“The Marseillaise” Relief
Arc de Triomphe, Paris
Charming as the “Neapolitan Fisher Boy” is, Rude’s genius is more completely illustrated by his great bas-relief in the Arc de Triomphe at Paris. Thiers was Louis Philippe’s minister at the time, and he gave Rude the commission for all the “grande sculpture” upon the Arch. The intrigues of rivals, however, resulted in half of the work being handed over to Etex, and finally, Rude only contributed a single group. This was the “Chant du Départ,” generally known as “The Marseillaise.” The magnificent force and vigour with which Rude has carried out the purpose of the memorial is beyond praise. His task was to perpetuate the fame of the Imperial armies which cowed Europe and won such fights as Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland. Surely the difference between the emotion expressed in Rude’s “Chant du Départ,” and any works by the more highly endowed Canova and Thorvaldsen is beyond question. Surely it is equally certain that the difference can only be traced to one thing. The Frenchman was expressing what he felt, whereas, the other two men were only expressing what Wincklemann and Lessing had proved to be correct. Rude was able to infuse his marble with the passion it contains because he had lived through a stirring age. The “Chant du Départ” only nominally dates from the ’thirties of the last century. Really, it was carved in the year 1793, when Rude as a boy of nine, marched up and down the squares of Dijon, with his child-companions in the Royal Bourbon Regiment of the National Guard, and felt his loyal little heart burning within him as he sang the Marseillaise before the bust of Marat or Robespierre. It makes us feel that it is the direct outcome of real feeling—experienced at first hand.
The Rise of English Sculpture
The sculpture of Rude leads naturally enough to that of Great Britain—the only other country in Europe with national emotions capable of being translated into a vital art at that time.
Unfortunately, no lover of sculpture, writing in English can turn from the art of France to that of his own country without a pang. For hundreds of years, the sculptor met with no encouragement in Great Britain. The land which had nourished the genius of a Shakespeare, a Milton and a Wren, of a Gainsborough and a Reynolds, could only advance a list of shadowy names against the tangible achievements of its great rival on the other side of the Channel. In the early days of the Renaissance, there was some promise that sculpture might obtain a foothold in England as it was doing in France. Henry VIII. and Wolsey took a keen interest in the infant art, and persuaded several Italian artists to take up their abode in England. Such a tomb as that of Henry VII. in the Abbey, the contract for which was made in 1512, affords an interesting comparison with the tombs of the French kings of the sixteenth century. It was the work of the Italian Torrigiano, best known nowadays as the breaker of Michael Angelo’s nose. Unfortunately, Torrigiano was the greatest, and not the least, of the band of foreign artists who came to England in those days. Consequently, our native sculptors never had the advantage of seeing men like Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto working among them. Torrigiano and Antonio Toto were poor substitutes for Cellini and Primaticcio.
No one can say what would have happened had a more vigorous artistic impulse been received from the country of Michael Angelo and Donatello. But this is certain. Neither sculpture nor painting in England became the living things they were in France. While Francis I. and the three Louis were purchasing statues by Goujon and Pajou, the English kings and nobles preferred to repeat lyrical snatches by such men as Lovelace and Rochester. Almost the only British sculptures from the end of the Tudors to the middle of the reign of George III. were the memorial monuments which still decorate our older churches. For the rest, there was such a work as the Nightingale monument by the foreigner Roubilliac, the still-life carvings of Grinling Gibbons, and the fine tombs by Nicholas Stone in Westminster Abbey.
The profound difference between the English character and the French accounts, in great measure, for Britain’s slowness to develop a national school of sculpture. The temperament which really feels that pure form can adequately express the emotional experience of mankind is rare at any time. It is far less likely to develop among men who prefer positive, concrete mental images than among those who seek the definite, abstract conceptions which the French mind creates. Moreover, during the century after Shakespeare, Britain was fully occupied in settling her religious and political difficulties, and upon such tasks as the absorption of Ireland and Scotland. During the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth England should be pictured by the aid of Arnold’s magnificent image:
“The weary Titan, with deaf
Ears, and labour-dimm’d eyes,
Regarding neither to right
Nor left...
Staggering on to her goal.”
The Scottish Revolution of 1745 marked the conclusion of the period of political and social stress. By the middle of the eighteenth century Great Britain had “found itself.” The foundations of a system of party government had been laid. The rule of Walpole, “the first Prime Minister of England,” had indicated the direction in which the future of English politics lay. For the first time the country was able to devote a portion of its spare energy to an art which was admittedly not quite attuned to the national temperament.
The establishment of the British Museum was an early indication of the new mood. The Royal Academy, founded in 1768, with Reynolds as its first president, indicated the public recognition that a national school of sculpture was possible. Finally, society—with a capital S—condescended to interest itself in classical art. The influence of this upon English sculpture can be happily illustrated from the history of the “Society of Dilettanti.”
At the time of the foundation of the Society of Dilettanti, between 1733 and 1735, young British noblemen were wont to make the “Grand Tour” through France and Italy, much as the Roman aristocrats had visited Greece and Asia Minor, during the later days of the Republic and the Empire. Usually the Englishman was accompanied by a tutor, who enabled his young charge to acquire the rudiments of a classical art education. The youth came back to London equipped as an arbiter in all matters of taste. The Society of Dilettanti only admitted such men as these, and its avowed object was to cultivate a taste for works of art which had attracted them during their tours. At first the Society of Dilettanti was little more than a dining club. Horace Walpole, writing in 1743, sneered: “The nominal qualification is having been in Italy; the real one being drunk.”
As the Society became more staid, with the advancing years of its founders, more ideal methods were adopted. Several of the promoters took leading positions in English life. Sir Francis Dashwood, for instance, became Bute’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. The fourth Earl of Sandwich not only enriched the language with a new term and a novel article of diet, but posed as a leader in all branches of English activity from gambling and theatricals to art criticism. In course of time such men as these had the spending of very considerable funds accumulated by the society. The sources whence the Society derived its income make amusing reading. There was, for instance, the “face money,” levied under a rule which ordained that every member’s portrait should be painted by Kneller for the benefit of the Society. Still larger sums accrued from the “Rule Ann. Soc. Undec.” This set forth that any member who was fortunate enough to secure an advance in his salary should contribute one per cent. of the first year’s rise to the Dilettanti coffers. In the Annals, under date January 6, 1744-5, one finds the following: “Received of the Duke of Bedford eleven guineas for having received the place of the first Commissioner of the Admiralty.”
On the whole, the funds of the Society of Dilettanti were expended with good judgment. Students’ scholarships were endowed in connection with the Royal Academy schools. Finely illustrated works dealing with various antiquarian subjects were published from time to time. Excavations were encouraged. Above all, a body of public opinion was created which took a real interest in classic sculpture.
Proofs of a sincere appreciation of classical art among the leaders of English society in the second half of the eighteenth century could be readily multiplied. We might instance the case of Charles Lennox, third Duke of Richmond, who celebrated his Italian tour by setting up a collection of painting, sculptures and casts in a gallery of his house in Whitehall and establishing schools of art there under Cipriani, the painter, and Wilton, the sculptor. But the supreme evidence of the value of the system is furnished by the case of Thomas, Earl of Elgin. That nobleman was engaged about 1802 upon a mission to the Ottoman Porte. He was fortunate enough to obtain a firman to examine and remove certain “inscriptions” from the Acropolis of Athens, at that time a Turkish fortress. His agents, under this firman, collected the Elgin marbles, which were conveyed to England in 1812 and finally purchased by the British Government in 1816. Even at this date, in spite of the writings of Lessing and Winckelmann, public opinion was in grave doubt as to the desirability of paying the beggarly £35,000 which the Earl of Elgin asked for his treasures. He had spent upwards of £70,000, so the offer was an exceptionally generous one. Even a man like Flaxman was doubtful as to the real value of the marbles. Like many art-lovers of his age, he preferred Raphael to Rembrandt—the “Venus of Medici” to the “Three Fates.”
FLAXMAN