Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 2 of 3) — John Shaqi
Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 2 of 3)Spooner, Shearjashub
History
Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 2 of 3)
Spooner, Shearjashub
Art -- Anecdotes; Artists -- Anecdotes
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 the classic subject of the Royal
Academy, and thus gain the Academy at Rome, now went there as chief of
the school, and as one of the most distinguished artists of his time.
This residence for five years among the best works of the great masters
of Italy naturally inspired him with ideas and desires which it had not
been hitherto in his circumstances to gratify. And once installed in the
Villa Medici, which he made to resound with the voices of joy and
revelry, splendid fetes and balls, he set himself to study the Italian
school.
A series of pictures somewhat new in subject and manner of treatment was
the result of this change of circumstances and ideas. To the Paris
Exhibition of 1831 he sent a "Judith and Holofernes," which is one of
the least successful of his pictures in the Luxembourg, where it hangs
still, with another sent two years after, "Raffaelle and Michael Angelo
in the Vatican." This is perhaps the best of his works at the
Luxembourg, all being inferior; but it has a certain dry gaudiness of
color, and a want of seriousness of design, which render it unfit to be
considered a master-work. One unquestionably preferable, the "Arresting
of the Princes at the Palais Royal by order of Anne of Austria," found
its way to the Palais Royal, so that in this, as in the other we have
remarked, the king seemed to know how to choose better than the
Art-authorities of the "Gallery of Living Painters." A number of other
pictures testified to the activity of the artist's pencil at
Rome:--"Combat of Brigands against the Pope's Riflemen," "Confession of
the Dying Brigand," also at the Palais Royal, but also we fear destroyed
by the popular vandalism of the 24th February; a "Chase in the Pontine
Marshes," "Pope Leo XII. carried into St. Peter's." The favor of the
public, however, still turned to the usual subject of Horace Vernet--the
French soldier's life; finding which, on his return from Rome, he
recurred to his original study. In 1836 he exhibited four new
battle-pieces, "Friedland," "Wagram," "Jena," and "Fontenoy," in which
were apparent all his usual excellencies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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