Taking a canvas about fifteen feet high by twenty in length, using the green-room of a theatre for a studio, he set to work. Disdaining the prevailing taste for mythology and classic themes, he took from the journals of the time the moving recital of the sufferings of the crew of the frigate "Medusa," abandoned on a raft in mid-ocean. Choosing the moment when the fifteen survivors of the hundred and forty-nine men who had embarked on the raft sighted the sail in the offing which meant their deliverance, he worked with an energy and fire which have remained remarkable in the annals of art. Certain of the figures, all of which are more than life size, were painted in a day, and when the Salon of 1819 opened, the picture was finished. [Illustration: INGRES. FROM A PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HIMSELF. Painted for the gallery of Painters' Portraits in the Uffizi, Florence, in 1858, according to the inscription on the picture. This most interesting collection, which is still being added to year by year, comprises the portraits of the great painters, in most cases by their own hands, from the time of the Renaissance to our day.] Seen as it is to-day in the Louvre, blackened by time and the neglect from which it suffered for six or seven years before it was placed there, it remains one of the capital pages in the history of modern art. The effect on the younger generation who saw it fresh from the hand of the master, accustomed as they were to the lifeless effigies of the classic school, was puzzling, and none but the most revolutionary dared approve of it. With the older painters there was a similar distrust of the impression which it caused. Yet David--an artistic kernel encased in an academic husk--admired it; and so did a swarthy youth who was soon to make his mark and who was a friend and former comrade of Géricault in the _atelier_ Guérin--Eugène Delacroix. [Illustration: DELACROIX. FROM A PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HIMSELF IN 1837. This portrait was left by the painter at his death to Mlle. Jenny Leguillon, his housekeeper, and by her was bequeathed to the Louvre in 1872.] Géricault received a recompense of the fourth class, and, disgusted with his lot, took the immense canvas to London, where it was exhibited with success. During his sojourn in England he executed a number of pictures in oil and water color, and many lithographs, which are to-day eagerly sought by collectors. Returning to France full of projects for work, his health began to give way, and on the 18th of January, 1824, he died. The influence which he exercised had, however, borne its fruits. Already in the Salon of 1822 Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix, born at Charenton, near Paris, April 26, 1799, had shown his "Dante and Virgil." Before considering Delacroix, however, it is best to return to the earlier years of the century, and give J. Dominique Auguste Ingres, whose stern face confronts Delacroix's portrait, the precedence to which his age entitles him.