We still see the works of some of the staunch Romanticists:
Jean Gigoux (d. 1892), Robert-Fleury (d. 1890), Jules Dupré
(d. 1889), Lami (d. 1890), Cabat (d. 1893) and Isabey (d. 1886);
and with these, though they did not follow quite the same road,
may be named Français (d. 1897) and Charles Jacque (d. 1894).
Next to them, Meissonier (d. 1891) crowded into the last twenty
years of his life a mass of work which, for the most part, enhanced
his fame; and Rosa Bonheur (d. 1899), working in retirement
up to the age of seventy-seven, went on her accustomed way
unmoved by external changes. Hébert, Harpignies, Ziem and
Paul Flandrin survived. Among the generation which grew
up under the Second Empire we find men of great intelligence
and distinction; some, like Alexandre Cabanel (1824–1889), by
pictures of historical genre, in a somewhat insipid and conventional
style, but more particularly by female portraits, firm in
flesh-painting and aristocratic in feeling; others, like Paul
Baudry (1828–1886, q.v.), whose large decorative works, with
their pure and lofty elegance, secured him lasting fame, and whose
allegorical compositions were particularly remarkable; not less
so his portraits, at first vivid, glowing and golden, but at the end
of his life, under the influence of the new atmosphere, cooler in
tone, but more eager, nervous and restless in feeling. Léon
Gérôme (b. 1824, q.v.) was the originator, during the Second
Empire, of the neo-Greek idea, an Orientalist and painter of
historic genre, whose somewhat arid instinct for archaeological
precision and finish developed to better ends in sculpture during
later years. William Bouguereau (b. 1825, q.v.) painted symbolical
and allegorical subjects in a sentimental style. Jules Lefebvre
(b. 1836) had a brilliant career as a portrait painter, combined,
in his earlier years, with admirable studies of the nude. These
were followed by Benjamin Constant (d. 1902), a clever painter
of past ages in the East and of modern Oriental life, who latterly
directed his powers of vigorous and rapid brushwork to portrait-painting;
Fernand Cormon, the inventive chronicler of primeval
Gaul, and a solid and learned portrait painter; Aimé Morot, a
man of versatile gifts, a painter of portraits full of life and ease.
These formed the heart of the Institut. On the other hand,
we find a group who betray a close affinity with the realist
party—rejecting, like them, tradition at second-hand, though
returning for direct teaching to some of the great masters: Léon
Bonnat (b. 1833), educated in Spain, and preserving through a
long series of official portraits an evident worship of the great
realists of that nation; and again, under the same influence,
Jean Paul Laurens (b. 1837), who has infused some return of
vitality into historical painting by his clear and individual
conceptions and realistic treatment. Jean Jacques Henner
(b. 1829, q.v.), standing even more apart, lived in a Correggio-like
dream of pale nude forms in dim landscape scenery; his
love of exquisite texture, and his unvarying sense of beauty, with
his refined dilettantism, link him on each side to the great groups
of realists and idealists.
About the middle of the 19th century, after the vehement disputes between the partisans of line and the votaries of colour, otherwise the Classic and the Romantic schools, when a younger generation was resting from these follies, exhausted, weary, devoid even of any fine technique, two groups slowly formed on the opposite sides of the horizon—seers or dreamers, both protesting in different ways against the collapse of the French school, and against the alleged indifference and sceptical eclecticism of the painters who were regarded as the leaders. This was a revolt from the academic and conservative tradition. One was the group of original and nature-loving painters, keen and devoted observers of men and things, the realists, made illustrious by the three great personalities of Corot (q.v.), Millet (q.v.) and Courbet (q.v.), the real originators of French contemporary art. The other was the group of men of imagination, the idealists, who, in the pursuit of perfect beauty and an ideal moral standard, reverted to the dissimilar visions of Delacroix and Ingres, the ideals of rhythm as opposed to harmony, of style versus passion, which Théodore Chassériau had endeavoured to combine. Round Puvis de Chavannes (q.v.) and Gustave Moreau (q.v.) we find a group of artists who, in spite of the fascination exerted of their intelligence by the great works of the old masters, especially the early Florentines and Venetians, would not accept the old technique, but strove to record in splendid imagery the wonders of the spiritual life, or claimed, by studying contemporary individuals, to reveal the psychology of modern minds. Among them were Gustave Ricard (1821–1873), whose portraits, suggesting the mystical charm sometimes of Leonardo and sometimes of Rembrandt, are full of deep unuttered vitality; Elie Delaunay (1828–1891), serious and expressive in his heroic compositions, keen and striking in his portraits; Eugene Fromentin (1820–1876), acute but subtle and silvery, a man of elegant mind, the writer of Les Maîtres d’autrefois, of Sahel and of Le Sahara, the discoverer—artistically—of Algeria. And round the loud and showy individuality of Courbet—healthy, nevertheless, and inspiring—a group was gathered of men less judicious, but more stirring, more truculent, thoroughly original, but not less reverent to the old masters than they were defiant of contemporary authorities. They were even more ardent for a strong technique, but the masters who attracted them were the Dutch, the Flemish, the Venetians, who, like themselves, had aimed at recording the life of their day. Among these was François Bonvin (1817–1887), who, following Granet, carried on the evolution of a subdivision of genre, the study of domestic interiors. This Drolling, too, had done, early in the 19th century, his predecessors in France being Chardin and Le Nain. This class of subjects has not merely absorbed all genre-painting, but has become a very important factor in the presentment of modern life. Bonvin painted asylums, convent-life, studios, laboratories and schools. Alphonse Legros (q.v.), painter, sculptor and etcher, who settled in London, was of the same school, though independent in his individuality, celebrating with his brush and etching-needle the life of the poor and humble, and even of the vagabond and beggar. There were also Bracquemond, the reviver of the craft of etching; Fantin-Latour, the painter of highly romantic Wagnerian dreams, figure compositions grouped after the Dutch manner, and flower-pieces not surpassed in his day. Ribot, again, and Vollon, daring and dashing in their handling of the brush; Guillaume Régamey, one of the few military painters gifted with the epic sense; and even Carolus Duran, who, after painting “Murdered” (in the Lille Museum), combined with the professional duties of an official teacher a brilliant career as a portrait painter. A later member of this group, attracted to it by student friendship in the little drawing-school which under Lecoq de Boisbaudran competed in a modest way with the École des Beaux Arts, was J. C. Cazin, well known afterwards as a pronounced idealist. Finally, there was Manet, a connecting link between the realists and the impressionists. These two radiant focuses of imagination and of observation respectively were to be seen still intact during the later period, as represented by the most energetic of the masters who upheld them.
After the catastrophe of 1870, French art appeared to be reawakened by the disasters of the country; and at the great exhibition in Vienna in 1873 Count Andrassy exclaimed to Léon Bonnat, “After such a terrible crisis you are up again, and victorious!” Immense energy prevailed in the studios, and money poured into France in consequence. The output increased rapidly, and at the same time study became more strenuous, and ambition grew bolder and more manly. Renewed activity stirred in the public academies, and a crowd of foreign students came to learn. Two great facts give a characteristic stamp to this new revival of French art: I. In the class of imaginative painting, the renewed impulse towards monumental or decorative work. II. In the class of nature studies, the growth of landscape painting, which developed along two parallel lines—Impressionism; and III. the “Open-air” school.
I. Decoration.—In decorative painting two men were the soul of the movement: Puvis de Chavannes and Philippe de Chennevières Pointel. As we look back on the last years of the Second Empire we see decorative painting sunk in profound lethargy. After Delacroix, Chassériau and Hippolyte Flandrin, and the completion of the great works in the Palais Bourbon, the Senate
