Meissonier, his life and his art . lliant functions, attracting by the very diversity of his im-pulses, and the curious contradictions of his character. I. Although his early education had been desultory and incomplete,he had profited by it, and in later life had been able to refine upon andenlarge it. He was an insatiable, yet a fastidious reader. LikeRubens, he liked to breakfast alone, a book by his side. When hismind was not engrossed by the conduct of his brush, when, for instance,he was painting accessories, he got some one to read aloud to readings he used to call his easel-st
Meissonier, his life and his art . lliant functions, attracting by the very diversity of his im-pulses, and the curious contradictions of his character. I. Although his early education had been desultory and incomplete,he had profited by it, and in later life had been able to refine upon andenlarge it. He was an insatiable, yet a fastidious reader. LikeRubens, he liked to breakfast alone, a book by his side. When hismind was not engrossed by the conduct of his brush, when, for instance,he was painting accessories, he got some one to read aloud to readings he used to call his easel-studies. After a day ofhard work his favourite recreation was a good book. He admiredShakespeare and Goldoni, both of whom he was able to enjoy in theoriginal. The classics were no less familiar to him. One day atFontainebleau, while he was working on Solferino, the generals were 48 MEISSONIER assembled waiting for the Emperor, who was to give the artist a sitting,Napoleon III., full of his favourite archceological subjects—it was. A READER. {M. Jambards collection at Nice.) when he was writing his Ccrsar—began to discuss how the Romans THE MASTER—THE MAN 49 managed to turn corners in their chariots. I ventured to point outthat he was mistaken, that the construction of the circular spina madeit impossible that they could have executed the manoeuvre as he sup-posed ; and I supported my opinion by a quotation from Tacitus !This was an event! In the evening I saw every one looking at me,and I heard whispers of He quotes Tacitus. He knew no Greek,and this was always a subject of regret to him. But Homer andyEschylus were, like the Bible, books that lay always by his Antibes he dreamt of the wanderings of Ulysses : the most trivialof Homers episodes made him long to paint, so vivid and exact werethe images they suggested. The humanity of Sophocles movedhim deeply. If you had come into my studio by any chance aftermy days work, he wrote to a friend, you would have been
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