at is already
happening, I should say that no word has yet been coined which will
adequately express it.

In the last century the issues were simple, and can be easily expressed.
On the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to
the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to
them in a variety of different forms, just as the Byzantine craftsmen
earned their living when they were so rudely disturbed by Cimabue and
his school. On the other was a small but ever-increasing number of
individuals who, like Cimabue, began to think things out for themselves,
but, unlike him, did not succeed in effecting a popular triumph
without--if at all--first raising both the painters and the public to a
pitch of fury. It is indeed curious to read Vasari and modern historians
side by side, and to wonder if, after all, Vasari knew or told
everything, in his desire to glorify the art, or whether Giotto and
other innovators were not in fact burnt at the stake. Probably not.
Gallileo, as we know, and Savonarola suffered for their crimes. But they
were working against the Church, and the artists were working for it.

In the nineteenth century, painting had altogether broken away from the
Church, and so it had to fight its own battles out in the street, or in
the law courts. That is what has given it such a swagger and strength.
It no longer looks to its protector, it will hit you in the face before
you know where you are. The feeble kind, only, looks to Academies for
support, and thereby becomes feebler still.

In the present chapter, accordingly, we shall hear no more of the
Madonnas, the Holy Families, and all the sacred and profane subjects on
which the old masters exercised their genius. Five centuries of painting
had established the art in a position of independence; and in a
sixth--that is to say, the nineteenth--it began to assert itself, and to
prove that its education was not in itself an end, but only a means to
various ends. Instead of following out the fortunes of each painter,
therefore, and attempting to set in any sort of order the reputations of
artists before sufficient time has elapsed for them to cool, I propose
to confine myself in the remaining pages to the broad issues raised
during this period between the painters, the critics, and the public.

II

EUGENE DELACROIX

The man who began all this street fighting was a Frenchman--Eugene
Delacroix. While still a youth he wa