human
costumes. There is still something academic in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by privation, disease, and the struggle with death; but what man can free himself at one stroke from the influence of his time and environment? Even in the colouring there lingers some touch of the Classical school. It offends no one, a fact to be insisted on in comparing him with the Nazarenes; but as yet it plays no part in expressing the meaning of the picture. From the distance, indeed, whence the rescuing ship is drawing near, a bright light shines forth upon a scene otherwise depicted in dull brown. Save for this, the intention of the picture is not expressed by means of colour, and it even shows some retrogression as compared with Géricault's earlier works. He had begun with Rubens, yet these studies in colouring did not last. In the
gpt
Wounded Cuirassier of 1814 dark tones took the place of the former cheerfulness, and so in the
human
Raft of the Medusa