Charles Blanc – Vernet II
Géricault Life
1804 Portrait of Carle Vernet (detail) Robert Lefevre, Louvre.
Charles Blanc published his biography of Carle Vernet, Théodore Géricault’s teacher 1808-9, in the Revue Indépendante on December 10th, 1843. Read the second part of this important study below.
Carle Vernet
,”…In the middle of these festivities, the lively intelligence of Carle Vernet was at no point at rest; he always had his pencil at hand amidst the melee. Observation had always been a source of pleasure for him. Now that he had sacrificed at the alter of the Academy, he played with the doctoral gravity of his colleagues, and gave to the art of Callot a new character, more true, less fantastic, but not less spiritual. Tired of Greeks and Romans, he threw the cloak of Paul-Emile into the weeds, relegating the nude figure, the bas-relief, and the antique chariot to the corner. He set himself to copying his friends, his companions, those who rode with him, who skated upon the ice, who set the tone of fashionable life, and who in the evening cast their eyes upon the beauties of the Palais-Royal in the famous wooden galleries known as the camp of the Tartars. The pencil which had produced the sons of Theseus in a correct and noble style, like the verse of Racine, was deployed to seize the extravegant forms of fashion, the high boots, the frock coats of An VII (Year 7). Never have there been caricatures more amusing than these Incroyables (Incredibles), in which the purity of line in no way undercuts the malice of intention; these models of satire were successful during their time and are still successful now. Our illustrators today are reduced to imitation and despair of ever doing better. The young aristocrats of Vernet’s time were the subjects of these amusements, dressed in their grey riding coats and green neck ties. Their hair was plaited, long, powdered and carefully set in the style known as oreilles de chien (dog ears), rather than short and cleanly shorn in the republican Roman style à la Titus. They carried in their hands immense canes which serve equally well as instruments of attack and defense. Their cruel vanity and lack of gravitas invited ridicule and could not escape the eye of Carle Vernet. In one image, Vernet depicts two Incredibles who stop one before the other. The thinner of the two holds a set of opera glasses and scrutinizes his companion with a condescending air, mouth contorted into a tiny pout, which was very much the fashion then. There is no difference between the two except in their hair styles and choice of footwear. The lorgneur (the individual with opera glasses) wears gartered stockings and high-heeled shoes to better display a gracefully accentuated leg. The other has hunting boots barely covering the ankle. These can sometimes serve to disguise this part of the leg, which when freely visible was all together the mark of a man well made. Immense blond wigs manage to obscure their cheeks. A vest in the style of Robespierre, and a small hat similar to the one Napoloeon would later wear, completes the uniform of the lorgneur; the other carries in his hand a huge tromblon (stove-pipe hat), similar that which under the Restoration we called a bolivar.
At the side of the Incroyables (Incredibiles), were the Merveilleuses (Marvelous), their female counterparts. In this case, Vernet includes the same scene observed with two Merveilleuses. An enormous bourgeois woman wearing sharp, stiff ribbons upon her head, which give her the air of a ball topped with some sort of spiral, encouters a tall, slim merveilleuse who parts the air with a hat shaped like an enormous spoon. Beneath their headgear drift strands escaping their wigs. Each raises her dress, and it seems that the painter wants to establish some contrast between the calves of the two women. The one is powerful and plump, like an overturned sugar loaf, while the other aspires to an impossible slimness, as if shocked by the flabby appendage of her rival. The painter, however, while committed to creating a comic scene, exercises great care. It is by their turns, by the movements, and by their gestures that we grasp the scene. We are thus willing to ignore the surprise which exageration evokes, and see these caricatures as individuals drawn from real life, captured in all their flagrant and ridiculous vanity, at the moment when they passed in the street beneath the windows of Carle Vernet. When one rediscovers these same elegant figures promenading on horseback, one sees their mounts starve themselves into a similarly abject state. Emaciation affords the poor beast the convenience of displaying his bones clearly in the light, each is cleanly visible out of respect for good taste.
Joining these cutting caricatures on stage we find a group of English visitors who arrive all well turned-out and displaying their good manners. Here we see the fashionable food-lover, or gastronome, bouncy, stocky and shiny – full of wine, full of joy, and full of himself. There we see a gentleman with an extremely long head, who promenades with an air of robust competance alongside his august spouse, encollared with twenty layers of piping, folds, and frills; coiffed with the tiny hat of the Company of the Indies; and carrying a long-handled umbrella, the fabric of which would protect a canary.
When Carle Vernet returned to the painting of real life he was able to free himself forever from the errors of David, the full scope of which he little understood. As soon as Vernet had renounced all efforts to revitalize the old traditions, he set about to write day by day the history of his time, bringing to this project the profound knowledge which he had acquired of horses and the lively energy of his talent. He chose to make himself into a painter of battles and to create for himself his own space apart within this genre. In fact, Carle was the first artist to make the element of strategy a matter of great importance in the composition of his battle scenes. His paintings always display clearly to us the great movements which decide the outcome of actions, and if the color of these is generally a bit bland, the paintings had other merits, however, the most important of which was depicting history. He made his first efforts in this new project by composing a suite of drawings set the Italian countryside, which Duplessis-Bertaux was charged with engraving. One remarks in these the exactitude of movement, and a rare ability to render detail well and in a picturesque style. All these drawings have a local physiognamy and feel. The nature of the terrain, the aspect of the countryside, these are very well observed. The first sketches were composed always of groups spiritually arranged, and which recall the carts and baggages of the paintings of Casanova. Without needing to imagine the viewer in a balloon, as Vander Meulen does, Vernet sets the point of view high enough to develop the strategic lines, the plan of the besieged cities, the diverse mountain slopes. Nothing is more picturesque, for example, than the battle of Millesimo, or the crossing of the river Po before Plaisance. It was said that the painter followed the army, and that he retraced all these events from memory, as the general Bacler d’Albe did in Spain. The fine stylus of Duplessis-Bertaux adds the intelligence and harmony of engraving to these happy compositions.
These studies set in the Italian countryside were sound preparation to paint battle scenes of vast proportions. The most celebrated and best of the works of Carle Vernet is his Battle of Marengo. In this great painting, thirty-two feet in length, the artist wanted to display all the movements of this immortal day. This is not one of these insignificant episodes which says and teaches us nothing – with the wounded carried in the foreground, and a general surrounded by his aides de camp, with the blade of windmill here, and a little smoke there. No, this is a grand action of arms, a true battle, in which the plan is so clearly traced that everyone can calculate the chances, predict the victory, and feel compassion for the vanquished. To the left, you see the Austrian army dressed in white, cut in two by the French cavalry, and it is clear that the Austrian troops who find themselves on that side will soon be enveloped and taken prisoner. Already, the foreground is covered with enemy officers who surrender their swords, swearing oaths or weeping. In the distance, on the field one perceives a French general who has just been mortally struck. It is the general Desaix. To the right, Napoleon, amidst his staff officers, gives the signal to begin the march to charge, which recovered for the French army the ground which it had lost and then won back with all speed. There one finds superb horses of varied coats, heads well-painted and full of expression. That of young Beauharnais is of a charming freshness. Around Bonaparte wave the thousand feathered helmets of a regiment of dragoons, the general movement of which is thus made perfectly evident. When we isolate individual parts of this canvas, we find in their isolation an agreeable color; however, the mass taken all together, perhaps owing to the effort for accuracy, is a bit cold, and does not produce half the effect we might expect. Yet, if we go one by one through all these episodes, which each reveal the true talent of Vernet, one cannot but admire the realism and vivacity there. Nobody until then had reproduced with this accent of truth, the physiognamies of our soldiers, their allure, the aspect of their muskets, of their cartridge bags, and the small defects of their uniforms. Carle painted them quickly, powerfully, and joyfully as they fought. One desires in this great painting, it is true, a warmer light, a melee more serious, more moving; unhappily Carle was not a colorist, not enough so at least to dare to a powerful effect of sunlight; he did not possess the fury of Salvator, nor the vigor and firm brush of Bourguignon, and Parrocel would certainly have accused him of not knowing how to kill his man. The emphasis on exactness, the requests of the minister, the official bulletin which had to be followed, however, all together deprived the artist of the immense resources available when constructing a painting grounded in the creative imagination, and we can surely blame the ministry of war for depriving the ensemble of much of its color. But at least the machinery of war is large and beautiful, and there is a freshness in the execution; the men and the horses are united in their intention and movement, not a detail mars the overall effect. Of all the battle painters who have followed Carle Vernet, not a single one has better written the history of this memorable spectacle of arms, in which the talented artist demonstrated how to reconcile the science of Jomini with the clarity of Mr. Thiers.
Carle Vernet is reproached for having only one type of horse, but how important is this after all, if this type is handsome, if it is agreeable, and if it is not artificial or the product only of imagination. Art is the combination of nature with individual sensibility. Vernet had an original and steady manner to sense and to see. I believe we must therefore be felicitous, for this is the gift of emininent artists. If Carle has a place of the first rank among painters of horses, it must be precisely because of his predilection for fine breeds which the artist excelled at painting; he owes his fame to this uniformity – which makes it impossible to confuse his work with that of others. My God, he who would look at nature through the glasses of everyone would not be an artist, any more than a daguerrotypist can be a painter. Look at Gros, Géricault, Vander Meulen: are they not each of a type also, a type which varies little? I admire these painters, whose styles are so distinctive they have no need to sign their canvases. We find Géricault easily in seeing his depictions of the horse of everyday life – muscular, powerful, as robust as his rider, and with a nobility of strength. In the same way, we can find Carle Vernet in these horses which he presented, sometimes dryly – it is true, but his horses are lively, elegant, fine, firm, and delicate all together, as was his own temperament.
As for paintings of dogs, racing, and hunting, Carle had no equal, even in England, where so many renowned painters work exclusively in this genre. His horse, he understood it by heart, from hoof to the tip of the muzzle; But do not demand of him anything other than the most beautiful studies of the stud farms of Exmes or of Viroflay; he allowed his spiritual brush to craft a scene of dandies at the hunt, or of fine ladies in their carriages, with grooms and footmen at hand. If one demanded a history painting of him, he could no doubt paint a figure on foot as well as he did a mounted figure. But his own tastes lay elsewhere; he loved best to present his hero in the country – dressed in a jacket with a hunting knife at his side, traversing barriers and bushes.
Carle Vernet’s success with paintings of a very large size was somewhat uneven. An active and fecund talent who loved to produce a great deal, the artist did not enjoy being tied to a work requiring a great commitment on time. How do we describe the painting known as the Morning of the Battle of Austerlitz? Were it not for the celebrity of the individuals depicted, who include Napoleon, Bernadotte, Bessieres, and Murat, this canvas could pass for an immense genre painting, an Albert Kuyp on a grand scale, but without the beautiful color of the Dutchman. However, the size of the figures suffices to assert that this is a history painting; for Carle Vernet possessed too much spirit to give such magnificent proportions to a simple parade. The painter has put an energy and movement into this work which is far from ordinary; the men and the horses are equally well-painted. However, the head of the emperor appears to me slightly off, even if we accept that this is an accurate depiction of his pallor at that time. One wants to see here the serenitity of heroes, inactive but only in the slumber of Alexander, who did not rise and become fully awake except in victory. Carle was unable to correct this element, he who had so happily treated the figures of the marshals and grand officers of the imperial escort. Except for the horse of Napoléon, which is of a stunning white, all the horses of this composition have dark coats of varying shades, and all are remarkable for their lively suppleness, for the precision of their movements, and also for their palpable air of fury as they breathe in the odors of combat. The riders sit astride their mounts with that aplomb which is part of the grace of the horseman. The groups are arranged skillfully and stand out vigorously on the clear background; the sky is of a firm tone, which does not form too solid a foundation; but we expected to find the sky lighter and more luminous, like the sunlight of this day at Austerlitz, so famous for the sun which shone so brightly there. As a painter, it is in this canvas that Vernet was the strongest and most forceful. His paintings, ordinarily smooth and glossy, had on this occasion greater mass; the rich costumes which he painted are not only rendered with taste they are executed in a wide and sure manner, noticeable in a painter, who, even in his great paintings, never forgot the proportions of the easel.
Wherever there is no need to go beyond the surface of things, we can easily recall the natural gesture of his figures, their customary allure, their appearances, Carle Vernet finds ample resources in his talent for observation and in the picturesque memories he retained of all which he saw. But his inabilities reveal themselves quickly when he is forced to accentuate strongly the face, to imprint there a dramatic situation, and a character knowing and profound. At that point passion takes control of his hand, and the expression of sadness is closer to a grimace. Thus, we find Carle Vernet’s problems with history painting displayed in scenes in which horses had no place. I could not wish for better proof than the painting of the Bombardment of Madrid. Without discussing the general aspect, which is dull and severe, nor the color, which is badly mixed, all the physiognomies of the Spanish present a uniform expression of despair which fails to move us.
‘These compositions,’ said Mr. Guizot…”
Read part III here.