The great masters of the Renaissance, from Giotto to Veronese,
were men of their time, sharing and interpreting the ideals of those
around them, and were recognized and patronized as such. Rembrandt's
greatest contemporary, Rubens, was painter in ordinary to half the
courts of Europe, and Velazquez was the friend and companion of his
king. Watteau and Boucher and Fragonard painted for the frivolous
nobility of the eighteenth century just what that nobility wanted, and
even the precursors of the Revolution, sober and honest Chardin, Greuze
the sentimental, had no difficulty in making themselves understood,
until the revolutionist David became dictator to the art of Europe and
swept them into the rubbish heap with the rest.
It is not until the beginning of what is known as the Romantic movement,
under the Restoration, that the misunderstood painter of genius
definitely appears. Millet, Corot, Rousseau were trying, with
magnificent powers and perfect single-mindedness, to restore the art of
painting which the Revolution had destroyed. They were men of the utmost
nobility and simplicity of character, as far as possible from the
gloomy, fantastic, vain, and egotistical person that we have come to
accept as the type of unappreciated genius; they were classically minded
and conservative, worshippers of the great art of the past; but they
were without a public and they suffered bitter discouragement and long
neglect.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25