WORKS OF SOME PAINTERS. 121 



some specimens, his work occupying so prominent a 

 position as the transition between the conventionalities 

 of his predecessors and the reality which is now required. 



I find the following lines in an interesting biography 

 of the artist : — " Oh ! that by a miracle we might see his 

 horses descend from their frames or become detached 

 from the lithographic stone and accomplish the motion 

 commenced and uninterruptedly finish their gait upon the 

 nervous elasticity of their hocks. 



"I have been witness of the hesitation which sometimes 

 possessed the mind of the spectator when looking at the 

 works of Gericault ; there is indecision as to the object 

 he himself proposed to attain. The question is put to 

 one's self : did he desire to astonish or did he only wish to 

 portray ? It is such an hesitation as this which I should 

 be happy to relieve. Apt to feel every violent motion, 

 the artist was also exceptionally apt to render it. Few 

 masters, even among the greatest, have known how to 

 avoid preparation for the mise en scene; in Gericault, 

 from the madness of the Medusa to the least picturesque 

 of his studies of a horse, the action not only takes place 

 at the very moment at which the attention is directed, 

 but it began previously and will subsequently continue ; 

 its duration is whilst it is regarded. I will not even swear, 

 after close and reiterated scrutiny, to the impossibility of 

 finding the preceding movement, the preceding effect. I 

 will absolutely affirm the divination of that which will 

 follow. What is even yet more astonishing in the 

 -Norman artist is his ability to express nature with 

 veracity and exactitude and yet to impart to his interpre- 

 tations something in addition and beyond, which is not 

 nature. His profound knowledge permitted self- 

 abandonment to his natural exaltation and attainment of 

 the translation of natural objections of his own notions 

 by intuition and obedience to nothing but his own 

 phantasy." 



It is in the calm motion that appreciation of the 

 mechanism regulating the progression of the members is 

 possible. The progress made in the science of locomotion 

 is an assistance to accurate inspection. 



Gericault ignored a theory he could never have learnt, 

 and his own observations, however thoroughly exercised, 



