What, I think, is the notable thing about both Gericault and Delacroix, however, as exponents, as the initiators, of romanticism, is the way in which they restrained the impetuous temperament they share within the confines of a truly classic reserve.  Closely considered, they are not the revolutionists they seemed to the official classicism of their day.  Not only do they not base their true claims to enduring fame upon a spirit of revolt against official and academic art—­a spirit essentially negative and nugatory, and never the inspiration of anything permanently puissant and attractive—­but, compared with their successors of the present day, in whose works individual preference and predilection seem to have a swing whose very freedom and irresponsible audacity extort admiration—­compared with the confident temerariousness of what is known as modernite, their self-possession and sobriety seem their most noteworthy characteristics.  Compared with the “Bar at the Folies-Bergere,” either the “Raft of the Medusa” or the “Convulsionists of Tangiers” is a classic production.  And the difference is not at all due to the forty years’ accretion of Protestantism which Manet represents as compared with the early romanticists.  It is due to a complete difference in attitude.  Gericault imbued himself with the inspiration of the Louvre.  Delacroix is said always to have made a sketch from the old masters or the antique a preliminary to his own daily work.  So far from flaunting tradition, they may be said to have, in their own view, restored it; so far from posing as apostles of innovation, they may almost be accused of “harking back”—­of steeping themselves in what to them seemed best and finest and most authoritative in art, instead of giving a free rein to their own unregulated emotions and conceptions.

Gericault died early and left but a meagre product.  Delacroix is par excellence the representative of the romantic epoch.  And both by the mass and the quality of his work he forms a true connecting link between the classic epoch and the modern—­in somewhat the same way as Prudhon does, though more explicitly and on the other side of the line of division.  He represents culture—­he knows art as well as he loves nature.  He has a feeling for what is beautiful as well as a knowledge of what is true.  He is pre-eminently and primarily a colorist—­he is, in fact, the introducer of color as a distinct element in French painting after the pale and bleak reaction from the Louis Quinze decorativeness.  His color, too, is not merely the prismatic coloration of what had theretofore been mere chiaro-oscuro; it is original and personal to such a degree that it has never been successfully imitated since his day.  Withal, it is apparently simplicity itself.  Its hues are apparently the primary ones, in the main.  It depends upon no subtleties and refinements of tints for its effectiveness.  It is significant that the absorbed and affected Rossetti did not like it;