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David to Delacroix
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136 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1977
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 2, 2022
Un clásico. Una perfecta muestra de la historia del arte de mediados del siglo XX, la cual se centra en exclusiva en los aspectos artísticos, en este caso, de los artistas más destacados entre David y Delacroix dejando a un lado aspectos sociales, económicos o políticos de la época. Es recomendable leer este libro en compañía de otros como los publicados por Boyme o Eisenman para el caso francés o Reyero para el caso español.
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January 22, 2026Divinely vivid writing about French art. So precise in its wording that I want to shake the hand of the translator (Robert Goldwater)!
It also felt incredibly chic to read because there were (italicized) French phrases thrown in and then not translated. Very cool.
“Charme and esprit, the hallmarks of the style, are imponderables, pure elements of a taste whose extreme refinement and elegance could only have been developed in a metropolis such as Paris; they thoroughly defy reason.
Moreover, these elements defy all morality; they are by definition amoral and this amorality was easily turned into immorality, frivolous-ness, and often overt eroticism. Thus, the whole movement became still more strongly opposed to the Academy, the stern guardian of morality.
The taste for the sensuously superficial and the charmingly elegant produced so many delightful works of art that there has been a tendency to forget everything in French art except these sparkling masterpieces of French eighteenth-century esprit. The wonderful deco-rations, large and small, of Watteau, Lancret, Pater, de Troy, etc., with their softly colored and yet brilliant lacquer tones and their captivating eroticism, covered the rocaille walls and ceilings of Parisian bôtels in the first half of the eighteenth century. They were the delight of connoisseurs and amateurs and enchanted the whole of Europe.” (3)
“Joyous and uncalculated melody is a fundamental element in the life and manner of the French people and their artistic culture, but it can never suppress the enduring rational keynote which, related to the high ideals of Italian classicism and antiquity, expresses the Latin intellect and is therefore a major component of the French spirit.” (4)
“This continued battle of opinions, the constant friction in which a partial interpenetration of opposites was unavoidable, played an important part in the formation of French artists. Because of this the nineteenth century produced that extraordinary richness of individual artistic personalities and variety of schools and tendencies which distinguished French art from that of all other countries.” (5)
“The Academy, under Lebrun, with its verbose aesthetic speeches and discussions, took the lead in codifying and mummifying all vitality.” (5)
“The space where the action takes place is indicated concisely and with utmost sincerity. A great wooden block or box laconically inscribed A MARAT DAVID iS pushed forward right to the picture frame; behind it, in the second and last plane extends the gray-brown bathtub, three quarters of it covered by a wooden board. The head and shoulders of the murdered man rise out of the long, narrow box like Lazarus from his coffin.
The breast with its tiny wound is placed in shadow. Marat's head is thrown back in death agony, and twisted around it is a kind of gray-white turban. From under this his face emerges half in light and half in shade, the eyes closed, the mouth anguished yet partly smiling; it has extraordinary plastic force, and is a striking likeness; it is also infinitely moving. Such grand simplicity is attained only by masterly composition.” (24)
“Under Napoleon David retained the outstanding social and artistic position which the "Sabines" had reconquered for him during the Directory. His atelier became famous all over Europe. Voilà mon héros, David said to his pupils when General Bonaparte, only twenty-eight years old but already glorious, visited him in his atelier for the first time. His hero worship had at last found its object.” (27)
“But even more than in the case of other artists we can and must consider him apart from any idea of "progress." We must admire the lovable, pure, and naïve spirit that he revealed in many of his smaller works, as in his sketches and drawings, which are half playful and yet always have a certain largeness of feeling. And almost to our surprise we must acknowledge that in at least one of his large pictures he was able to surpass himself and achieve monumentality.” (59)
“Out of all this grew a picture which, though based on an old tradition must, through its orientalisms, its exotic gothic setting, and its dreadfulness of subject, have had a strange and exciting effect. The introduction of a modern hero into a world so alien to him in theme and milieu was entirely new. In the Louvre today the picture's coloristic effect can no longer be appreciated; originally, however, it was very striking and served to remove the whole concept even further from clasicist formulas, bringing it near that movement of color which was the ideal of the later, so-called romantic painters.” (63)
“David set his figures in an imaginary, bare, artificially empried space. Ingres destroys the space and puts bodies, heads, garments, and drapery all in one almost unitorm plane; in this there 1s, again, an approach to an "archaic" style. David replaced the pomp of the typ. ical eighteenth-century portrait with a laconic simplicity; Ingres again complicates his portraits, reasserting the ideal of elegance; he almost revels in luxuriant stuffs and in embroidery. But how delicate, how sensitive are his folds, in contrast to the rougher, more conventional draperies of David; with what extraordinary simplicity he renders the full oval of the face, the eyes, the mouth, the elongated surface of the hand, and the broad fingers. And yet the portrait of Mme. Rivière is no schematic arrangement, and it is no anemic Nazarene ideal that sits before us.” (74)
“All anecdote and folklore, the sentiment and symbolism into which the exotic so easily falls (as, for example, in Gauguin), has been avoided. Although underneath there lies that exact, small, and accidental truth derived from the study of nature, Delacroix always lifts this to the higher level of an almost visionary yet precisely captured scene in which color, form, and content are fused into a single unity.” (121)
“Though the arrangement and movement of the figures are very similar in the two, the feeling for space and mass is entirely different. In the Montpellier painting, the picture space of the earlier painting is increased, and as a result the large figures of the foreground are pushed back and so are much more intimately fused with the space into whose depth they sink.” (132)
It also felt incredibly chic to read because there were (italicized) French phrases thrown in and then not translated. Very cool.
“Charme and esprit, the hallmarks of the style, are imponderables, pure elements of a taste whose extreme refinement and elegance could only have been developed in a metropolis such as Paris; they thoroughly defy reason.
Moreover, these elements defy all morality; they are by definition amoral and this amorality was easily turned into immorality, frivolous-ness, and often overt eroticism. Thus, the whole movement became still more strongly opposed to the Academy, the stern guardian of morality.
The taste for the sensuously superficial and the charmingly elegant produced so many delightful works of art that there has been a tendency to forget everything in French art except these sparkling masterpieces of French eighteenth-century esprit. The wonderful deco-rations, large and small, of Watteau, Lancret, Pater, de Troy, etc., with their softly colored and yet brilliant lacquer tones and their captivating eroticism, covered the rocaille walls and ceilings of Parisian bôtels in the first half of the eighteenth century. They were the delight of connoisseurs and amateurs and enchanted the whole of Europe.” (3)
“Joyous and uncalculated melody is a fundamental element in the life and manner of the French people and their artistic culture, but it can never suppress the enduring rational keynote which, related to the high ideals of Italian classicism and antiquity, expresses the Latin intellect and is therefore a major component of the French spirit.” (4)
“This continued battle of opinions, the constant friction in which a partial interpenetration of opposites was unavoidable, played an important part in the formation of French artists. Because of this the nineteenth century produced that extraordinary richness of individual artistic personalities and variety of schools and tendencies which distinguished French art from that of all other countries.” (5)
“The Academy, under Lebrun, with its verbose aesthetic speeches and discussions, took the lead in codifying and mummifying all vitality.” (5)
“The space where the action takes place is indicated concisely and with utmost sincerity. A great wooden block or box laconically inscribed A MARAT DAVID iS pushed forward right to the picture frame; behind it, in the second and last plane extends the gray-brown bathtub, three quarters of it covered by a wooden board. The head and shoulders of the murdered man rise out of the long, narrow box like Lazarus from his coffin.
The breast with its tiny wound is placed in shadow. Marat's head is thrown back in death agony, and twisted around it is a kind of gray-white turban. From under this his face emerges half in light and half in shade, the eyes closed, the mouth anguished yet partly smiling; it has extraordinary plastic force, and is a striking likeness; it is also infinitely moving. Such grand simplicity is attained only by masterly composition.” (24)
“Under Napoleon David retained the outstanding social and artistic position which the "Sabines" had reconquered for him during the Directory. His atelier became famous all over Europe. Voilà mon héros, David said to his pupils when General Bonaparte, only twenty-eight years old but already glorious, visited him in his atelier for the first time. His hero worship had at last found its object.” (27)
“But even more than in the case of other artists we can and must consider him apart from any idea of "progress." We must admire the lovable, pure, and naïve spirit that he revealed in many of his smaller works, as in his sketches and drawings, which are half playful and yet always have a certain largeness of feeling. And almost to our surprise we must acknowledge that in at least one of his large pictures he was able to surpass himself and achieve monumentality.” (59)
“Out of all this grew a picture which, though based on an old tradition must, through its orientalisms, its exotic gothic setting, and its dreadfulness of subject, have had a strange and exciting effect. The introduction of a modern hero into a world so alien to him in theme and milieu was entirely new. In the Louvre today the picture's coloristic effect can no longer be appreciated; originally, however, it was very striking and served to remove the whole concept even further from clasicist formulas, bringing it near that movement of color which was the ideal of the later, so-called romantic painters.” (63)
“David set his figures in an imaginary, bare, artificially empried space. Ingres destroys the space and puts bodies, heads, garments, and drapery all in one almost unitorm plane; in this there 1s, again, an approach to an "archaic" style. David replaced the pomp of the typ. ical eighteenth-century portrait with a laconic simplicity; Ingres again complicates his portraits, reasserting the ideal of elegance; he almost revels in luxuriant stuffs and in embroidery. But how delicate, how sensitive are his folds, in contrast to the rougher, more conventional draperies of David; with what extraordinary simplicity he renders the full oval of the face, the eyes, the mouth, the elongated surface of the hand, and the broad fingers. And yet the portrait of Mme. Rivière is no schematic arrangement, and it is no anemic Nazarene ideal that sits before us.” (74)
“All anecdote and folklore, the sentiment and symbolism into which the exotic so easily falls (as, for example, in Gauguin), has been avoided. Although underneath there lies that exact, small, and accidental truth derived from the study of nature, Delacroix always lifts this to the higher level of an almost visionary yet precisely captured scene in which color, form, and content are fused into a single unity.” (121)
“Though the arrangement and movement of the figures are very similar in the two, the feeling for space and mass is entirely different. In the Montpellier painting, the picture space of the earlier painting is increased, and as a result the large figures of the foreground are pushed back and so are much more intimately fused with the space into whose depth they sink.” (132)
April 19, 2022
"Historical precedents for such a portrayal of the momentary are hardly discoverable, even in English painting there is nothing similar. A new genre had been created, which was to be continued only later in the century by the impressionists and by Degas" (Friedlander: 103)
This book is an account of the evolution of French painting from David to Delacroix, although references to previous artists are also included.
Being a book so time-specific allows you to see or discover artists and artworks that do not normally come up in in general art history courses.
This is an analysis based most of the time on formal qualities, although the life of the artist and the context are also used. The author tries to be objective in his account by reproducing what critics wrote about the paintings when they were made. But despite this the author is not afraid to put his opinions and theories out, one being about Gericault as the founder of Impressionism. He even considers the school of Romanticism as a plague. For him only revolutionary artists or artworks seem to be worthy.
French text is from time to time being inserted into the English text without any translation, which makes reading the book not so easy. And the concept of abstraction the author uses for David is peculiar to me. You like it or not, this is the author's point of view of what nineteenth-century French painting was and represented.
This book is an account of the evolution of French painting from David to Delacroix, although references to previous artists are also included.
Being a book so time-specific allows you to see or discover artists and artworks that do not normally come up in in general art history courses.
This is an analysis based most of the time on formal qualities, although the life of the artist and the context are also used. The author tries to be objective in his account by reproducing what critics wrote about the paintings when they were made. But despite this the author is not afraid to put his opinions and theories out, one being about Gericault as the founder of Impressionism. He even considers the school of Romanticism as a plague. For him only revolutionary artists or artworks seem to be worthy.
French text is from time to time being inserted into the English text without any translation, which makes reading the book not so easy. And the concept of abstraction the author uses for David is peculiar to me. You like it or not, this is the author's point of view of what nineteenth-century French painting was and represented.
December 7, 2020
Most of Friedlander's "commentary" boils down to him saying a given painting is good or bad. The only value is in how he charts formal and social relationships between some of the 1800s French painters.
May 28, 2017
Basico!!!!
El clasicismo de David....el color de Delacroix!
El clasicismo de David....el color de Delacroix!
June 26, 2010
read this, but can't say that I got very much out of it. The book is brief, and much of the prose seems impressionistic. The prints are in black and white and the book, therefore, really cannot be read without one finger on the mouse.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews