Up to the close of the eighteenth century French artists had contented themselves with adapting to French taste the light and superficial art of Nicolaus Berghem. Demarne, one of the last heirs of this Dutch artist, brought, even in the period of the Revolution, a little sunshine, blitheness, and country air amongst the large pictures in the classical manner. The animal painting of the _ancien régime_ expired in his arms, and the "noble style" of Classicism obstructed the rise of the new animal painting. The fact that the great Jupiter, father of gods and men, assumed the form of a four-footed creature when he led weak, feminine beings astray had no doubt given a certain justification to the animal picture during the reign of the school of David. But the artists preferred to hold aloof from it, either because animals are hard to idealise in themselves, or because the received antique sculpture of animals was difficult to employ directly in pictures. In landscapes, which gods and heroes alone honoured with their presence, idealised animals would have been altogether out of place. Only animals which are very difficult to draw correctly, such as sphinxes, sirens, and winged horses--beings which the old tragedians were fond of turning to account--are occasionally allowed to exist in the pictures of Bertin and Paul Flandrin. _Carle Vernet_, who composed cavalry charges and hunting scenes, had not talent enough seriously to make a breach, or to find disciples to follow his lead. _Géricault_, the forerunner of Romanticism, was likewise the first eminent painter of horses; and although his great "Raft of the Medusa" is heavily fettered by the system of Classicism, his jockey pictures and horse races are as fresh, as vivid, and as unforced as if they had been painted yesterday instead of seventy years ago. In dashing animation, verve, and temperament Géricault stands alone in these pictures; he is the very opposite of Raymond Brascassat, who was the first specialist of animal pieces with a landscape setting, and was much praised in the thirties on account of his neat and ornamental style of treatment. _Brascassat_ was the Winterhalter of animal painting, neither Classicist nor Romanticist nor Realist, but the embodiment of mediocrity; a man honestly and sincerely regarding all nature with the eyes of a Philistine. His fame, which has so swiftly faded, was founded by those patrons of art who above all demand that a picture should be the bald, banal reproduction of fact, made with all the accuracy possible. [Illustration: CHARLES JACQUE. THE RETURN TO THE BYRE (ETCHING). (_By permission of M. Frédéric Jacque, the owner of the copyright._)] [Illustration: _L'Art._ CHARLES JACQUE. A FLOCK OF SHEEP ON THE ROAD. (_By permission of M. Frédéric Jacque, the owner of the copyright._)]