Paul Delaroche
(From Wikipedia)
Hippolyte Delaroche, commonly known as Paul (July 17, 1797 - November 4, 1856), French painter, was born in Paris.
His father was an expert who had made a fortune by negotiating and cataloguing, buying and selling. He was proud of his son's talent, and able to forward his artistic education. The master selected was Gros, then painting life-size histories, and surrounded by many pupils. In no haste to make an appearance in the Salon, his first exhibited picture was a large one, "Josabeth saving Joas" (1822). This picture led to his acquaintance with Géricault and Delacroix, with whom he remained on the most friendly terms, the three forming the central group of a numerous body of historical painters, such as perhaps never before lived in one locality and at one time.
From 1822 the record of his life is to be found in the successive works coming from his hand. He visited Italy in 1838 and 1843, when his father-in-law, Horace Vernet, was director of the French Academy in Rome.
His studio in Paris was in the rue Mazarine,
where he never spent a day without some good result, his
hand being sure and his knowledge great. His subjects,
definitely expressed and popular in their manner of
treatment, illustrating certain views of history dear to
partisans, yet romantic in their general interest, were
painted with a firm, solid, smooth surface, which gave
an appearance of the highest finish. This solidity,
found also on the canvas of Vernet, Scheffer,
Louis-Leopold Robert and Ingres, was the manner of the
day. It repudiates the technical charm of texture and
variety of handling which the English school inherited
as a tradition from the time of Reynolds; but it is more
easily understood by the world at large, since a picture
so executed depends for its interest rather on the
history--scene in nature or object depicted--than on the
executive skill, which may or may not be critically
appreciated.
We may add that his point of view of the historical
characters which he treated is not always just.
"Cromwell lifting the Coffin-lid and looking at the Body
of Charles" is an incident only to be excused by an
improbable tradition; but "The King in the Guard-Rocm,
with villainous roundhead soldiers blowing tobacco smoke
in his patient face," is a libel on the Puritans; and
"Queen Elizabeth dying on the Ground," like a she-dragon
no one dares to touch, is sensational; while "The
Execution of Lady Jane Grey" is represented as taking
place in a dungeon. Nothing can be more incorrect than
this last as a reading of English history, yet we forget
the inaccuracy in admiration of the treatment which
represents Lady Jane, with bandaged sight, feeling for
the block, her maids covering their faces, and none with
their eyes visible among the many figures.
On the other hand, "Strafford led to Execution," when
Laud stretches his lawn-covered arms out of the small
high window of his cell to give him a blessing as he
passes along the corridor, is perfect; and the splendid
scene of Richelieu in his gorgeous barge, preceding the
boat containing Cinq-Mars and De Thou carried to
execution by their guards, is perhaps the most dramatic
semi-historical work ever done. The Princes in the Tower
must also be mentioned as a very complete creation; and
the "Young female Martyr floating dead on the Tiber" is
so pathetic that criticism feels hard-hearted and
ashamed before it.
As a realization of a page of authentic history, again,
no picture can surpass the "Assassination of the duc de
Guise at Blois." The expression of the murdered man
stretched out by the side of the bed, the conspirators
all massed together towards the door and far from the
body, show exact study as well as insight into human
nature. This work was exhibited in his meridian time,
1835; and in the same year he exhibited the "Head of an
Angel," a study from Horace Vernet's young daughter
Louise, his love for whom was the absorbing passion of
his life, and from the shock of whose death, in 1845, it
is said he never quite recovered.
By far his finest productions after her death are of the
most serious character, a sequence of small elaborate
pictures of incidents in the Passion. Two of these, the
Virgin and the other Manes, with the apostles Peter and
John, within a nearly dark apartment, hearing the crowd
as it passes haling Christ to Calvary, and St John
conducting the Virgin home again after all is over, are
beyond all praise as exhibiting the divine story from a
simply human point of view. They are pure and elevated,
and also dramatic and painful.
Delaroche was not troubled by ideals, and had no
affectation of them. His sound but hard execution
allowed no mystery to intervene between him and his
motif, which was always intelligible to the million, so
that he escaped all the waste of energy that painters
who try to be poets on canvas suffer. Thus it is that
essentially the same treatment was applied by him to the
characters of distant historical times, the founders of
the Christian religion, and the real people of his own
day, such as "Napoleon at Fontainebleau," or "Napoleon
at St Helena," or "Marie Antoinette leaving the
Convention after her sentence."In 1837 Delaroche
received the commission for the great picture, 27 metres
long, in the hemicycle of the lecture theatre of the
École des Beaux Arts. This represents the great artists
of the modern ages assembled in groups on either hand of
a central elevation of white marble steps, on the
topmost of which are three thrones filled by the
architects and sculptors of the Parthenon. To supply the
female element in this vast composition he introduced
the genii or muses, who symbolize or reign over the
arts, leaning against the balustrade of the steps,
beautiful and queenly figures with a certain antique
perfection of form, but not informed by any wonderful or
profound expression. The portrait figures are nearly all
unexceptionable and admirable. This great and successful
work is on the wall itself, an inner wall however, and
is executed in oil. It was finished in 1841, and
considerably injured by a fire which occurred in 1855,
which injury he immediately set himself to remedy
(finished by Robert-Fleury); but he died before he had
well begun, on the 4th of November 1856.Personally
Delaroche exercised even a greater influence than by his
works. Though short and not powerfully made, he
impressed every one as rather tall than otherwise; his
physiognomy was accentuated and firm, and his fine
forehead gave him the air of a minister of state.
