ted
since the romantic outburst. But he belongs completely to the classic
epoch. Neither he nor his refined and sympathetic pupil, Flandrin, did
aught to pave the way for the modern movement. Intimations of the
shifting point of view are discoverable rather in a painter of far
deeper poetic interest than either, spite of Ingres's refinement and
Flandrin's elevation--in Prudhon. Prudhon is the link between the last
days of the classic supremacy and the rise of romanticism. Like Claude,
like Chardin, he stands somewhat apart; but he has distinctly the
romantic inspiration, constrained and regularized by classic principles
of taste. He is the French Correggio in far more precise parallelism
than Lesueur is the French Raphael. With a grace and lambent color all
his own--a beautiful mother-of-pearl and opalescent tone underlying his
exquisite violets and graver hues; a color-scheme, on the one hand, and
a sense of design in line and mass more suave and graceful than anything
since the great Italians, on the other--he recalls the lovely
chiaro-oscuro of the exquisite Parmesan as it is recalled in no other
modern painter. Occupying, as incontestably he does, his own niche in
the pantheon of painters, he nevertheless illustrates most distinctly
and unmistakably the slipping away of French painting from classic
formulas as well as from classic extravagance, and the tendency to new
ideals of wider reach and greater tolerance--of more freedom,
spontaneity, interest in "life and the world"--of a definitive break
with the contracting and constricting forces of classicism. During its
next period, and indeed down to the present day, French painting will
preserve the essence of its classic traditions, variously modified from
decade to decade, but never losing the quality in virtue of which what
is French is always measurably the most classic thing going; but of this
next period certainly Prudhon is the precursor, who, with all his
classic serenity, presages its passion for "storms, clouds, effusion,
and relief."

II

ROMANTIC PAINTING

I

When we come to Scott after Fielding, says Mr. Stevenson, "we become
suddenly conscious of the background." The remark contains an admirable
characterization of romanticism; as distinguished from classicism,
romanticism is consciousness of the background. With Gros, Gericault,
Paul Huet, Michel, Delacroix, French painting ceased to be abstract and
impersonal. Instead of continuing the