posite walls,
first exhibited in 1808: Justice and Divine Wrath pursuing Crime; and
the graceful but somewhat invertebrate, Rape of Psyche. 746, an
Assumption, was executed for the Tuileries Chapel in 1819. Other works
by this master, whose Correggiosity is evident, hang in the room. Two
famous pupils of David were Francois Pascal Simon Gerard (1770-1837)
and Antoine Jean Gros (1771-1835). By the former, known as the King of
Painters and Painter of Kings, are: 328, Love and Psyche; and 332, a
charming portrait of the painter Isabey and his daughter. By the
latter, who owed the Imperial favour to the good graces of Josephine,
are: 391, Bonaparte at Arcole; 392A, Lieut. Sarloveze, a typical
Beau-Sabreur portrait; and 388, Bonaparte visiting victims of the
Plague at Jaffa, a striking composition, which advanced the artist to
the front rank of his profession. Gros was the parent of the grand
battle-pictures of the future; the painter of the Napoleonic epos.
Young artists were wont to attach a sprig of laurel to this work in
which the first signs of the coming storm of Romanticism are
discerned.

The real champion of the movement was, however, Jean Louis Andre
Theodore Gericault (1791-1824), whose epoch-making picture, 338, The
Raft of the Medusa, we now observe. This daring and passionate revolt
from frigid classicism and preoccupation with a conventional antiquity
was received but coldly by the professional critics on its appearance
in 1819, though with enthusiasm by the people. Failing to find a buyer
at Paris, its exhibition in England by a speculator, proved a
financial success. 339-343, are military subjects of lesser range by
this young innovator: 348, Epsom Races, was painted in England in
1821, three years before his premature death. To follow on with the
French school we retrace our steps by the Rotonde and the Escalier
Daru through Room XVI. to Room XV., L. of which, is the entrance to

ROOM VIII.

We revert to David whose Oath of the Horatii, 189, exhibited in 1785;
and The Lictors bearing to Brutus the Bodies of his Sons, 191,
exhibited in the fateful year 1789, hang skied on the R. wall. These
paintings, hailed with prodigious enthusiasm, revolutionised the
fashions and tastes of the day and gave artistic expression to the
coming political and social changes. 200A on the same wall, The Three
Ladies of Ghent, was painted during the artist's exile in Belgium,
for the old Terrorist was naturally not a _persona