28 
ART NOTES FROM FRANCE. 
[Nature and Art, June 1, I860. 
Much of this happy change is due to the daring 
though incomplete genius of Eugene Delacroix, 
who, if he could not succeed in embodying on 
canvas all his own ideas, exhibited a determination, 
at the very outset of his career, not to be the slave 
of the ideas and opinions of others, and never 
swerved from it while his hand could hold a pencil. 
Delacroix saw that what were called the grand or 
the classic styles were either lifeless or theatrical ; 
that the colouring of the French school was flat, 
conventional, pedantic ; and he dared to compose 
according to his own notions, and to colour, as 
faithfully as he could, after Nature. His first 
pictures were received with shouts of derision, 
or shrugs of contempt : he possessed less power in 
delineation than many artists of his own standing ; 
his colouring was not only totally inconsistent with 
the dogmas of the schools, but also evidently fell 
far short of what he himself intended ; and in 
spite of the rapid advancement of his talent, his 
daring, uncompromising originality had to struggle 
for many years against the vogue for pictures as 
cold, correct, and soulless as his own were warm, 
faulty in detail, and imaginative. But Delacroix 
combined perseverance with genius ; he bent him- 
self to his work with the determined energy that 
arose from a conviction of power; he painted down 
the scoffers, he interested the sceptical, and at length 
the conventionalists were beaten, and admitted that 
he was a genius, though incomplete and wayward. 
When he died he enjoyed one of the highest 
reputations in France ; and after his death his 
slightest sketches were sold to enthusiastic connois- 
seurs for fabulous sums. Nor was the demand for 
these sketches a mere fashion or mania. Delacroix 
left comparatively few finished pictures ; his greatest 
works are on the walls and the ceilings of the 
churches, the Hotel de Ville, and the Louvre, but 
many of his so-called sketches were exquisitely 
finished works, almost as much superior, in an 
artistic point of view, to those for which they served 
as guides, as the cartoons of Raphael must have 
been to the tapestry which was worked from them. 
We have been present at the exhibition of the 
collected works of many painters, but we never 
witnessed such genuine enthusiasm as that which 
Avas called forth by those exquisite first draughts. 
It was, to a large portion of those present, a revela- 
tion of genius. 
Posterity will probably not place Eugene Dela- 
croix iu one of the highest niches in the temple of 
fame, but he undoubtedly deserves a position parallel 
with that occupied by Samuel Johnson in English 
literature ; he broke the bonds that confined his 
class, and asserted Avith heroic determination and 
a large amount of success the freedom of genius, 
the liberty of independent thought. The man who 
did this was a great artist, although his most ardent 
admirers Avould not compare his works with those 
of a Raphael or a Leonardo da Vinci. 
Others have since aided the good work begun by 
Delacroix for his epoch, and, in many respects, no 
painter has been more successful in the same course 
than the late Constant Troyon, the sale of whose 
Avorks has recently created a great sensation in 
Paris. 
A few years since, a painter of landscapes or 
animals, or both, Avas scarcely admitted by French 
critics to be an artist, the rank awarded to him 
Avas somewhere between the last miniaturist 
and the first sign-painter. That there could be 
anything worthy of the attention of an artist born 
in a country that possessed an academy of art and 
a host of traditions, in transferring to canvas or 
paper the vulgar elements of rural scenery, Avas 
inconceivable in the opinion of the great mass of 
the learned in such matters ; unless, indeed, certain 
grand personages, such as Venus or Diana, Apollo, 
Pan or Silenus, Dido and HCneas, Solomon and the 
Queen of Sheba, Avere introduced, when the paint- 
ing became a classical landscape, although the in- 
habitants of the mythical regions, of the balmy 
South or of the gloAving East, might be introduced 
half, if not Avholly, undraped, amid the gnarled oaks 
or the frigid pine-trees of our colder climes. And 
even Avhen the work had thus paid toll, and passed 
the academic gate, if the artist exhibited too much 
fondness for Nature, and dwelt too lovingly on 
sunrise and sunset, instead of putting them hi after 
the rule of the schools, the critic would shrug his 
shoulders and say — “ No doubt the man lias 
talent, but what a pity it is that he allows it to 
run riot, and offend all the established rules of 
classic art!’' Want of originality or dread of the 
critics caused most landscape-painters to follow 
tradition only too closely ; they copied the pecu- 
liarities, the handling, the tricks of the artist in 
fashion, until their Avorks Avere as unlike anything 
in Nature as if they had been executed in Berlin 
avooI. The Avoolly school has still its adepts in 
France, and hosts of admirers, but it is gradually 
giving place to a far more natural style. 
The French, until very lately, kneAV extremely 
little about the condition of the English mind, and 
the great and well-grounded admiration Avliich we 
expressed for the works of Claude Lorrain gave 
our neighbours but a poor opinion of our critical 
acumen. The case is considerably altered now : we 
have helped to teach our neighbours the value of one 
of their most original and brilliant artists, and in this 
we have done them a service for which they owe 
us a debt of gratitude ; for one of the problems of 
the French school of the present day is to discover 
Iioav Claude created his glowing sunsets, or flung the 
silvery haze of morning over earth and sky ; and, 
sIoav as may be the approach towards his glorious 
touch, every step on the road is a prize for modern 
art. 
Constant Troyon was born, lived, and died 
almost in sight of the famous porcelain works at 
Sevres. He received his artistic education from a 
painter in that establishment, where everything was 
classical; the idol might be Raphael, or Correggio, 
or Watteau, or eA T en Lancret, but an idol there 
must be, and he must be followed implicitly, or 
there was no art in the matter, but simple barba- 
rous daubing. It was a grand proof of the original 
genius of Troyon that, after having been educated 
