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Updated: June 27, 2025
A mere list of the greatest names is not sufficient to apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in clearing the issue. Let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they look. England. Lawrence. Constable. Turner. De Wint. Nasmyth. Stevens. Whistler. Cotman. Cox. Watts. Rossetti. Hunt. France. David. Géricault. Ingres. Delacroix. Corot. Millet. Daubigny. Courbet.
So it is that an Italian, a Russian, or a Swede prefers to read a book by a mediocre Parisian, such as Marcel Prevost, to one by a writer of genuine talent, such as Galdos; it also explains why the canvases of second rate painters such as David, Gericault, or Ingres are more highly esteemed in the market than those of a painter of genius like Goya.
Compared with the "Bar at the Folies-Bergère," either the "Raft of the Medusa" or the "Convulsionists of Tangiers" is a classic production. And the difference is not at all due to the forty years' accretion of Protestantism which Manet represents as compared with the early romanticists. It is due to a complete difference in attitude. Géricault imbued himself with the inspiration of the Louvre.
The beginning in short was with Géricault and David, but it went on and on and slowly spread; so that one's stretched, one's even strained, perceptions, one's discoveries and extensions piece by piece, come back, on the great premises, almost as so many explorations of the house of life, so many circlings and hoverings round the image of the world.
Let this Decadence unroll before the eyes of men the cause, that wreck by Gericault symbolize the effect, in the great career of nations, and the two are sublimely matched. After visiting the Luxembourg, I resorted to the gardens of the Tuileries. The thermometer was at about eighty degrees in the shade.
Flowers by Van Huysum, David, and Heim; butterflies painted by Abraham Mignon; Van Eycks, undoubted Cranachs and Albrecht Durers; the Giorgione, the Sebastian del Piombo; Backhuijzen, Hobbema, Gericault, the rarities of painting none of these things so much as aroused their curiosity; they were waiting for the sun to arise and shine upon these treasures.
From the pupil of David, the admirer of Michel Angelo, the conservator of the sacred traditions of Art, the student might learn all the treasured wisdom of antiquity, while the influences around him, and his own genius, would impel him towards prophesying the hope of the future. His favorite companions of the atelier at this time were Eugène Delacroix and Géricault.
Here are antique mosaics, in which colored stones seem liquefied, realizing the most beautiful effects of painting quadrigae, warriors, arms, armor, vases, streams, all lifelike. Ascending to the hall of French paintings I spent an hour in studying one picture La Meduse, by Gericault. It is a shipwrecked crew upon a raft in mid ocean.
The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother's head into the fountain of the Flower-Market. They had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, The Medusa, which was destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and Gericault with glory. Colonel Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha.
In the figures of El Greco as in the prancing horses of Géricault, rhythm informs every inch of the canvas. The Futurists are seeking a new synthesis, and their work is far from synthetic; it is decomposition in the painter's sense of the word carried to the point of distraction.
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