Charles Gleyre and the French Romantics

Recent reassessments of the paintings of Charles Gleyre have emphasized the fact that the artist was never entirely the Academic painter he has long been considered to be. It is now recognized that, especially before 1843, the year of his first Salon success, Le Soir, Gleyre revealed a very strong penchant towards Romanticism that is clearly evident in his Journal de Voyage. The present study traces Gleyre's emotional itinerary from the Romantic vision du monde of his youth to the increasingly pessimistic view of life he later adopted, a view of life that underscores his affinity with Alfred de Vigny. (FJK)