Meissonier. Henri Barbusse
nude models: “He passed his days in an enclosure adjoining the studio, where the master was engaged upon his ceiling painting for the Louvre, the Expedition into Egypt, and hired by the day soldiers in republican uniform, dragoons, artillerymen and their horses.” In the midst of this resurrection of a past that was still quite recent, in the very presence of the stage setting, the reproduction of the Napoleonic Epic, he suddenly conceived of it as the greatest of all subjects that might tempt his accurate artist fingers. It must have seemed to him, later on, that he himself had witnessed its close.
But while waiting to achieve his dream, he had to achieve a living. This was not easy. His father spared him an allowance of fifteen francs a month, not counting the privilege of dining at home once a week, and from time to time allowed himself to be cajoled into buying a small aquarelle.
Be one’s tastes never so modest, it is difficult under such conditions to make both ends meet, and there was many a day of sacrifice and privation for the future painter of canvases destined later to sell at a hundred thousand francs per square decimeter. He shared his poverty light-heartedly with a chosen circle of friends whose fame in after years has made their names familiar: among others Daumier, the caricaturist, and Daubigny, the great landscape painter, with whom, it is told, Meissonier collaborated in manufacturing for the export trade canvases that were generously paid for at five francs a meter!
He was unable to enter the classes of Paul Delaroche, the monthly charge for admission to the studio from which The Princes in the Tower had issued reaching the exorbitant sum of twenty francs! He had to content himself with frequenting the Louvre.
Unlooked-for windfall: in company with his friend Trimolet, a needy artist who succumbed to poverty before his real talent had had time to ripen, he obtained an opportunity to decorate fans. Then, some religious figures and emblems of saints for certain publishers in the Rue Saint-Jacques. This meant the assurance of an honest living; they could go to a restaurant twice a day, every day in the week, and proudly pass the paint-shop knowing their account was paid.
When only sixteen years of age, Meissonier exhibited for the first time. As a matter of fact his name appears in the Salon catalogue of 1834, accredited with A Visit to the Burgomaster. In this picture one may find, I will not say in miniature (since all his paintings were destined to be contained in narrow limits) but in a youthful way, an indication of those qualities of relief and of realism which so energetically stamped his productions later on.
Is there any need of saying that the public failed to distinguish a work which did not sufficiently distinguish itself?
The first connoisseurs to pay attention to the newcomer were editors, the severe and imposing editors.
Not quite at the start, naturally; and the first instalment of illustrations that he offered to a magazine then famous, the name of which is now forgotten – four little sepia drawings – was curtly rejected. But he refused to be discouraged, and not long afterwards deliberately made his way to the celebrated art-publisher, Curmer. This bold venture went badly at the start. The publisher, rendered distrustful by so youthful and importunate a face, assured the young man and the friend who had introduced him, that “for the time being he had nothing for him.”
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