There was in France almost at the same time another privileged person, another of these favoris de l'Eternel, as Delacroix himself calls them, who also combined in himself the apparently irrecon cilable tendencies of the critical mind and the creative imagina tion. This was Baudelaire, and by a rare coincidence it was Baudelaire who first understood and, in the masterpiece of art criticism of the century, explained the genius of Delacroix.
The rivalry of Ingres and Delacroix, and the battles waged round romanticism fill practically the whole of the first part of the t9th century. The champions of Davidian classicism claimed to defend order, and accused the romanticists of introducing anarchy and revolution into art. In reality, romanticism, taking the word in its widest sense, prevailed everywhere in the atmos phere of the time, as an aspiration to liberty, poetry and lyricism. There is romanticism in Ingres himself. As for Delacroix he always repudiated any claim to being the head of a School and liked to pose as a pure classic. And he was right. There is only one good form of romanticism, the psychological romanticism which infuses the artist's personality in its most intimate, emo tional and secret aspect into his work. Delacroix embodies in himself the whole of romanticism in painting, with its vital principle. But he had no liking either for painters or men of letters who paraded romanticism. Seen as a whole his work is strong and sound, notwithstanding his tragic sadness, because it aims at great objectives and uses the most rational and efficacious means to attain them. In short, it happened by good fortune that the two men, whose influence was to succeed that of David, the one more instinctive and more enamoured of form, the other more intellectual and more preoccupied with dramatic expression, were champions of order, deserving each in their own way the name of classic. One may even say that, in spite of appearances and of what the contemporaries really believed, the more classic of the two was the one who was in turn acclaimed and scorned as the leader of triumphant revolution.
Twenty years older than Delacroix, Ingres (1780-1867) at first seemed destined to continue brilliantly the work of his master David both in portrait and historical painting. Ingres, however, soon emancipated himself. He was only 25 or 26 when he painted in 1805 and 1806 the Riviere portraits (Louvre), and that of La Belle Zelie (Rouen). These show an original talent and a taste for composition not without some mannerism, but the mannerism is full of charm, and the refinement of undulating lines is as far removed as possible from the simple and slightly rough realism which is the strength of David's portraits. His contemporary opponents were not deceived; they were attacking archaic and singular taste when they dubbed him "Gothic" and "Chinese."
The sculptor, Preault, celebrated for his witty sayings called him a "Chinaman lost in Athens." We still perceive eccentricity in some of the most beautiful of Ingres' works. A pedant, seeing the back of the Grande Odalisque, the neck and arm of Thetis in the picture of the Aix Museum, Jupiter et Thetis, the neck of Angelique in the Louvre picture, where the fair victim is rescued by Roger, and various exaggerations of form in the Bain Turc would point to this incomparable draughtsman's faults. But are not these merely the means by which a great and extremely sensitive artist inter prets his passion for the beautiful female form? When he wants to group a large number of persons in a monumental work as in L'Apotheose d'Homere, le Martyre de Saint Symphorien and L'Age d'Or, Ingres never attained the ease, the suppleness, the life, the unity which we admire in the magnificent decorative compositions of Delacroix. He proceeds by accumulation and juxtaposition. On the other hand he has an impeccable sureness, original taste, a fertile and appropriate invention in the pictures where only two or three figures appear, and even more in those where he shows us, standing or reclining, a single effigy of the female figure which was the enchantment and sweet torment of his whole life. The Grande Baigneuse, the Grande Odalisque, the Venus Anadyomene and La Source are unique works in French art not unworthy of being compared with the most radiant daughters of Italian imagination.
On the other hand it is generally in the relationship of several figures, in other words in drama, that Delacroix finds the natural and striking expression of his ideas. His work is an immense and multiform poem, at once lyrical and dramatic, on the passions, the violent and murderous passions which fascinate, dominate and rend humanity. In the elaboration and execution of the pages of this poem, Delacroix does not forego any of his faculties as a man and an artist of vast intelligence standing on a level with the thoughts of the greatest in history, legend and poetry, but he makes use of a feverish imagination always controlled by lucid reasoning and cool will-power, of expressive and life-like drawing, strong and subtle colour, sometimes composing a bitter harmony, sometimes overcast by that "sulphurous" note, already observed by contemporaries, producing an atmosphere of storm, supplica tion and anguish. Passion, movement and drama must not be supposed to engender disorder. With Delacroix as with Rubens, there hovers over the saddest representations, over tumults, horrors and massacre, a kind of serenity which is the sign of art itself and the mark of a mind master of its subject.