Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/622

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592 Painting Shipwrecked Mariners, the Entrance of Baldwin into Con- stantinople, and many others. Joseph Louis Hippolyte Bellange (1800 — 1866) was born in Paris and took his earliest lessons in art from Gros. In 1824 he won a second-class medal for an historic picture ; in 1834 he was made a member of the Legion of Honour ; in 1855 he obtained one of the prizes of the French International Exhibition ; and in 1861 was created an officer of the Legion of Honour. He is chiefly known in England by two pictures sent to the Exhibition of 1862 : the Two Friends, a small but highly finished work, and A Square of Republican Infantry repulsing Austrian Dragoons. His most important pictures, however, are to be seen at Versailles and the Luxembourg, and include his Battle of the Alma, Painful Adieux, the Departure from the Cantonment, the Cuirassiers at Waterloo, the Battle of Fleurus, the Return from Elba, the Morning after the Battle of Jemappes, the Defile after the Victory. Alexandre Gabriel Decamps (1803 — 1860), a pupil of Abel de Pujol, is chiefly celebrated for the pictures of Eastern subjects which he introduced to the Parisian public. The gallery of Sir Richard Wallace contains more than thirty paintings by this artist — many of which are Scriptural subjects. His Turkish School, the History of Samson, and the Defeat of the Cimbri, are among his most celebrated works. Narcisse Virgile Diaz de la Pefla (1809 — 1876), the son of Spanish parents, was born at Bordeaux, where, at ten years of age, he was left an orphan. During many years of poverty he learned to paint, and in 1844 gained his first medal at the Salon. After that time he was immensely successful. Diaz ridiculed the realistic school, and made