DELAROCHE, PAUL, an eminent French painter, was born at Paris in 1797. Early intending to follow art as a profession, he at first studied landscape, and was in 1817 an unsuccessful candidate for the Academy prize in landscape-painting. Convinced that landscape painting was not his vocation, he entered the atelier of Baron Gros, under whose guidance he made rapid progress in the study of the figure. Gros had himself in a great measure thrown off the classic trammels which his master David had fixed on French art [Gam, BARON, A. J.], and Delaroche entirely emancipated himself from their thraldom. But he did not, like Delacroix, go to the opposite extreme. He still adhered to the old laws, and many of the conventionalities of art. Choosing his subjects to a great extent from modern history, and painting without much regard to academic attitudes and arrange ments, he yet sought to maintain something of the old sobriety and dignity of the historic style, and hence when his superiority in his chosen line came to be generally recognised, and Delaroche was the acknowledged chief of a school, that school received the name of the 'Eclectics,' in contradistinction to the Romantic school of Delacroix and the Classic school of Dwiid and his followers.
Paul Delaroche in 1819 and the following years exhibited some paintings of scriptural subjects, but it was not till 1824 that the earliest of that class of works by which he achieved his fame appeared ; these were, St. Vincent de Paul preaching in the presence of Louis XIII.; ' and Jeanne d'Aro interrogated in prison by Cardinal Beaufort,' which produced a considerable impression. In 1826 M. Delaroche exhibited the first of his very remarkable paintings from English history—' The Death of Queen Elizabeth: This picture was purchased for tho gallery of the Luxembourg, and is thought by French critics to display a wonderful knowledge of English history and English character. It is really the worst of his English pictures, and renders with abundant exaggeration the coarse notion of Elizabeth which alone continental artists and poets seem capable of conceiving : somo of the draperies are however very well painted, as indeed his draperiee mostly ;are. When M. Delaroche a few years later (1831)
again trod on English ground he was a good deal more successful; his 'Children of Edward IV. iu the Tower,' being of its class a very excellent picture : it is well known in this country by engravings. But of a far higher order was his next• great English picture, Cromwell contemplating the corpse of Charles I.' He has here imagined a circumstance in itself sufficiently probable, and he has treated it with a calm dignity worthy of the theme. M. Delaroche has been often charged with sacrificing his principal subject to the accessories by his excessive care in the rendering of them, but here the attention is at once arrested by the thoughtful head of the Protector, directed to the lifeless form he is brooding over, and it never wanders from the victim and the victor. The sombre colour and gloomy shades are entirely in unison with the prevalent impression. Simple as is the idea of the picture, it would perhaps be difficult to name another modern painting which so thoroughly succeeds in carrying the mind of the spectator into the very presence of the man represented. This fine picture is now in the possessiou of the Earl of Ellesmere, but M. Delaroche has painted, we believe, more thau ono repetition of it; it has been very popular also as an engraving.
His other more important pictures from English history are the Execution of Lady Jane Grey' (1834); Charles L in the Guard room, insulted by the Parliamentary Soldiers' (1837), now in the col lection of the Earl of Ellesmere, and well engraved by A. Martine] ; ' Lord Strafford on his way to tho Scaffold receiving the Blessing of Archbishop Laud' (1837), a companion picture to that of Cromwell contemplating the Corpse of Charles,' and equally well known by the engravings, but certainly far less impressive as a work of mind, and inferior in its technical qualities : the original is in the collection of the Duke of Sutherland. M. Delaroche has also painted some illustra tions of Scott's novels.