Among the subjects from French history may be named Sceue de Is St. Barthelemy' (1826); .' Le Cardinal de Richelieu sur le Rhone, conduisant an supplice Cinq Mars et de Thou,' and a companion, Le Cardinal Mazarin inourant' (1831), both of which, as pictures, and in the engravings by F. Giraud, were very popular ; La Mort du Duo de Guise' (1835), one of his best pictures; 'La Reine Marie-Antoinette apres as Condemnation h. Mort ;' and finally his universally popular pictures of ' Napoleon at Fontainbleau,' and ' Napoleon Crossing the Alps,' of which he has been required to paint several repetitions and smaller copies. His other pictures and portraits are very numerous.
Perhaps tho most remarkable of Delaroche's productions however is his painting of the hemicycle of the Palais des Beaux Arts, iu which he has represented the great painters, sculptors, and architects from the earliest time down to the present. From the centre, where Apelles, Phidias, and Minus are enthroned as the representatives of the arts In ancient Greece, and marshalled under figures which symbolise the principal eras In the history of art, the great sculptors and architects are ranged in groups, the painters occupying the extremities. The artists in some instances chosen, and those iu more instances omitted, from this artistic Wallhalla, will probably raise a smile on the lips of the student of the history of art ; but tho work itself cannot fail to excite admiration, it is so elevated in style, treated with so much sobriety and refinement, and is so simple and effective in arrangement and execution. This great work employed the painter
during the years 1837.41. A very beautiful version of it (in which Delaroche had introduced some alterations) on canvas, of consider able mite, but of course small in comparison with the original, formed the chief attraction nt the French Exhibition, London, in 1854.
M. Delaroche is justly regarded by the French as one of their greatest painters. His pictures never reach the highest order of art. They are rather melodramatic than epic or tragic. They are suggestive always of a certain kind of stage effect. You see that the painter is aiming at the actors trick—that ho is seeking to make a point.' But allowing for this, it must be granted that M. Delaroche is almost all his countrymen pronounce him to be. Ho has undoubted genius, if it be not of the highest order; he is a master of his art; and he is always truthful, conscientious, correct in drawing, on the whole satisfactory as a colourist, and tells his story with admirable perspicuity.
M. Delaroche was named member of the Institute in 1832, and subsequently professor at the Ecolo des Beaux Arts, in which capacity he has educated a large number of pupils, several of whom have already obtained eminence. He was created en officer of the Legion of Honour in 1834.