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It contains Horace Vernet's not uncelebrated picture of Mazeppa, and another, less famous, but perhaps more interesting, by swollen-cheeked David, the 'genius in convulsion, as Carlyle has christened him. His canvas is unfinished. Who knows what cry of the Convention made the painter fling his palette down and leave the masterpiece he might have spoiled?
Fortuny had associated with many artists at Rome and he had heard of that wonderful performance of Horace Vernet's, the "Taking of the Smalah of Abd-el-Kader." This picture of Vernet's, up to that time, was the largest picture ever held in a single frame. It is seventy-one feet long and sixteen feet high.
Your aim, my dear nephew, must always be to be in bon ton. It is not a case of wealth, you understand. Mere riches cannot do it. Golden Price has forty thousand a year, but his clothes are disastrous. I assure you that I saw him come down St. James's Street the other day, and I was so shocked at his appearance that I had to step into Vernet's for a glass of orange brandy.
It was Pere Lantz, the "old dolphin," who was standing there with Maurice beside him and three or four of the auxiliary engineers; and, upon my word, in spite of his cap, which seemed to date from the time of Horace Vernet's "Smala," the poor man, with his glasses upon his nose, long cloak, and pepper colored beard, had no more prestige than a policeman in a public square, one of those old fellows who chase children off the grass, threatening them with their canes.
We set off at two o'clock in the day on our return to Montpelier, not a little envying the horses and mules their cool quarters in the immense remise. Within a mile of Cette lies the breakwater of rough stones, which forms a prominent object in the foreground of Vernet's picture, and serves to ascertain the spot from whence he took his design.
In 1845, his wife, then being sixty years of age, died. Two years later he married Olympe Pelissier, who had been his mistress in Paris and had posed for Vernet's "Judith." Rossini was a great voluptuary, and was prouder of his art in cooking macaroni than of anything else he could do.
It has been before stated that Vernet's father intended him for an historical painter, but nature formed his genius to imitate her sweetest, as well as most terrible aspect.
It was Pere Lantz, the "old dolphin," who was standing there with Maurice beside him and three or four of the auxiliary engineers; and, upon my word, in spite of his cap, which seemed to date from the time of Horace Vernet's "Smala," the poor man, with his glasses upon his nose, long cloak, and pepper colored beard, had no more prestige than a policeman in a public square, one of those old fellows who chase children off the grass, threatening them with their canes.
In Vernet's studio we feel the predominance of military taste and education in France; in the Ecole Polytecnique, the policy by which her youth are bred to serve their country; at the manufactories of the Gobelines and Sévres china, we perceive how naturally the mechanical genius of the race finds development in pottery and fabrics instead of ships and machines, as across the Channel and beyond the ocean; and in the self-possession, knowledge of affairs, and variety of occupation of the middle class of women, we see why they have no occasion to advocate their rights and complain of the inequality of the sexes.
In passing, it is well to say that this picture of Vernet's is the parent of all the panorama pictures that have added to the ready cash of certain enterprising citizens of Chicago, and that Vernet is the father of the modern "military school."
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