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DELAROCHE, PAUL. 



DELAROCHE, PAUL. 



612 



amidst almost every variety of difficulty and personal danger that can 

 be conceived. Mechain dying during the progress of the work, the 

 completion of it devolved wholly on Delambre. His perseverance, 

 prudence, and zeal however eventually overcame all obstacles; and 

 after eight years of unceasing labour and anxiety he obtained the 

 measurements which constitute the data of the three volumes(1806-10) 

 of his elaborate and invaluable work, 'Base du Systeme Mi'trique 

 Decimal.' The Institute of France, which had watched over its progress, 

 decreed him the prize for the most valuable work on physical science 

 which had appeared within the preceding ten years ; and it is difficult 

 to conceive that a single objection could possibly arise to the propriety 

 of that decision. 



Of the continuation of Delambre'a arc by Biot and Arago from Bar- 

 celona to Formentcra, this is not the place to speak at length ; but it 

 may be necessary to state that discrepancies which had long been 

 observed in this latter arc were found by Puissant to arise out of actual 

 errors committed by these observers. 



Delambre was chosen an associate of almost every learned body in 

 Europe, and was appointed by the French government a member of 

 the Bureau des Longitudes, and Secretaire Perpetuel de 1'Institut de 

 France, and one of the directors of the University of France. During 

 the twenty yean that he filled this latter important and responsible 

 post, his attention to its duties was unwavering, and bis decisions 

 remarkable for their justice and impartiality. His eloges of the 

 deceased savans were indeed at the time considered somewhat strained 

 an to praise ; but they were at least kindly meant to the friends of the 

 deceased, and were gratifying to the vanity of the nation. They were 

 remarkable for purity of style and for the researches into the history 

 of the subjects to which the eulogised member had devoted himself. 



In 1814 Delambre was appointed a member of the Council of Public 

 Instruction, but was deprived of it in the following year. He was in 

 Paris when it was taken by the allied armies ; and shortly afterwards, 

 writing to one of his friends, he says he worked with perfect tranquil- 

 lity from eight in the morning till midnight in the continued hearing 

 of the cannonade. Such self-possession for study under that tremen- 

 dous attack, and such absence of interest in the result of the great 

 struggle, to say nothing of indifference to personal danger, is what we 

 confess ourelves unable to understand. In the midst of active exer- 

 tion we may be fearless of personal danger ; but Delambre was in his 

 study, and professes to have felt not only perfectly calm but to have 

 been able to pursue his scientific labours for sixteen hours in the very 

 niMst of the cannonade. He escaped uninjured. 



On the creation of the Legion of Honour, Delambre was constituted 

 a member of that body, and soon after an hereditary chevalier, with a 

 pension, as a reward for his scientific services; and finally, in 1821 

 he was created an officer of that body. In 1817 he was created a 

 chevalier of the order of St. Michael. 



The death of Delambre occurred on the 19th of August 1S22, at the 

 age of seventy-two. It was preceded by a total loss of strength and 

 frequent and long continued fainting-fits, with the other symptoms of 

 a constitution worn out by hard mental and bodily labour. He died 

 as he had lived, calmly, and though not without great Buffering, yet 

 without a single complaint. 



The writings of Delambre are exceedingly numerous. The following 

 is a list of his separate works in the order of their publication : 

 1, ' Tables de Jupiter et de Saturne,' 1789 ; 2, ' Tables du Solcil, de 

 Jupiter, de Saturne, d'Uranns, et des Satellites de Jupiter, pour servir 

 & la 3me edition de 1' Astronomic de Lalande,' 1792 ; 3, ' Mdthodcs 

 Analytiques pour la determination d'un Arc du Meridien,' 1799 ; 4, 

 ' Tables Trigonomdtriquea Decimates,' par Borda, revues, augrneutdes, 

 publics par II. Delambre,' 1801 ; 5, 'Tables du Soleil,' publiees par 

 lc, iiureau des Longitudes, 1806; 6, 'Base du Systeme Me'trique 

 Decimal,' 3 vols., 1806-10 ; 7, ' Rapport Hiatorique sur les Progres des 

 Sciences Mathe'matiques depuis 1789,' 1810 ; 8, ' Abre'ge' d' Astronomic, 

 ou Lccons Eldmentaires d'Astronomie Thdorique et Pratique;' 9, 

 'Astronomie Theorique et Pratique,' 4to, 3 vol., 1814 ; 10, 'Tables 

 Ecliptiques des Satellites de Jupiter,' 1817; 11, 'Histoire de 1'Astro- 

 nomie Ancienne,' 2 vols. 4to, 1817 ; 12, ' Histoiro de 1' Astronomie du 

 Moyen Age,' 1 vol. 4to, 1819 ; 13, ' Histoire de 1' Astronomie Moderne,' 

 2 vols. 4to, 1821; 14, 'Histoire de 1'Astronomie au Dix-huitieme 

 Siocle,' 4to, 1827, published under the care of Matthieu. 



Besides these separate works, Delambre published a considerable 

 number of memoirs in the collections of Petersburg, Turin, Stockholm, 

 and Berlin, independently of those which appeared in the ' Me'moires 

 de 1'Institut de France : ' also twenty-eight memoirs on different sub- 

 jects (astronomy, geodesy, and astronomical history) in the ' Connais- 

 sance des Temps," from 1788 to 1820. A list of these may be seen in 

 Coste'a indexes to that work for 1807 and 1822. 



Any attempt to analyse the writings of Delambre would far exceed 

 the limits which can be allowed in this Cyclopaedia. It is sufficient to 

 say they are wdl worthy of the praise which has been bestowed upon 

 them, as they are not only all excellent in their kind, but throughout 

 marked with an original mind, indicate the most devoted enthusiasm 

 to their several subjects, and prove that their author combined the 

 spirit of scientific inquiry with the feelings and habits of literature in 

 a degree that the hi-tory of a single Individual baa hardly ever before 

 or since exhibited. 



DELAROCHE, PAUL, an eminent French painter, was bom at 



Paris in 1797. Early intending to follow art as a profession, he at 

 first studied landscape, and was in 1817 an unsuccessful candidate for 

 the Academy prize in landscape-painting. Convinced that landscape- 

 painting was not his vocation, he entered the atelier of Baron Gros, 

 under whose guidance he made rapid progress in the study of the 

 figure. Gros had himself in a great measure thrown off the classic 

 trammels which his master David had fixed on French art [Guos, 

 BAUON, A. J.], and Delaroche entirely emancipated himself from their 

 thraldom. But he did not, like Delacroix, go to the opposite extreme. 

 He still adhered to the old laws, and many of the conventionalities of 

 art. Choosing his subjects to a great extent from modern history, 

 and painting without much regard to academic attitudes and arrange- 

 ments, he yet sought to maintain something of the old sobriety and 

 dignity of the historic style, and hence when his superiority in his 

 chosen line came to be generally recognised, and Delaroche was the 

 acknowledged chief of a school, that school received the name of the 

 ' Eclectics,' in contradistinction to the Romantic school of Delacroix 

 and the Classic school of David and his followers. 



Paul Delaroche in 1819 and the following years exhibited some 

 paintings of scriptural subjects, but it was not till 1824 that the 

 earliest of that class of works by which he achieved his fame appeared ; 

 these were, ' St. Vincent de Paul preaching in the presence of Louis 

 XIII. ; ' and ' Jeanne d'Arc interrogated in prison by Cardinal 

 Beaufort,' which produced a considerable impression. In 1826 M. 

 Delaroche exhibited the first of his very remarkable paintings from 

 English history ' The Death of Queen Elizabeth.' This picture was 

 purchased for the gallery of the Luxembourg, and is thought by 

 French critics to display a wonderful knowledge of English history 

 and English character. It is really the worst of his English pictures, 

 and renders with abundant exaggeration the coarse notion of Elizabeth 

 which alone continental artists and poets seem capable of conceiving : 

 some of the draperies are however very well painted, as indeed his 

 draperies mostly ;are. When M. Delaroche a few years later (1831) 

 again trod on English ground he was a good deal more successful; his 

 'Children of Edward IV. iu the Tower,' being of its class a very 

 excellent picture : it is well knowu in this country by engravings. 

 But of a far higher order was his next great English picture, 

 ' Cromwell contemplating the corpse of Charles I.' He has here 

 imagined a circumstance in itself sufficiently probable, and he has 

 treated it with a calm dignity worthy of tho theme. M. Delaroche 

 has been often charged with sacrificing his principal subject to the 

 accessories by his excessive care in the rendering of them, but here the 

 attention is at once arrested by the thoughtful head of the Protector, 

 directed to the lifeless form he is brooding over, and it never 

 wanders from the victim and the victor. The sombre colour and 

 gloomy shades are entirely in unison with the prevalent impression. 

 Simple as is the idea of the picture, it would perhaps be difficult to 

 name another modern painting which so thoroughly succeeds in 

 carrying the mind of the spectator into the very presence of the 

 man represented. This fine picture is now in the possession of the 

 Earl of Elleamere, but M. Delaroche has painted, we believe, more 

 than one repetition of it; it has been very popular also as au 

 engraving. 



His other more important pictures from English history are tho 

 'Execution of Lady Jane Grey' (1834); 'Charles L in the Guard- 

 room, insulted by the Parliamentary Soldiers' (1837), now in the col- 

 lection of the Earl of Ellesmerc, and well engraved by A. Martinet ; 

 ' Lord Stratford on his way to the Scaffold receiving the Blessing of 

 Archbishop Laud' (1837), a companion picture to that of ' Cromwell 

 contemplating the Corpse of Charles,' and equally well known by the 

 engravings, but certainly far less impressive as a work of mind, and 

 inferior in its technical qualities : the original is in the collection of 

 the Duke of Sutherland. M. Delaroche has also painted some illustra- 

 tions of Scott's novels. 



Among the subjects from French history may be named ' Uue Scene 

 de la St. Barthelemy ' (1826) ; ' Le Cardinal do Richelieu sur le Rhone, 

 conduisant au supplice Cinq Mara et de Thou,' and a companion, ' Le 

 Cardinal Mazariu mourant' (1831), both of which, as pictures, and in 



the engravings by F. Giraud, wera very popular ; ' La Mort du Duo de 

 Guiae' (1835), one of his best pictures; ' La Heine Marie- Antoinette 



smaller copies. His other pictures and portraits are very numerous. 



Perhaps the moat remarkable of Delaroche's productions however is 

 his painting of the. hemioycle of the Palais des Beaux Arts, iu which 

 he has represented the great painters, sculptors, and architects from 

 the earliest time down to the present. From the centre, where 

 Apelles, Phidias, and Ictinus are enthroned as the representatives of 

 the arts in ancient Greece, and marshalled under figures which 

 symbolise the principal eras in the history of art, the great sculptors 

 and architects aro ranged in groups, the painters occupying the 

 extremities. The artists in some instances chosen, and those iu more 

 instances omitted, from this artistic Wallhalla, will probably raise a 

 smile on the lips of the student of the history of art ; but tho work 

 itself cannot fail to excite admiration, it is so elevated in style, treated 

 with so much sobriety and refinement, and is so simple and effective 

 in arrangement and execution. This great work employed the painter 



