying portraits of Don Quixote (fig. 32) where, in the Don's
generosity and adventurous self-sacrifice and in Sancho Panza's resig-
nation, the artist might have recognised some of his own features.
It is interesting to speculate on what Daumier's reputation might have
been had he given at least as much time and energy to painting as he gave
to his profession as a chronicler. Certainly he raised the status of his
trade, but it denied him the chance of total self-fulfilment. Nonetheless
his work, although incomplete and thus to some extent unfinished, had
a widespread influence, and many later artists have benefited from the
example of his genius.
Millet (figs. 35-37)

It is sometimes difficult to assign an artist a logical place in the historical
process of development. François Millet's is a case in point. He was a
landscape painter who, soon after his studies were over, joined the Barbi-
zon group in the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he made friends with

Théodore Rousseau and where he spent most of his life. He had a strong
feeling for humanity and an attachment to the soil that were even stronger
and more direct than Courbet's. Also, he had a desire to represent
the peasant soul with the purest possible degree of truth. These things
firmly place him among the realists, yet one thing marks him off from the
other Barbizon painters: man always occupies the central place in his
work.
Millet was born on a farm in the Manche, and throughout his life he
never forgot that he had worked on the land as a youth. His talent for
drawing led his family to send him to study under a painter at Cherbourg,
and a scholarship enabled him to pursue his studies in Paris, where he
became a pupil of Paul Delaroche. He was a frequent visitor to the studio
of Narcisse Diaz de la Pena, a talented, impulsive, unconventional Span-
iard, and in the Louvre he was most impressed by Mantegna, Giorgione,
Michelangelo and Poussin. He spent some time experimentingwith differ-
ent styles, and he could easily have earned his living by catering for pop-
ular tastes. But the eas) way was foreign to his nature. The first picture
he sent to the Salon (in 1843) was refused, but he gained entry the follow-
ing year with his Leçon cT Equitation The Riding-Lesson). About a year
(
later he had found his vocation; it lay within himself, in the man he was
and in the soil he could no more desert than Courbet could. He began to
take his subjects from rural life, and rendered them with a simplicity and
a tone that was entire]) new. In 1848, in the midst of the Revolution, The
Winnower brought him his first success. This was the first of a series of
rural subjects, including The Sower, I he Woman Gleaning, The Woman
Shearing Sheep, and the famous Angelas, in which he created the world
that is now associated with his name, the gently illuminated world
of the peasant, with its unalterable movements and its humble, daily
round, seen as a symbol of eternal truth.
Millet could never settle down to city life, and in 1849 he retired to
Barbizon, where he renewed his association with Rousseau. There, in rural
surroundings reminiscent of his childhood, he could really work, and
there he brought forth the best that w as m him, participating in his friends'
discussions on aesthetics but remaining faithful to his personal manner.
He disliked the ihow) elVects and violent contrasts that the earlier Ro-
mantics had favoured. On the other hand, his sense of realism led him to
seek psychological truth not only in his choice of subject but through
quiet strength in design and,above all, through a melancholy tone which
suited to perfection the vision hewanted to express. Such methods do, of
course, discard the exhilarating power of colour, but Millet was capable
o\' communicating deep emotion by these sober restricted means. His
composition, too, has a monumental grandeur, and in pictures such as

the landscape-painters: barbizon and honfleur 29
The Sower his sense of form reveals an almost sculptural power. Taken
all together, his paintings radiate a psychological influence that was to
have an important effect on artists working later in the century, notably
van Gogh, for whom Millet was the true master of reality.
The Landscape-Painters: Barbizon and Honfleur
As Romantic movement passed its zenith, certain ideas the Roman-

the
tics had experimented with began to come into their own. Corot was in
Italy, replenishing his taste for nature. Courbet, in Paris, was giving ar-
tistic form to the inner vision he had brought with him from his native
province, while the English, travelling further than anyone along that
path, had already shown the world many of the possibilities that land-
scape could offer as a subject in itself. Art had progressed a long way from
David's conception of it, although his death was still quite recent. One
concept, above all, was doomed beyond reprieve the idea of man as a
;
central, creative element in the artist's work was giving place to other
values. Its importance declined with the passing of Daumier, Delacroix,
and Courbet, grew weaker still with Manet and Monet, and, with the
Post-Impressionists at the century's end, it disappeared entirely.
By imperceptible degrees, almost surreptitiously, landscape came to
dominate painting in France. Some painters (minor ones, it is true), re-
flected the influence ofConstable and Bonington; others again drew in-
spiration from the Dutch and Flemings. Independents such as Georges
Michel, Paul Huet (1803-1869) and Eugène Isabey (1803-1886) started
down the same path without, however, suspecting where it led. These were
all isolated departures, and no general movement emerged for the time
being. When it actually did emerge, after the Revolution of 1848, it was
rather a matter of chance, for it was born in the little village of Barbizon,
in the Forest of Fontainebleau, which the painters at the court of Fran-
çois I had once made famous. The outcome was the Barbizon school,
with Théodore Rousseau its unchallenged leader, a school whose painters
never scaled the heights of the greatest Masters but who served as a ne-
cessary bridge from the Romantics to the Impressionists.
Rousseau (fig. 44)

Théodore Rousseau was born in 1812 in Paris. After several unsuccessful
attempts to get his work accepted by the Salon, he abandoned art and led
the life of a recluse. Because he was so ill at ease in Paris, he took refuge
at Barbizon, where he soon found himself one of a whole band of painters
just as disappointed with the opposition of the bourgeois and official
worlds, and as much in love with nature, as he was himself. Millet, of
course, was there, and so were Diaz de la Pena, Jules Dupré, Constant
Troyon, and Charles-François Daubigny. At first, they were still
somewhat infected with Romanticism, but they began to cure themselves
by close observation of nature. Their admitted aim was to improve
nature, but never to idealize it. Like Courbet they wanted to represent the
truth without being bound by convention, but it was the truth about
landscape that they sought. Various as they were in temperament, they
were all straining to achieve simplicity by giving an objective account of
the scene before their eyes. Nature was not to be utilised for ulterior ends;
the artist was simply to bring out her greatness, her nobility, and the
countless ways in which her beauty changed while its essence remained
immutable.
In Rousseau, who was the most fervent advocate of the Barbizon aesthe-
tic, this feeling attained the strength of an almost religious conviction.
In a very real sense Rousseau had heard the appeal of nature, had under-
stood the message of the trees as they whispered in the wind, and had
mastered 'the language of the forests', as he liked to call it. Driven by this
conviction tie showed a tendency to glorify the scenes he painted, choos-
ing by preference those that had a touch of the majestic or theatrical.
Despite his predilection for the melodramatic, however, Rousseau was
skilful enough to temper the romantic flavour of, for example, his sun-
sets, w ith a certain rustic naturalism. He could unite the romantic and the
naturalistic elements of his style into a harmonious whole, and, in this

he made admirable use o\' the movement of tree-trunks and foliage. Trees
indeed, were a fascinating subject for the whole of the Barbizon group
for whom their vigour was a symbol o\' nature's omnipotence and vitali
ty. Each of them tried to express this feeling in his own way: Jules Dupré
(1811 880) by setting compact masses against effects of light, Diaz de la

1
Pefta (fig. 33) by employing a degree of lyricism that was sometimes spoil-
ed by a touch of preciousness.
For considerable period, Rousseau's only comfort was the firmness
a
of his friendships, especially that with Daumier, who did a magnificent
portrait of him. However, a belated tribute, amounting almost to a re-
habilitation, was paid to him at the Universal Exhibition of 1855, and
this broad survey showed the true significance of his work. Man had
vanished from his pictures, and their interest was centred only on the
powerful feelings which the changing seasons, the colour of the landscape,
and the movement o\' the trees can arouse in a sensitive mind.
Not all the painters who gravitated around Rousseau were landscape-
artists. There were also some ver) Successful animal-painters at Barbizon,
although their work holds little interest today. Among the more promin-
ent were Constant [royon, who had greatly admired Paul Potter's works
in Holland, Rosa Bonheur (1S22 -1899), and the pamter-sculptor An-
the landscape-painters: barbizon and honfleur 31
toine-Louis Barye (1795-1875), whose talents had developed in the shade

of Delacroix.
Daubigny {fig. 34)

The work of Charles-François Daubigny stands apart from that of his
fellows, and reveals the trend towards Impressionism. Daubigny had
studied under Paul Delaroche, and his early pictures showed first a Neo-
classical bias, and later an inclination towards realism which led to a
better conception of landscape painting, as was evident in the works he
sent to the Salon between 1843 and 1848. Close relations with Corot in
1852 did not affect his adherence to the naturalistic style on which his
reputation rests. He and Rousseau were the first to paint pictures from
open air (Corot had always completed his landscapes
start to finish in the
in the studio). He was also first in the field with a style of greater intimacy
and with lighter and more vivid colour-harmonies so that his subjects
seemed to change appearance with the vibrations of the light. In this,
Daubigny seems a precursor of Impressionism, and indeed he was al-
ways ready to support the younger artists. In particular, he gave many
marks of encouragement to the young Monet, who acknowledged him as
master. He painted scenes in the valley of the Oise, anticipated Monet at
Argenteuil, and preceded van Gogh at Auvers, which he made one of the
centres of modern art.
In 1865 Daubigny was painting at Trouville with Monet, Courbet and

Boudin, and this event marks the amalgamation of two important schools,
Barbizon and Honfleur, the latter being also known as the Saint-Siméon
school or, again, as the 'estuary-painters'.
Boudin (figs. 47-50)

The artists to enjoy the free, fresh air of the sandy Chan-
who had come
nel coast tended to gather around Eugène Boudin, a native of those parts.
The really decisive year in the formation of the Honfleur group was 858, 1
when the meeting of Boudin and Jongkind took place. The latter was a
Dutchman, bohemian and valetudinarian at once, who, having visited
Paris in 1845, remained in France, drawing and painting as he drifted
around the country. In the following year, 1 859, the two of them met Cour-
bet at Le Havre, and Boudin also made the acquaintance of Baudelaire.
Although the two painters became fast friends, they were very different
types. Boudin was a simple, local man, who painted the sea with loving
care, using a somewhat precious range of colour. He was driven by an
intense desire to be accurate, and, by always trying to capture the scene
as the ever-changing light transformed it, he succeeded to a marvellous
degree. His beginnings had been influenced by Isabey, Troyon, and Co-
rot, but his association with Jongkind gave him a more personal tech-
nique and style. Using impasto and harmonies of ever paler colours, he
achieved an exceeding delicacy of tone, in which soft greys impart great
vividness to the occasional notes of pure colour. Although many of his
pictures are very small, they possess an undeniable power; this was exact-
ly what he had in mind when he used to say, 'condense things: the smal-
lest frame is enough for a great picture.'
Jongkind {figs. 45-46)

The Dutchman, Johan Barthold Jongkind, seemed to be in a perpetual
state of emotion, and was even more of a child of instinct than his Nor-
man friend. He was an odd creature, but his vagaries were atoned for by
visions of such delicacy, handled with such inspiration, that they defy all
attempt to attach him to a school. Jongkind had neither education, nor
artistic philosophy; his one concern was to get away from himself and
from the misery of illness. He drowned his troubles in painting as others

drown them and appeared to derive solace from open plains,
in drink,
wide skies, and the broad expanse of the sea where long, straight, hori-
zontal lines con\e> a sense o\' calm. Like the English before him and
mans landseape-painters afterwards, he painted in water-colour as well
as oils, and achieved a rare perfection in its use. Using washes done di-
rectly in the open air. he conveyed a spontaneity that was lacking in his
oils, a freshness of impression, and an originality of character that justify
his reputation even today. he speed with which he recorded the most
I
transient changes of atmosphere and light make Jongkind a true fore-

runner o\' Impressionism, and Monet himself was known to ask him for
advice. Me had a decided influence on the landscape-painters of his own
and the succeeding generation, men like Monet, Sisley and Bazille in
particular. All o( them lodged m their day with Mère Toutain on her
farm at Saint-Simeon, where old and young had long and stimulating
conversations and roved the countryside around Etretat and Sainte-
Adresse. e Havre and Dieppe. These were days in which a new move-
1
ment was beginning to establish itself, one of the most influential move-
ments of modern times; Honlleur ma> indeed be called the birthplace of
Impressionism.
Impressionism
From that gathering at e Havre m 1862, we can trace a direct chain of

1
influences from Boudin and Jongkind to Monet, Renoir. Manet, Sisley,

Bazille, Pissarro, Degas, and Cézanne. his chain continues to the point
I
at which Cézanne declared his intention of making impressionism 'an art

as iiutable as the an you find in museums' and stamped on it a character
IMPRESSIONISM 33
which, when pushed to its logical extremes, gave rise to an anti-Impres-

sionist reaction and to some of the most typical trends of the twentieth
century.
In 1862 Manet was painting La Musique aux Tuileries, and making
friends with Degas. In the previous year, Degas had been turning out
still
academic compositions, but now he was painting the first of his Horse-
Races at Longchamps. Cézanne had arrived in Paris and ,was getting to
know Pissarro, while Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Bazille were meeting
together at the Atelier G ley re. The following year saw the historic uproar
over Manet's Déjeuner sur V Herbe in the Salon des Refusés, as well as the
death of Delacroix. Truly, a page of history was being turned, and the
marks of a new world were to appear on the next one. The door which
had been forced open at the start of the century was leading to the passage
from one epoch to another. Now, in the early 1860s, it was firmly closing
on the past.
Therein lies the whole importance of Impressionism. It represented the
final assault by which the nineteenth-century revolution in art triumphed.
This accounts for the violent reactions that greeted its appearance.
However, to ascribe this violence merely to the movement's novelty of
technique, or to what then seemed an outrage to aesthetic standards,
would be to do it less than justice. The reaction was provoked not by the
material facts alone, but also, and possibly even more significantly, by
underlying factors in the spheres of sociology and morals. The very con-
cept of a work of art, the relation of the artist to society, his significance
as revealed in the work that he creates, these things are the essential ele-
ments in what we should regard primarily as an adventure of the spirit.
The conquest of the artist's freedom which the Romantics had begun was
now complete and final. The artist, conscious of his newly-won indepen-
dence, could now at last give his audience a vivid display of his mind and
soul in full and free florescence by choosing a technique to suit his person-
al thoughts and aims, without any regard for taboos. He could devise
his means of expression purely to match the demands of his own indivi-
duality.
Liberty had now become total, both liberty of theme and of expression.
The painter was no longer held in the strait-jacket of categories and con-
ventions laid down 'once and for all' at some dim date in another age. He
could leave the ivory tower to which he had been consigned, go down into
the street, and take an active part in life. Art had brought itself up-to-
date, and made the realities of daily life its raw material. The point of the
controversy over Manet's famous painting was simply that. It was not the
first time, of course, that a naked woman had figured in a contemporary
painting. Courbet's Studio, eight years earlier, had done the same thing.
Although Courbet's realism had produced a shock, the nude model could
at least pretend to have an allegorical meaning. But Manet's Déjeuner had

decisively blown the bridges. Not only was the lady shown in the com-
pany of people wearing everyday clothes - which in itself was enough to
make her seem inordinately familiar with them - but, although she was
nude, she could claim no higher significance whatever. Until Manet's
painting, the law had required the nude to be deified. Manet ripped the
veil of hypocrisy to shreds, and abolished the pretence. That was the real
reason for the outcry over his painting, and the howl went up again for
similar reasons at the first Impressionist Exhibition in 1874 when Monet,
who could so easily have called his picture simply Sunrise, declined to do
so and called it Impression: Sunrise in order to emphasize his real inten-
tions. By doing this he gave a jolt to accepted standards; his painting
upset the man in the street by flouting his habits of mind and presenting
him with a world in which he did not feel at home. With this picture, Mo-
net had arrived at a culmination of the ideas that went back to Corot and
Daubigny. The point of his picture was to give an impression; in other
words, it was a pictorial rendering of a personal sensation, regardless of
any other factor. Much time was to pass before the public would admit
that a picture is first of all a painting, and not a picture of something. The
term 'Impressionism' was first launched by a reviewer, Louis Leroy, in the
Charivari. Leroy, an opponent of the Impressionists, had used the word
derisively, but, as a term, it stuck.
Monet (figs. 134 139)

Impressionism is a sort of Odyssey, with almost as many episodes as
characters in its history. The leading ligure in themovement was Claude
Monet, who must be given credit for the first experiments in the new style
and who provided inspiration for the rest of the group. Born in Paris in
1840, he spent his early life with his family at Le Havre. There, on the
Channel coast, he acquired his love for wide-open spaces and the chang-
ing panorama of the sky. He had unusual gifts and powerful instincts,
but he was no intellectual. He was still doing caricatures when Boudin
showed him what painting really was and gave him the first advice he
ever had. He soon realized that painting would enable him to express his
pleasure in his favourite type of landscape, full of fresh air and light.
Meetings with Courbet in 864, and with Manet at about the same time,
1
completed the process, and left him with an eye of extraordinary pene-
tration and a deep analytical sense. Robust in temperament, confident
in his own ideas, he let himself be guided by his powerful instincts and
his capacity for meticulous observation. He evolved the various parts of
his technique by trialand error. His disregard of local colour, his analysis
of effects ol atmosphère and light by which outlines and masses are dis-
solved, his emphasis on experiments with colour and with the reactions
IMPRESSIONISM 35
of colours upon one another, his suppression of fact for the sake of uni-
ty: all these discoveries made him the originator of a movement which
others were to develop in directions he had only partially foreseen.
Monet, although in some respects, a lesser artist than his friends,
was clearly the hero of Impressionism. His was the personal conception
that supplied the soul of the new movement, and, in spite of the greatest
difficulties, enormous toil, and living conditions that were often wretched,
he eventually convinced Pissarro, Sisley, Manet, and Renoir to follow his

lead. None of them pursued experiment further than he, and indeed, at
the period of the Nymphéas (fig. 1 39), Monet had reached the very brink
of a non-figurative art, a fact that was to fill Wassily Kandinsky with
astonishment and admiration, and which eventually produced its ultimate
effects, after World War II, with the second generation of lyrical abstrac-
tionists. The two artistic centres from which this celebrated group of
friends emerged were the Atelier Gleyre and the Académie Suisse. The
latter was where Monet met Pissarro, and where Pissarro, two years later,
began his friendship with Cézanne.
Pissarro {figs. 129-133)
Camille Pissarro, born in 1 830 in the West Indies, was the oldest of the
group, although never more than a secondary figure in it. After a short
period at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he was painting West-Indian pictures
rather in the manner of Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (fig. 21), when Mo-
net and his ideas took hold of him. It is clear that he did not accept the
rising Impressionist doctrines without reservations or internal struggles,
for his own convictions are apparent in his work. It is more naturalistic
and more solidly constructed than Monet would have recommended. He

rather mistrusted (and he was not alone in this) the fugitive nature of the
Impressionist vision, and he aimed at a closer grasp of natural forms. So
did Cézanne, and reciprocal influence between the two was the first stage
in their relationship. It was Pissarro who introduced Cézanne to the new
.theories, and Cézanne, in turn, lent strength to Pissarro's instinctive pre-
ference for. solid composition. As an admirer of Courbet and Corot, he
was the most classical and human of the Impressionists. His intelligence
and curiosity always prompted him to check experiments made by others,
and this is what explains the association with Paul Signac and Georges
Seurat that led in 1885 to his succumbing to their scientific theories and
joining the Neo-Impressionists for a couple of years. In the end he revert-
ed to his earlier manner, and declined to be the leader of the new move-
ment. Previously, however, he had managed to get Signac and Seurat
admitted to the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 - the year in which
he made the acquaintance of van Gogh.
Sisley (figs. 123-128)
Alfred Sisley was an Englishman, born in Paris in 1839. The first artists
to influence his work were Corot and Daubigny. In 1862 he was in the
Atelier Gleyre with the other members of the group, but he did not actu-
ally join the Impressionists until 1870. Like Pissarro, he was devoted to
nature, and would not wittingly sacrifice the subject to the impression.
Barbizon was therefore more his spiritual home. Moreover, he was shy
and rather self-effacing, though of great natural distinction he had neither
;
Monet's boldness nor Pissarro's taste and talent for structural composi-
tion. On the other hand, he had a lively, sensitive feeling for nature and a
refinement in the use of colour that recalls Corot. In the flicker of Impres-
sionist brush-work, he managed to preserve a kind of romantic nostalgia,
although he detestedall excess. What he loved above all was the subtle,
muted colouring of the places in the Ile-de-France, where he painted

more than any of the others. Sisley 's painting was in the stream of pure
Impressionism, the one that lay at the heart of the movement and the
one to which it owed its first successes.
Manet < figs. 65-70)

Edouard Manet stands apart from the rest of the group, friendly but not
desirous of joining Me came from the prosperous middle class,
it at first
almost from the world ot fashion. Manet very nearly became a sailor, and
set out as a youth to see the world. The sparkle of the sea off Rio de Ja-
neiro fascinated him, and he spent the whole voyage drawing. He had a
distinguished air. and an impressive know-
a high degree o\ education,
ledge oi' the galleries, but middle-class he remained, witha strongand per-
manent longing He never got one, however, for
to be gi\en a decoration.
his strong personality was the kind that officialdom dislikes. Jean Cocteau
once said.* being original is trying to be like everyone else, and failing utter-
ly.' This remark exact l> tits the case of Manet, a revolutionary against his
will, a man who caused an uproar no one hated more than he, a dyed-
in-the-wool traditionalist who brought about a divorce between official

art and the real painting of the time. The ease with which he absorbed
the teaching o\~ the Masters as well as the contributions of his fellows
shows how powerful his personalis was. More than anything else he was
simply Manet: a mind, an e\e. and a hand that combined to give inimi-
table Style to everything he painted. It mattered little what the subject
was. Nature held no particular interest for him; he was a firm Parisian,
and he mostly painted city-life. Nor did he hesitate to take up subjects
others had ahead) handled: the style was all that counted, and Manet's
style was creative in itself. Ever) influence he felt was seized and transmut-
ed into something of his own. For example, he had a great admiration
tor Goya, .is ^wn he seen in his Olympia (tig. 65), Woman with a Fan. and
IMPRESSIONISM 37
Lola de Valence; however, a glance is enough to show the extent of his

own magisterial contribution.
It was the hostility of the official world that drove Manet into defiance
and opposition. His alliance with the Impressionists was caused by the
fact that, in 1863, his paintings were hung in the Salon des Refusés along-
side the work of Pissarro, Jongkind, Whistler, and Cézanne. Nonethe-
less the Impressionists' outlook was, and remained, very different from
his ;
painting out-of-doors, in particular, never quite got the better of his
preference for the studio. Little by little, of course, he became more skil-
ful in painting subjects from nature, and there were times, indeed, when
his touch was almost as free as that of the landscape-painters. However,
he normally respected local colour, and aimed at a more solid, less mobile
rendering of reality than they. This was a difference he would not give up,
and it is revealing that, despite the entreaties of Monet and Degas, he
refused to exhibit at the first Impressionist Salon in 874, even though the
1
official Salon had rejected two of the four paintings he sent in.
Manet's career was productive, successful, and all too short (he died at
the age of fifty-one). His work is marked by a number of masterpieces :
Lola de Valence (1862), Déjeuner sur V Herbe (1863), Olympia (1865), the
Portrait of Zola, Berthe Morisot on a Balcony (fig. 66), Le Bon Bock {The
Good Glass of Beer), which brought him his first success in 1 873, Le Linge,
work painted in the open-air, the famous Nana
his earliest (1876), refused
by the Salon of the following year, and the Bar of the Folies Bergères
(fig. 70), which he painted the year before his death. Each of these is a
milestone on his road through time and experience, and they display a
stylistic unity that renders Manet's work remarkably homogeneous. Ma-
net's great historical achievement was to remove the mystery from paint-
ing by the inclusion of so much contemporary life. He also took some
very bold steps in terms of technique; by means of juxtaposing colours
without transitions he dispensed with modelling and thereby revealed a
new conception of perspective, a novel method of creating space and of
giving colour greater independence. But apart from everything else, Ma-
net was great as a creator and profoundly original in thought.
Renoir {figs. 89-94)

The due to Manet can also be given to Auguste Renoir, although
praise
with a good many qualifications. Being a genius, Renoir had scarcely any
followers; he is an isolated figure, and not always easy to apprehend. The
salient thing about him is his wonderful talent for imparting to his painting
the warm and gentle poetry that dwelt within him. Renoir was born at
Limoges in 1 84 1 He left school at an early age, and, at twenty, he had even
.
left the Atelier Gleyre in order to paint in the open air with Bazille, Mo-
net, and Sisley. He was neither a theorist nor an intellectual, and, al-
though he often talked of his 'experiments', he was not actually testing

any doctrines. Rather, they represented the efforts of a conscientious
craftsman obsessed with a desire to achieve perfection in his field. 'Paint-
ing', Renoir once remarked, 'has nothing to do with day-dreams. It is first
and foremost a handicraft, to be tackled as a good craftsman would.'

Renoir was even less of a revolutionary than Manet. The starting point
for him was simply Courbet, and, although his friends' example led him
to adopt their view that light alters the appearance of objects, he never
let this theory dominate all else, and his ideas often differed from theirs.
Unlike most young painters of his day, he used to assert that the place to
learn painting was in the picture-galleries, and not face to face with na-
ture. The first lessons he learned came from studying the Venetians and
Raphael, later from Ingres and Delacroix, but the purpose of his study
was not to borrow their tricks so much as their secrets. There were critical
moments, of course, and many an inner conflict to resolve, especially the
cleavage between his own profoundly classical tastes and the realities of
painting in his day. The 'break' (as he called it) that appeared in his work
in the early iKKOs, after his visit to Italy, shows how great a cleavage it was:
he was forced to face the problem of how to reconcile the dictates of his
instinct with the data furnished by his reasoning mind. This was the stage
at which Renoir, like Cézanne, turned away from the Impressionists, and
found the answer to his problem in subordinating colour to solidity of
composition.
His work from that time onward shows the full effect of a sensuality
both powerful and refined, an artistic concept that reached the plenitude
of its evolution in the most natural way, with organic composition estab-
lishing a miraculous interaction between the various objects in a given
field. His painting reaches a zenith in that series of admirable nudes whose
skin takes the light so well': it is no exaggeration to say that, in these
paintings. Renoir rediscovered the spirit of the ancient Greeks, the spirit
that the Neo-C'lassicists had sought in vain with their cumbersome my-
thological equipment. These nudes are not the whole of Renoir's work,
of course, but like his landscapes of the Midi, his pictures of Parisian life,
his boating scenes, and his portraits, they have their share in the sense of
joy which is at the core of Renoir's great talent.
Degas {figs. 71-76)

Woman takes the central place again in the work of Edgar Degas. Ingres
was indirectly his master until the day that Degas firmly turned his back
on the past in order to tackle the realities of current life. He first acquired
his taste for horses at the race-course at Longchamps. Their movements
ited him, just as he was bewitched a little later by the movements he
disa ered in the ballet. Degas is yet another example of the diversity that
IMPRESSIONISM 39
existed within the Impressionist movement, for each adherent gave it his
own particular cachet, according to his background, education, and out-
look. Being intelligent, cultivated, and misanthropic, Degas relied on pure
reason, and was not afraid to call himself 'an old, incorrigible reactionary'.
The crises of anxiety, disgust, and depression he went through are famous.
He was a man who worried, a complex character, a misogynist whose
work is largely taken up with women, a traditionalist frequently in con-
flict with tradition, a man who tried to use his intellect in situations which
called for feeling.
Degas' eye was unusually sharp and registered with cruel indifference
what it saw in that, perhaps, for all his over-use of preconceived ideas
;
and reason, lies the key to his greatness. He objected to his friends' dis-
solution of the lines and masses of a composition in the name of the im-
pression. However, what he would not let them do in the case of light, he
did himself in the case of movement. It was not arrested movement that
he favoured in this way (he disliked the transient and accidental), but
movement seen as part of a continuing process. For this type of represen-
tation, his gift of draughtsmanship was essential. He took less interest
than the others in colour, which is why, in his later years, he made so much
use of pastel. Other innovations can be put down to him as well the :
break with classical composition, a new kind of space, a lowering of the

line of sight, and the dynamic quality he imparted to his coloured sur-
faces by means of vertical strokes. Aside from some obvious exceptions, he
was a painter of artificial life: of theatre-life behind the scenes, of inter-
iors lit by gas. But, in general, he was one of those painters to whom the
actual subject was relatively unimportant. What he cared about was the
irruption of movement into painting and the interior dimension he con-
trived to give the world he depicted. Whether he loved that world or hat-
ed it is not worth our enquiry in the face of his artistic achievement.
Cézanne {figs. 95-100)

Others in this circle of Impressionist painters who ought to be mentioned
here are Jean-Frédéric Bazille (fig. 88), an early member from his time at
the Atelier Gleyre, who was killed in action in the Franco-Prussian War at
the age of twenty-nine; Berthe Morisot (fig. 86), who began as Manet's
model and eventually became and James McNeill
as his sister-in-law,
Whistler (fig. unorthodox American. If Paul Cézanne
172), a foot-loose,
is mentioned last, the reason is not that he was slow to join the group.
Rather, it is because when one considers the novelty of his style and the
range of the discoveries it revealed as time went on, one is almost forced
to say that as a painter he belongs to the twentieth century.
Cézanne is the source of almost every trend in modern art, and the in-
fluence of his work has been so great, the lessons drawn from it so var-
ious, that he looms in art history like some mysterious kind of wonder-
worker, the Master par excellence, the oracle to answer every need. When
we think we understand him, it is time to start discussing the man and the
profound significance of his artistic life afresh. No body of painting, per-
haps, has ever been analysed so often or given rise to so many varying
interpretations. 'Sensations are what I am basically concerned with,' he
k
wrote shortly before his death, so I must be impenetrable.'
His start - he was self-taught - showed little promise of what lay ahead.
His first efforts were romantic, unorganized, and clumsy; he was slow to
develop, with the slowness of a peasant who lacks confidence in anything
not planted well, solidly constructed, built to last. He was a conservative
like Manet, but once be had joined the younger men at the Académie
Suisse in 1862 he began to admire the works of Delacroix and Courbet.
Four years later, his still-lifes were praised by Manet, but Cezanne's com-
position was still baroque in st> le. It was not until 1873 that he overcame
the first o\' the obstacles in the way of He was then
his self-realization.
painting on the banks of the Oise w ith Pissarro, who was showing him the
Impressionist technique. He began to lighten his palette and look at nature
with simplicity. However, because lie could never fully accept Monet's
theories, he soon began his long and solitary meditation. Impressionism
seemed to him too superficial for his needs, and his preference for struc-
ture imposed its own solutions on him. He set about creating an idiom to
meet simultaneously his three strongest needs: powerful structure, well-
knit composition, and a means of expressing sensations wholly divorced
from the classical traditions.
Cézanne devoted himself to a careful analysis of nature, and looked at
her not as the Impressionists did. but as a Living, functional reality. He
went back to the very start and. with what one might call the innocence
o\' genius, began the gradual, persistent acquisition of the technical me-
thods that have made him famous: the 'sensations colorantes*, as he called
them: the suggestion o\' modelling by means of colour as opposed
i.e.
to light and shade: the modifying influence of vision, divorced from me-
mory, upon the objects it perceives; and the suggestion of depth, or re-
cession. b> the de\ iee of coloured planes superimposed in gradation from
the colder tones for shadow to the warmer tones for light. These, in brief,
were C e/anne's main achievements. The most important innovation was
the last for, by abolishing classical perspective based on receding lines
and objects used as markers, n created a sense of depth while keeping the
composition on a single plane. A line o( masterpieces marks the stages on
Cezanne's journey towards the painting o\' the future: the various ver-
sions o\ the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, the male and female bathers, the
Château Noir, innumerable still-lifes. the self-portraits, the Boy in
i
a Red If aistcoat (tig. WW), and that last landscape o( the Cahanon ilc Jour-
TOWARDS THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 41
dan which he left unfinished at his death. It is an immensely rich legacy,

which many painters have attempted to draw upon. The first to do so
were his contemporaries Gauguin and van Gogh, and each arrived at a
different conclusion. The old man had foreseen it all. 'If, he had said,
'they tryand create a school in my name, tell them they never understood,
or liked, what I was doing.' He himself did not like Gauguin, with his
globe-trotter airs and his 'images chinoises'.
Towards the Twentieth Century
Gauguin {figs. 101-105)

In 1 883 Cézanne spent part of his time at Aix and part at l'Estaque, where
he painted a wonderful view of the bay of Marseilles. It was one of those
years in which a number of significant events converged. There was the
death of Manet, the disintegration of the Impressionist group, and the
appearance of a new generation. Seurat began to exhibit at the Salon, van
Gogh in Holland was painting still-lifes and studies of peasants, while
Gauguin, a Sunday-painter, decided to drop his prosperous life as a bank-
er and wholly give himself up to painting. By doing this, he ruined his
fortune and his marriage, but he gave us The Yellow Christ, The White
Horse (fig. 103), and the Pastorale Tahitienne. He had found his vocation
rather late, for he was already thirty-five. If we must seek a reason for his
decision, we shall almost certainly find it, not for the first time, in that
kindly man, Pissarro, who was always ready to give advice and help.
Gauguin is a picturesque figure: immoderate, unbridled, and doubtless
difficult to live with. When he painted, he painted with passion. He was
very gifted, very intelligent, and always concerned to get to the bottom
of everything. It did not take him long to discover that the analytical
method shown him by Pissarro was not at all suitable for him. He
was one of those men who carry their universe about with them, and, as
such, he had his own ideas. Rebelling against his teacher, he found that
painting with broad areas of colour was the technique he needed to ex-
press his love of freedom and wide open spaces and the restless nostalgia
that consumed his spirit. In Brittany, where he settled in 1886, the school
of Pont-Aven gathered around him. There, together with Emile Bernard,
Gauguin introduced 'Synthetism'. Whether he or Bernard was its author
is not important, but it owed a good deal to the art of Japan. What is
certain is that it well suited Gauguin's aspirations, for he had already

spoken of 'exploring the mysterious centre of thought' and of clothing
ideas with perceptible forms. His principles can be clearly defined. Sensa-
tion must be followed by suggestion. Nature takes second place and the
thought must dominate the picture. Line, 'noble or deceptive', was to be

form was to be purified, eliminated, or suggested by means of
reinstated;
pure colour.
It was Gauguin who firstwas an abstraction. If his mind was
said art
rather woolly and changeable, he certainly had genius. His tragedy is that
he was chronically beset by a desire to go away in search of something, to
escape in pursuit of a peace of mind he never found. He was a tormented
man who always wanted to 'be somewhere else', dreaming of the South
Sea islands when he was in France, dreaming of France when he was at
the other end of the earth, painting Brittany in Tahiti. Yet, odd as it seems,
this state of muddled crisis eventually produced a genuine style: majestic,
sumptuous, well thought-oul, warm in colour-harmonies held in a firm
design, and capable of affecting the mind like a sort of incantation. The
symbols from which Gauguin drew his inspiration are just as potent in
his pictures as they had been in the tumult of his brain. Painting, for him,
was expression; it was only in painting that he fulfilled his urge to create
things in harmony, images of his sensations, expressions of his soul that
approach the state of music. Indeed, he often made reference to music -
when he spoke of a Mow tone, muted and powerful' - and
very plainly so
he sought the same effects in painting. The Yellow Christ (1888), the
Paysage du Pouldu 1889), D'où Venon&nousl or Where Have We Come
(
From? (1897), The White Horse (1898), and the Seins aux Fleurs Rouges
(1899) are masterpieces which all hear eloquent witness to Gauguin's
painful but glorious spiritual adventure.
Van Gogh (figs. 115 120)

It is strange to consider that Gauguin's career began at thirty-five, while
van Gogh put an cn<.\ Yet Gauguin was only five
to his at thirty-seven.
years the older oï the two, and they both began their anti-Impressionist
reaction at the same time. There are many similarities between the two:
the same extremes o\' temperament, the same capacity for self-torment,
the same passionate, total dedication to art, to the point of sacrificing life
itself. These were two lives condemned alike to tragedy. Their ideas
themselves formed a bond between them. e\en before they had met. Each
recoiled from Monet's doctrine of purely optical sensation, and each
sought a finer balance between the vessel and its content, for they regard-
ed painting as a means of expressing ideas and thoughts. They had se-
parately arrived at the same position, and the effect of their meeting was
to fortify it in each case. Thus, their points o\' departure were the same,
and in spirit, if not in their aesthetic tastes, they marched in step for a
time. Il is true that Gauguin had a certain influence upon van Gogh at
Aries, in 888, but their methods weft not the same and they led in differ-
1
ent directions Pure symbolism in Gauguin's case led to a search for calm
and balance, just as it led to Redon's ethereal poetry and similarly to the
'Nabis' group of painters and their atmospheric 'Intimism'. On the other
hand, van Gogh invested it with a kind of exasperation, a violence
of colour, that reappeared in the twentieth century with the Fauves and
Expressionists - French, German, Belgian, and Norwegian alike.
Vincent van Gogh was born in 1853 in a small Dutch town near the
Belgian frontier, and he grew up in an atmosphere where religion and the
arts, especially music, were paramount. These two influences coloured
his whole life. He was excitable and psychologically unbalanced, with
high moral aspirations but no self-confidence at all. Starting at the age of
sixteen he ran through one profession after another bookseller's assist-
:
ant, evangelist, assistant-pastor, salesman for a picture-dealer, tutor in

French. Between unhappy love-affairs, he drifted from one country to
another: Holland, Belgium and even England. By 1880 he had at last
seen what his vocation was, and he took it seriously. His first group of
paintings, which constitute what is now called his Dutch period, are dark
in tone, with strong contrasts of light, and have a certain affinity with the
old Dutch masters of genre. One example is The Potato-Eaters, which he
painted in 1885 when he was staying with his father at Nuenen. In that
year he also spent some time in Antwerp. There he discovered Rubens
while the prints he bought from sailors opened his eyes to the art of Japan.
In 1886 he went to Paris, and there, his art took a decisive turn. Impres-
sionism - no one could escape it - lay in wait for him, and Pointillism
too. He made friends with Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Signac,
Seurat, and Gauguin. As a result of this contact, he started using lighter
tones, and he began to bring his technique up to date. Some of the pic-
tures he painted at this time show 'Pointillist' leanings too it was certain-
;
ly a phase through which he passed, but, on the whole, his two years in
Paris were spent in feeling his way. At Aries his experiments at last pro-
duced results: he found the 'language' he needed, strengthened it, and
quickly made it an instrument of precision, capable of coping, to the very
last degree, with the fierce demands of his inspiration. This, at last, was
his style - the style that made him famous. He had less than three years
left: 1888, 1889, 1890 - Arles, Saint-Rémy, and finally Auvers-sur-Oise.
It is scarcely conceivable that an œuvre of such importance, so essentia]
to the future, could have been created in so short a time: in 1888 the Or-
chards in Blossom (fig. The Postman Roulin and the Sun-Flowers; in
1 19),
1889 the Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear (fig. 116), the Cypresses, the
Harvesting; in 1890 the Portrait of Dr Gachet (fig. 11 7) and Marie d'Auvers.
The upward progress never stopped, at least not while he remained at
Aries. Itwas a progress not in terms of technique alone, but also in the
passion he poured on to the surface of the picture. Although he expressed
his powerful vision in a style that leaned towards Synthetism, his method
was not, as in Gauguin's case, to use whole areas of colour. Rather, his
weapon was the vigorous, dynamic, concentrated brush-stroke, laid on
with a sort of frenzy that became a paroxysm at Saint-Rémy.
Van Gogh, the 'cultivated savage', had already studied Delacroix' ideas
on colour in his time at Nuenen, but he himself was no theoretician. The
vivid, unusual pictures he created were the logical expression of his in-
most, innate feelings and convictions. The internal processes of which
they alone could be the outcome were all part of an attitude of mind that
never altered. Although his mind, indeed, was deranged at times and al-
though it ultimately brought his life to an end, painting, for him, could
never be irrational must serve a deep and serious cause, for it existed to
; it
transmit thoughts and feelings to others. Van Gogh said he wanted to

express himself in colour. This is because every colour, for him, was en-
dowed with a specific, symbolic power. Thus, green and red were dra-
matic, black suggested evil, while yellow signified friendship and love.
These were no empty abstractions; on the contrary, the symbol assumed
the potency of something real, and for van Gogh it became the highest
form of expression. Here lies his greatest innovation: 'the heart of modern
art itself, as he wrote to his brother Theo, 'a thing you will not find in
the Greeks or the Renaissance or the old Dutch masters'. In van Gogh's
painting, the symbol no longer serves the thing; the symbol itself becomes
significant, and art aims not to represent the subject but to bear witness
to the subject's essence.
Van Gogh used one must suffer for art, and to say that he
to insist that
sacrificed his life no dramatic phrase but a statement of plain fact.
to it is
At the heart of van Gogh's character lay the evangelist, the preacher he
had been in his youth, the man who refused to quit life without leaving a
message for his fellow men. In his struggle to achieve this end he created
a new aesthetic concept; the truth his work proclaims is that form and
content are inseparable.
Redon (figs. 106-108)

Symbolism, with Gauguin and van Gogh, was implicit, but with Odilon
Redon it took a more militant form. It became, indeed, a movement, and
was publicly proclaimed in 1886 in a manifesto signed by the poet Jean
Moréas. But the movement itself was less an artistic than a literary one.
The style it preached was idéiste, symbolist, synthetist and decorative: a
set of terms already dear to Gauguin. In 1879, Redon had been the first
to bring the unconscious into painting, and, while it was he who inspired
movement, Paul Sérusier became its chief theorist.
the artistic side of the
Symbolism never quite rid itself o\~ a literary bias, but Redon himself
managed to save his style from disaster because he was a natural painter
with a high degree o\ sensibility and a gift of vigorous drawing allied to
a wonderfully delicate range of colour, shot with soft, mysterious tints.

With talents of this order,he transports us into a universe outside all
time and reality, yet which we feel a disturbing kind of witchcraft
one in
is at work. His imagination runs away with itself, and finds material for
extravagant conceits even in the closest observation of nature. He man-

aged to avoid the pitfall of poetic illustration nonetheless, and at times he
achieved genuine decorative power. In addition to his easel-pictures he
produced engravings; a set of ten lithographs collected in an album en-
titled Dans le Rêve can be taken by itself as giving a good general picture
of this unusual mind.
Seurat and Point illism {figs. 112-114)

The roads that branched out from Impressionism into unexplored terri-
tory are numerous indeed. If we take it in its purest form, leaving aside
its leader and the two or three faithful disciples who never abandoned
his theories, the Impressionist movement was short-lived. In general, it

owed its enormous influence to the least orthodox among its members,
and its very triumphs were achieved under a suspended sentence of death.
There is something almost repellent, therefore, in the spectacle of Impres-
sionism dying while giving birth to new and vigorous painters who not
only hastened its demise but who were, beyond question, deeply in its
debt.
Among all its spiritual offspring, the most direct legatee was certainly
Neo-Impressionism, alias 'Divisionism' or 'Pointillism', the outcome of
a doctrine that Georges Seurat learned of from an eminent chemist. The
first anti-Impressionist stirrings were already being felt when van Gogh
was still at work in the pastor's home at Nuenen and Gauguin was a
discontented banker. In Paris, Seurat, a young man of twenty-four was
at work on his first great composition, forging the weapons for a battle
that was to cause a great artistic controversy. Two years later, in 1885,
the launching of 'Divisionism' was signalized by La Grande Jatte, a pic-
torialmanifesto that had required no less than thirty-eight painting ses-
sions and twenty-three preparatory drawings. Monet had been guided by
his own intuitions when working on the representation of light, but Seurat
decided to tackle his problems by scientific methods. Although it made
things difficult for him, Seurat rebelled against Monet, with whom, as a
person, he had little or nothing in common. Seurat was a prudent, ration-
al young man, devoted to the exact sciences and aware of no other poet-
ry but that which mathematics could supply. For relaxation, he read
treatises on physics, and found his gospel in a book by Chevreul, The Law
of Contrasts and Similarities, a scientific work on colour which provided
the basis of his method. Not only did his classical cast of mind give pri-
mary importance to the architecture of his pictures, but he refused to
use any colours but those of the spectrum. With the aim of marrying de-
sign to colour, the permanent to the transient, he first distinguished in
each picture exactly what elements combined to make its luminosity, its
colouring, and its composition, i.e. tonality, colour, and line. Then, in
each of these elements, he sought the law of contrasts and the law of simi-
larities (the simultaneous contrasts).
At the Salon des Indépendants of 1884 he was associated with Redon
and, even more, with Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross who both
became his followers. Seurat was too much of a theorist to arouse emo-
tion. La Parade du Cirque and Le Chahut (fig. 14) are works that cer-
1
tainly do not lack greatness, but they are cold, somewhat artificial visions
of some extremely wooden figures. Yet the enormous labour he put be-
hind him in a very few years (he died at thirty-two) was not in vain. He
discovered some principles of very great importance, and it was the Cub-
ists who, a little later, derived the greatest profit from them.
Signac (fig. Ill) (whose career belongs largely to the twentieth century,
for he died in 1935) was a suppler man. who avoided systematization and
left us a body of work in \* hich there is much that is delicate, especially in
his water-colours. Cross (tig. 10) maintained a balance between doctrine

1
and intuition, and his work has a warmly lyrical character that is likely, in
a few years' time, to bring his reputation nearer the level of his genuine
deserts.
Toulouse-Lautrec I figs, 77-82)

Whatever methods one adopts and whatever one may make, there
efforts
are some artists who will simply not beand Henri de Tou-
classified,
louse-Lautrec is one of them. Celebrated painter though he was, there is
no definite movement to which one can link him. He admired Manet, and
Degas even more, but while their work may have helped him to forget
what the academies had taught him. it had no influence on his style. The
man himself is no less famous than his painting, and a brief account of
him will not be out of place. He came of an old aristocratic family, direct-
ly descended from the Counts of Toulouse, who had been ennobled under
Charlemagne. However, he was crippled and deformed as a result of two

accidents in youth, and could not therefore lead the life that would nor-
mally have been his heritage. Painting, for him, was at first a sort of com-
pensation for his condition, but he was extraordinarily gifted and, since
he could not follow country-gentleman's pursuits, he decided to be-
a
come a great painter. rom
the \er> start he showed an amazing virtuosi-
1
ty in design that promised a brilliant career. He was so original, with such

gifts of observation and delicate wit, that his output very soon assumed
real value as a record of contemporary life. Yet his handicap made him
an outcasi. nui he suffered deepl) from it. If he could not live with inten-
sity himself, he could at watch others do so. Observation was thus a

least
solace for him, but, with time and practice, he did it with consummate
skill. Life was a spectacle, and even if his legs could scarcely carry him
about, his hand could make the pencil move with incredible agility to
seize and fix the passing moment. His favourite haunts were crowds and
crowded places, theatres, circuses and cabarets - wherever humanity was
apt to congregate with gaiety and noise.
First and foremost Toulouse-Lautrec was a draughtsman. Colour had
only a decorative role, and his work was at its best when done at the
highest speed. The major work in his output is his graphic work, espe-
cially the posters, which are outstanding in their qualities of life and spon-
taneity. They have a sweep and a sharpness of expression allied to a mon-
umental character that gives them great decorative power and well suits
them for their function as advertisements. Lithography also claimed
Toulouse-Lautrec's attention at an early stage, and he became one of the
greatest masters of that art, second only to Daumier, with whom, indeed,
he had some points in common. In his rapidly executed paintings, and
even more in his drawings, pastels, and engravings, he was an astonishing
recorder of the manners of his time, as well as a source of admirable
portraits. With the utmost concentration and the greatest economy of
means he could express the very thoughts and character of those he drew.
Many of them owe their immortality to him alone. Singers and cabaret-
dancers, shooting-stars of the world of entertainment such as Valentin le
Désossé, La Goulue, and Jane Avril, have escaped the oblivion that
awaited them thanks to the magic of his brush and pencil.
Henri Rousseau, the 'Douanier^ (figs. 121, 122)
Picasso once said: 'There nothing odd about the "Douanier". He repre-
is
sents the perfection of a certain type of mind.' It was a most peculiar

type of mind, at all events, and its possessor is even harder to classify than
theCount of Toulouse. Rousseau is, in fact, the most baffling painter of
modern times. A great deal has been written about him, but the question
of what sort of person the 'Douanier' Rousseau really was still remains
unanswered. His history was quaint, the manner of his discovery was
unusual, and the records left by those who knew him are more than some-
what contradictory. Legend has crept in everywhere, smothering every-
thing with its vegetation, and for us, today, Rousseau is still a myth. All
we know is that he was a great painter.
He was a secretive man who liked making a mystery of things. One day
he would play the village idiot, and the next he would show an astonishing
degree of cultivation and judgement. Did he mislead his contemporaries
so as to preserve his quaintness as a 'character'? The question has fre-
quently been asked, and has never had an answer. His art was ingenuous
and fresh, true enough, but was he really a simpleton? A 'Sunday-painter'

he certainly was not, for his devotion to his work would have put many a
professional to shame, and he, too, used to refer to his 'experiments.'
Rousseau was an employee of the octroi (the municipal customs-author-
ity) of Paris. It appears that he began to paint in his spare time about
1870, but nothing is certain before 1880, which is the date of the earliest
pictures we possess. Four years later, his wife having died, he retired from
the octroi on a pension and for the last twenty-six years of his life he de-
voted himself exclusively to painting. His work was shown for the first
time at the Salon des Champs-Elysées in 1885. Signac and Maximilien
Luce both noticed his canvases Redon praised his 'naturalist genius', and
;
Toulouse-Lautrec took up his case against those who sought to exclude

him from the Salon des Indépendants. Evidently, Rousseau was not slow
to find admirers among the painters of the day.
Rousseau's style developed in the normal way. The early pictures betray
a clumsiness that gradualh disappears. He had to work hard to improve
his technique and expand its possibilities, because painting did not come
easily to him. On worked out with the
the contrary, his pictures were
greatest ca e he took much trouble over the rhythms of their composition
i :
and gave deep thought to the problems of their structure and the inter-
action of form and colour. In short, he was an artist who took pains. He
had an outstanding gift for colour, and the harmonies he produced are
enchanting even today. Rousseau had the ability to sweep the spectator
off into the dream world that was his own favourite haunt. There was
always a certain degree o\' realism in his paintings, but it stopped short of
mere imitation even in his portraits or in the scenes he did from nature.
It was in his 'exotic' paintings that he gave free rein to his imagination.
In these works, the scrupulous care he devoted to certain details - the

\ egetation, lor accompanied by lyrical invention, and is really
example is
endows the best of his work with

a part ol the struggle lor stvli/ation that
such remarkable decorative power. Nothing save, perhaps, a certain lack
of skill in draw mg can detract from the greatness of his work, and it well
deserves the place o( honour that posterity has given it.
I he Nineteenth Century in Europe
Since one o\' the salient things about the nineteenth century was that the
international centre of gravity in art shifted from Italy to Paris, it is na-
tural that all eves should have turned towards France once she became
the crucible of artistic innovation. We have seen what wealth and vitality
were brought to light in ranee, how numerous and important were the
I
personalities unequalled anywhere else who played a part in these

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN EUROPE 49
upheavals. Yet there are some minor aspects of the period, scarcely amount-
ing to any definite trend, which have been neglected here, such as the
second period of French idealism, whose leading figures, Gustave Mo-
reau (fig. 58), Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (fig. 59) and Adolphe Monticelli
(figs. 63, 64), all deserve to be mentioned.
England
In England, Turner remained a solitary light once Constable had left the
firmament, but in 1849 the need for a reaction against the academic canon
led to the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which sought to
bring about a return to the standards of the Primitives and found a pow-
erful ally in the celebrated critic, Ruskin. An attempt to formulate its
attitude was made by Holman Hunt (1827-1910) when he said the TRB'
had never denied that there had been much sound and elevated art since
Raphael, but that it seemed to them that Raphael's successors had too
often let their art be corrupted. He and his friends did not think soundness
and an absolute method could be found anywhere outside the work of the
older masters. The 'PRB' stemmed in part from the religious-minded
Oxford Movement, and its principal target v/as more pagan allegory than
the art of the Renaissance, which, in fact, it drew upon in no small mea-
sure. As a reaction to academic painting, indeed, its aim was not the one
the situation really called for. True, its fruit was not so trivial, but it was
no less artificial than the style it sought to supplant, as can be seen in
Hunt's religious symbolism, the legends of chivalry resurrected by Burne-
Jones (fig. 164), or Rossetti's meticulous accounts of his seraphic visions.
Germany
In the Germanic north, the idealist stream had a strongly romantic fla-
vour, with a character more literary than artistic. Caspar David Friedrich
(figs. 141, 142) exemplifies this situation. Trained in Dresden, he was a sen-
sitive and rather melancholy man who expressed his deep response to
nature with great delicacy of touch against a background of real drama.
To Hans von Marées (fig. 146) inspiration seemed to come from sixteenth-
century Italy and, as he spent long years in Rome, he had ample time to
study this period.He painted more broadly than Friedrich, often using a
muted palette, but he applied his colour with a sort of agitation that sheds
an air of mystery upon the symbolism of his compositions. After spend-
ing some successful years painting portraits at Dresden, he finally went
back to Rome. There he executed large-scale decorative work in which he
shows a great command of technique, but rather too great a leaning
towards intellectualism. Anselm Feuerbach (1829-1880), who had been
Thomas Couture's (fig. 60) pupil in Paris, is another in whom the idea was
more romantic than his rather academic style.
The place that Adolf von Menzel occupies in German nineteenth-cen-

tury art is somewhat Torn as he was between two ambitions, he
peculiar.
admirably typifies the transition from idealism to early realism. He was a
painter with a mania for accuracy, a man whose conscience drove him to
the uttermost limits in order to satisfy himself as regards authenticity and
sources. The commission he received to illustrate Kugler's History of
Frederick the Great involved him in herculean labours, a whole mountain
of drawings, pastels, and sketches of every kind. But he organized it all
into great pictorial compositions, did the coronation-picture of William I,
and was made painter-in-ordinary to His Majesty. Labour on such a scale

could not possibly be barren, and the full development of Menzei's art
makes him the greatest German painter of his time. By sheer knowledge
of composition, skill in draughtsmanship, and close study of nature and
light, he rose well above the level of official painting (despite the risks his
court-appointment carried), and some of his smaller works are painted

with a freedom and a luminosity which give them a striking modernity.
With Hans Thoma (tig. 143), Wilhelm Leibl (fig. 148), and the Dutch-
man George Hendnk Breitner (fig. 173), the door is open for realism and
open-air painting to make their entry. Thoma was the founder of Heimats-
kunst, the art that is rooted in its native soil. Leibl brought great earnest-
ness and a solid, healthy style to the handling of subjects drawn from
peasant and of portraits that are, in some ways, like Corot's. He and
life,
Thoma had both been Courbet's pupils, and had learned their lessons
well. There was also Lovis Corinth who, after a period at the Académie
Julian in Paris, had great success in Berlin. It was he who introduced open-
air painting to Germany, joint!) with Max Liebermann (fig. 147), a paint-
er whose two long periods in Paris gave some of his work a markedly
Impressionist approach.
Switzerland
Arnold Bocklin (figs. 165, 166), the Swiss, put almost an excess of skill to
work for his fertile and sometimes morbid imagination. As an exponent
o( the Germanic nostalgia that flies for refuge to the haunted forests of
myth and legend, he was brilliant. Haunted by mythology himself and
steeped in the lore o( ancient Greece, he sought to dispel the darkness of
his inner life in the sunlit Mediterranean world. He could orchestrate
colour to produce effects of rare intensity, although the heavy atmosphere
remained unaltered. All the essentials of his moral climate can be seen in
his celebrated masterpiece, the allegory called The Isle of the Dead.
Bocklin'a mysterious gardens, tilled with poisonous flowers, held no
charm for his compatriot. erdinand Hodler(figs. 167 169). Rustic solid-
\
ity, proof against c\er> siren song, is his chief characteristic. He belonged,
it is true, to the idealist movement, and he painted some allegorical
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY IN EUROPE 51
frescoes of enormous size. However, his symbolism concealed ideas that

were simple and sound, if perhaps a trifle moralistic. His style was vigor-
ous and muscular, better suited to depicting a powerful wood-cutter than
a decadent poet. Nature was very real to him, for he had grown up in
close communion with her, and her knottier kinds of strength were his
inheritance too. Towards the end of his life he turned to lighter tones and
gentler colours, and some of the landscapes he painted then belong, for
all their very personal style, to the painting of the twentieth century.
Italy
Although it was the cradle of the Renaissance and its final stronghold too,
Italy had long been burdened by the very weight of her inheritance. She
was slow to adopt the newer trends in art, but when she did so she soon
made up for the time she had lost. As the century of Delacroix and Cé-
zanne gave way to that of Matisse and Picasso, a handful of Italians were
beginning to bring about a revival of painting there. Boldini was destined
to become the most Parisian of fashionable painters. Signorini founded
an anti-academic movement in Florence, although it never had any seri-
ous effects, and Segantini (fig. 174), a native of the Swiss Ticino whose
early work was in a lyric strain, painted numerous peasant scenes in a
realist style softened by human sympathy. Later, he turned his attention
to a sombre kind of philosophic symbolism that is said to have been in-
spired by his neighbour in the Engadine, the philosopher Friedrich Nietz-
sche.
The Year 1899
In 1899 Cézanne, aged sixty, was working on his Grandes Baigneuses and
sent three pictures to the Salon des Indépendants. The 'Nabis' group held
a great exhibition in Paris. Claude Monet, at fifty-nine, was beginning the
series of views of London in which he pushed the disintegration of form
even further than he had done before. Renoir was fifty-eight and settling
down at Cagnes; Kandinsky was thirty-four, Klee twenty, Matisse thirty,
Picasso eighteen, and Modigliani fifteen. Sisley died with the century itself.
Nineteenth - Century Painting
Illustrations
1 Jacques-Louis David
2 François Gérard
3 Antoine-Jean Gros
k Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet
5 Georges Michel
6 Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
7 Théodore Géricault
12 Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
17 Théodore Chassériau
18 Théodore Chasseriau
19 Théodore Chassériau
20 Théodore Chasseriau
21 Alexandre Decamps
22 Eugène Delacroix
28 Honoré Daumier
29 Honoré Daumier
30 Honoré Daumier
32 Honoré Daumier
33 Narcisse Diaz de la Pefta
K
34 Charles Daubigny
35 François Millet
36 François Millet
37 François Millet
38 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
A3 Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
44 Théodore Rousseau
45 Johan Barthold Jongkind
46 Johan Barthold Jongkind
T
47 Eugène Boudin
48 Eugène Boudin
49 Eugène Boudin
50 Eugène Boudin
_ >
.
* *
f m. ** ,^
*ÉLJ
1
/- J
i^. <^^^|
*
/
kF
-
IV lutij
51 Gustave Courbet
52 Gustave Courbet
53 Gustave Courbet
54 Gustave Courbet
55 Gustave Courbet
56 Gustave Courbet
57 Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson
58 Gustave Moreau
-•'
s v- a
59 Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

60 Thomas Couture
61 Antoine Chintreuil
62 Paul Camille Guigou
XJhv ^' Vî^
63 Adolphe Monticelli
64 Adolphe Monticelli
65 Edouard Manet
•A
\ a
..-.
\
\
'I
j /\
la / \
66 Edouard Manet
67 Edouard Manet
68 Edouard Manet
69 Edouard Manet
70 Edouard Manet
71 Edgar Degas
72 Edgar Degas
73 Edgar Degas
74 Edgar Degas
75 Edgar Degas
76 Edgar Degas
77 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
V*
83 Eugène Carrière
84 Jean-Louis Forain
85 Ernest Meissonier
86 Berthe Morisot
87 Mary Cassait
88 Jean-Frédéric Bazille
90 Auguste Renoir
91 Auguste Renoii
V
¥
:
92 Auguste Renoir
93 Auguste Renoii
94 Auguste Renoir
95 Paul Cézanne
96 Paul Cézanne
97 Paul Cézanne
98 Paul Cézanne
99 Paul Cézanne
b^fcic^^™*' " -***'*'*
_^ M.» ÏJ--
\-i
H'
100 Paul Cézanne

**%km
101 Paul Gauguin

102 Paul Gauguin
103 Paul Gauguin
104 Paul Gauguin
105 Paul Gauguin
106 Odilon Redon
107 Odilon Redon
108 Odilon Redon
109 Armand Guillaumin
1 \ g£*r* '
fk
ë t I
i^î
•Saw ^&*\,
110 Henri-Edmond Cross

... '
111 Paul Signac

112 Georges Seurat
113 Georges Seurat
114 Georges Seurat
115 Vincent van Gogh
121 Henri Rousseau
122 Henri Rousseau
123 Alfred Sisley
124 Alfred Sisley
125 Alfred Sisley
126 Alfred Sisley
127 Alfred Sisley
128 Alfred Sisley
129 Camille Pissarro
» im

fc

134 Claude Monet
135 Claude Monet
r
136 Claude Monet

137 Claude Monet
AtotV
138 Claude Monet

139 Claude Monet
140 Moritz von Schwind
3
S*^ s
^
J^
M
-7
141 Caspar David Friedrich

162 Caspar David Friedrich
143 Hans Thoma
144 Karl Spitzweg
145 Adolf von Menzel
146 Hans von Marées
147 Max Liebermann
148 Wilhelm Leibl
149 Wilhelm Trubner
150 J. M. W.Turner
i'STÎSL
151 J. M. W.Turner
152 Sir Thomas Lawrence
153 J. M. W. Turner
154 J. M. W. Turner
155 J. M. W. Turner
156 John Constable
157 John Constable
158 John Constable
159 Richard Parkes Bonington
164 Sir Edward Burne-Jones
*J -
165 Arnold Bocklin

166 Arnold Bôcklin
167 Ferdinand Hodlcr
r. ^oilrr.
168 Ferdinand Hodler

169 Ferdinand Hodler
170 Charles Gleyre
171 Frank Buchser
172 James McNeill Whistler
173 George Hendrik Breitner
174 Giovanni Segantini
175 Silvestro Lega
176 Giovanni Fattori
Biographical Notes
Biographical Notes
Bazille, Jean-Frédéric. French painter. velled in Spain, Africa and America

Born at Montpellier in 1841, died in (fig- 171)
1870. Studied under Gleyre with Burne-Jones, Sir Edward. English paint-
Monet and Renoir, among others. er and draughtsman. Born at Bir-
Associated with the Impressionist mingham in 1833, died in London in
movement {fig. 88) 1898. Specialized in religious and
Bocklin, Arnold. Swiss painter. Born at mythological subjects, influenced in
Basle in 1827, died in 1901 at San his style by the Pre-Raphaelite
Domenico da Fiesole. Studied in Movement, especially D. G. Rossetti
Antwerp, Brussels, Geneva and Paris. and William Morris ( fig. 164)
Worked in Rome and Florence. Paint- Carrière, Eugène. French painter. Born
ed landscapes and portraits in the at Gournay
in 1849, died in Paris in
Neo-Romantic style (figs. 165, 166) 1906. Painted mainly portraits and
Bonington, Richard Parkes. British paint- figure-compositions (fig. 83)
er. Born at Arnold, near Notting- Cassatt, Mary. American/French paint-
ham in 1801/02, died London in
in er. Born at Pittsburgh in 845, died in
1
1828. Studied at the Academy in Pa- 1926 at Mesnil-Théribus. Pupil of

risand under Baron Gros. Influenced Degas. Shows the influence of Re-
the Barbizon school of landscape- noir. Also known as an etcher. Exhib-
painters in France (figs. 159-163) ited with the Impressionists (fig. 87)
Boudin, Eugène. French painter. Born Cézanne, Paul. French painter. Born at
at Honfleur in 1824, died in Deauville Aix-en-Provence in 839, died there in
1
in 1898. Afriend of Jongkind and of 1 906. A friend of Emile Zola and first
Monet, whom he influenced. Painted influenced by Delacroix and Cour-

quasi-Impressionist pictures of the bet, from whom he took his heavy,
sea and the coast of Brittany (figs. dark tonality. Met van Gogh and the
47-50) Impressionists. Returned to Pro-
Breitner, George Hendrik. Dutch pain- vence in 1882 and began his search for
ter. Born at Rotterdam in 1857, died means of giving his pictures appro-
in Amsterdam 1923. Knew van Gogh priate structural composition and
at The Hague and worked in Paris be- colouring. Painted mainly still-lifes,
fore returning to Amsterdam. Typical landscapes and portraits. His work
of Dutch 'picturesque naturalism'. has had an enormous influence on
Painted views of cities, ports and twentieth-century art (fig. 95-99)
rivers, pictures of horses and military CharIet,Nicolas-Toussaint. French paint-
life, as well as nudes (fig. 173) er. Born in Paris in 1792, died there
Buchser, Frank. Swiss painter. Born at in 1845. Studied under Gros. Paint-
Feldbrunnen in 1828, died there in ted Napoleonic military scenes (fig. 4)
1890. Self-taught painter of genre and Chassériau, Théodore. French painter.
of landscapes in the open air. Tra- Born in San Domingo in 1819, died
in Paris in 1856. A pupil of Ingres, David, Jacques-Louis. French painter.
but later showed the influence of the Born in Paris in 1748, died in Brus-
Romantics - Delacroix in particular sels in 1825. Champion of Neo-Clas-
(figs. 17-20) sicism. Linked with Robespierre and
Chintreuil, Antoine. French painter. also with Napoleon, whose court
Born at Pont-de-Vaux in 1814, died painter he became. Teacher of Gros
in 1873 at Septeuil. Landscape-paint- and Ingres among others. Painted por-
er; a follower of Corot (fig. 61) traits and ligure-compositions (yïg. 1)
Constable, John. British painter. Born Decamps, Alexandre-Gabriel. French
at East Bergholt in 1776, died in Lon- painter. Born in Paris in 1803, died
don in 1837. Influenced by the Dutch at Fontainebleau in 1860. Travelled
painters of the 17th century. In turn in the East, whence he derived the
he exerted a great influence upon subjects of many of his pictures. Also
landscape-painting himself, notably painted historical works (fig. 21)
the school of Rdvbizon (figs. 156-158) Degas, Edgar. French painter. Born in
Corot, Jean-Baptiste-Camille. French Pans in 1834, died therein 1917. Began
painter. Born in Paris in 796 and died
1 in the classical tradition of Ingres,
there in 1875. Influenced at first by but about 865 he met the Impression-
1
Poussin and Claude Lorrain. Worked ists and so came to establish his own
in Italy as well as France. Painted style, which was closely related to
mainly landscapes and figures figs. I
theirs. Well known for his pictures
38-43) of ballet-life and horse-racing (figs.
Courbet, Jean-Désiré-Gustave. French 71-76)
painter. Born at Ornans in 1819, died Delacroix, Eugène. French painter. Born
at La Tour-du-Peil/, Switzerland, in at Charenton in 1798, died in Paris in
1877. Self-taught. Had great influence 1863. Studied Rubens in particular
not only on later realists (e.g. Thoma and was influenced by Constable and
in Germany) but on Impressionists Bonington. The central figure of
such as Renoir and Manet. Painted French Romanticism. Painted his-
landscapes, figure-pieces, portraits torical pieces, portraits, animal-pic-
and still-life (figs. 51-56) tures and religious works (figs. 22-27)
Couture, Thomas. French painter. Born Diaz de Narcisse. French paint-
la Pciïa,
at Sentis in LSI 5, died at Yillicrs-lc- er. Born at Bordeaux in 1808, died in
Bel in 1879. Teacher o\~ Manet and 1876 at Menton. Landscape-painter
1 euerbach, among others, and stu- of the Barbizon school. Self-taught,
died under Gros himself. Historical but influenced by Prud'hon and De-
and portrait painter fig. 60)( lacroix (
fig. 33)
Cross, Henri-Edmond (real name: Dela- Fattori, Giovanni. Italian painter. Born
croix). French painter. Born at Douai at 1 eghorn in 1825, died in 1908 in
in 1856, died in 1910 at Saint-C lair. Florence. Painted many pictures with
Member of the Impressionists, hut military subjects, as well as some very
later came under the influence of personal portraits (fig. 176)
Seurat and Signac. Mainly a land- Forain, Jean-Louis. French painter.
scape painter, and used the Pointillist Born at Rheims in 1852, died in 1931
technique (fig. 1 10) in Paris. Best known for his water-
Daubigny, Charles- Francois. French colours, pastels and graphic work,
painter. Born in Paris in 1817 and but was a fine painter in oils as well
died there in 1878. Joined the Barbi- (fig. 84)
zon school. Painted landscapes and Friedrich, Caspar David. German paint-
nature-studies. An important fore- er. Born at Greifswald in 1774, died
runner of Impressionism (fig. 34) in 840 in Dresden. Studied in Copen
1
Daumicr, Honoré. reneh painter Horn

I hagen and moved to Dresden in 1795
at Marseilles in 1810, died in I
Represents German Romanticism in
Valmondois. Well-known also as a painting, and is considered one ol
draughtsman and caricaturist, less so the greatest o\' Romantic landscape
sculptor. ( onsidered a precursor painters | figs. 141 , 142)
of modern realism (figs. 2ê 3 2) Gauguin, Paul. French painter. Born in
Paris in 1848, died in 1903 in the Mar- longs to a later phase in the develop-
quesas. Worked with Pissarro, and in ment of painting (fig. 109)
188£withvan Gogh. Frequently visit- Hodler, Ferdinand. Swiss painter. Born
ed Brittany. Went to Martinique in at Giirzelen (Berne) in 1853, died in
1887 and to Tahiti in 1891. After two 1918 in Geneva. Began as a realist
more years in Paris he returned to the painter under the influence of Cour-
South Sea islands. With Emile Ber- bet, but afterwards painted large
nard, he inaugurated Synthetism. symbolical compositions. He was
His work has had an important in- mainly a landscape and figure-paint-
fluence on modern art {figs. 100-105) er, (figs. 167-169)
Gérard, (Baron) François. French paint- Ingres, Jean- Auguste-Dominique. French
er. Born in Rome 1770, died in
in painter. Born at Montauban in 1780,
1 837 in Paris. Napoleon's court-paint- died in 1867 in Paris. Studied first in
er. Studied under David, among Toulouse and then under David in
others. Painted mainly portraits and Paris. He was head of the French
historical pictures in the classical Academy in Rome. Painted portraits,
style {fig. 2) nudes, historical and mythological
Géricault, Théodore. French painter. pictures. His realism influenced many
Born at Rouen in 1791, died in Paris later French painters figs. 12-16)
(
in 1824. Influenced first by Gros and Jongkind, Johan Barthold. Dutch paint-
then by Rubens. A
leading figure in er. Born at Ootmarsum in 1819, died
French Romanticism {figs. 7-11) in 1891 at Côte-Saint-André. Studied
Girodet-Trioson, Anne-Louis (Girodet under Eugène Isabey, among others.
de Roussy). French painter. Born at Went to France in 1846 and settled
Montargis in 1767, died in 1824 in there permanently in 1860. Influenced
Paris. Pupil of David. Influenced by by Corot and the Barbizon school,
Romanticism while in Italy. Painted and was associated with Boudin at
literary subjects {fig. 57) Honfleur. Painted landscapes and
Gleyre, Charles. Swiss painter. Born at especially views of canals and har-
Chevilly in 1 806, died in Paris in 874. 1 bours figs. 45, 46)
(
Settled in Paris after visits to Italy and Lawrence, Sir Thomas. British painter.
the East. Teacher of Monet, Renoir Born at Bristol in 1769, died in 1830
and Whistler, among others {fig. 170) in London. Like Reynolds, he was a
Gogh, Vincent van. Dutch painter. Born court painter, and painted many por-
at Groot Zundert in 1853, died in traits of the great, such as Metter-
1890 at Auvers-sur-Oise. Studied in nich,Pius VII and Charles X(fig. 152)
Antwerp and, 1886, in Paris.
after Lega, Silvestro. Italian painter. Born at
Friend of the Impressionists, of Gau- Modigliana in 1826, died in 1895 in
guin and Toulouse-Lautrec. In 1888 Florence. Belonged to the so-called
he went to Aries, where his most im- 'macchiaioli' group which resembled
portant work was done: landscapes, the school of Barbizon (fig. 175)
figures, and portraits (figs. 115-120) LeibI, Wilhelm. German painter. Born
Gros, (Baron) Antoine-Jean. French at Cologne in 1844, died at Wurzburg
painter. Born in Paris in 1771, died in in 1900. Studied first in Munich, then
1835 at Bas Meudon. Pupil of David. in Paris, where he fell under the in-
Glorified the Napoleonic period in his fluence of Courbet and realism. Spe-
portraits and battle-pieces (fig. 3) cialized in paintings of peasant men
Guigou, Paul Camille. French painter. and women in their natural surround-
Born at Villars in Provence in 1834, ings (fig. 148)
died in 1871 in Paris. Painted mainly Liebermann, Max. German painter.
landscapes in Provence. Sometimes Born in Berlin in 1847 and died there
resembles Courbet (fig. 62) in 1935. Studied in Berlin and Paris,
Guillaumin, Armand. French painter. and spent much time at Barbizon.
Born in Paris in 1841, died there in Influenced by Courbet and Millet,
1927. Painted landscapes, still-life and and later by the Impressionists. Paint-
portraits. He joined the Impression- ed portraits, street-scenes and
ists, but his personal style really be- theatre-life (fig. 147)
Manet, Edouard. French painter. Born Morisot, Berthe. French painter. Born
in Paris in 1832 and died there in at Bourges in 1841, died in 1895 in
1883. Mainly a figure-painter and Paris. Worked under Corot and was
portraitist. An influential Impressio- influenced by Manet. Member of the
nist, although he himself was influ- Impressionists (fig. 86)
enced by the Realists, especially by Pissarro, Camille. French painter. Born
Courbet (Jigs. 65-70) in St. Thomas, Danish West Indies, in
Marées, Hans von. German painter. 1830, died in 1903 in Paris. Impression-
Born at Elberfeld in 1837, died in ist landscape-painter, like Sisley and
1887 Rome. Studied in Berlin and

in Monet. Influenced by Constable and
Munich and, after moving from one later by the Pointillists (figs. 129-133)
country in Europe to another, settled Prud'hon, Pierre-Paul. French painter.
in Italy in 1873 (fig. 146) Born at Cluny in 1758, died in Paris
Meissonier, Ernest. French painter. in 1823. Began as a Neo-Classicist
Born at Lyons in 1815, died in 1891 in under David's influence and then
Paris. Painted historical costume- became a precursor of French Ro-
pieces (fig. 85) manticism (fig. 6)
Menzel, Adolf von. German painter. Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre. French paint-
Born at Breslau in 1815, died in 1905 er. Born at Lyons in 1824, died in
in Berlin. Worked at first as a 1898 in Paris. Basically a Classicist,
draughtsman, and started painting in even a Hellenist, who pursued the
oil in 1835. Painted historical pieces idealization of form. Shows affinities
and contemporary histor) {fig. 145) with Feuerbach, von Marées and the
Michel, Georges rehch painter. Horn
I
Pre-Raphaehtes. Painted frescoes and
in Paris in 1763 and died there in 1843. figure-compositions {fig. 59)
A landscape-painter reminiscent o\ Redon, Odilon. French painter. Born at
the Dutch landscape-painters of the Bordeaux in 1840, died in 1916 in Pa-
seventeenth century. Had an influence ris. From the intensive study of na-
on those who later formed the Barbi- ture, he moved on to create a dream-
zon school fig, 5) ( world of mythologica] figure-compo-
Millet, Jean-Francois. rench painter. 1 sitions and still-lifes (figs. 106-108)
Born at Gruchy in 1814, died in 1875 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste. French painter.
at Barbizon. Specialized in the pays- Horn at Limoges in 1841, died in 1919
sage intime and belonged to the Barbi- at ( agues. Pupil of Gleyre, influenced
zon school figs. 3'5-37) ( by Courbet and then by Monet who
Monet, Claude. French painter. Born in introduced him to pure Impression-
Paris in 1840, died in 1926" at Giver- ism. Specialized in figure-composi-
ny. After 1857, studied in Paris. Work- tions and portraits ( figs.89-94)
ed with Renoir, Sisley and Manet. Rousseau, Henri, the 'Douanier'. French
The most characteristic Impressionist painter. Born at Laval in 1844, died
and the chief theoretician of the move- in 1910 in Paris. Amateur painter,
ment (figs. 134 139) and a master of 'naive' art. Friend
Monticelli, Adolphe.
1 rench painter of Gauguin and Redon. Painted
Born Marseilles in 1824 and died
at landscapes and figure-compositions
there in 1886. A versatile painter o\~ i
figs. 121 ', 122)
landscapes, portraits and still-life, as Rousseau, Théodore. French painter.
well as festivals, in a range of strong Born in Pans in 1812, died in 1867 at
colour that was widely admired figs. ( Barbizon. Painted intimate land-
63, 64) scapes in the forest of Fontainebleau
Moreau, Gustave. rench painter. Born 1
and belonged to the Barbizon school.
in Paris in 1826 and died there in Influenced, like the others of the
1898. Teacher of Matisse and Kou- group. b> Constable, Bonington, and
ault, among others. Painted sym- the Dutch painters of the seventeenth
bolical works with mythologica] and century fig. 44) (
biblical subjects. Most of his work Scawtnd, Mortal >on. German painter.
is in the More. m Museum m l'ai is Porn in Vienna in 1804, died in 1871
( fig. 58) in Munich. South-German Roman-
ticist, known also for his drawings traitist who started as a popular real-
{fig.140) ist (he had known Courbet in Paris)
Segantini, Giovanni. Italian painter. but later came under the influence of
Born at Arco in 1858, died in 1899 at Bôcklin and Feuerbach. His litho-
Schafberg in the Engadine. Painted graphs are also well known (fig. 143)
Alpine landscapes and the life of the Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de. French
mountain peasantry (fig. 174) painter. Born at Albi in 1841, died
Seurat, Georges. French painter. Born in 1901 at Malromé. Known not on-
in Paris in 1859 and died there in ly for his paintings but also for his-
1891. Began as a draughtsman, and lithographs and posters (fig. 77-
methodically evolved the 'Pointillist' 82)
system of disintegrating colour. Triibner, Wilhelm. German painter.
Friend of Signac. Painted landscapes, Born atHeidelberg in 1851, died in
architecture, and still-life (figs. 112- 1917 at Karlsruhe. Started as a realist
114) painter under Courbet's influence,
Signac, Paul. French painter. Born in then, under Feuerbach's, he began
Paris in 1863 and died there in 1935. painting in a 'literary' manner. Later
A typical Neo-Impressionist, like still, he became an impressionistic
Seurat; friend of van Gogh. Painted landscape and portrait-painter (fig.
landscapes with rivers and the sea 149)
{fig. HI) Turner, Joseph Mallord William. Brit-
Sisley, Alfred. French painter. Born in ish painter. Born in London in 1775
Paris 1839, died at Moret-sur-
in and died there in 1851. Began as a
Loing in 1899. Member of the Im- draughtsman and in 1801 started
pressionists, pupil of Gleyre, friend painting in oil. His experiments with
of Renoir and Monet. Landscape- effects of light and atmosphere make
painting influenced by the Barbizon him one of the most important fore-
school, afterwards by Monet and runners of Impressionism (figs. 150-
Pissarro (figs. 123-128) 155)
Spitzweg, Karl. German painter. Born Whistler, James Abbott McNeill. Amer-
in Munich in 1808 and died there in ican painter. Born at Lowell, Mass.,
1885. Self-taught, but later felt the in- in 1834, died in London in 1903.
fluence of the Barbizon school (fig. Worked in Paris but even more in
144) London. Pupil of Gleyre, influenced
Thoma, Hans. German painter. Born at by Courbet and the Barbizon paint-
Bernau in 1839, died at Karlsruhe in ers. Painted landscapes and por-
1924. Landscape-painter and portraits (fig. 172)
Captions
nineteenth # CAll\
century compass
Books
painting
compass history of art
The Viking Press, Inc.

625 Madison Avenue
New York 22, N.Y. S2.25

Nineteenth-Century Painting (Compass History of Art)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Nineteenth-Century Painting (Compass History of Art)

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Nineteenth-Century Painting (Compass History of Art)

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

nineteenth

Nineteenth- Century Painting

Edited by Andre Held and D. W. Bloc menu

The complete series includes:

Roman and Etruscan Painting

Early Christian Painting

Christian and Byzantine Painting

Gothic and Romanesque Manuscripts

Eighteenth- ( \ntury Painting

Nineteenth- ( entury Painting

THE VIKING PRESS

Photographs 1-149, 156-161, 163, 165-171, 173-176

© 1964 by André Held

Translated by Angus Malcolm

A COMPASS BOOKS original edition

Published in 1965 by The Viking Press, Inc.

625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

OngTCSa catalog card number: 64-19703

The Birth of Landscape Painting 16

The Landscape Painters Barbizon and Honfleur

Towards the Twentieth Century 41

The Nineteenth Century in Europe 48

The Year 1899 51

In the history of painting, the nineteenth century is of capital importance ;

luci of all these developments.

teenth century attained the place we assign to it today ? It is difficult to

cannot, of course, be described as typical of the movements that made

century was to evolve. Since the Renaissance, the fountainhead of art

often second to dogma and to theory because of David's desire to figure

Ingres {figs. 12-16)

The same is true of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, although there was

work was certainly not all of equal value. As a history-painter

Delaroche, skilful in compromise, or Leopold Robert and Charles Gleyre,

on Delacroix, whose genius he had recognized in public. The year was

Géricault (figs. 7-11)

Everything about him tended to excess: a questing spirit, a thirst for

he admired and Michelangelo's frescos literally overwhelmed him. But

eight months of visionary fever.

work was calculated to upset the elderly painter, it was this,

from In actual fact, what had enabled Géricault to work, as it were,

'from life' when painting his Chasseur, was a magical transmutation of

easel. Cart-horse, pure-blooded Arab, English thoroughbred, he painted

Delacroix {figs. 22 27)

me, consists of the illusions I create by painting.'

was immensely cultivated, and not in humanism alone, thanks to the

repaid it handsomely by having the Barque du Dante framed at his own

monumental frescos, as well as a most telling portrait of a canon. From

had \\\v greater aesthetic repercussions. There he discovered the Levant,

Mediterranean sun, the very quintessence of reality. We can read about

to the ideal of the ancients, but unlike his predecessors he conceived it

Delacroix's achievements are beyond compare. They are the outcome

gifts, his originality of outlook, his acceptance of intellectual discipline

Chasser iau (figs. 17-20)

However, the mu-

ral painting that filled his life from 1843

The Birth of Landscape-Painting

Landscape, for Centuries, was nothing more than decoration, a useful

expressive powers. From the times oï the Primitives onwards, it is true,

some thought to landscape, but he kept it in the realm of the imaginary.