If it be exact to speak of the
"romantic school" at all, it should be borne in mind that its adherents
were men of the most marked and diverse individualities ever grouped
under one standard. The impressionists, perhaps, apart, individuality is
often spoken of as the essential characteristic of the painters of the
present day. But beside the outburst of individuality at the beginning
of the romantic epoch, much of the painting of the present day seems
both monotonous and eccentric--the variation of its essential monotony,
that is to say, being somewhat labored and express in comparison with
the spontaneous multifariousness of the epoch of Delacroix and Decamps.
In the decade between 1820 and 1830, at all events, notwithstanding the
strength of the academic tradition, painting was free from the thraldom
of system, and the imagination of its practitioners was not challenged
and circumscribed by the criticism that is based upon science. Not only
in the painter's freedom in his choice of subject, but in his way of
treating it, in the way in which he "takes it," is the revolution--or,
as I should be inclined to say, rather, the evolution--shown.
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