d, instead of making a pink imitation of antique sculpture,
seemed to him to be of little promise.

Gericault, however, persisted; and with the exception of about a year,
when the halo of military glory seduced him from his work, he worked
so well and earnestly that, after two years' sojourn in Italy, he
returned to Paris, a few weeks before the Salon of 1819, equipped with
the knowledge of a master.

Taking a canvas about fifteen feet high by twenty in length, using the
green-room of a theatre for a studio, he set to work. Disdaining the
prevailing taste for mythology and classic themes, he took from the
journals of the time the moving recital of the sufferings of the crew
of the frigate "Medusa," abandoned on a raft in mid-ocean. Choosing
the moment when the fifteen survivors of the hundred and forty-nine
men who had embarked on the raft sighted the sail in the offing which
meant their deliverance, he worked with an energy and fire which have
remained remarkable in the annals of art. Certain of the figures, all
of which are more than life size, were painted in a day, and when the
Salon of 1819 opened, the picture was finished.

[Illustration: INGRES. FROM A PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HIMSELF.

Painted for the gallery of Painters' Portraits in the Uffizi,
Florence, in 1858, according to the inscription on the picture. This
most interesting collection, which is still being added to year by
year, comprises the portraits of the great painters, in most cases by
their own hands, from the time of the Renaissance to our day.]

Seen as it is to-day in the Louvre, blackened by time and the neglect
from which it suffered for six or seven years before it was placed
there, it remains one of the capital pages in the history of modern
art. The effect on the younger generation who saw it fresh from the
hand of the master, accustomed as they were to the lifeless
effigies of the classic school, was puzzling, and none but the most
revolutionary dared approve of it. With the older painters there was
a similar distrust of the impression which it caused. Yet David--an
artistic kernel encased in an academic husk--admired it; and so did a
swarthy youth who was soon to make his mark and who was a friend and
former comrade of Gericault in the _atelier_ Guerin--Eugene Delacroix.

[Illustration: DELACROIX. FROM A PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HIMSELF IN 1837.

This portrait was left by the painter at his death to Mlle. Jenny
Leguillon, his housekeeper, an