The
great painter, struggling with his genius, had enormous wants; he did
not earn enough to pay for the luxuries which his relations to
society, and his distinguished position in the young School of Art
demanded. Though powerfully sustained by his friends of the Cenacle
and by Mademoiselle des Touches, he did not please the Bourgeois. That
being, from whom comes the money of these days, never unties its
purse-strings for genius that is called in question; unfortunately,
Joseph had the classics and the Institute, and the critics who cry up
those two powers, against him. The brave artist, though backed by Gros
and Gerard, by whose influence he was decorated after the Salon of
1827, obtained few orders. If the ministry of the interior and the
King's household were with difficulty induced to buy some of his
greatest pictures, the shopkeepers and the rich foreigners noticed
them still less. Moreover, Joseph gave way rather too much, as we must
all acknowledge, to imaginative fancies, and that produced a certain
inequality in his work which his enemies made use of to deny his
talent.
"High art is at a low ebb," said his friend Pierre Grassou, who made
daubs to suit the taste of the bourgeoisie, in whose _appartements_ fine
paintings were at a discount.
"You ought to have a whole cathedral to decorate; that's what you
want," declared Schinner; "then you would silence criticism with a
master-stroke."
Such speeches, which alarmed the good Agathe, only corroborated the
judgment she had long since formed upon Philippe and Joseph.
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