Delacroix, who hardly ever painted isolated figures, did paint some portraits of friends. The best of his works of this kind is the fine portrait that he made of himself because he knew himself better than he knew others. An ardent docility in the presence of nature explains why Ingres was a great portraitist. The tech nique which he had developed like an instrument of precision, was suited admirably to portrait-painting. He not only renders' for us with extraordinary distinctness the appearance of faces, forms and costumes, but by the magic of intuition brings out the intimate secret of the personality, and upon this picture, the accuracy of which will never perhaps be surpassed, he super imposes an intellectual beauty and the value of a general type. Finally, his original effort gained a supreme reward; his best portraits—such as Bertin Paine and Madame de Senones—having a beautiful sobriety of colour.
The development of landscape is one of the most salient facts in the history of French painting in the 19th century. David himself had secured for landscape painters the recognition of their right of citizenship in official art, and at his initiative what was called "historic landscape" became one of the Sections for the Prix de Rome. But this academic and conventional landscape painting was soon renounced by the young men of the generation born around I8io—Cabat, Rousseau, Dupre, Paul Huet, Millet, Decamps, Flers, Diaz, Troyon, Chintreuil, Daubigny. With un equal merits and varying aspirations they conquered, after many trials, the right to represent nature in all its grandiose or familiar aspects.
Landscape in its natural state was alone to be worthy of modern art, that is to say, a faithful picture of a portion of the country; man should only be admitted in the dress and attitudes of a field labourer. In every direction landscape painters would explore France. Some of them were even hermits confined to their province and unknown in Paris. Such was the Lyonnais Ravier poet of light, singer of the sunsets at Cremieu and Morestel, perhaps the most lyrical and musical of French land scape painters of the period.
As in Holland a man raised himself above his peers by the force of a rational and forceful genius. Rousseau (1812-67) is a French Ruysdael, he is also a romantic Ruysdael who has profited by the lesson of the English and also by the examples of Delacroix. But he had a philosophic mind individual to himself which gives his meticulous works an aspect of austere grandeur. Starting from an almost scientific analysis, Rousseau terminates in generalizations which out of the fringe of a forest, a chaos of rocks, forms a microcosm, mirroring innumerable terrestrial activities.
In spite of appearances Corot (1796-1875) is quite foreign to this group of innovating landscape painters. He was 16 years old when Rousseau was born. The leaders of the new school accorded to their senior all due deference, but they would doubt less have been greatly surprised if it had been revealed to them what posterity would think of Corot, that it would not only admire him as the first landscapist of his time, but would give him a place beside the very greatest. Corot never ceased to
believe that one of the finest uses of painting was to compose harmony between the sweep of trees, the colour of skies, the play of light, and some poetical legend or simply figures.
The position of Corot visa vis the new school of landscape is similar to that of Delacroix in relation to Ingres. Corot is a classic ; he is perhaps the most thoroughly French and classic artist among those of the 19th century. Tearing aside the false style of the historic landscape derived from David, Corot links up with the French landscapists of the i8th century, Vernet, Moreau, Hubert Robert ; in his mythological or allegorical compo sitions he gives fresh and ingenuous life to the noble inspirations emanating from Poussin and Claude. Whether they admit it or not, Manet, the impressionists, and all the painters of the subse quent generation who, under the example of Cezanne, reacted in various ways against impressionism, owe tribute to the "bon homme" Corot; so do those like Puvis de Chavannes.
At the time when landscape attracted to itself free inquirers in large numbers Millet (1814-75) and Daumier (1808-79) had the merit of introducing the representation of contemporary life not in the anecdotic form of the tableau de genre—which had existed at several epochs (at that time brilliantly represented by a charming colourist, Eugene Lami (1800-189o) before reaching its apex with Meissonier (1816-91), one of the most prodigious, precious, and impeccable virtuosi of soulless painting)—but with a dignity of which the only earlier examples are found in the work of Chardin and of the brothers Le Nain. No doubt there is in both cases some admixture of the humanitarian mysticism which inspired many generous hearts around the year 1848. Millet sought an epic style in order to paint peasants, their fields, their work, their domestic life; he found it, and that suffices for the glory of a great artist. Having begun with paintings in the romantic fashion very high in tone, he denuded himself gradually, and simplified design and colour, still keeping contact through his studies with this nature which he so religiously loved. He was one of those very rare painters who have brought into the life of art the themes of their inspirations and have created the language without which this inspiration could never have been communicated to the world—a work so difficult that it is not surprising if the execution often is sometimes heavy and dry— in paintings at least, for the drawings are always full of decisive ness and grace. The drawings, water-colours, and etchings of Millet show a quivering sensitiveness. The pictures, always and entirely composed in the studio, are the acts of a considered wish, assisted by a methodically exercised memory. The Gleaners is, perhaps, the most finished example of this naked art, almost poor, deliberately chosen to express in all its primitive force a deep, grave and sincere feeling.