Annibale Caracci. Eustache le Seur,
Le Brun's rival, possessed remarkable dignity, and wonderful correctness of
style. Indeed, by some he has been called the Raphael of France. Had he
lived longer, (for he died at the age of thirty-eight,) the French school,
under his direction, would most probably have adopted a manner which might
have been imitated, and which might have established the arts on an
eminence to vie with even imperial Rome. But, by the concurrence of
extraordinary circumstances, Le Brun was the fashionable painter of the
time, and it therefore became necessary to imitate _his_ manner, rather
than the more simple and more refined one of his rival. As Le Brun's
imitators wanted his genius, his faults not only became current, but more
glaring and deformed.

[5] Le Brun was the pupil of Simon Voueet, and afterwards of Poussin.

After Le Brun's death, which took place in 1690, the French artists
degenerated greatly, their productions being decorated in a gaudy and
theatrical way, without due regard to taste or decorum. Their school, some
years ago, altered its principles, under the auspices of the spirited Count
de Caylus, who possessed considerable merit as an artist. The count, by his
high rank and fortune, had the means of encouraging the imitators of the
ancients, and of procuring the best models in Italy for study. He, in
conjunction with Monsieur Vien, first formed the design of restoring a pure
taste in France; and if his countrymen had followed the path thus marked
out for them, they would now have been equal to the greatest of the Greek
painters. But it appears that they are incapable of rising to any very
extraordinary height in the arts, for, with the exception of Le Seur, and
one or two others, they have ever wanted that elevation of mind which so
eminently distinguished the Romans. Though De Caylus greatly purified
painting in his time, yet his precepts and examples had little or no weight
after his death, for the art again retrograded into its original state--a
state from which the French professors, as before observed, seem incapable
of rising.

In our own days some few French artists have distinguished themselves,
particularly Lefevre, who was the chief painter to Napoleon. A full-length
portrait of the emperor in his coronation robes, for which Lefevre received
the sum of five thousand Napoleons, and which I have lately had the
pleasure of seeing, is very correct in drawing, and extremely