American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
The same year Delacroix submissively made his final attempt for the
Prix de Rome, but came out sixtieth in the competition. Thenceforward
he was to be constantly before the public, constantly opposed,
misunderstood, criticised; but nevertheless, with all the energy which
shows in his portrait, constantly in the front. When his defenders had
sufficient influence to force the hand of the ministry of fine arts,
he was commissioned to paint for the state; and to this we owe the
decorations in the gallery of Apollon in the Louvre, the decorations
in the church of St. Sulpice, and others. When he received the order
for the entrance of the Crusaders to Constantinople for the Gallery of
Battles at Versailles, the good King Louis Philippe sent him word to
make it as little like his usual style as possible!
Among Delacroix's critics Ingres, with all the force of his
convictions, was the foremost. He to whom a sky had always served as
a simple background was not created to understand the almost purple
canopy of azure stretching far above the heads of the Crusaders; nor
to find barbaric delight in the rich trappings of horses and men,
since to him a drapery was simply a textureless covering adjusted to
accentuate the form beneath. Delacroix, whose intelligence was of a
higher order and who said of himself that he was "more rebellious than
revolutionary," treated Ingres when they met on official occasions,
as at the meetings of the Institute (where finally Delacroix had
penetrated), with a high and distant courtesy which his sturdy
adversary, strong in his pious devotion to classicism, hardly
returned. Delacroix had by far the most brilliant following,
reinforced as it was by the landscape painters, who from 1830 onwards
gave to this century its most notable school of painting. Added to
this was a fair measure of appreciation on the part of collectors.
Delacroix's genius found expression in many small pictures, all of
them characterized by a gem-like coloration (which is more than mere
color, however, for in it lies the secret of a powerful and direct
expression of sentiment) and by a vivid realization of movement. Proud
by nature, delicate in health, his life was far from happy; he never
ceased to feel the sting of adverse criticism. "For more than thirty
years I have been given over to the wild beasts," he said once. He
had warm friends, who have left many records of his sweetness of
disposition when the outer barrier of haughty reserve was broken
through; but they were few in number. He never married; painting,
he said, was his only mistress, and his passion for his art is felt
through all his work. His death occurred at Champrosay near Paris,
where he had a modest country house, on August 13, 1863; and four
years later, January 14, 1867, his great adversary, Ingres, followed
him.
CY AND I.
BY EUGENE FIELD.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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