Instead of a landscape as
a tapestry background to a Holy Family, and having no pertinence but an
artistic one, we have Corot's "Orpheus."
II
Gericault and Delacroix are the great names inscribed at the head of the
romantic roll. They will remain there. And the distinction is theirs not
as awarded by the historical estimate; it is personal. In the case of
Gericault perhaps one thinks a little of "the man and the moment"
theory. He was, it is true, the first romantic painter--at any rate the
first notable romantic painter. His struggles, his steadfastness, his
success--pathetically posthumous--have given him an honorable eminence.
His example of force and freedom exerted an influence that has been
traced not only in the work of Delacroix, his immediate inheritor, but
in that of the sculptor Rude, and even as far as that of Millet--to all
outward appearance so different in inspiration from that of his own
tumultuous and dramatic genius. And as of late years we look on the
stages of any evolution as less dependent on individuals than we used
to, doubtless just as Luther was confirmed and supported on his way to
the Council at Worms by the people calling on him from the house-tops
not to deny the truth, Gericault was sustained and stimulated in the
face of official obloquy by a more or less considerable aesthetic
movement of which he was really but the leader and exponent.
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