Meissonier, his life and his art . d faces of the combatants, theirfurious glances, the straining muscles of heads and necks, the culmin-ating frenzy of a violence which has been aggravated rather thanexhausted by the struggle in which benches, tables and stools have beenoverturned—a violence no longer to be restrained by the intervention,at once deprecatory and threatening, of comrades who seek to part themaddened adversaries. I do not think Meissonier ever showed this gift for generalisationof expression more forcibly than in two pictures of this period, theMonk Ministering to a Sick Man (18
Meissonier, his life and his art . d faces of the combatants, theirfurious glances, the straining muscles of heads and necks, the culmin-ating frenzy of a violence which has been aggravated rather thanexhausted by the struggle in which benches, tables and stools have beenoverturned—a violence no longer to be restrained by the intervention,at once deprecatory and threatening, of comrades who seek to part themaddened adversaries. I do not think Meissonier ever showed this gift for generalisationof expression more forcibly than in two pictures of this period, theMonk Ministering to a Sick Man (1838) and The Barricade (1848).What a combination of gratitude and anguish in the sufferers face ;what mingled firmness and gentleness in the monks tender grasp !Here we have Christian charity itself at the bedside of sufferinghumanity. Tlic Bari-icade is a drama, a drama which is a was a captain of artillery in the National Guard during thedays of June, 1S48. The insurrection was surging round the Hotel de. HIS WORKS 39 Ville, which it was his business to protect, and he was present whenthe barricade of the Rue de la Mortellerie was taken. He saw itsdefenders shot down, thrown out of windows, the ground strewn withcorpses, the earth red with the blood it had not yet drunk. It wason this occasion, he said, that I heard that stern sentence, whichshowed me more forcibly than anything, how minds are unhinged bypassion in these street risings. Were all these men guilty ? saidMarrast to the officer in command of the National Guard. I canassure you, M. le Maire, that not more than a quarter of them wereinnocent. Inspired by this tragic incident, the picture of The Barricadebecame something more than an episode. It is an image of civil warin all its horror. The fight is over, night is falling, a deathly silencebroods over the scene. At the entrance of a narrow street, we seehigh walls blackened by powder, and riddled with shot. In the fore-ground, a heap of pav
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