Today we
start a weeklong look at the work of Hippolyte
Delaroche (1797-1857), also known as Paul Delaroche. Paul came from an artistic family; his father
was an art dealer who made his fortune buying, selling and cataloging art. His father encouraged young Paul and worked
hard to advance his artistic education, sending young Paul to work with Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771– 1835) in
1818.
Paul studied
landscape painting at the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts, and he made his first appearance in the Salon with an oversized
picture, Josabeth Saving Joas
(1822). This picture met with great success and, as a result, he soon became
the friend of such luminaries as Géricault
and Delacroix. In fact, the three of them were the center of
the historical painting scene of the era.
Following
his debut, Paul spent most of his life as an active (and prolific) artist. He visited Italy in 1838 and 1843, when his
father-in-law, Horace Vernet
(1789-1863) was director of the French Academy. His studio in Paris was in the
rue Mazarine, where he built a reputation for patient industry.
The great
love of Paul’s life was Louise Vernet. They married in 1835, the same year he
exhibited Head of an Angel, for
which she served as a model. Paul never
recovered fully from the shock of her death 10 years later, aged only 31. After her loss he created a series of small,
exquisite pictures based on the Passion
of the Christ, focusing his attention on the story’s dimension of human
suffering.
Paul was
extremely adept at history paintings – meaning not only pictures depicting
historic events, but also mythological or biblical pictures, scenes from great
literature and allegorical paintings.
The key
to Paul’s enduring success was that he had a dramatist’s eye and sense for the
key moment of heightened tension. His pictures
depicting past events were not, perhaps, always scrupulously accurate in the representation
of the actual historical moment, but were always intensely dramatic and psychologically true.
With that
in mind, let’s look at one of his great pictures, The Children of Edward (1831).
The scene is, of course, familiar to anyone who has seen Shakespeare’s Richard III. Two princes, held in the Tower of London, are
about to be smothered on the order of Crooked-Back Richard, their uncle and
usurper of their rights (and, eventually, the throne of England). Knowing the fate of the children as we do,
the sense of dramatic suspense is remarkable.
The two
children, pale with terror, cling to one another on a four-poster bed in a dark
room. Edward V, and his brother Richard,
children of the late king, Edward IV, have heard a noise and stopped
reading. The king gazes sadly at us, the
gaze of his younger brother is drawn to the door, where his eventual murderer
will enter. The dog sees the shadow of a
foot in the light under the door….
When this
picture debuted at the Salon in 1831, it was a riotous success. It was immediately purchased by the
administrators of the Royal Museums; indeed, it was the inspiration for Casimir Delavigne to write a play, The Children of Edward (1833), which is
little-performed today.
With
this picture, Paul renders the subject in a manner both natural and
emotional. The children are quite real,
and the dog emphasizes the tragic pathos of the moment. There are few warm colors in evidence, and
Paul’s inherent sense of dramatic romanticism is contained – such a moment did
not need embellishment.
The
scene can be found in Richard III, Act 4, Scene 3, where it is described in the
words of Sir James Tyrell, who had commissioned their murder from Dighton and
Forrest:
The
tyrannous and bloody act is done -
The most
arch deed of piteous massacre
That
ever yet this land was guilty of.
'O
thus', quoth Dighton, 'lay the gentle babes';
'Thus,
thus', quoth Forrest, 'girding one another
Within
their alabaster innocent arms.
Their
lips were four red roses on a stalk,
And in
their summer beauty kissed each other.
A book
of prayers on their pillow lay,
'Which
once', quoth Forrest, 'almost changed my mind.
But O,
the devil' -- there the villain stopped,
When
Dighton thus told on, 'We smothered
The most
replenished sweet work of nature,
That
from the prime creation e'er she framed.'
More Delaroche tomorrow.
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