Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art | Page 9

and increasingly the public admiration. The critics of the painted bas-relief school found much to say against, and little in favor of, the new talent that seemed to look them inimically in the face, or rather did not seem to regard them at all. But people in general, of simple enough taste in matter of folds of drapery or classic laws of composition or antique lines of beauty, saw before them with all the varied sentiments of admiration, terror, or dismay, the soldier mounting the breach at the cannon's mouth, or the general, covered with orders, cut short in the midst of his fame. Little of the romantic, little of poetical idealization, little of far-fetched style was there on these canvasses, but the crowd recognized the soldier as they saw him daily, in the midst of the scenes which the bulletin of the army or the page of the historian had just narrated to them. They were content, they were full of admiration, they admired the pictures, they admired the artist; and, the spleen of critics notwithstanding, Horace Vernet was known as one of the favorite painters of the time.
In 1819 appeared the "Massacre of the Mamelukes at Cairo," now in the Luxembourg. We do not know how the public accepted this production. We have no doubt, however, that they were charmed at the gaudy ��clat of the bloodthirsty tyrant, with his hookah and lion in the foreground, and dismayed at the base assassinations multiplied in the background. Nor do we doubt that the critics gave unfavorable judgments thereupon, and that most of those who loved Art seriously, said little about the picture. We would at all events express our own regret that the authorities do not find some better works than this and the "Battle of Tolosa," to represent in a public gallery the talent of the most famous battle-painter of France. The Battles of Jemmapes, Valmy, Hanau, and Montmirail, executed at this time, and hung till lately in the gallery of the Palais Royal (now, we fear, much, if not entirely, destroyed by the mob on the 24th February), were much more worthy of such a place. Whether it was by a considerate discernment that the mob attacked these, as the property of the ex-king, or by a mere goth-and-vandalism of revolution, we do not know; but certainly we would rather have delivered up to their wrath these others, the "property of the nation." The same hand would hardly seem to have executed both sets of paintings. It is not only the difference in size of the figures on the canvass, those of the Luxembourg being life-sized, and those of the Palais Royal only a few inches in length, but the whole style of the works is different. The first seem painted as if they had been designed merely to be reproduced in gay silks and worsteds at the Gobelins, where we have seen a copy of the "Massacre of the Mamelukes," in tapestry, which we would, for itself, have preferred to the original. But the latter four battles, notwithstanding the disadvantage of costume and arrangement necessarily imposed by the difference of time and country, produce far more satisfactory works of Art, and come much nearer to historical painting. They are painted without pretension, without exaggeration. The details are faithfully and carefully, though evidently rapidly, executed. The generals and personages in the front are speaking portraits; and the whole scene is full of that sort of life and action which impresses one at once as the very sort of action that must have taken place. Now it is a battery of artillery backed against a wood,--now it is a plain over which dense ranks of infantry march in succession to the front of the fire. Here it is a scene where in the full sunlight shows the whole details of the action; there it is night--and a night of cloud and storm, draws her sombre veil over the dead and wounded covering the field. A historian might find on these canvasses, far better than in stores of manuscript, wherewith to fill many a page of history with accurate and vivid details of these bloody days; or rather, many a page of history would not present so accurate and vivid a conception of what is a field of battle.
In 1822, entry to the exhibition at the Louvre being refused to his works, Horace Vernet made an exhibition-room of his atelier, had a catalogue made out (for what with battles, hunts, landscapes, portraits, he had a numerous collection), and the public were admitted. In 1826 he was admitted a Member of the Institute, and in 1830 was appointed Director of the Academy at Rome, so that the young man who could not so far decline his antiques as to treat