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The Paris Sketch Book

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As for the Ecole Royale des Beaux Arts, then, and all the good its
students have done, as students, it is stark naught. When the men
did anything, it was after they had left the academy, and began
thinking for themselves. There is only one picture among the many
hundreds that has, to my idea, much merit (a charming composition
of Homer singing, signed Jourdy); and the only good that the
Academy has done by its pupils was to send them to Rome, where they
might learn better things. At home, the intolerable, stupid
classicalities, taught by men who, belonging to the least erudite
country in Europe, were themselves, from their profession, the
least learned among their countrymen, only weighed the pupils down,
and cramped their hands, their eyes, and their imaginations; drove
them away from natural beauty, which, thank God, is fresh and
attainable by us all, to-day, and yesterday, and to-morrow; and
sent them rambling after artificial grace, without the proper means
of judging or attaining it.

A word for the building of the Palais des Beaux Arts. It is
beautiful, and as well finished and convenient as beautiful. With
its light and elegant fabric, its pretty fountain, its archway of
the Renaissance, and fragments of sculpture, you can hardly see, on
a fine day, a place more riant and pleasing.

Passing from thence up the picturesque Rue de Seine, let us walk to
the Luxembourg, where bonnes, students, grisettes, and old
gentlemen with pigtails, love to wander in the melancholy, quaint
old gardens; where the peers have a new and comfortable court of
justice, to judge all the émeutes which are to take place; and
where, as everybody knows, is the picture-gallery of modern French
artists, whom government thinks worthy of patronage.

A very great proportion of the pictures, as we see by the
catalogue, are by the students whose works we have just been to
visit at the Beaux Arts, and who, having performed their pilgrimage
to Rome, have taken rank among the professors of the art. I don't
know a more pleasing exhibition; for there are not a dozen really
bad pictures in the collection, some very good, and the rest
showing great skill and smartness of execution.

In the same way, however, that it has been supposed that no man
could be a great poet unless he wrote a very big poem, the
tradition is kept up among the painters, and we have here a vast
number of large canvases, with figures of the proper heroical
length and nakedness. The anticlassicists did not arise in France
until about 1827; and, in consequence, up to that period, we have
here the old classical faith in full vigor. There is Brutus,
having chopped his son's head off, with all the agony of a father,
and then, calling for number two; there is Æneas carrying off old
Anchises; there are Paris and Venus, as naked as two Hottentots,
and many more such choice subjects from Lemprière.

But the chief specimens of the sublime are in the way of murders,
with which the catalogue swarms. Here are a few extracts from it:--


7. Beaume, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur. "The Grand Dauphiness
Dying.

18. Blondel, Chevalier de la, &c. "Zenobia found Dead."

36. Debay, Chevalier. "The Death of Lucretia."

38. Dejuinne. "The Death of Hector."

34. Court, Chevalier de la, &c. "The Death of Caesar."

39, 40, 41. Delacroix, Chevalier. "Dante and Virgil in the
Infernal Lake," "The Massacre of Scio," and "Medea going to
Murder her Children."

43. Delaroche, Chevalier. "Joas taken from among the Dead."

44. "The Death of Queen Elizabeth."

45. "Edward V. and his Brother" (preparing for death).

50. "Hecuba going to be Sacrificed." Drolling, Chevalier.

51. Dubois. "Young Clovis found Dead."

56. Henry, Chevalier. "The Massacre of St. Bartholomew."

75. Guérin, Chevalier. "Cain, after the Death of Abel."

83. Jacquand. "Death of Adelaide de Comminges."

88. "The Death of Eudamidas."

93. "The Death of Hymetto."

103. "The Death of Philip of Austria."--And so on.


You see what woful subjects they take, and how profusely they are
decorated with knighthood. They are like the Black Brunswickers,
these painters, and ought to be called Chevaliers de la Mort. I
don't know why the merriest people in the world should please
themselves with such grim representations and varieties of murder,
or why murder itself should be considered so eminently sublime and
poetical. It is good at the end of a tragedy; but, then, it is
good because it is the end, and because, by the events foregone,
the mind is prepared for it. But these men will have nothing but
fifth acts; and seem to skip, as unworthy, all the circumstances
leading to them. This, however, is part of the scheme--the
bloated, unnatural, stilted, spouting, sham sublime, that our
teachers have believed and tried to pass off as real, and which
your humble servant and other antihumbuggists should heartily,
according to the strength that is in them, endeavor to pull down.
What, for instance, could Monsieur Lafond care about the death of
Eudamidas? What was Hecuba to Chevalier Drolling, or Chevalier
Drolling to Hecuba? I would lay a wager that neither of them ever
conjugated [Greek text omitted], and that their school learning
carried them not as far as the letter, but only to the game of taw.
How were they to be inspired by such subjects? From having seen
Talma and Mademoiselle Georges flaunting in sham Greek costumes,
and having read up the articles Eudamidas, Hecuba, in the
"Mythological Dictionary." What a classicism, inspired by rouge,
gas-lamps, and a few lines in Lemprière, and copied, half from
ancient statues, and half from a naked guardsman at one shilling
and sixpence the hour!

Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his "Medea" is a
genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
Brownrigg, and her two female 'prentices, would have done as well
as the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted]. M.
Delacroix has produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but
there is the stamp of genius on all of them,--the great poetical
INTENTION, which is worth all your execution. Delaroche is another
man of high merit; with not such a great HEART, perhaps, as the
other, but a fine and careful draughtsman, and an excellent
arranger of his subject. "The Death of Elizabeth" is a raw young
performance seemingly--not, at least, to my taste. The "Enfans
d'Edouard" is renowned over Europe, and has appeared in a hundred
different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and gloomy, and
merits fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in such
subjects--in what Lord Portsmouth used to call "black jobs." He
has killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise,
and I don't know whom besides. He is, at present, occupied with a
vast work at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honor
of seeing him,--a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in
height. He wore, on this important occasion, a bandanna round his
head, and was in the act of smoking a cigar.

Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the
king of French battle-painters--an amazingly rapid and dexterous
draughtsman, who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and
has painted the Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes.
His pictures on such subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent;
and he is so clever a man, that all he does is good to a certain
degree. His "Judith" is somewhat violent, perhaps. His "Rebecca"
most pleasing; and not the less so for a little pretty affectation
of attitude and needless singularity of costume. "Raphael and
Michael Angelo" is as clever a picture as can be--clever is just
the word--the groups and drawing excellent, the coloring pleasantly
bright and gaudy; and the French students study it incessantly;
there are a dozen who copy it for one who copies Delacroix. His
little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now publishing "Life of
Napoleon," are perfect gems in their way, and the noble price paid
for them not a penny more than he merits.

The picture, by Court, of "The Death of Caesar," is remarkable for
effect and excellent workmanship: and the head of Brutus (who looks
like Armand Carrel) is full of energy. There are some beautiful
heads of women, and some very good color in the picture.
Jacquand's "Death of Adelaide de Comminges" is neither more nor
less than beautiful. Adelaide had, it appears, a lover, who betook
himself to a convent of Trappists. She followed him thither,
disguised as a man, took the vows, and was not discovered by him
till on her death-bed. The painter has told this story in a most
pleasing and affecting manner: the picture is full of onction and
melancholy grace. The objects, too, are capitally represented; and
the tone and color very good. Decaisne's "Guardian Angel" is not
so good in color, but is equally beautiful in expression and grace.
A little child and a nurse are asleep: an angel watches the infant.
You see women look very wistfully at this sweet picture; and what
triumph would a painter have more?

We must not quit the Luxembourg without noticing the dashing sea-
pieces of Gudin, and one or two landscapes by Giroux (the plain of
Grasivaudan), and "The Prometheus" of Aligny. This is an
imitation, perhaps; as is a noble picture of "Jesus Christ and the
Children," by Flandrin: but the artists are imitating better
models, at any rate; and one begins to perceive that the odious
classical dynasty is no more. Poussin's magnificent "Polyphemus"
(I only know a print of that marvellous composition) has, perhaps,
suggested the first-named picture; and the latter has been inspired
by a good enthusiastic study of the Roman schools.

Of this revolution, Monsieur Ingres has been one of the chief
instruments. He was, before Horace Vernet, president of the French
Academy at Rome, and is famous as a chief of a school. When he
broke up his atelier here, to set out for his presidency, many of
his pupils attended him faithfully some way on his journey; and
some, with scarcely a penny in their pouches, walked through France
and across the Alps, in a pious pilgrimage to Rome, being
determined not to forsake their old master. Such an action was
worthy of them, and of the high rank which their profession holds
in France, where the honors to be acquired by art are only inferior
to those which are gained in war. One reads of such peregrinations
in old days, when the scholars of some great Italian painter
followed him from Venice to Rome, or from Florence to Ferrara. In
regard of Ingres's individual merit as a painter, the writer of
this is not a fair judge, having seen but three pictures by him;
one being a plafond in the Louvre, which his disciples much admire.

Ingres stands between the Imperio-Davido-classical school of French
art, and the namby-pamby mystical German school, which is for
carrying us back to Cranach and Dürer, and which is making progress
here.

For everything here finds imitation: the French have the genius of
imitation and caricature. This absurd humbug, called the Christian
or Catholic art, is sure to tickle our neighbors, and will be a
favorite with them, when better known. My dear MacGilp, I do
believe this to be a greater humbug than the humbug of David and
Girodet, inasmuch as the latter was founded on Nature at least;
whereas the former is made up of silly affectations, and
improvements upon Nature. Here, for instance, is Chevalier
Ziegler's picture of "St. Luke painting the Virgin." St. Luke has
a monk's dress on, embroidered, however, smartly round the sleeves.
The Virgin sits in an immense yellow-ochre halo, with her son in
her arms. She looks preternaturally solemn; as does St. Luke, who
is eying his paint-brush with an intense ominous mystical look.
They call this Catholic art. There is nothing, my dear friend,
more easy in life. First take your colors, and rub them down
clean,--bright carmine, bright yellow, bright sienna, bright
ultramarine, bright green. Make the costumes of your figures as
much as possible like the costumes of the early part of the
fifteenth century. Paint them in with the above colors; and if on
a gold ground, the more "Catholic" your art is. Dress your
apostles like priests before the altar; and remember to have a good
commodity of crosiers, censers, and other such gimcracks, as you
may see in the Catholic chapels, in Sutton Street and elsewhere.
Deal in Virgins, and dress them like a burgomaster's wife by
Cranach or Van Eyck. Give them all long twisted tails to their
gowns, and proper angular draperies. Place all their heads on one
side, with the eyes shut, and the proper solemn simper. At the
back of the head, draw, and gild with gold-leaf, a halo or glory,
of the exact shape of a cart-wheel: and you have the thing done.
It is Catholic art tout craché, as Louis Philippe says. We have it
still in England, handed down to us for four centuries, in the
pictures on the cards, as the redoubtable king and queen of clubs.
Look at them: you will see that the costumes and attitudes are
precisely similar to those which figure in the catholicities of the
school of Overbeck and Cornelius.

Before you take your cane at the door, look for one instant at the
statue-room. Yonder is Jouffley's "Jeune Fille confiant son
premier secret à Vénus." Charming, charming! It is from the
exhibition of this year only; and I think the best sculpture in the
gallery--pretty, fanciful, naïve; admirable in workmanship and
imitation of Nature. I have seldom seen flesh better represented
in marble. Examine, also, Jaley's "Pudeur," Jacquot's "Nymph," and
Rude's "Boy with the Tortoise." These are not very exalted
subjects, or what are called exalted, and do not go beyond simple,
smiling beauty and nature. But what then? Are we gods, Miltons,
Michel Angelos, that can leave earth when we please; and soar to
heights immeasurable? No, my dear MacGilp; but the fools of
academicians would fain make us so. Are you not, and half the
painters in London, panting for an opportunity to show your genius
in a great "historical picture?" O blind race! Have you wings?
Not a feather: and yet you must be ever puffing, sweating up to the
tops of rugged hills; and, arrived there, clapping and shaking your
ragged elbows, and making as if you would fly! Come down, silly
Daedalus; come down to the lowly places in which Nature ordered you
to walk. The sweet flowers are springing there; the fat muttons
are waiting there; the pleasant sun shines there; be content and
humble, and take your share of the good cheer.

While we have been indulging in this discussion, the omnibus has
gayly conducted us across the water; and le garde qui veille a la
porte du Louvre ne défend pas our entry.

What a paradise this gallery is for French students, or foreigners
who sojourn in the capital! It is hardly necessary to say that the
brethren of the brush are not usually supplied by Fortune with any
extraordinary wealth, or means of enjoying the luxuries with which
Paris, more than any other city, abounds. But here they have a
luxury which surpasses all others, and spend their days in a palace
which all the money of all the Rothschilds could not buy. They
sleep, perhaps, in a garret, and dine in a cellar; but no grandee
in Europe has such a drawing-room. Kings' houses have, at best,
but damask hangings, and gilt cornices. What are these to a wall
covered with canvas by Paul Veronese, or a hundred yards of Rubens?
Artists from England, who have a national gallery that resembles a
moderate-sized gin-shop, who may not copy pictures, except under
particular restrictions, and on rare and particular days, may revel
here to their hearts' content. Here is a room half a mile long,
with as many windows as Aladdin's palace, open from sunrise till
evening, and free to all manners and all varieties of study: the
only puzzle to the student is to select the one he shall begin
upon, and keep his eyes away from the rest.

Fontaine's grand staircase, with its arches, and painted ceilings
and shining Doric columns, leads directly to the gallery; but it
is thought too fine for working days, and is only opened for the
public entrance on Sabbath. A little back stair (leading from a
court, in which stand numerous bas-reliefs, and a solemn sphinx,
of polished granite,) is the common entry for students and others,
who, during the week, enter the gallery.

Hither have lately been transported a number of the works of French
artists, which formerly covered the walls of the Luxembourg (death
only entitles the French painter to a place in the Louvre); and let
us confine ourselves to the Frenchmen only, for the space of this
letter.

I have seen, in a fine private collection at St. Germain, one or
two admirable single figures of David, full of life, truth, and
gayety. The color is not good, but all the rest excellent; and one
of these so much-lauded pictures is the portrait of a washer-woman.
"Pope Pius," at the Louvre, is as bad in color as remarkable for
its vigor and look of life. The man had a genius for painting
portraits and common life, but must attempt the heroic;--failed
signally; and what is worse, carried a whole nation blundering
after him. Had you told a Frenchman so, twenty years ago, he would
have thrown the démenti in your teeth; or, at least, laughed at you
in scornful incredulity. They say of us that we don't know when we
are beaten: they go a step further, and swear their defeats are
victories. David was a part of the glory of the empire; and one
might as well have said then that "Romulus" was a bad picture, as
that Toulouse was a lost battle. Old-fashioned people, who believe
in the Emperor, believe in the Théâtre Français, and believe that
Ducis improved upon Shakspeare, have the above opinion. Still, it
is curious to remark, in this place, how art and literature become
party matters, and political sects have their favorite painters and
authors.

Nevertheless, Jacques Louis David is dead, he died about a year
after his bodily demise in 1825. The romanticism killed him.
Walter Scott, from his Castle of Abbotsford, sent out a troop of
gallant young Scotch adventurers, merry outlaws, valiant knights,
and savage Highlanders, who, with trunk hosen and buff jerkins,
fierce two-handed swords, and harness on their back, did challenge,
combat, and overcome the heroes and demigods of Greece and Rome.
Notre Dame à la rescousse! Sir Brian de Bois Guilbert has borne
Hector of Troy clear out of his saddle. Andromache may weep: but
her spouse is beyond the reach of physic. See! Robin Hood twangs
his bow, and the heathen gods fly, howling. Montjoie Saint Denis!
down goes Ajax under the mace of Dunois; and yonder are Leonidas
and Romulus begging their lives of Rob Roy Macgregor. Classicism
is dead. Sir John Froissart has taken Dr. Lemprière by the nose,
and reigns sovereign.

Of the great pictures of David the defunct, we need not, then, say
much. Romulus is a mighty fine young fellow, no doubt; and if he
has come out to battle stark naked (except a very handsome helmet),
it is because the costume became him, and shows off his figure to
advantage. But was there ever anything so absurd as this passion
for the nude, which was followed by all the painters of the
Davidian epoch? And how are we to suppose yonder straddle to be
the true characteristic of the heroic and the sublime? Romulus
stretches his legs as far as ever nature will allow; the Horatii,
in receiving their swords, think proper to stretch their legs too,
and to thrust forward their arms, thus,--


[Drawing omitted]


Romulus's is in the exact action of a telegraph; and the Horatii
are all in the position of the lunge. Is this the sublime? Mr.
Angelo, of Bond Street, might admire the attitude; his namesake,
Michel, I don't think would.

The little picture of "Paris and Helen," one of the master's
earliest, I believe, is likewise one of his best: the details are
exquisitely painted. Helen looks needlessly sheepish, and Paris
has a most odious ogle; but the limbs of the male figure are
beautifully designed, and have not the green tone which you see in
the later pictures of the master. What is the meaning of this
green? Was it the fashion, or the varnish? Girodet's pictures
are green; Gros's emperors and grenadiers have universally the
jaundice. Gerard's "Psyche" has a most decided green-sickness; and
I am at a loss, I confess, to account for the enthusiasm which this
performance inspired on its first appearance before the public.

In the same room with it is Girodet's ghastly "Deluge," and
Gericault's dismal "Medusa." Gericault died, they say, for want of
fame. He was a man who possessed a considerable fortune of his
own; but pined because no one in his day would purchase his
pictures, and so acknowledge his talent. At present, a scrawl from
his pencil brings an enormous price. All his works have a grand
cachet: he never did anything mean. When he painted the "Raft of
the Medusa," it is said he lived for a long time among the corpses
which he painted, and that his studio was a second Morgue. If you
have not seen the picture, you are familiar probably, with
Reynolds's admirable engraving of it. A huge black sea; a raft
beating upon it; a horrid company of men dead, half dead, writhing
and frantic with hideous hunger or hideous hope; and, far away,
black, against a stormy sunset, a sail. The story is powerfully
told, and has a legitimate tragic interest, so to speak,--deeper,
because more natural, than Girodet's green "Deluge," for instance:
or his livid "Orestes," or red-hot "Clytemnestra."

Seen from a distance the latter's "Deluge" has a certain awe-
inspiring air with it. A slimy green man stands on a green rock,
and clutches hold of a tree. On the green man's shoulders is his
old father, in a green old age; to him hangs his wife, with a babe
on her breast, and dangling at her hair, another child. In the
water floats a corpse (a beautiful head) and a green sea and
atmosphere envelops all this dismal group. The old father is
represented with a bag of money in his hand; and the tree, which
the man catches, is cracking, and just on the point of giving way.
These two points were considered very fine by the critics: they are
two such ghastly epigrams as continually disfigure French Tragedy.
For this reason I have never been able to read Racine with
pleasure,--the dialogue is so crammed with these lugubrious good
things--melancholy antitheses--sparkling undertakers' wit; but this
is heresy, and had better be spoken discreetly.

The gallery contains a vast number of Poussin's pictures; they put
me in mind of the color of objects in dreams,--a strange, hazy,
lurid hue. How noble are some of his landscapes! What a depth of
solemn shadow is in yonder wood, near which, by the side of a black
water, halts Diogenes. The air is thunder-laden, and breathes
heavily. You hear ominous whispers in the vast forest gloom.

Near it is a landscape, by Carel Dujardin, I believe, conceived in
quite a different mood, but exquisitely poetical too. A horseman
is riding up a hill, and giving money to a blowsy beggar-wench.
O matutini rores auraeque salubres! in what a wonderful way has the
artist managed to create you out of a few bladders of paint and
pots of varnish. You can see the matutinal dews twinkling in the
grass, and feel the fresh, salubrious airs ("the breath of Nature
blowing free," as the corn-law man sings) blowing free over the
heath; silvery vapors are rising up from the blue lowlands. You
can tell the hour of the morning and the time of the year: you can
do anything but describe it in words. As with regard to the
Poussin above mentioned, one can never pass it without bearing away
a certain pleasing, dreamy feeling of awe and musing; the other
landscape inspires the spectator infallibly with the most
delightful briskness and cheerfulness of spirit. Herein lies the
vast privilege of the landscape-painter: he does not address you
with one fixed particular subject or expression, but with a
thousand never contemplated by himself, and which only arise out of
occasion. You may always be looking at a natural landscape as at a
fine pictorial imitation of one; it seems eternally producing new
thoughts in your bosom, as it does fresh beauties from its own. I
cannot fancy more delightful, cheerful, silent companions for a man
than half a dozen landscapes hung round his study. Portraits, on
the contrary, and large pieces of figures, have a painful, fixed,
staring look, which must jar upon the mind in many of its moods.
Fancy living in a room with David's sans-culotte Leonidas staring
perpetually in your face!

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