and focused everybody’s attention on the realities of the time, preparing for new artistic ideals.
The defection of artists themselves was a serious sign of the movement running out of steam. Louis Boulanger, for whom Hugo cherished great hopes and whose zeal had led him to truly extravagant behaviour, finally turned to dull and spineless painting. Overwhelmed by the weight of early glory, and despite a few successful comebacks, Eugène Devéria disappeared too. Ary Scheffer turned his back on the colourfulness of Gaston of Foix and preferred pale philosophical abstraction.
Others looked only for success and, in order to achieve it, they weakened their effects, added mannerism and, in the end, produced watered-down Romanticism. Some tried to revive the graces of the eighteenth century that they had talked down in the past. Achille Devéria and Célestin Nanteuil came down with a bump and produced undemanding lithographs.
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Charles IV and his Family, c. 1800.
Oil on canvas, 280 × 336 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
The crowd seemed to prefer skilful men who produced mundane or dramatic images using a plain language devoid of technical originality. Avatars, weaknesses of disoriented artists and an uneducated public all had a negative impact but then an even more damaging phenomenon occurred. From 1840 on, the suppressed classical tendencies found a new vigour and claimed revenge; public opinion called for a reaction and young people turned away from Romanticism. Victor Hugo’s play The Burgraves was a memorable failure, and Ingres suddenly appeared like the hero of the hour. He was just back from Italy, where he had managed the Ecole de Rome and had had an incredible influence on his pupils. He had just painted the Stratonice, which was showered with praise. He was acclaimed as a saviour and humbly agreed to stand up in the sacred cause of art. He had soon forgotten his previous ambitions and with total authority he proclaimed the cult of the beautiful and condemned any deviation from the rule. He had only a few direct disciples but, nevertheless, dull and faded paintings reappeared everywhere. Neo-classical landscape painters turned to Antiquity again and were influenced by Poussin. The general appearance of exhibitions changed completely: colour, movement and life disappeared. Romantic art was still allowed in, but seemed out of place. Greyness and a sense of wisdom had swept in. An English man felt like going for a cold bath as he entered the Exhibition of 1846. New artists appeared like Gérôme with his Cockfighting; the calculated and glamorous effects of the Decadent Romans by Couture appeared vivid and inspired.
Caspar David Friedrich, On the Sailing Boat, 1818–1820.
Oil on canvas, 71 × 56 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
It was a time of helplessness. Hyperbolic assertions, polemic beliefs and basic negation were not worthwhile anymore. Either out of scepticism or indifference the most sensitive people accepted the novelties that stood out, whatever doctrine they stemmed from. They preached eclecticism, and events seemed to prove them right. Times were weary though each year probably had its harvest of works worth admiring. Some were as good or even possibly superior to the works of the previous years but their flaws and qualities were precisely the same that had been debated ad nauseam. A feeling of general discomfort and stagnation gradually developed, awaiting the advent of the man, the idea or the work that would be capable of reviving energies, enthusing a new spirit and stirring up art out of its dullness.
At that time precisely a whole chain of events occurred, the importance of which people of the time could not realise. They appear to us, however, as the portents of a new faith, the revelation of which was awaited. On several occasions, works containing elements of poetry focused on reality praised by Géricault were exhibited. Since The Readers in 1840, Meissonier had accustomed the public to meticulous accuracy. The opening of a Spanish gallery at the Louvre in 1848 showed the example of masters filled with an intense naturalist feeling. The daguerreotype was invented in 1839 and photography focused everybody’s attention on views of direct reality once again. At the same time, Balzac, Stendhal and George Sand analysed contemporary life.
Thus realism crept into art and society through obscure and complex mechanisms. At first it only seemed to be claiming a small place but soon it asserted itself as the only truth and that it was up to the realist to regenerate the arts. At the last Exhibitions of the Monarchie de Juillet, two young painters had a modest start as no-one, not even themselves, guessed their potential. Then came the 1848 Revolution and Courbet and Millet discovered their own genius in the middle of the universal turmoil. Amidst a blaze of publicity they proclaimed the beliefs that were at the core of artistic battles. Of course some artists whose soul was definitely Romantic were going to remain: neither Delacroix nor Berlioz or Préault would give up their ideals and they could neither be forgotten nor despised. They would remain a reference for young people and, in a way, would continue to have more influence than ever. However, the continuing action of Romanticism would be of a different kind now, somewhat pacified and somewhat historical. In 1848 a new period started for the arts; Romantic times were over.
Charles-François Grenier de Lacroix, called Charles-François Lacroix de Marseille, A Mediterranean Harbour Scene at Sunset, 18th century.
Oil on canvas, 45.8 × 61 cm.
Private collection.
Richard Parkes Bonington, Boats by the Normandy Shore, c. 1823–1824.
Oil on canvas, 33.5 × 46 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
Caspar David Friedrich, Dreamer (Ruins of the Oybin Monastery), c. 1835.
Oil on canvas, 27 × 21 cm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg.
III. The Romantic Inspiration
Was the movement that we have just described only a violent bout of fever? Was it anything more than exaggeration and distortion? Did it only have a superficial and, when all is said and done, perhaps regrettable influence on artists? Was it going to be remembered as a movement marked by a strong and rampant taste for trinkets, cheap rubbish and mundane anecdotes, a movement mostly interested in subjects taken from fiction or history and easy to turn into vivid scenes? Those subjects corresponded to the fashion of the time, and if Romanticism had been limited to illustrating books and popular historical stories it would then be difficult to understand why it faced such strong resistance. If it was only made of mannerism and failings would it have kept raising so much passion and would it have remained polemical a century later?
Romanticism actually marked a general change of minds. As mentioned at the beginning of this book, it had expressed itself in all areas of human thinking and in all activities; it had had a deep impact on the arts. The works that it had influenced were linked together not just by superficial analogy but were closely related. They had been created according to the same norms and had used similar methods. It is those norms and methods that we are now going to try to unveil.
A Romantic person was first of all sensitive and someone on whom logic and pure ideas had little impact. It was a knowledgeable person whose actions were based on intuition: as a statesman, he would obey a generous or imaginary impetus; as a writer or poet his thinking was taking shape in images. All the more so for artists, who had no interest in abstraction but were
