Romanticism. Léon Rosenthal
and when the laws of September 1834 stopped their sarcasm against Louis-Philippe their satirical wittiness started targeting public mores, and Gavarni applied his sharp mind with endless resourcefulness.
Around that time David’s school seemed utterly exhausted. Gros’s suicide, after the bad reception of his works at the 1835 Exhibition had driven him to despair, could be perceived as a token gesture. Of course that did not prevent followers of David from going on with their teaching, keeping their seats at the Institut, and providing an increased number of bloodless, conventional and outrageous paintings to decorate the monuments and churches of Paris in particular. The Institut, that had the juries of exhibitions under its control, proscribed people like Delacroix, Decamps, Chassériau and, above all, landscape painters throughout the Monarchie de Juillet.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid, 1814.
Oil on canvas, 268 × 347 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Delacroix was fully accomplished by then. He painted the admirable Algiers Women in 1834, Saint Sebastian in 1836, Medea and Taillebourg in 1838, Trajan and The Shipwreck of Don Juan in 1840, The Crusaders of Constantinople in 1841 and Marcus Aurelius in 1845. Decamps created high quality works with the same regularity. Chassériau, a child prodigy brought up in Ingres’s studio, asked the Romantics to help him express his refined and complex desires. In his famous lessons on colour, Chevreul justified Delacroix’s technical intuitions and drew up new laws that could allow daring ideas to develop.
Revolution had expanded everywhere. Landscape painting was bubbling with excitement. An imposing group made up of Paul Huet, Dupré, Théodore Rousseau, Daubigny and Corot offered original ways of feeling and representing natural landscapes. At the Exhibition of 1827, Mercury by Rude foreshadowed a renewal in sculpture stamped with authority. Turmoil reached sculpture too. David d’Angers modelled statues, busts and medallions of his most famous contemporaries and sculpted the pediment of the Panthéon in 1837. On the Arc de Triomphe, Rude celebrated the Departure of the revolutionary armies with epic grandeur and Barye managed to catch and represent the lively ferocity of the great cats.
Théodore Chassériau, Ali Ben Ahmed, the Last Caliph of Constantine, with his Entourage outside Constantine, 1845.
Oil on canvas, 325 × 260 cm.
Musée national du château et des Trianons, Versailles.
Eugène Delacroix, The Massacre at Chios, 1824.
Oil on canvas, 419 × 354 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Parallel to that, a craze for images developed and lithography played a central role. Illustrations started to appear everywhere in books. Whilst the monumental publication of the Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France was going on, enriched by lithographs, some of the most beautiful of which were carried out by Bonington and Isabey, books of all kinds were adorned with frontispieces, images, lithographs, etchings and steel engravings. With the help of incredibly skilful craftsmen, wood allowed illustrations of perfect typographic quality to be inserted in the text. The Magasin pittoresque relied heavily on images in its effort at encyclopaedic popularisation.
Deep changes were also visible in furniture, interior design, clothing and even hairdressing: tasteful or not, art was taken into consideration in all areas. Collectors gathered marvels from the past and threw new light upon them. The choice of a jacket or haircut or the growth of a beard showed aesthetic beliefs and were perceived as manifestos. Without knowing it, elegant men and ladies going to the opera disguised as transvestites, slovenly-dressed young people complaining about the fuss ordered by Chicard, all took up the style established by the Duchess of Berry and Alexandre Dumas. Unexpected costumes, unreliable archaeological extravaganzas, plastic surprises, medleys of colour and flashiness, all were a visual feast added to music or dance.
Was the whole movement a hundred per cent Romantic? Undoubtedly analysis reveals that some aspects were not a matter for Romanticism but parodies, imitations and compromises would not have happened if some active and vivid ferment had not been at work, modelling the period, and people of the time, whether scandalised or overjoyed, saw Romanticism everywhere.
Indeed, Romanticism had swept across the whole of society. Yet, at the same time that one could see signs of it everywhere, it was already deeply eroded and going into decline.
Just after the first battles, Romanticism faced some opposition in the public which it was not going to overcome. I am not referring here to the surprise that Romantic works caused, for every new form of art requires some time for the public to adapt, become educated and eventually understand it. It is also obvious that the eccentric side of early Romanticism would only raise momentary curiosity. No, the essence of Romanticism itself was repugnant to the spirit in general, and the French spirit in particular.
With traditions of clarity, order, logic and analysis and the pre-eminence of rational thinking, everything in France was against an aesthetic movement which praised feeling and passion and relied on the soul’s intimate forces instead of asking for well thought out adhesion.
Eugène Delacroix, The Women of Algiers, 1834.
Oil on canvas, 180 × 229 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Francesco Podesti, Henry II, King of France, Mortally Wounded in a Joust, Blessing the Marriage of his Sister Marguerite de Valois with Emmanuel-Philibert de Savoie, 1844.
Oil on canvas, 178 × 280 cm. Castello ducale, Agliè.
Romantic success was never total and the more characteristic the works, the more the polemic reactions they caused. Year after year the general atmosphere was less and less in the Romantics’ favour. Besides, material wealth softened the mal du siècle. When time came for minds to be taken over by new passions, social and humanitarian tendencies as well as political claims called for action, and focused everybody’s attention on the realities of the time, preparing for new artistic ideals.
The defection of artists themselves was a serious sign of the movement running out of steam. Louis Boulanger, for whom Hugo cherished great hopes and whose zeal had led him to truly extravagant behaviour, finally turned to dull and spineless painting. Overwhelmed by the weight of early glory, and despite a few successful comebacks, Eugène Devéria disappeared too. Ary Scheffer turned his back on the colourfulness of Gaston of Foix and preferred pale philosophical abstraction.
Others looked only for success and, in order to achieve it, they weakened their effects, added mannerism and, in the end, produced watered-down Romanticism. Some tried to revive the graces of the eighteenth century that they had talked down in the past. Achille Devéria and Célestin Nanteuil came down with a bump and produced undemanding lithographs.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Charles IV and his Family, c. 1800.
Oil on canvas, 280 × 336 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
The crowd seemed to prefer skilful men who produced mundane or dramatic images using a plain language devoid of technical originality. Avatars, weaknesses of disoriented artists and an uneducated public all had a negative impact but then an even more damaging phenomenon occurred. From 1840 on, the suppressed classical tendencies found a new vigour and claimed revenge; public opinion called for a reaction and young people turned away from Romanticism. Victor Hugo’s play The Burgraves was a memorable failure, and Ingres suddenly appeared like the hero of the hour. He was just back from Italy, where he had managed the Ecole de Rome and had had an incredible influence on his pupils. He had just painted the