The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. TitmarshThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Paris (France) -- Description and travel
Delacroix is a man of a very different genius, and his “Medea” is a
genuine creation of a noble fancy. For most of the others, Mrs.
Brownrigg, and her two female ’prentices, would have done as well as
the desperate Colchian with her [Greek text omitted]. M. Delacroix has
produced a number of rude, barbarous pictures; but there is the stamp
of genius on all of them,—the great poetical INTENTION, which is worth
all your execution. Delaroche is another man of high merit; with not
such a great HEART, perhaps, as the other, but a fine and careful
draughtsman, and an excellent arranger of his subject. “The Death of
Elizabeth” is a raw young performance seemingly—not, at least, to my
taste. The “Enfans d’Edouard” is renowned over Europe, and has appeared
in a hundred different ways in print. It is properly pathetic and
gloomy, and merits fully its high reputation. This painter rejoices in
such subjects—in what Lord Portsmouth used to call “black jobs.” He has
killed Charles I. and Lady Jane Grey, and the Dukes of Guise, and I
don’t know whom besides. He is, at present, occupied with a vast work
at the Beaux Arts, where the writer of this had the honor of seeing
him,—a little, keen-looking man, some five feet in height. He wore, on
this important occasion, a bandanna round his head, and was in the act
of smoking a cigar.
Horace Vernet, whose beautiful daughter Delaroche married, is the king
of French battle-painters—an amazingly rapid and dexterous draughtsman,
who has Napoleon and all the campaigns by heart, and has painted the
Grenadier Français under all sorts of attitudes. His pictures on such
subjects are spirited, natural, and excellent; and he is so clever a
man, that all he does is good to a certain degree. His “Judith” is
somewhat violent, perhaps. His “Rebecca” most pleasing; and not the
less so for a little pretty affectation of attitude and needless
singularity of costume. “Raphael and Michael Angelo” is as clever a
picture as can be—clever is just the word—the groups and drawing
excellent, the coloring pleasantly bright and gaudy; and the French
students study it incessantly; there are a dozen who copy it for one
who copies Delacroix. His little scraps of wood-cuts, in the now
publishing “Life of Napoleon,” are perfect gems in their way, and the
noble price paid for them not a penny more than he merits.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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