Chronologically, this section begins with works by artists from the late 18th and early 19th century, whose contributions to the history of art vary enormously, but whose works embody the artistic aspirations of the age: Lethiere, Lefebre, Caraffe, C.Vernet, Girodet, P.Chauvin, artists who were very popular during the time of the Empire such as Guerin, F.Gerard and others. <В
Room 314 . A new chapter in French history was opened in 1789 when the feudal Bourbon monarchy collapsed. The artistic movement which expressed the revolutionary aspirations of the progressive factions of French society was Neoclassicism. The Death of Coto of Utica by Guillaume Lethiere (1760-1832) gives us some us some idea of ​​the distinctive features of this movement. Cato, a confirmed Republican, commits suicide upon hearing of the establishment of Caesar's dictatorship; the figure of the hero, who preferred death to the loss of freedom, was consonant with the aspirations of the time.
During the First Empire artist began to choose idyllic or allegorical themes. Guerin's paintings Morpheus and Iris and Sapho and two sculptures, Chaudet's Cypress and Canova's Dancer , illustrate the fundamental changes in Neoclassical art. p> In the same room is Antoine Gros's (1771-1835) Napoleon upon the Bridge at Arcole . This painting is based upon the actual event at the time of the Italian campaign of 1797; during the battle of Arcole Bonaparte, a young general at that time, was the first to rush forward and, leading his men, began the assault on the bridge. In Gros's handling the figure of Napoleon has lost the rhetorical quality of Lethiere's hero, it contains a greater feeling of vitality, greater energy, those qualities which later received expression in the paintings of the Romantics.
Room 332. The leading figure in French Neoclassicism was Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825). From his late canvas Sappho and Phaon (1809) it is evident that at the time of the Empire no traces remained of the revolutionary spirit of the former member of the National Convention, the creator of the Death of Marat . br/>
Room 332 . In the Portrait of Josephine (Napoleon's first wife) Francois Gerard (1770-1837) presents a new type of formal portrait, in which he skillfully combines the austerity of a classical composition with a simple and unaffected rendering of the appearance of his model. One of the first artists to portray the everyday life of the bourgeois society of his time was Louis Boilly, who painted the small picture A Game of Billiards.
Jean-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867), a staunch adherent of Classicism and an ardent admirer of antiquity and Raphael, was among the most subtle and complex artists of the mid-nineteenth century. The only painting by him in the Hermitage is the portrait of the Russian diplomat Count Guryev, painted in 1821 and notable for the austere formal arrangement and the strength and assurance of line.
Room 329. Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), the major painter of the Romantic movement, is represented in the Hermitage by two late works. Lion Hunt in Morocco (1854) and Arab Saddling His Horse (1855). One glance at these paintings is sufficient for an understanding of the great difference between them and the paintings produced by the artists of the Classical school. Painted in bright, fresh colours, Delacroix's canvases are filled with the ardent breath of life, an a sense of the grandeur of nature.
One of the representatives of the Romantic movement in sculpture is the animalist Antoine Barye (1796-1875), the creator of the bronze groups A Lion and a Snake and A Panther and an Antelope . Barye imbues his works with great expressiveness, revealing in them the harsh laws of the animal kingdom.
Room 328, 325, 324 and 322. In the 1830s a realist trend appeared in French painting, heralded by the Barbizon school of landscape painters. This name was given to a group of artists who had settled in the village of Barbizon near Paris, where they faithfully reproduced in their paintings their native countryside. There is a large collection of landscapes of the Barbizon school in the Hermitage. Its leading figure, Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), showed, even in one of his early works, View in the Vicinity of Granville , that the simple, visually unprepossessing
Countryside of Normandy could become a source of inspiration. Close to Rousseau in their perception of nature are Jules Dupre, Charles Francois Daubigny, Diaz de la Pena, Charles Jacque and Constant Troyon. <В
Room 321 . An important place in the history of French landscape painting belongs to Camille Corot (1796-1875). A profound, subtle understanding o...
