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MATLAB Programming for
Numerical Analysis

César Pérez López

MATLAB Programming for Numerical Analysis
Copyright © 2014 by César Pérez López
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For your convenience Apress has placed some of the front
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Contents at a Glance

About the Author�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix

■■Chapter 1: The MATLAB Environment��������������������������������������������������������������������������������1

■■Chapter 2: MATLAB Language: Variables, Numbers, Operators and Functions���������������29
■■Chapter 3: Matlab Language: Development Environment Features�������������������������������83
■■Chapter 4: MATLAB Language: M-Files, Scripts, Flow Control and
Numerical Analysis Functions���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������121
■■Chapter 5: Numerical Algorithms: Equations, Derivatives and Integrals����������������������191

iii
Chapter 1

The MATLAB Environment

Starting MATLAB on Windows. The MATLAB working environment

To start MATLAB, simply double-click on the shortcut icon to the program on the Windows desktop. Alternatively,
if there is no desktop shortcut, the easiest and most common way to run the program is to choose programs from the
Windows Start menu and select MATLAB. Having launched MATLAB by either of these methods, the welcome screen
briefly appears, followed by the screen depicted in Figure 1-1, which provides the general environment in which the
program works.

Figure 1-1.  

1
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

The most important elements of the MATLAB screen are the following:
• The Command Window: This runs MATLAB functions.
• The Command History: This presents a history of the functions introduced in the Command
Window and allows you to copy and execute them.
• The Launch Pad: This runs tools and gives you access to documentation for all MathWorks
products currently installed on your computer.
• The Current Directory: This shows MATLAB files and execute files (such as opening and search
for content operations).
• Help (support): This allows you to search and read the documentation for the complete family
of MATLAB products.
• The Workspace: This shows the present contents of the workspace and allows you to make
changes to it.
• The Array Editor: This displays the contents of arrays in a tabular format and allows you to edit
their values.
• The Editor/Debugger: This allows you to create, edit, and check M-files (files that contain
MATLAB functions).

The MATLAB Command Window

The Command Window (Figure 1-2) is the main way to communicate with MATLAB. It appears on the desktop when
MATLAB starts and is used to execute all operations and functions. The entries are written to the right of the
prompt >> and, once completed, they run after pressing Enter. The first line of Figure 1-3 defines a matrix and, after
pressing Enter, the matrix itself is displayed as output.

Figure 1-2.  

2
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-3.  

In the Command Window, it is possible to evaluate previously executed operations. To do this, simply select
the syntax you wish to evaluate, right-click, and choose the option Evaluate Selection from the resulting pop-up
menu (Figures 1-4 and 1-5). Choosing Open Selection from the same menu opens in the Editor/Debugger an M-file
previously selected in the Command Window (Figures 1-6 and 1-7).

Figure 1-4.  

3
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-5.  

Figure 1-6.  

4
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-7.  

MATLAB is sensitive to the use of uppercase and lowercase characters, and blank spaces can be used before and
after minus signs, colons and parentheses. MATLAB also allows you to write several commands on the same line,
provided they are separated by semicolons (Figure 1-8). Entries are executed sequentially in the order they appear on
the line. Every command which ends with a semicolon will run, but will not display its output.

Figure 1-8.  
5
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Long entries that will not fit on one line can be continued onto a second line by placing dots at the end of the
first line (Figure 1-9).

Figure 1-9.  

The option Clear Command Window from the Edit menu (Figure 1-10) allows you to clear the Command
Window. The command clc also performs this function (Figure 1-11). Similarly, the options Clear Command History
and Clear Workspace in the Edit menu allow you to clean the history window and workspace.

Figure 1-10.  

6
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-11.  

To help you to easily identify certain elements as if/else instructions, chains, etc., some entries in the Command
Window will appear in different colors. Some of the existing rules for colors are as follows:
1. Chains appear in purple while they are being typed. When they are finished properly (with
a closing quote) they become brown.
2. Flow control syntax appears in blue. All lines between the opening and closing of the flow
control functions are correctly indented.
3. Parentheses, brackets, and keys are briefly illuminated until their contents are properly
completed. This allows the user to easily see if mathematical expressions are properly closed.
4. Comments in the Command Window, preceded by the symbol %, appear in green.
5. System commands such as ! appear in gold.
6. Errors are shown in red.
Below is a list of keys, arrows and combinations that can be used in the Command Window.

Key Control key Operation

� CTRL+ p Calls to the last entry submitted.
¯ CTRL+ n Calls to the next line.
← CTRL+ b Moves one character backward.
→ CTRL+ f Moves one character forward.
CTRL+→ CTRL+ r Moves one word to the right.
CTRL+← CTRL+ l Moves one word to the left.
Home CTRL+ a Moves to the beginning of the line.
(continued)
7
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

(continued)

Key Control key Operation

End CTRL+ e Moves the end of the line.
ESC CTRL+ u Deletes the line.
Delete CTRL+ d Deletes the character where the cursor is.
BACKSPACE CTRL+ h Deletes the character before the cursor.
CTRL+ k Deletes all text up to the end of the line.
Shift+ home Highlights the text from the beginning of the line.
Shift+ end Highlights the text up to the end of the line.

To enter explanatory comments simply start them with the symbol % anywhere in a line. The rest of the line
should be used for the comment (see Figure 1-12).

Figure 1-12.  

Running M-files (files that contain MATLAB code) follows the same procedure as running any other command
or function. Just type the name of the M-file (with its arguments, if necessary) in the Command Window, and press
Enter (Figure 1-13). To see each function of an M-file as it runs, first enter the command echo on. To interrupt the
execution of an M-file use CTRL + c or CTRL + break.

Figure 1-13.  

8
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Escape and exit to DOS environment commands

There are three ways to pass from the MATLAB Command Window to the MS-DOS operating system environment to
run temporary assignments.
Entering the command ! dos_command in the Command Window allows you to execute the specified command
dos_command in the MATLAB environment. Figure 1-14 shows the execution of the command ! dir. The same effect is
achieved with the command dos dos_command (Figure 1-15).

Figure 1-14.  

Figure 1-15.  

The command ! dos_command & is used to execute the DOS command in background mode. This opens a new
window on top of the MATLAB Command Window and executes the command in that window (Figure 1-16). To
return to the MATLAB environment simply click anywhere in the Command Window, or close the newly opened
window via its close button or the Exit command.

9
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-16.  

Not only DOS commands, but also all kinds of executable files or batch tasks can be executed with the three
previous commands. To leave MATLAB simply type quit or exit in the Command Window and then press Enter.
Alternatively you can select the option Exit MATLAB from the File menu (Figure 1-17).

Figure 1-17.  

Preferences for the Command Window

Selecting the Preferences option from the File menu (Figure 1-18) allows you to set particular features for working
in the Command Window. To do this, simply choose the desired options in the Command Window Preferences
window (Figure 1-19).

10
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-18.  

Figure 1-19.  

11
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-20.  

The first area that appears in the Command Window Preferences window is Text display. This specifies how the
output will appear in the Command Window. Your options are as follows:
• Numeric format: Specifies the format of numerical values in the Command Window (Figure 1-21).
This affects only the appearance of the numbers, not the calculations or how to save them.
The possible formats are presented in the following table:

12
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-21.  

Format Result Example

+ +,-, white +
Bank Fixed 3.14
Compact Removes excess lines displayed on the screen to theta = pi/2 theta = 1.5708
present a more compact output.
Hex Hexadecimal 400921fb54442d18
long 15 digits fixed point 3.14159265358979
long e 15 digits floating-point 3. 141592653589793e + 00
long g The best of the previous two 3.14159265358979
loose Adds lines to make the output more readable. theta = pi/2 theta=1.5708
The compact command does the opposite.
rat Ratio of small integers 355/13 (a rational approximation of pi)
short 5 digits fixed point 3.1416
short e 5 digits floating-point 3. 1416e + 00
short g The best of the previous two 3.1416

13
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

• Numeric display: Regulates the spacing of the output in the Command Window. Compact is
used to suppress blank lines. Loose is used to show blank lines.
• Spaces per tab: Regulates the number of spaces assigned to the tab when the output is
displayed (the default value is 4).
The second zone that appears in the Command Window Preferences window is Display. This specifies the size of
the buffer and allows you to choose whether to display the executions of all the commands included in M-files. Your
options are as follows:
• Echo on: If you check this box, the executions of all the commands included in the M-files are
displayed.
• Limit matrix display width to eighty columns: If you check this box, MATLAB will display only
an 80-column dot matrix output, regardless of the width of the Command Window. If this box
is not checked, the matrix output will occupy the current width of the Command Window.
• Enable up to n tab completions: Check this box if you want to use tab completion when typing
functions in the Command Window. You then need to specify the maximum number of
completions that will be listed. If the number of possible completions exceeds this number,
MATLAB will not show the list of completions.
• Command session scroll buffer size: This sets the number of lines that are kept in the Command
Window buffer. These lines can be viewed by scrolling up.
In MATLAB it is also possible to set fonts and colors for the Command Window. To do this, simply unfold the
sub-option Font & Colors hanging from Command Windows (Figure 1-21). In the fonts area select Use desktop font
if you want to use the same source as specified for General Font & Colors preferences. To use a different font click the
button Use custom font and in the three boxes located immediately below choose the desired font (Figure 1-22), style
(Figure 1-23) and size. The Sample area shows an example of the selected font. In the Colors area you can choose
the color of the text (Text color) (Figure 1-24) and the color of the background (Background color). If the Syntax
highlighting box is checked, you can choose which colors will represent various types of MATLAB commands.
The Set Colors button is used to select a given color.

14
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-22.  

Figure 1-23.  

15
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-24.  

To display the MATLAB Command Window separately simply click on the button located in the top right
corner. To return the window to its site on the desktop, use the option Dock Command Window from the View menu
(Figure 1-25).

Figure 1-25.  

16
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

The Command History window

The Command History window (Figure 1-26) appears when you start MATLAB. It is located at the bottom right of the
MATLAB desktop. The Command History window shows a list of functions used recently in the Command Window
(Figure 1-26). It also shows an indicator of the beginning of the session. To display this window, separated from the
MATLAB desktop, simply click on the button located in its top right corner. To return the window to its site on the
desktop, use the Dock Window Command from the View menu. This method of separation and docking is common to
all MATLAB windows.

Figure 1-26.  

If you select one or more lines in the Command History window and right-click on the selection, the pop-up
menu of Figure 1-27 appears. This gives you options to copy the selection to the clipboard (Copy), evaluate the
selection in the Command Window (Evaluate Selection), create an M-file with the selected syntax (Create M-File),
delete the selection (Delete Selection), delete everything preceding the selection (Delete to Selection) and delete the
entire history (Delete Entire History).

17
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Figure 1-27.  

The Launch Pad window

The Launch Pad window (located by default in the upper-left corner of the MATLAB desktop) allows you to get help, see
demonstrations of installed products, go to other windows on the desktop and visit the MathWorks website (Figure 1-28).

Figure 1-28.  

18
 Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

The Current Directory window

The Current Directory window is obtained by clicking on the Current Directory sticker located at the bottom left of the
MATLAB desktop (Figure 1-29). Its function is to view, open, and make changes in the MATLAB files environment.
To display this window, separated from the MATLAB desktop (Figure 1-30), just click on the button located in its top
right corner. To return the window to its site on the desktop, use the Dock Command Window option in the View menu.  

Figure 1-29.  

19
Chapter 1 ■ The MATLAB Environment

Search for content in M-files

Create folder
Change directory level

Search folders
Current directory

Figure 1-30.  

It is possible to set preferences in the Current Directory window using the Preferences option from the File menu
(Figure 1-31). This gives you the Current Directory Preferences window (Figure 1-32). In the History field the number
of recent directories is set to save to history. In the field Browser display options file characteristics are set to display
(file type, date of last modification, and descriptions and comments from the M-files).

20
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 Prudhon was ten years younger than David, and was born at Cluny, the tenth child of a poor stone
cutter. He grew up in miserable circumstances, cherished only by a mother who devoted the whole
of her love to this her youngest born, and to whom the child, a delicate pliant creature, clung with
girl-like tenderness. His parents used often to send him out with the other poor children of the little
town to gather faggots for the winter in the wood belonging to the neighbouring Benedictine
monastery. There the handsome, sprightly boy with the large melancholy eyes attracted the notice
of the priest, Père Besson, who made him a chorister and gave him some instruction. Here, in the
old abbey of Cluny, surrounded by venerable statues carved in wood, by old pictures of saints and
artistic miniatures, he recognised his vocation. An inner voice told him that he was to be a painter.
And now his Latin exercise books began to fill with drawings, and he carved little images with his
penknife out of wood, soap, or whatever came to his hand. He squeezed out the juice of flowers,
made brushes of horsehair, and began to paint. He was inconsolable on finding that he could not hit
off the colouring of the old church pictures. It was a revelation to him when one of the monks said
to him one day: “My boy, you will never manage it so: these pictures are painted in oils”; and he
straightway invented oil painting for himself. With the help of the instruction which he now received
at Dijon from an able painter, Devosge, he made rapid progress.

Nevertheless a generation was yet to pass before he was really to become a painter. His marriage,
on 17th February 1778, with the daughter of the notary of Cluny, became the torment of his life. A
linen-weaver and three of his father-in-law’s clerks were present at the wedding. His wife was
quarrelsome, their income small, and their family rapidly increasing. He betook himself to Paris to
seek his fortune, with a letter of introduction to the engraver Wille. “Take pity on this youngster, who
has been married for the last three years, and who, were he to come under some low fellow’s
influence, might easily fall into the most terrible abyss”; so ran the letter, which a certain Baron
Joursanvault had given him. He hired himself a room in the house of M. Fauconnier, the head of a
firm engaged in the lace trade, who lived in the Rue du Bac with his wife and a pretty sister. The
latter, Marie, was eighteen years of age, and, like Werther’s Lotte, was always surrounded by her
brother’s children, whom she looked after like a little housewife. Prudhon, himself young, sensitive,
and handsome, loved and was loved, and made her presents of small flattering portraits and pretty
allegorical drawings, in which Cupid was represented scratching the initials M. F. (Marie Fauconnier)
on the wall with his arrow. That he was married and several times a father she never knew, till one
day Madame Prudhon arrived with the children. “And you never told me!” was her only word of
reproach.

Prudhon himself now went to Italy—a journey accompanied by serious difficulties. At Dijon he had
competed for the Prix de Rome, and had been so simple as to make a sketch for one of his rivals. He
owed it to the latter’s honesty that the scholarship nevertheless fell to himself. He started on his
journey; but when he reached Marseilles, and was ready to embark, the vessel was unable to weigh
anchor for several weeks, owing to stormy weather. And even on the voyage it became necessary to
disembark again, so that months had elapsed before he arrived in Rome, penniless, and having
embraced, according to classical custom, the land he had come to conquer; for he had fallen out of
the carriage on the way. Fortunately his dearly bought sojourn in Italy did him no harm. He had
indeed intended to draw only from the antique and after Raphael; but after the lapse of a very few
weeks he found his ideal in Leonardo. Him he calls “his Master and Hero, the inimitable father and
prince of all painters, in artistic power far surpassing Raphael!”
 In a small sketch-book, half torn up, dating from this time, and still
in existence, we have already the whole Prudhon. It contains copies of
ancient statues, made laboriously and without pleasure in the work;
then comes Correggio’s disarmed “Cupid,” a delicious little sketch, and
with the same pencil that drew it he has written down the names of
the pictures he purposes painting later on: “Love,” “Frivolity,” “Cupid
and Psyche.” It is as it were the secret confession of his fantasy, a
preliminary announcement of his future works. Here and there are
found sketches hastily dashed off of beautiful female forms in the
graceful attitude which had excited his admiration in the women of the
“Aldobrandini Wedding.” But, above all, the young artist observed all
that was around him. He lived in unceasing intercourse with the
beautiful, and his soul was nurtured by the spirit of the works which
surrounded him. He accumulated pictures, not in his sketch-book, but Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
PIERRE PAUL
in himself; so much so that, when he was afterwards interrogated as to PRUDHON. PORTRAIT
his Italian studies, his only answer was: “I did nothing but study life OF HIMSELF.
and admire the works of the masters.” He avoided association even
with scholars who had taken the Prix de Rome. The elegant and graceful sculptor Canova was the
only one with whom he permitted himself any intercourse.

Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.

PRUDHON. JOSEPH AND POTIPHAR’S WIFE.
 When his scholarship had run its course, at the end of November 1789, he found himself again in
Paris, and the struggle against poverty began once more. Even while in Italy he had sent all his
savings to his wife, who had straightway squandered them in drink with her brother, a sergeant in a
cavalry regiment. At Paris he had to act as parlour-maid and nursery-maid. The faces of two more
women rise up in his life like fleeting stars, and both of them died before his eyes. The first was the
mysterious stranger who appeared one day in his studio and commissioned him to paint her portrait.
She was young, scarcely twenty years of age, with great blue eyes, but her face was weary and wan
as though from long sleepless nights. “Your portrait?” asked Prudhon, “with features so troubled and
sad?” He set to work, silent and indifferent; but with every stroke of his brush he felt himself more
mystically attracted to this young girl, evidently as unhappy and as persecuted by fate as himself.
She promised to return on the morrow; but neither on that day nor on the next did she appear. One
afternoon he was wandering dreamily along the street, thinking of the unknown fair one, when his
eye almost mechanically caught sight of the guillotine, and he recognised in the unhappy victim at
that very moment ending her days the mysterious visitor of his studio.

To keep the wolf from the door, Prudhon was obliged for some years to draw vignettes on letter-
sheets for the Government offices, business cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for
bonbonnières. For this the representatives of high art held him in contempt. Greuze alone treated
him amicably, and even he held out no hopes for his future. “You have a family and you have talent,
young man; that is enough in these days to bring about one’s death by starvation. Look at my cuffs.”
Then the old man would show him his torn shirt-sleeves—for even he could no longer find means of
getting on in the new order of things. To his anxieties about the necessities of life were added
dissensions with his wife. He became the prey of a continual melancholy; he was never seen to
smile. Even when a separation had been effected his tormentor persecuted him still, until she was
relegated to a madhouse. But now a change comes over the scene with the entrance of Constance
Mayer.
 PRUDHON. STUDY DIRECTS THE FLIGHT OF PRUDHON. LE COUP DE PATTE DU CHAT.
GENIUS.

This amiable young painter, his pupil, was the star that lighted up his old age. She was ugly. With
her brown complexion, her broad flat nose, and her large mouth, she had at first sight the
appearance of a mulatto. Yet to this large mouth belonged voluptuous lips ever ready to be kissed;
above this broad nose there were two eyes shining like black diamonds, which by their changeful
expression made this irregular, gamin’s face appear positively beautiful. She was seventeen years his
junior, and he has painted her as often as Rembrandt painted his Saskia. He has immortalised the
dainty upturned nose of his little gipsy, as he called her, in pictures, sketches, pastels, all of which
have the same piquant charm, the same elegant grace, the same joyous and merry expression. In
her he had found his type, as his namesake Rubens did in Hélène Fourment. Constance Mayer
became the muse of his delicate, graceful work. And she too died before his eyes, having cut her
throat with a razor.

The master and the pupil loved each other. As sentimental as she was passionate, as gay as she
was piquant, nervous and witty, she possessed every quality that was likely to captivate him, as she
chattered to him in her lively and original way, and flattered his pride as an artist. This love seemed
to promise him rest and a bright ending for his days. He entered into it with the passion of a young
man in love for the first time. Mlle. Mayer, after her father’s death, was dependent on no one. Her
studio in the Sorbonne was separated from her master’s only by a blind wall. She was with him the
entire day, worked at his side, was his housekeeper, and saw to the education of his daughter, to
whom she was at once a mother and an elder sister; and Prudhon transferred to her all the tender
love which as a child he had cherished for his mother. In his gratitude he wished to share his genius
with his friend, and to make her famous like himself. It is pathetic to note in Mlle. Mayer’s studies
with what patience and devotion he instructed her, how he strove to animate her with his own spirit,
and to give her something of his own immortality. Even his own work was influenced by the new
happiness. To the period of his connection with Constance belong his masterpieces, “Justice and
Vengeance,” “The Rape of Psyche,” “Venus and Adonis,” and “The Swinging Zephyr.”

PRUDHON. CUPID AND PSYCHE.

 These brought him at last even outward success. In
1808 the Emperor gave him the Cross of the Legion of
Honour for his picture of “Justice and Vengeance,” and he
became, if not the official, at least the familiar painter of
the Court. The fine portrait of the Empress Josephine
belongs to this period. When the new Empress Marie
Louise wished to learn the art of painting, Prudhon, in
1811, became her drawing master; and when on the birth
of the King of Rome the city of Paris presented to the
Emperor the furniture for a room, he was commissioned to
provide the artistic decoration. Criticism began to bow its
head when his name was mentioned; and the younger
generation of painters soon discovered in him, once so CONSTANCE MAYER.
contemptuously reviled, the founder of a new religion, the
want of which had long been felt. He began to make money. Constance Mayer seemed to bring him
luck: her death affected him all the more deeply.

By nature nervous and highly strung, jealous and keenly conscious of her equivocal position, she
could not make up her mind, when the painters were ordered to move their studios from the
Sorbonne, either to leave Prudhon or openly to live with him. On the morning of 26th March 1821
she left her model, the little Sophie, alone, after giving her a ring. Soon afterwards a heavy fall was
heard, and she was found lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Prudhon lingered on for two years
more, two long years spent as it were in exile. Solitary, tortured by remorse of conscience, and with
continual thoughts of suicide, he lived on only for his recollections of her, in tender converse with the
memorials she had left, insensible to the renown which began gradually to gather round his name.
The completion of the “Unfortunate Family,” which Constance had left unfinished on her easel, was
his last tête-à-tête with her, his last farewell. He left his studio only to visit her grave in Père-
Lachaise, or to wander alone along the outer boulevards. An “Ascension of the Virgin” and a “Christ
on the Cross” were the last works of the once joyous painter of ancient mythology: the Mater
Dolorosa and the Crucified—symbols of his own torments. Death at length took compassion upon
him. On the 16th of February 1823 France lost Prudhon.

His art was the pure expression of his spiritual life. His life was swayed by women, and something
feminine breathes through all his pictures. In them there speaks a man full of soul, originally of a
joyous nature, who has gone through experiences which prevented him ever being joyous again. He
has inherited from the rococo style its graces and its little Cupids, but has also already tasted of all
the melancholy of the new age. With his smiles there is mingled a secret sadness. He has learnt that
life is not an unending banquet and a perpetual pleasure; he has seen how tragic a morrow follows
upon the voyage to the Isle of Cythera. The bloom has faded from his pale cheeks, his brow is
furrowed—he has seen the guillotine. He, the last rococo painter and the first Romanticist, would
have been truly the man to effect the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century by a
path more natural than that followed by David.
 Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
CONSTANCE MAYER. THE DREAM OF HAPPINESS.

Even his fugitive sketches, thrown off in the days of his poverty, have a quite peculiar charm and a
thoroughly individual sentiment. There are vignettes of his for letter-sheets, done for the
Government offices, which in a few pencil touches contain more manly elegance and poetry than do
David’s most pretentious compositions with all their borrowed Classicism. Prudhon was the only
painter who at that time produced anything of conspicuous merit in the art of ornament. Even
drawings such as “Minerva uniting Law and Liberty,” which from their titles would lead one to expect
nothing more than frozen allegories, are imbued, not with David’s coldness, but with Correggio’s
charm. French grace and elegance are united, without constraint, to the beauty of line found in
ancient cameos. He it was who first felt again the living poetry of that old mythology, which had
become a mere collection of dry names. He is commissioned to draw a card of invitation for a ball,
and he sends a tender hymn on music and dancing. In extravagant profusion he scatters forth, no
matter where, poetic invention and grace such as David in his most strenuous efforts sought for in
vain. It was during this time that Prudhon became the admirable draughtsman to whom the French
school have awarded a place among their greatest masters. These drawings and illustrations were
the necessary preparation for the great works which brought him to the front at the beginning of the
century.

Even his first picture, painted in 1799—to-day half-destroyed—“Wisdom bringing Truth upon the
earth, at whose approach Darkness vanishes,” must, to judge from early descriptions, have been
marked by a seductive and delicate grace. And the celebrated work of 1808, “Justice and Vengeance
pursuing Crime,” belongs certainly, so far as colouring is concerned, rather to the Romantic than to
the Classical era. For during the latter, one faculty especially had been lost, and that was the art of
painting flesh. Prudhon, by deep study of Leonardo and Correggio, masters at that time completely
out of fashion, won back this capacity for the French school. In wild and desolate scenery, above
which the moon, emerging from behind heavy clouds, shines with a ghostly light upon the bare
rocks, the murderer is leaving the body of his victim. He strides forth with hasty steps, purse and
dagger in hand, glancing back with a shudder at the naked corpse of a young man which has fallen
upon a ledge of rock, lying there stiff and with outstretched arms. Above, like shapes in the clouds,
the avenging goddesses are already sweeping downwards upon him. Justice pursues the fugitive
with threatening, wrathful glance; while Vengeance, lighting the way with her torch, stretches out
her hand to grasp the guilty one. In that epoch this picture stands alone for the imposing
characterisation of the persons, for its powerful pictorial execution, and the stern and grandiose
landscape which serves as setting to the awful scene.

In general, Prudhon was not a tragic painter; his

preference was for the more joyous, light and dreamy,
delicately veiled myths of the ancients. His misfortunes
taught him to flee from reality, and on the wings of Art
he saved himself, in the realm of legendary love and
visionary happiness. So we see Psyche borne aloft by
Zephyr through the twilight to the nuptial abode of Eros.
A soft light falls upon her snowy body; her head has
fallen upon her shoulder, and one arm, bent backwards,
enframes her face. Silent like a cloud, the group moves THE TOMB OF PRUDHON AND CONSTANCE
MAYER AT PÈRE-LACHAISE.
onward—a sweet-scented apparition from fairyland.
Now, enraptured genii visit the slumbering Fair One in
forest-shadows, under the shimmering moon; now she is stealing secretly down to bathe in a
tranquil lake, and gazes with astonishment upon her own likeness in the gloomy mirror. Here Venus,
drawing deep breaths of secret bliss, is seated, full of longing love, by the side of Adonis. Who else,
at that time, could draw nude figures of such faultless beauty, so slender and pure, with lines so
supple and yet so firm, and enveloped in so full and soft a light? Or again, he paints Zephyr swinging
roguishly by the side of a stream. A gentle breeze plays through his locks, and the cool darkness of
the wood breathes through all things round.

Prudhon’s work is never a laborious patchwork of fragments of antique forms picked up here and
there, never the insipid product of the reason working in accordance with recipes long handed
down; it is thoroughly intuitive. Never keeping too closely to his model, he gave to his creations the
movement and the divine breath of life. In his hands with dreamlike fidelity the Antique rose up
again renewed, new in the sense of his own completely modern sentiment, and in that of those
great masters of the Renaissance who had wakened it to life three hundred years before. For
Prudhon, as is shown by his landscape backgrounds, is altogether Jean Jacques Rousseau’s
contemporary, the child of that epoch in which Nature revealed itself anew; and, as is proved by his
figures, he is a congenial spirit to Antonio da Allegri and Vinci. In fresh recollection of Correggio, he
loves a soft exuberance of flesh and a delicate semi-obscurity; in enthusiastic reverence for
Leonardo, those heads of women, with deep, sensuously veiled eyes, and that mysterious delicate
smile playing dreamily round the wanton mouth. Only, the enchanting sweetness of the Florentine
and the delicious ecstasy of the Lombard are toned down by a gentle melancholy which is entirely
modern. The Psyche borne up to heaven by Zephyr changes in the end, when purified and refined,
into the soul itself, which, in the form of the Madonna, ascends into heaven, transfigured with
 longing desire; and Venus, the goddess of love, is
transformed into Love immortal, “Who, stretched
upon the Cross, yet reacheth out His hand to thee.”

Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.

PRUDHON. THE UNFORTUNATE FAMILY.
 PRUDHON. THE RAPE OF PSYCHE.

This man, with his soft tenderness and fine feeling for the eternal feminine, was as though
fashioned by Nature to be the painter of women of his time. If David was the chief depicter of male
faces bearing a strong impress of character, delicate, refined, womanly natures found their best
interpreter in Prudhon. His heads of women charm one by the mysterious language of their eyes, by
their familiar smile, and by their dreamy melancholy. No one knew better how to catch the fleeting
expression in its most delicate shades, how to grasp the very mood of the moment. How piquant is
his smiling Antoinette Leroux with her dress à la Charlotte Corday, her coquettish extravagant hat,
and all the amusing “chic” of her toilette! Madame Copia, the wife of the engraver, with her
delicately veiled eyes, has become in Prudhon’s hands the very essence of a beautiful soul. A
languishing weariness, a remarkable mingling of Creole grace and gentle melancholy, breathes over
the portrait of the Empress Josephine. She is represented seated on a grassy bank in a dignified yet
negligent attitude, her head slightly bent, her gaze wandering afar with a look of uncertain inquiry,
as though she had some faint presentiment of her coming misfortune; and the dreamy twilight-
shadows of a mysterious landscape are gathering around her.
 PRUDHON. LE MIDI.

Coming after a period of colour asceticism, Prudhon was the first to show a fine feeling for colour.
Even during the revolutionary era he protested in the name of the graceful against David’s formal
stiffness. He sought to demonstrate that human beings do not in truth differ very widely to-day from
those in whom Leonardo and Correggio delighted, that they are fashioned out of delicate flesh and
blood, not out of marble and stone. Standing beside David, he appealed to the art of colour. But as
with André Chénier, a spirit congenial to his, it was long before he attained success. His modesty and
his rustic character could effect nothing against the dictatorial power of David, on whom had been
showered every dignity that Art could offer. People continued to ridicule poor Prudhon, who worked
only after his own fantasy, who had fashioned for himself in chiaroscuro a poetic language of his
own, till the question was raised again from another side, and this time by a young man who came
directly out of David’s studio.

Antoine Jean Gros was one of David’s pupils, and stood out among his fellows as the one most
submissively devoted to his master; yet it was he who, without wishing it or knowing of it, was
preparing the way for the overthrow of David’s school. He was born 17th March 1771, at Paris,
where his father was a miniature painter. His vocation was determined in the studio of Mme. Vigée-
Lebrun, who was a friend of his parents. In the Salon of 1785, which contained David’s “Andromache
beside the Body of Hector,” he chose his instructor. He was then the handsome youth of fifteen
represented in his portrait of himself at Versailles, with delicate features, full of feeling, on which lies
an amiable, gentle cast of sentimentality. Two large, dark-brown eyes look out upon the world
astonished and inquiring, dark hair surrounds the quiet, fresh face, and over it is cocked a broad-
brimmed felt hat. In this picture we see a fine-strung, sensitive nature, a soul which would be
plunged by bitter experiences into depths of despair, in proportion as success would raise it to
heights of ecstasy. In 1792 he competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome, and this failure was
the making of him.
 PRUDHON. LA NUIT.

He went to Italy on his own account, and was an eye-witness of the war which Napoleon was
there waging. There he beheld scenes in which archæology had no part. For when Augereau’s foot-
soldiers carried the bridge of Arcola by assault, they had little thought of imitating an antique bas-
relief. Gros observed armies on the march, and saw their triumphant entry into festally decorated
cities. He learnt his lesson on the field of battle, and on his return placed on record what he had
himself gone through. In Italy he caught the poetry of modern life, and at the same time was
enabled as a painter to supplement David’s lectures with the teaching of another surpassing master.
It was in Genoa that he became acquainted with Rubens. As Prudhon’s originality consisted in the
fact that he was the first of that period again to stand dreaming before Leonardo and Correggio, so
did Gros’ lie in this, that he studied Rubens at a time when the Antwerp master was also completely
out of fashion. His instinct as a painter had at the very commencement guided him to Rubens’ “St.
Ignatius,” which in his letters he described as a “sublime and magnificent work.” When he was
subsequently appointed a member of the Commission charged with the transference of works of art
to Paris, he had abundant opportunities of admiring critically the works of the sixteenth and
seventeenth century masters. The two impressions thus received had a decisive effect upon his life.
Gros became the great colourist of the Classical school, the singer of the Napoleonic epos.
Compared with David’s marmoreal Græco-Romans, Gros’ figures seem to belong to another world;
his pictures speak, both in purport and in technique, a language which must more than once have
astonished his master.

He was fortunate enough to be presented to Josephine Beauharnais, and through her to

Bonaparte, in the Casa Serbelloni at Milan; and Gros, whose earnest desire it was to paint the great
commander, was appointed a lieutenant on his staff. He had occasion, in the three days’ battle of
Arcola, to admire the Dictator’s impetuous heroism; and he made a sketch of the General storming
the bridge of Arcola at the head of his troops, ensign in hand. It pleased Napoleon, who saw in it
something of the dæmonic power of the future conqueror of the world; and when the picture was
exhibited in Paris in 1801 it met there also with
the most striking success. The greater warmth
of colour, the broader sweep of the brush, and
the life-like movement of the figures seemed, in
comparison with David’s monotonous manner, to
be far-reaching innovations.

With his “Napoleon on the Bridge of Arcola”

Gros had found his peculiar talent. What his
teacher had accomplished as painter to the
Convention, Gros carried to a conclusion in that
span of time during which Napoleon lived in the
minds of his people as a hero. He too made an
occasional excursion into the domain of Greek
mythology, but he did not feel at home there.
His field was that living history which the
generals and soldiers of France were making.
He won for contemporary military life its
citizenship in art. David, wishing to remain true
to “history” and to “style,” had depicted
contemporary events with reluctance. What
PRUDHON. L’ENJOUIR.
Gérard and Girodet had produced was
interesting as a protest on the part of reality
against classical convention, but on the whole it was unsatisfying and wearisome. Gros, the famous
painter of the “Plague of Jaffa” and of the “Battle of Eylau,” was the first to attain to high renown in
this field.
 PRUDHON. MARGUERITE.

These are two powerful and genuine pictures, two pre-eminent works which will endure. Gros
stands far above David and all his rivals in his power of perception. The elder painter is now out of
date, while Gros remains ever fresh, because he painted under the impulse given by real events, and
not under the ban of empty theories. A realist through and through, he did not shrink from
representing the horrible, which antique art preferred to avoid. In an epoch when Rome and Greece
were the only sources of inspiration he had the courage to paint a hospital, with its sick, its dying,
and its dead. When in the Egypto-Syrian campaign the plague broke out after the storming of Jaffa,
Napoleon, accompanied by a few of his officers, undertook, on 7th March 1799, to visit the victims
of the pestilence. This act deserved to be celebrated in a commemorative picture. Gros took it in
hand, and represented Napoleon, in the character of consoler, amid the agonising torments of the
dying; deviating from historical accuracy only so far as to transfer the scene from the wretched
wards of the lazaretto to the courtyard of a pillared mosque. In the shadows of the airy halls sick
and wounded men twist and writhe, stare before them in despair, rear themselves up half-naked in
mortal pain, or turn to gaze upon the Commander-in-Chief, a splendid apparition full of youthful
power, who is tranquilly feeling the plague boils of one of their comrades. Here and there Orientals
move in picturesque costumes, distributing the food which negro lads are bringing in. And beyond,
over the battlements of the Moorish arcades, one sees the town with its fortifications, its flat roofs
and slender minarets, over which flutter the victorious banners of the French. On one side lies the
distant, glittering blue sea, and over all stretches the clear, glowing southern sky.

Like a new gospel, like the first gust of wind preceding the storm of Romanticism, this picture
standing in the Louvre, surrounded by its stiff Classical contemporaries, excites a sensation of
pleasure.

Gros’ heroes know, as David’s do, that they

are important, and show it perhaps too much,
but at least they act. The painter felt what he
was painting, and an impulse of human love, an
heroic and yet human life, permeates the
picture. Moreover, Gros did not content himself
with the scanty palette and the miserable
cartoon-draughtsmanship of his contemporaries.
This treatment of the nude, these despairing
heads of dying men, show none of the stony
lifelessness of the Classical school; this Moorish
courtyard has no resemblance to the tragedy
peristyle so habitually employed up to that time;
this Bonaparte laying his hand upon the dying
PRUDHON. LES PETITS DÉVIDEURS.
man’s sores is no Greek or Roman hero. The sick
men whose feverish eyes gaze upon him as on
the star of hope, the negroes going up and down with viands, are no mere supernumeraries; the sea
lying in sunshine beyond, full of bustling sails, and the harbour gaily decked with many-coloured
flags, point in their joyous splendour of colouring to the dawn of a new era. The young artists were
not mistaken when, in the Salon of 1804, they fastened a sprig of laurel to the frame of the picture.
The State bought it for sixteen thousand francs. A banquet at which Vien and David presided was
given in honour of the painter. Girodet read a poem, of which the conclusion ran as follows—

“Et toi, sage Vien, toi, David, maître illustre,

Jouissez de vos succès; dans son sixième lustre,
Votre élève, déjà de toutes parts cité,
Auprès de vous vivra dans la postérité.”
 PRUDHON. THE VINTAGE.

In his “Battle of Eylau,” exhibited in 1808, Gros has given us a companion picture to the “Plague of
Jaffa”: in one a visit to a hospital, in the other the inspection of a field of battle after the fight is
over. The dismal grey hue of winter rests upon the white sheet of snow stretching desolately away
to the horizon, only interrupted here and there by hillocks beneath which annihilated regiments
sleep their last sleep. In the foreground lie dead bodies heaped together, and moaning wounded
men; and in the midst of this horror of mangled limbs and corrupting flesh he, the Conqueror, the
Master, the Emperor, comes to a halt, pale, his eyes turned towards the cities burning on the
horizon, in his grey overcoat and small cocked hat, at the head of his staff, indifferent, inexorable,
merciless as Fate. “Ah! si les rois pouvaient contempler ce spectacle, ils scraient moins avides de
conquêtes.” The classical posturing which still lingered, a disturbing element, in the Plague picture,
has been put aside completely. The conventional horse from the frieze of the Parthenon, which
David alone knew, has given way to the accurately observed animal, and the colouring too, in its sad
harmony, has fully recovered its ancient right of giving character to the picture. It was, beyond all
controversy, the chief work in the Salon of 1808, rich in remarkable pictures; neither Gérard’s “Battle
of Austerlitz,” nor Girodet’s “Atala,” nor David’s Coronation piece endangered Gros’ right to the first
place.

PRUDHON. THE VIRGIN. PRUDHON. CHRIST CRUCIFIED.

 “Napoleon before the Pyramids,” at the moment when he cries, “Soldiers, from the summit of
those monuments forty centuries contemplate your actions,” constitutes, in 1810, the coping-stone
of the cycle. Gros alone at that time understood the epic grandeur of war. He became, also, the
portrait painter of the great men from whom its events proceeded. His picture of General Masséna,
with its meditative, slily tenacious expression, is the genuine portrait of a warrior; and how well is
heroic, simple daring depicted in the likeness of General Lasalle, without the commonplace device of
a mantle puffed out by the wind! His portrait of General Fournier Sarlovèse, at Versailles, has a
freshness of colouring, the secret of which no one else possessed in those days except the two
Englishmen, Lawrence and Raeburn. Gros was far in advance of his age. A painter of movement
rather than of psychological analysis, he brought out character by means of general effect, and gave
the essentials in a masterly way. His portraits, just as much as his historical pictures, have a stormy
exposition. In David all is calculation; in Gros, fire. Almost alone among his contemporaries, he had
studied Rubens, and like him gave colour the place due to it. At times there is in his pictures a
natural flesh-colour and an animation which make this warm-hearted man, who has not been
sufficiently appreciated, a genuine forerunner of the moderns. Surrounded as he was by orthodox
Classicists, he cried in a loud voice what Prudhon had already ventured to say more timidly: “Man is
not a statue—not made of marble, but of flesh and bone.”

But as with Prudhon, so with Gros. This man, of exaggerated nervousness, was lacking in that
capacity for persistence which belongs to a strong will conscious of its aim; he lacked confidence in
himself and in the initiative he had taken. So long as the great figure of Napoleon kept his head
above water he was an artist; but when his hero was taken from him he sank. The Empire had made
Gros great, its fall killed him. The incubus of David’s antique manner began once more to press upon
him, and when David after his banishment (in 1816) committed to him the management of his
studio in Paris, Gros undertook the office with pious eagerness, on nothing more anxiously intent
than as a teacher once more to impose the fetters of the antique upon that Art which he had set
free by his own works. “It is not I who am speaking to you,” he would say to the pupils, “but David,
David, always David.” The latter had blamed him for having taken the trouble to paint the battles of
the Empire, “worthless occasional pieces,” instead of venturing upon those of Alexander the Great,
and thus producing genuine “historical works.” “Posterity requires of you good pictures out of ancient
history. Who, she will cry, was better fitted to paint Themistocles? Quick, my friend! turn to your
Plutarch.” To depict contemporary life, which lies open before our eyes, was, he held, merely the
business of minor artists, unworthy the brush of an “historical painter.” And Gros, who reverenced
his master, was so weak as to listen to his advice: he believed in him rather than in his own genius,
in the strength of others rather than his own. He searched his Plutarch, and painted nothing more
without a previous side-glance towards Brussels; introduced allegory into his “Battle of the
Pyramids”; composed in homage to David a “Death of Sappho”; and painted the cupola of the
Pantheon with stiff frescoes; while between times, when he looked Nature in the face, he was now
and then producing veritable masterpieces.

His “Flight of Louis XVIII” in the Museum at Versailles, shows him once more at his former height.
It is “one of the finest of modern works,” as Delacroix called it in 1848, in an essay contributed to
the Revue des Deux Mondes; at once familiar and serious. Napoleon had left Elba, marched on Paris,
and had reached Fontainebleau, when, in the night of the 19th-20th March 1815, Louis XVIII
determined to evacuate the Tuileries with all speed. Accompanied by a few faithful followers and by
the officers of his personal service, he abandons
his palace and takes leave of the National
Guards. There is something pathetic in this
sexagenarian with his erudite Bourbon profile,
immortalised in the large five-franc pieces of his
reign, with his protruding stomach and small
thick legs, looking like a dropsical patient going
to hospital. His bearing is most unkingly. Gros
has boldly depicted the scene, even to the
pathological appearance of the king, just as he
saw it, forgetting all that he knew of antique art.
He had himself seen the staircase, the
murmuring crowd, the lackeys hurrying by,
lantern in hand, at their wits’ end, and the fat,
gouty king, who in his terror has forgotten all
kingly dignity.

That was an historical picture, and yet as he

painted it he reproached himself anew for
having forsaken the “real art of historical
painting.” At the funeral of Girodet in 1824 the Gaz. des Beaux-Arts.
members of the Institute talked of their PRUDHON. MADAME COPIA.

“irreparable loss,” and of the necessity of finding

a new leader for the school who should avert with a strong hand that destruction which hot-headed
young men threatened to bring upon it. “You, Gros,” observed one of them, “should be the man for
the place.” And Gros answered, in absolute despair; “Why, I have not only no authority as leader of
a school, but, over and above that, I have to accuse myself of giving the first bad example of
defection from real art.” The more he thought of David, the more he turned his back upon the world
of real life. With his large and wearisome picture of “Hercules causing Diomedes to be devoured by
his own Horses” (1835) he sealed his own fate. Conventionality had conquered nature.
 GROS. SAUL.

The painters overwhelmed him with ridicule, and a shrill shout of derision rose from all the critics.
Already, for some time past, a few writers had risen to protest against the Classical school. They
spoke with fiery eloquence of the rights of humanity, the benefits of liberty, the independence of
thought, the true principles of the Revolution, and found numerous readers. They fought against
rigid laws in the intellectual as well as the social sphere; they pointed out that there were other
worlds besides that of antiquity, and that even the latter was not peopled exclusively by cold
statues; they delighted in describing the great and beautiful scenes of Nature, and opened out once
more a new and broad horizon to art and poetry. The Spring was awakening; Gros felt that he had
outlived himself. Arming himself against the voices of the new era with the fatal heroism of the deaf,
he became the martyr of Classicism in French art. He was a Classic by education, a Romantic by
temperament; a man who took his greatest pride in giving the lie as a teacher to the work he had
accomplished as an artist, and this discordance was his ruin.

On the 25th of June 1835, being sixty-four years of age, he took up his hat and stick, left his
house without a word to any one, and laid himself face-downwards in a tributary of the Seine near
Meudon. It was a shallow place, scarce three feet deep, which a child could easily have waded
through. It was not till next day, when he had been dead for twenty-four hours, that he was
discovered by two sailors walking home along the bank. One of them struck his foot against a black
silk hat. In it there was a white cravat marked with the initial G., carefully folded, and upon it a short
note to his wife. On a torn visiting-card could still be read the name, Baron Gros. A little farther on
they saw the corpse, and as they were afraid to touch a drowned man, they drew lots with straws to
decide which of them should pull him out. “I feel it within me, it is a misfortune for me to be alone.
One begins to be disgusted with one’s self, and then all is over,” he had once in his youth written to
his mother with gloomy foreboding. Such was the end of a master every fibre of whose being was in
revolt against Classicism, and who had so great a love for colour, truth, and life.

More important events were yet to take place before the

signal of deliverance could be expected. It was the young men
who had grown up amid the desolate associations of the
Restoration who were to lead to victory the new movement of
which Prudhon and Gros had been the forerunners. The
dictatorship over art of that Classical school which had been
taken over from the seventeenth century was limited to a
single generation—from the birththroes of the Revolution to
the fall of the Napoleonic Empire. For although many of
David’s pupils survived until the middle of the century, yet they
were merely academic big-wigs, who, compared with the
young men of genius who were storming their positions,
L’Art.
represent that mediocrity which had indeed attained to ANTOINE JEAN, BARON GROS.
external honours, but had remained stationary, fast bound to
antiquated rules. The future belonged to the young, to a youth which from the standpoint of our
own days seems even younger than youth commonly is, richer, fresher, more glowing and fiery—the
Generation of 1830, the “vaillants de dix-huit cent trente,” as Théophile Gautier called them in one of
his poems.
 Photo,
GROS. THE BATTLE OF EY

CHAPTER X
THE GENERATION OF 1830
During the years which elapsed between 1820 and 1848 France produced a great and admirable
school of art. After the convulsions of the Revolution and the wars of the Empire, that generation
had arisen, daring and eager for action, which de Musset describes in his Confessions d’un Enfan du
Siècle. And these young men, born between the thunders of one battle and another, who had grown
up in the midst of greatness and glory, had to experience, as they ripened into manhood, the
ignominy of Charles X’s reign, the period of clerical reaction. They saw monasteries re-erected, laws
of mediæval severity made against blasphemy and the desecration of churches and saints’ days, and
the doctrine of the divine origin of the monarchy proclaimed anew. “And when young men spoke of
glory,” says de Musset, “the answer was, ‘Become priests!’ And when they spoke of honour, the
answer was, ‘Become priests!’ And when they spoke of hope, of love, of strength and life, ever the
same answer, ‘Become priests!’” The only result of this pressure was to intensify all the more the
impulse towards freedom. The political and intellectual reaction could only have the effect of
impelling the poetic and artistic emotions of young and unquiet spirits into opposition, on principle,
to all that was established, into a fiery contempt for public opinion, into the apotheosis of
unrestrained passion and unfettered genius. The French Romanticists were anti-Philistines who
regarded the word “bourgeois” as an insult. For them Art was the one supreme consideration; it was
to them a light and a flame, and its beauty and daring the only things worth living for. For those who
put forward such demands as these, the “eunuchism of the Classical”—an expression of George
Sand’s—could never suffice. They dreamed of an art of painting which should find its expression in
blood, purple, light, movement, and boldness; they held in sovereign contempt the correct, pedantic,
colourless tendency of their elders. An inner flame should glow through and liberate the forms,
absorb the lines and contours, and mould the picture into a symphony of colour. What was desired
and sought for, in poetry and in music, in plastic art and in painting, was colour and passion: colour
so energetic, that drawing was, as it were, consumed by it; passion so vehement, that lyrical poetry
and the drama were in danger of becoming feverish and convulsive. A movement which reminds one
of the Renaissance took possession of all minds. It was as though there were something intoxicating
in the very air that one breathed. On a political background of grey upon grey, consisting of the
cowls of the Jesuits of the Restoration, there arose a flaming, refulgent, blustering literature and art,
scintillating with sparks and bright hues, full of the adoration of passion and of fervid colour.
Romanticism is Protestantism in literature and art—such is Vitet’s definition of the movement.

Literature, which, adapting itself to the politics of the government, had begun in Chateaubriand
with an enthusiastic fervour for Catholicism, Monarchy, and Mediævalism, had in the twenties
become revolutionary; and the description of its battles is one of the most glowing chapters in
George Brandes’ classic work. There was a revolt against the pseudo-antique, against the stiff
handling of the Alexandrine metre, against the yoke of tradition. Then arose that mighty race of
Romantic poets who proclaimed with Byronic fire the gospel of nature and passion. De Musset, the
famous child of the century, the idol of the young generation, the poet with the burning heart, who
rushed through life with such eagerness and haste that at the age of forty he broke down altogether,
worn out like a man of seventy, deliberately wrote bad rhymes in his first poems, for the purpose of
thoroughly infuriating the Classicists. So, too, he wrote his dramas, in which love is glorified as a
serious and terrible power with which one may not trifle, as the fire with which one must not play, as
the electric spark that kills. So George Sand, the female Titan of Romanticism, published her novels,
with their subversive tendencies and their sparkling animation of narrative. Between these two rises
the keen bronze-like profile of Prosper Mérimée, who prefers to describe the life of gypsies and
robbers, and to depict the most violent and desperate characters in history. Finally, Victor Hugo, the
great chieftain of the Romantic school, the Paganini of literature, unrivalled in imposing grandeur, in
masterly treatment of language, and in petty vanity, found submissive multitudes to listen to him
when he rose in fierce and fiery insurrection against the rigid laws of the bloodless Classical style,
and substituted for the actionless and ill-contrived declamatory tragedies of his time his own
romantic dramas, breathing passion and full of diversified movement.

The conflict was deadly. The young generation hailed

with applause the new Messiah of letters, and grew
intoxicated with the harmony of Hugo’s phrases, which
sounded so much fuller and fierier than the measured
speech of Corneille and Racine. The Théâtre Français,
recently benumbed as with the quiet of the grave,
became all at once a tumultuous battlefield. There they
sat, when Hugo’s Cromwell and Hernani were produced
on the stage, correct, well dressed, gloved, close
shaven, with their neat ties and shirt collars, the
representatives of the old generation, whose blameless
conduct had raised them to office and place. And in
contrast to them, in the pit were crowded together the
young men, the “Jeune France,” as Théophile Gautier
described them, one with his waving hair like a lion’s
mane, another with his Rubens hat and Spanish mantle,
another in his vest of bright red satin. Their common THÉODORE GÉRICAULT.
uniform was the red waistcoat introduced by Théophile
Gautier—not the red chosen for their symbol by the men of the Revolution, but the scarlet-red which
represented the hatred felt by these enthusiastic young men for all that was grey and dull, and their
preference for all that is luminous and magnificently coloured in life. They held that the
contemplation of a beautiful piece of red cloth was an artistic pleasure. A similar change took place
at the same time in ladies’ toilettes. As the Revolution had in ladies’ costumes rejected all colour in
favour of the Grecian white, so now dresses once more assumed vivid, and especially deep red
hues; deep red ribbons adorned the hat and encircled the waist.

Deep red—that was the colour of the Romantic school; the flourishing of trumpets and the blare of
brass its note. Flashes of passion and ferocity, rivers of sulphur, showers of fire, glowing deserts,
decaying corpses in horrible phosphorescence, seas at night-time in which ships are sinking,
landscapes over which roaring War shakes his brand, and where maddened nations fall furiously
upon one another—such are the subjects, resonant with shout of battle and song of victory, which
held sway over French Romanticism. At the very time when at Düsseldorf the young artists of
Germany were painting with the milk of pious feeling their lachrymose, susceptible, sentimental
pictures, utterly tame and respectable; when the Nazarene school were holding their post-mortem
on the livid corpse of old Italian art, and seeking to galvanise it, and with it the Christian piety of the
Middle Ages, into life again; at that very time there arose in France a young generation boiling over
with fervour, who had for their rallying cry Nature and Truth, but demanded at the same time, and
before all else, contrast, pictorial antithesis, and passion at once lofty and of tiger-like ferocity. In
those very years, when in Germany, the cartoon style of Carstens having died away, progress was
limited to a timid and unsuccessful pursuit of that revelry of colour which marked the Quattrocentisti,
the French took at once, as with the seven-leagued boots of the fairy-tale, the great stride onward
towards the Flemings.

Through Napoleon, France had grown richer, not only in glory, but in art treasures, gathered
together from all countries into Paris, as trophies of the victorious general. The abundant collections
thus accumulated brought to bear upon that generation the quickening influence of the best that
had been done in the art of painting. Nowhere could one study either the Venetian colourists or
Rubens to greater advantage than in the Louvre, and it was by virtue of this unrestrained
intercourse with the masters who represent the most perfect blossom of colouring that the Byronic
spirits of 1830 succeeded in giving full expression to the glowing full-coloured life of things which
hovered before their heated imagination. It is unnecessary to say that this was accompanied by a
great widening of the range of subjects treated. The Romantic school showed that there were other
heroes in history and poetry besides the Greeks and Romans. They painted everything, if only it
possessed colour and character, flame, passion, and exotic perfume. Romanticism was the protest of
painting against the plastic in art, the protest of liberty against the academic teaching of the
Classical school, the revolution of movement against stiffness.

GÉRICAULT. THE WOUNDED CUIRASSIER. GÉRICAULT. CHASSEUR.

 It was in the studio of Guérin, the tame and timid Classicist, that the young assailants grew up,
“the daubers of 1830,” who called the Apollo Belvidere a shabby yellow turnip, and who spoke of
Racine and Raphael as of street arabs. They were tired of copying profiles of Antinous. The
contemplation of a picture by Girodet was wearisome to them. It was Théodore Géricault, a hot,
hasty passionate nature, of Beethoven-like unruliness and of heaven-storming boldness, who spoke
the word of deliverance.

He was a Norman, sturdily built and serious in manner. Even while he was studying in Guérin’s
studio he had already grasped some of the ideas which Gros had in his mind, and, although not his
pupil, Géricault may be said to have continued his work, or at least would have been able to do so
had he lived longer. Like him, he had from his youth up contemplated, full of wonder, the rolling sea
and the thunder-laden skies; like him, he had a predilection for fine horses; and, being of a
somewhat melancholy disposition, he preferred to treat of the darker aspects of life. His aspiration
was to paint the surging sea, proud steeds rushing past at a gallop, suffering and striving humanity,
great deeds, pathos and frenzy in every form. His first works were splendid horsemen, whose every
muscle twitches with nervous movement. During his short stay in Charles Vernet’s studio he had
already taken an interest in cavalry, and begun the studies of such subjects, which he continued to
the day of his death. Afterwards, while he was working under Guérin and before his visit to Italy in
1817, he often went to the Louvre, copied pictures and studied Rubens, to the great annoyance of
his teacher, who with horror beheld him entering upon so perilous a path.

Here again he followed in the steps of Gros, whose portrait of General Fournier Sarlovése was
hung in the Salon of 1812 close by Géricault’s “Mounted Officer.” This picture, a portrait of M.
Dieudonné, an officer in the Chasseurs d’Afrique, crossing the battlefield sword in hand on a rearing
horse, was the first work exhibited by Géricault, then twenty-one years of age. It was an event. Gros
found himself supported, if not surpassed, by a beginner who had his own enthusiasm for colour
and movement, for profiles broadly and boldly delineated. In 1814 followed the “Wounded
Cuirassier,” staggering across the field of battle and dragging his horse behind him. These were no
longer warriors seated on classical steeds foaming with rage, but real soldiers in whom there was
nothing of the Greek statue. Then Géricault went to Italy, but in this case also it was not to pursue
archæological studies in the museums, but to see the race of the barberi during carnival. To this
time belong those studies of horses, for the possession of which collectors vie with one another to-
day, sketches made in the open air, out in the street or in the stables. “The Horses at the Manger”
and “Horses fighting” were among the pearls of the collection of French drawings in the Paris
Exhibition of 1889.

In 1819 he completed his greatest picture, that which most people alone call to mind—not quite
fairly—when his name is mentioned—“The Raft of the Medusa.” What a tragedy is there represented!
For twelve days the unfortunate wretches have been on the deep, starving, in utter despair and
ready to lift their hands against each other. They were a hundred and fifty, now they are but fifteen.
One old man holds upon his knees the corpse of his son; another tears his hair out, left alone in life
after seeing all his dear ones perish. In the foreground lie dead bodies which the waves have not yet
swept away. But far away in the distance a sail appears. One points it out to another: yes, it is a sail!
A mariner and a negro mount upon an empty barrel and wave their handkerchiefs in the air. Will
they be seen? The anxiety is terrible. And ever higher and higher the grey waves roll on.
 Seemann, Leipzig.
GÉRICAULT. THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA.

GÉRICAULT. THE START.

 How must such a scene have impressed a generation which for long years had seen nothing in the
Salon but dry mythology and painted statues! Géricault was the first to free himself from the tyranny
of the plaster-of-Paris bust, and once again to put passion and truth to nature in the place of cold
marble. Just as he commissioned the ship’s carpenter who had constructed the raft and was one of
the saved to make him a model of it, so also he moved into a studio close to the hospital, for the
purpose of studying the sick and dying, of sketching dead bodies and single limbs. It must be
admitted that one would wish for a yet firmer grasp of the subject. In form, Géricault still belongs to
the school of David. A good deal of Classicism shows itself in the fact that he thought it necessary to
depict the majority of the figures naked, in order to avoid “unpictorial” costumes. There is still
something academic in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by privation,
disease, and the struggle with death; but what man can free himself at one stroke from the
influence of his time and environment? Even in the colouring there lingers some touch of the
Classical school. It offends no one, a fact to be insisted on in comparing him with the Nazarenes; but
as yet it plays no part in expressing the meaning of the picture. From the distance, indeed, whence
the rescuing ship is drawing near, a bright light shines forth upon a scene otherwise depicted in dull
brown. Save for this, the intention of the picture is not expressed by means of colour, and it even
shows some retrogression as compared with Géricault’s earlier works. He had begun with Rubens,
yet these studies in colouring did not last. In the “Wounded Cuirassier” of 1814 dark tones took the
place of the former cheerfulness, and so in the “Raft of the Medusa” he imagined the tragedy could
be represented only in sombre hues. He spread over the whole scene a monotonous unpleasant
brown shade, and in his endeavour to lay all weight upon human emotion he went so far as almost
to suppress the sea, which nevertheless played the chief part in the drama, and whose deep blue
would have afforded a splendid contrast. Discoveries are not to be made all at once, but only when
their hour is come.

The next step in French art was to be that of reinstating the

significance of colour in the full rights conquered for it by Titian,
so that it should no longer be merely a tasteful tinting of the
figures, but should become truly that which gives its temper to
the picture. It was not reserved for Géricault to effect this. A trip
to London, which he made in 1820, in company with his friend
Charlet, was the last event of his life. There the sportsman awoke
in him once more, and he painted the “Race for the Derby at
Epsom.” Soon after his return he was thrown from his horse while
riding, but lingered on for two years longer, suffering from a
spinal complaint. With a few more years in which to develop he
should have been one of the great masters of France, but he died
when scarcely in his thirty-second year.
Seemann, Leipzig.
Yet he lived long enough to observe, in the Salon of 1822, the EUGÈNE DELACROIX.
début of one of his comrades from Guérin’s studio. A greater than
himself, to whom with dying voice he had given a few words of advice, arose as the intellectual heir
of the young painter so prematurely carried off, and carried to its issue the struggle which he had
begun. It was on 26th April 1799, at midday, that the first genuine painter’s eye of the century saw
the light, at Charenton Saint-Maurice. Géricault had made a beginning, but it was the impetuous,
powerful genius of Eugène Delacroix which entered in and completed his work. What Gros had dimly
perceived, but had not dared to express, what Géricault had barely had time with a courageous
hand to point out, a hand too soon stiffened in death—the modern poetry of colour, of fever, and of
quivering emotion—it was reserved for Delacroix to write.

“That child will grow up to be a famous man; his life will be extremely laborious, but also
extremely agitated, and always exposed to opposition.” Thus had a madman prophesied of the boy
one day when he and his nurse were taking a walk near the lunatic asylum at Charenton. And he
was right.

L’Art.
DELACROIX. DANTE’S BARK.

Delacroix was another of the pupils who had grown up in Guérin’s studio, but he became the
latter’s antipode. Even in his student years he took counsel, not of the antique, but of Rubens and
Veronese; and when Géricault was painting his “Raft of the Medusa,” Delacroix belonged to the little
band of enthusiastic admirers which gathered round the young master. He served as model for the
half-submerged man to the left in the foreground of that picture. After busying himself at first almost
entirely with caricatures, and studies of horses, and with Madonnas in the Classical style, he
exhibited in 1822 his “Dante’s Bark,” in a pictorial sense the first characteristic picture of the century.
One is inclined even to-day to repeat David’s exclamation when he caught sight of the work, the first
great epoch-making life-utterance of the revolutionary Romanticists: “D’où vient-il? Je ne connais
pas cette touche-la.” There were thoughts in it which had not been conceived and expressed in the
same manner since the time of Tintoretto. Dante and Virgil, ferried by Phlegyas over Acheron, are
passing among the souls of the damned, who grasp hold of the boat with the energy of despair. A
theme taken from a mediæval author; an antique figure, that of Virgil, but seen through the prism of
modern poetry. While the Florentine, stiff with horror, gazes upon the swimming figures which cling
to the boat with teeth and nails, Virgil, tranquil and serious, turns on them a face which the
emotions of life can no longer affect.

The work obtained a decisive success. A carpenter in Delacroix’s house had made for the young
painter an inartistic frame of four boards. When he went to the exhibition and looked for his picture
in the side-rooms he could not find it. The frame had fallen to pieces during removal, but the picture
had been hung in an honourable place in the Louvre, in a rich frame ordered for it by Baron Gros.
“You must learn drawing, my young friend, and then you will become a second Rubens,” was the
salute which this remarkable man, whose theory ever gave the lie to his practice, gave the young
master. Naturally Delacroix would not now have been admitted into the school of David, or would
have been placed there in the lowest rank—with Rubens and a few other immortals, who drew no
better than he did. He was absolutely opposed to all the exact, regular, well-balanced, colourless
traditions which held sway in David’s school with their pedantic erudition and bourgeois discretion.
The principle of the Classicists was the Greek type of beauty, and the translation of sculpture into
painting. In Delacroix’s picture there was no longer anything of that sort. Géricault had already
broken away from the academic stencilling of form, and had substituted natural expression, life, and
emotion for conventional types; Delacroix now set aside the sullen colouring of the Classical school,
and its painted statues made way for the colour-symphonies of the Venetians.

These reforming qualities found in his second work, a few years later, a much fuller expression
than in the “Dante’s Bark.” At that time the Greeks, that heroic nation, struggling and dying for its
religion and independence, had excited everywhere the deepest sympathy and enthusiasm.
Delacroix was the very man to be inspired by such a theme. From the agitation caused by the
martyrdom of Greece, and from his taste for Byron’s poetry, resulted in 1824 the celebrated
“Massacre of Chios,” on which he was already employed in 1821, before the completion of his
“Dante’s Bark,” and in which his power of expression as well as of colour was carried much further
than in the earlier picture. In the “Dante’s Bark” there were still, both in form and colour,
reminiscences of the great Florentine masters; as, for instance, in the female figure in the
foreground, which is almost an exact reproduction of Michael Angelo’s “Night.” The event depicted
was comparatively quiet and tranquil, and the well-balanced composition would have done honour to
the most rigorous follower of David. The only novelty lay in the treatment of colour, and in the
substitution of the individual and characteristic for the typical and ideal. But undoubtedly it was now
possible not only to produce in colour more powerful chords, but also in expression to strike notes
more dramatic, for the academic plaster-of-Paris heads of the David school had depicted human
emotion only in icy immobility. Delacroix had put all these possibilities into the new picture. The
pyramidal configuration has resolved itself into an unconstrained grouping of figures. Here we have
for the first time the artistic spirit intoxicated
with colour, the “Orlando Furioso of colourists,”
the pupil of Rubens, Delacroix. An entire world
of deep feeling and of painfully passionate
poetry, an entire world of tones, which the
master under whose eyes he painted his
“Dante” could not have conceived, lies enclosed
within the frame of this picture. The figures,
sitting, kneeling, partly reclining, with their half-
starved bodies and their gloomy, brooding,
hopeless faces; the desperate struggle between
the conquerors and their victims in the far
distance; the contrast between this scene of
horror and the luminous splendour of the
atmosphere, and the wealth of colour in the
whole, made and still make this fine painting
one of the most impressive pictures in the
Louvre. It is a work which flames in glow of
colour more than any that had appeared in
France since the days of Rubens. The English Baschet.
DELACROIX. HAMLET AND THE GRAVE-DIGGERS.
had been his teachers. “It is here only that
colour and effect are understood and felt,”
Géricault had previously written from London. Delacroix’s work had already been sent off to the
Salon when Constable’s first pictures were just arriving there, and the impression which they made
upon him was so powerful that, at the very last moment, and in the Louvre itself, he gave his picture
a brighter and more luminous colouring.
 L’Art.
DELACROIX. TASSO IN THE MAD-HOUSE.

And indeed it was not till now that the Classicists perceived how great an opponent had arisen
against them. Not only did the aged Gros call the “Massacre of Chios” “le massacre de la peinture,”
but all the critics talked about barbarism, and prophesied that on this path French painting would
hasten to its destruction. The prize of the Salon was awarded, not to the “Massacre,” but to Sigalon’s
“Locusta,” an unimportant work of compromise, though very clever and well studied in
draughtsmanship. It was said that Delacroix’s picture was lacking in symmetrical arrangement, that
he showed too great a contempt for the beautiful, that indeed he appeared systematically to prefer
the ugly—that is to say, he was blamed for the very qualities wherein lay his importance as a
reformer. Accustomed as they had been for many years to an art in which intellect, correctness, and
moderation held sway, not one of the critics was in a position to perceive all at once the value of this
fiery spirit. Delécluze, the indefatigable defender of the sacred dogmas of the Classical school,
characterised “dramatic expression and composition marked by action” as the reef whereon the
grand style of painting must inevitably be wrecked. The modern schools of art, he taught as late as
1824, exist, flourish, and have their being only by the utilisation of what we can learn from the
Greeks. Even acknowledging the progress in colour which the work showed, it nevertheless
belonged, he said, to an inferior genus, and all its excellences in colouring could not outweigh the
ugliness of its form.

Therewith began the battles of the Romantic school, and all the daring of Théophile Gautier,
Thiers, Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Baudelaire, Bürger-Thoré, Gustave Planche, Paul Mantz, and
others had to be called upon in order to storm the heights held by the batteries of the Classical
critics. Count Forbin gave proof of no less courage when he bought the picture, torn to shreds as it
was by hostile criticism, for the State, at the price of six thousand francs. This enabled Delacroix to
visit England. He spent the time from spring to autumn of 1825 in London, where he consorted
amicably with all the artists of the day. And he took an interest not only in English art, but also in
literature and the drama. His preference for Shakespeare, Byron, and Walter Scott, who were
already his favourite poets, found new sustenance. An English opera made him acquainted with
Goethe’s Faust; and henceforth these poets entered into the foreground of his works. A picture of
“Tasso” (the poet in a cell of the madhouse, through the window of which two grinning lunatics look
in upon him) in 1826, the “Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero” and the “Death of Sardanapalus,”
both after Byron, in 1827, and “Faust in his Study” in 1828, followed the “Massacre”—all of them
obviously the works of a painter who loved bright, glowing colour, had studied Rubens and had
recently returned from England. In 1828 was published, in seventeen plates, his cycle of illustrations
to Faust, to accompany a translation of the poem into French; and this was followed by a number of
lithographs on Shakespearian subjects.

And here we may notice a singular exchange of parts. When the word “Romantic” was first heard
in Germany it had originally much the same sense as “Roman.” The German Romanticists were
moved to enthusiasm by Roman Catholicism and Roman church painting. But when Romanticism
reached France, the word came to mean exactly the opposite: a preference for the German and
English spirit as compared with the Greek and Latin, and an enthusiasm for the great Anglo-Saxon
and German poets, Shakespeare and Goethe, in whom, contrasting with Racine’s correctness, were
to be found unrestrained genius and glowing passion. This influence of poetry over art may easily
become dangerous, if painters sponge, so to speak, upon the poet, as the Düsseldorf school did,
and make use of his work only for the purpose of enabling works, in themselves valueless, to keep
their heads, artistically speaking, above water, by means of their extrinsic poetical interest. But
Delacroix had no need of any such support. He was not the poets’ pupil, but their brother. He did not
study them in order to illustrate their works, but was imbued with their spirit and possessed by their
souls. He lived with them; he did not borrow his subjects from them, but rather made use of them to
express in his own powerful language the strongest emotions of the human heart. Nor did he ever
forget that painting must, before all, be painting. Endowed as he was with a poet’s soul, he
conceived things as a painter, not laboriously translating passages from the poets, but simply
thinking in colour. What the musician hears, what the poet imagines, he saw. The scenes of which
he read appeared at once before his eyes as sketches, in great masses of colour. For him,
composition, action, and colour ever united together into one inseparable whole.
 DELACROIX. ENTRY OF THE CRUSADERS INTO CONSTANTINOPLE.

The journey to Morocco, which he made in the spring of 1832, in company with an embassy sent
by Louis Philippe to the Emperor Muley Abderrahman, is noteworthy for a further progress in his
ability as a colourist and a new broadening of his range of subjects. When he returned to the port of
Toulon, on 5th July 1832, he had seen Algiers and Spain, and had assimilated an abundance of
sunshine and colour. It is in his Oriental pictures that his painting first reaches its zenith, just as
Victor Hugo’s mastery over language was at its highest point in his Orientales. Goethe, in his West-
östliches Divan, celebrated what is quiet and contemplative in the Oriental view of life. Obermann
sang of the land of legend, of buried treasures, of Aladdin and the wonderful lamp; but for Byron
(who was practically the first to introduce into Europe the perfume and colour of the East), for Hugo,
and for Delacroix, it was the distant, bright-hued, barbaric land of the rising sun, the land of
sanguinary warfare and overthrow, the home of light and colour. Here it was that the French
Romanticists found the world that realised their dreams of colour. The East became for them what
Rome had been for the Classical school. From the feeble and misty sun of Paris, and from the grey
skies of the Boulevard des Italiens, they turned to Africa.

His enthusiasm for this newly discovered world resounds, full and clear, in Delacroix’s letters.
“Were I to leave the land in which I have found them,” he wrote, during his stay in Morocco, of the
men whom he saw about him there, “they would seem to me like trees torn up by the roots. I
should forget the impressions I have received, and should be able only in an incomplete and frigid
manner to reproduce the sublime and fascinating life which fills the streets here, and attracts one by
the beauty of its appearance. Think, my friend, what it means to a painter to see lying in the
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