Publisher's Synopsis
When Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier was born at Lyons in 1815, under the fading light ofan Imperial sunset, these were scarcely the ideas that predominated in the national schoolof French art. Pictorial art, to confine ourselves to that, had, both before and during theFirst Empire, achieved at most a lumbering and trammelled flight; and the influence ofantiquity, so perceptible in the language as well as in the manners and fashions at the closeof the Eighteenth Century, served only to confine the inspiration of artists more strictlywithin the bounds of classic tradition. Roman characters, Roman costumes, Romanvirtues, -such was the ideal to which each debutant who did not revolt openly must makesurrender! To be sure, the commanding figure of David gave a magnificent prestige to thisrather cold and dishearteningly classic programme. But, like all great artists, David wasexceptional; and he stands today as the only one who, in an epoch sadly poor in genius, produced a host of living masterpieces, to swell the lists of a school so artificial that itwould now be forgotten, save as an echo of his name. It is true that, by way of ransom, hespent much time in painting vast canvases that today hold but a small place in his life wor
