Romanticism. Léon Rosenthal
vehemently powerful work claimed the joy of painting, the rights of movement, drama, and life. Beyond David’s canon, it was based on principles from the past and strengthened by the tradition it had returned to, whilst at the same time announcing a free form of art. Critics moaned and were disturbed by the multiplication of mundane and religious topics, but young people praised Géricault and saw in him their new leader. He still had a natural penchant for the realist epic that few shared, but he set an example for all and gave them the courage to assert themselves.
Those around him, and in particular the young Delacroix, were attracted by his work and could see something special in it. His drawings, gouaches and watercolours often confirmed what Gros had intuitively discovered, but at the same time he pioneered techniques in different fields. Invented in 1796, lithography had only produced uncertain and imperfect outcomes; Géricault took it up and, with remarkable confidence, revealed its full potential. Lithography would have been inadequate for David and his students, who would have found it too greasy, supple, colourful and sometimes excessive, but it turned out to be perfectly suitable for the new generation.
Géricault’s action was profound and long lasting though he did not show work in public again after the Medusa. He did not take part in the Exhibition of 1822 and died at the beginning of 1824. Before Géricault’s death, Eugène Delacroix had taken up his torch. Dante and Virgil was showed at the Exhibition of 1822 and made him famous. Close to him were artists like Bonington, Champmartin, Sigalon, Camille Roqueplan, Ary Scheffer and Achille Devéria, some of whom achieved enduring fame.
At the Exhibition of 1824 scattered signs of change had turned into a generalised movement in which was at stake the whole direction that art was to take. The Romantics flocked together. Besides Bonington, Copley Fielding, Constable and Lawrence came to display their works at the Exhibition as if they wanted to support the avant-garde.
Facing such attacks and desertion, the French School resisted; it would not let go and the fight turned out to be much harder for artists than writers. Victor Hugo and his emulators faced mediocre writers with worn out, passé formulae who opposed them with insults and mockery but not with powerful works. However, the School which the young artists had decided to destroy was too recent, and the fits of enthusiasm that it had produced were only just past. Girodet was still very successful with Pygmalion at the Exhibition of 1819, but time was not on the School’s side and nobody had David’s authority or the productivity needed either to impose discipline on the young or to stimulate them and give them confidence in proven doctrines. A figure to lead the resistance was looked for, and Ingres was called on for help.
At the time he was blacklisted. La Grande Odalisque, on display beside Roger delivering Angelica at the Exhibition of 1819, had been accused of multiple flaws and seen as directing art backwards to its primitive age, though avant-garde artists appreciated his work. At the Exhibition of 1824, however, The Vow of Louis XIII created a sudden reversal of the situation and put him back in favour with the orthodox point of view.
He was seen as the saviour who was needed: the idiosyncratic features of his genius were ignored whilst his science and energy were put at the forefront. In 1825 he was elected a member of the Institut.
In 1825 Charles X was crowned in Reims. Gothic decoration was chosen for the ceremony: there was a gallery in front of the façade as well as inside the nave. These solemn circumstances helped assert the triumph of the Middle Ages that had been so looked down on. Everything worked in favour of this reversal: it was in the interest of religion and politics whilst being also supported by the development of historic sciences. In 1831 the novel Notre-Dame de Paris made the craze for medievalism reach its peak. It was visible everywhere, in the inspiration of artists and writers, trinkets, furniture and fashion.
Antoine Jean Gros and Auguste Deaby, The Battle of the Pyramids (21st July 1798), first quarter of the 19th century.
Oil on canvas, 389 × 511 cm.
Musée national du château et des Trianons, Versailles.
Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Field of Waterloo, 1818.
Oil on canvas, 147.3 × 238.8 cm.
Tate Gallery, London.
David’s death in Brussels at the beginning of 1826 went almost unnoticed. A few weeks later an exhibition of Greek art was held. Some of the School’s most famous paintings were displayed, besides which Delacroix, Devéria, Roqueplan and Scheffer also exhibited their work. The stylistic confrontation had exactly the effect that could have been expected: faded enthusiasms were revived and avant-garde artists were crushed by the weight of the glorious past. However, all was in vain and the dying body could not be brought back to life. Nevertheless, the Romantics lost some support, and from then on they were attacked mercilessly.
1827 was marked by the preface to Cromwell. The parallel between Hugo and Delacroix, which was to become famous, was first made by Louis Vitet in the Globe. The artistic struggle reached its peak, and the Exhibition of 1827 turned into a ‘convention on painting’, as a contemporary put it. Delacroix’s Sardanapale, Devéria’s Birth of Henri IV, and Ary Scheffer’s Souliot Women were to be seen. Opposite that group there were The Death of Elisabeth and The Taking of the Trocadero by Paul Delaroche, Mazeppa by Horace Vernet, and Torquato Tasso by Robert Fleury. Bonington displayed The View of Venice and Lawrence Master Lambton. Such a list gives testimony to an exceptional creative intensity. Inspired, feverish, solid or skilful; how could those paintings not trouble minds? Sigalon failed totally. So did Delacroix, whose Marin Faliero did not raise any interest whilst Sardanapale was slated equally by his friends and enemies. It was a success for Boulanger and a short-lived triumph for the creator of The Birth of Henri IV, Eugène Devéria, of whom it was briefly thought that he might become the leader of the Romantics. Two beginners, Corot and Paul Huet, were hardly noticed in the turmoil yet it was through them that landscapes would be included in the controversy.
A few days after the Exhibition started some new rooms opened at the Louvre. On one of the ceilings Ingres had painted The Apotheosis of Homer. To tell the truth, no-one understood it, and it prompted mostly the admiration of the Romantics.
The first performance of the play Henri III and his Court by Alexandre Dumas on 10 February 1829 was not solely a literary event. It revealed some deep changes in the performing arts. Doric porticos which could hardly fill the stage were no longer fashionable; staging, décor and costumes grew richer and were enlivened by Romantic inspiration.
The opening of the Conservatoire’s concerts by Habeneck in 1828 allowed music lovers to discover and develop the cult of Beethoven. Around the end of 1830, Berlioz conducted his Symphonie fantastique. He transferred into the realm of music the same enthusiasm and rage that was going on in painting and poetry, and thus found himself, like Victor Hugo or Delacroix, a key figure in the avant-garde.
The revolution had just begun. It created generous exaltation and a lot of hope. It seemed that the France which had been humiliated under the Restoration regime was about to be reborn. Freedom guiding the People by Delacroix was the sign of that élan. Had it endured, the direction taken by the arts would have been substantially different. Reconciled with their time and bathed in civic spirit, artists would have forgotten their reveries and feverish feelings and would have been reconnected to reality. The Monarchie de Juillet dispelled illusions born on the barricades almost immediately. Artists turned back to the silence of their studios.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Second of May, 1808: The Charge of the Mamelukes, 1814.
Oil on canvas, 266 × 345 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Yet the new regime provided fighters in unexpected fields of activity. Political caricature sprang up with an incredible violence and fierceness but also unbelievable artistic brilliance. Decamps,