YHK HI. STORY OF ART. 



Iff 



with tho poetry of tho minor versifiers, and the artificial pretti- 

 ness of the fashionable boautien. J. B. Gruuzo i 1 

 was one of tho few more original painters of the later Bourbon 

 period. Hia works are often of a domestic character, and in 

 apite of a certain meretricious tendency, which has caused him 

 to be much docried of late yearn, they are often really touching 

 and tender in sentiment. The "Broken Pitcher," ongravi.nl 

 many times, ia a popular favourite in England, and exbibitH 

 Oreuce at once at his beat and worst. Taken as a whole, tho 

 times of Louis XV. and Louia XVI. in Franco coincided with a 

 gonerul decrease in artistic productivity ; for art, like every 

 other department of human work, declined with the universal 

 decay of the French monarchy in its later stages. 



the false classical spirit of which he was almost the taut, and 

 certainly the chilliest, exponent. Almost all of the subject* 

 are taken from the ancient mythology, but a few represent 

 scenes in the life of Napoleon. His namesake, Jean Pierre 

 David, generally known from his birthplace, for distinction's 

 sake, as David d' Angers, was a sculptor of great power and real 

 genius. Though almost equally classical in taste, hu line of 

 art fitted in better with the then prevailing style, and as time 

 passed on he grew gradually more modern, with most of his 

 contemporaries. 



The rise and progress of the modern romantic French school 

 lies almost beyond the scope of this series. After the fall 

 of Napoleon wider modern views began deeply to influence the 



THE MILL. (By Claude.) 



With tho great Revolution, an immense change set in, in art 

 as in other things. Nevertheless, the artistic revelation came 

 much more slowly than the social and literary revolutions. For 

 awhile, France was almost too much engaged in war to find 

 leisure for aesthetic pursuits ; and when she settled down again, 

 the influence of Napoleon was strongly exerted in favour of a 

 certain hard, cold, academic classicalism. Indeed, the revolu- 

 tion had brought classical ideas and even classical costumes 

 into favour, and the school of David (17481825) was strongly 

 marked by the prevailing tendency. His works have, for the 

 most part, a great elegance of form and much power of technical 

 expression ; but they are frigid in tho extreme, wholly lacking 

 in life and spirit, and as dead as marble. David carefully 

 endeavoured to restore what he conceived to be Greek ideas in 

 painting ; and as Greek art is now mainly known to us from its 

 statuary, his results were such as are suitable to the sculptor's 

 craft, but quite unfitted for pictorial representation. Tame 

 and lifeless as they are, however, David's heroic pieces have a 

 singular elegance of composition, and he has probably suffered 

 somewhat at the present day in the universal reaction against 



minds of Frenchmen, and a more natural realistic style, ye* 

 tinged with idealism of the romantic sort, became usual in art 

 as in literature. In the record of this change, the great name 

 of Eugene Delacroix (1799 1863), the most fiery and imagina- 

 tive of modern painters, stands in the very first rank. He was, 

 in fact, the leader of the romanticist revolution in art, as Victor 

 Hugo was in literature. Paul Delaroche, his great contempo- 

 rary and rival (1797 1856), stood half-way between the two 

 schools, with a decided tendency towards romanticism. The 

 wonderful battle-pieces of the Vernets must also be mentioned, 

 instinct as they are with vivid life and realism. It is impossible 

 to find room for more than the names of Ary Soheffer, Corot, 

 Millet, Ge'rAme, and others. Indeed, within tho present century, 

 France has rapidly risen to be the real home of art, and it now 

 leads the entire artistic movement of the world. At the present 

 day, its living painters are the greatest masters of technique 

 who have ever lived, and its art, though marred by many faults 

 of sentiment and much underlying sensnousness of feeling, is 

 still the widest, finest, and most varied in type that the world 

 has ever possessed. 



