A Text-Book of the History of Painting by John Charles Van Dyke

Author:John Charles Van Dyke [Van Dyke, John Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Painting -- History
Published: 2006-07-22T16:00:00+00:00

THE ORIENTALISTS: In both literature and painting one phase of romanticism showed itself in a love for the life, the light, the color of the Orient. From Paris Decamps (1803-1860) was the first painter to visit the East and paint Eastern life. He was a genre painter more than a figure painter, giving naturalistic street scenes in Turkey and Asia Minor, courts, and interiors, with great feeling for air, warmth of color, and light. At about the same time Marilhat (1811-1847) was in Egypt picturing the life of that country in a similar manner; and later, Fromentin (1820-1876), painter and writer, following Delacroix, went to Algiers and portrayed there Arab life with fast-flying horses, the desert air, sky, light, and color. Théodore Frere and Ziem belong further on in the century, but were no less exponents of romanticism in the East.

Fifteen years after the starting of romanticism the movement had materially subsided. It had never been a school in the sense of having rules and laws of art. Liberty of thought and perfect freedom for individual expression were all it advocated. As a result there was no unity, for there was nothing to unite upon; and with every painter painting as he pleased, regardless of law, extravagance was inevitable. This was the case, and when the next generation came in romanticism began to be ridiculed for its excesses. A reaction started in favor of more line and academic training. This was first shown by the students of Delaroche, though there were a number of movements at the time, all of them leading away from romanticism. A recoil from too much color in favor of more form was inevitable, but romanticism was not to perish entirely. Its influence was to go on, and to appear in the work of later men.

ECLECTICS AND TRANSITIONAL PAINTERS: After Ingres his follower Flandrin (1809-1864) was the most considerable draughtsman of the time. He was not classic but religious in subject, and is sometimes called "the religious painter of France." He had a delicate beauty of line and a fine feeling for form, but never was strong in color, brush-work, or sentiment. His best work appears in his very fine portraits. Gleyre (1806-1874) was a man of classic methods, but romantic tastes, who modified the heroic into the idyllic and mythologic. He was a sentimental day-dreamer, with a touch of melancholy about the vanished past, appearing in Arcadian fancies, pretty nymphs, and idealized memories of youth. In execution he was not at all romantic. His color was pale, his drawing delicate, and his lighting misty and uncertain. It was the etherealized classic method, and this method he transmitted to a little band of painters called the

NEW-GREEKS, who, in point of time, belong much further along in the century, but in their art are with Gleyre. Their work never rose above the idyllic and the graceful, and calls for no special mention. Hamon (1821-1874) and Aubert (1824-) belonged to the band, and Gérôme (1824-[6]) was at one

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