Paris; and is said to have painted six hundred and sixty-two portraits or fancy pieces, and more than one hundred and fifty landscapes.

Jean Baptiste Isabey, of Nancy (1767-1855), is known as a miniature-painter of the empire, who obtained fashion and celebrity. He began by adorning "lids of snuff-boxes and coat-buttons;" but developed higher talents at the court of Louis XVI., and especially under Napoleon, of whom he executed more than two hundred miniatures. The works of his son, who became a graphic marine painter, are to be seen in the Luxembourg.

Francois Marie Granet (1775-1849), a clever delineator of "interiors," belongs to the same epoch. The "Crypt of the Church of St. Francis of Assisi," in the Louvre, is his most powerful picture.

Horace Vernet, who was born in Paris in 1789, and died in the same city in 1863, was a grandson of Claude Joseph Vernet, and a rapid, brilliant, and prolific artist, whose abilities were enhanced by Italian study and Eastern travel. He was a favorite with Napoleon I., who presented him in 1814 with the cross of the Legion of Honor, as a reward for his bravery at the Barrière de Clichy. He afterward painted "The Defense of Clichy," and is famous for his huge battlescenes, most of which are collected at Versailles. The Luxembourg also contained his "Massacre of the Mamelukes," and a large picture of “The Meeting of Michael Angelo and Raphael at the Entrance of the Vatican," where Michael Angelo is reported to have exclaimed to his rival, "You march surrounded with a suite, like a general!" and Raphael retorted, "You go alone, like a hangman." Vernet's treat

ment of his subjects is naturally broad and striking, without great elaboration; his coloring is vivid, but not durable; his grouping dexterous and effective, and his horses spirited and life-like. He occasionally undertook marine pieces, as in the "Storm at Sea," at the Hague; and it is said he once persuaded a devoted younger brother to allow himself to be tied to a pole, and "plentifully watered at intervals from a watering-can," in order that the artist might faithfully represent the drenched and wretched condition of a shipwrecked sailor, clinging to a spar.

Jean Louis Géricault, born at Rouen, 1791, was educated in the strictly classic taste which characterized the followers of David; but his originality burst such imposed fetters, and forcibly portrayed the real and actual. Yet, as reality in the minds of his countrymen is always viewed through the medium of French imagination, we need not wonder that his conception of what is true to Nature differs so widely from that of his Dutch contemporaries. The change of artistic principles which he announced was warmly received by the public; but his own life was too short to fully demonstrate its success. He died at the age of thirty-five. "The Raft of the Medusa," in the Louvre, may give some idea of his striking talents. It is a large picture, representing the crew of the shipwrecked vessel Méduse floating on an immense raft which nearly fills the entire canvas. The dead and dying lie upon the raft in heart-rending attitudes of exhaustion and despair; but the survivors in frantic joy perceive a distant sail; and it is this moment just preceding their deliverance which the painter has chosen for his terrible and thrilling composition.

With the protest of Géricault classic art lost its last expiring hold upon the favor of France. A more natural and modern style thenceforth filled its place. Among the artists born at this epoch we may here mention Léopold Robert (1794-1835), sometimes called the rival of Géricault, whose Italian landscapes, particularly "The Reapers of the Campagna," are much admired; but the great masters Delaroche and Delacroix we shall number among the painters of the nineteenth century.

CHAPTER XVII.

PAINTING IN ENGLAND.

CHAPTER by chapter we have been advancing from the dim, religious twilight of early art to the common light of day in which our modern pictures are painted. English painting knows no past, but rejoices in the present, and aspires to the future. None of the Continental galleries, with the exception of that of St. Petersburg, ever hints at an English school; and yet there is no country in the world where the growth of a hundred years has developed such true genius.

Previous to the seventeenth century the few pictures in the British Isles were all of foreign origin, either purchased abroad by monarchs or noblemen, or executed by strangers whom offers of patronage attracted to the English court. Such works still remain in royal palaces, or among the family portraits and collections of old and wealthy houses. The reign of Henry VIII. brought over Holbein, and artists of lesser note, who found a wide field and ready compensation for the exercise of portraiture. Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary gladly welcomed painters of Flanders, Holland, and Spain, to their shores, and also recognized the talents of two English citizens, Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver, who

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in the first half of the seventeenth century became quite renowned for their miniatures. Indeed, national admiration appeared restricted to portraits till the accession of Charles I., who had a profound appreciation of art, and was himself a good drawer and designer. He desired to form a large gallery of noble compositions, and was censured for extravagance by a populace who could not understand the practical value of a fresco by Raphael, or a cartoon by Michael Angelo. Yet King Charles improved his brief opportunity by paying eighty thousand pounds for the Duke of Mantua's famous collection, including Mantegna's "Triumph of Julius Cæsar," now at Hampton Court; and also secured more than twenty of Titian's works, thirteen of Paul Veronese's, seventeen of Tintoretto's, and many of other Venetian artists, as well as specimens of Raphael and Correggio. He gave liberal commissions to Rubens, induced him to spend a year in England, and finally persuaded Vandyck to accept the position of court-painter, which so identified him with that particular epoch of history that we think of him even more naturally as an English artist than as a Fleming. Family pieces were then the prevailing fashion, and we can well comprehend the enthusiasm excited by Vandyck's splendid group of the "Wilton Family," which shares with the "Arundel Family" and Holbein's "More Family" a world-wide renown. Something over five hundred pounds was the customary price paid for these large and most interesting compositions, which often include as many as ten figures, with highly-finished accessories. Neither did the passion for portraits die with the Cavaliers. Even Cromwell desired to sit to Robert Walker, whose picture of him exists at Warwick