ABSTRACT
Addressing the downbeat mood afflicting France between Waterloo and midcentury, this chapter opens with an attack, by Honoré Daumier, on the torpor of the July Monarchy, followed by discussion of two contemporary works of fiction (by Alfred de Vigny and Alfred de Musset, respectively) that portray frustrated longing for imperial glory. Then, representations of the 1812 retreat from Russia by Géricault and others are located in a thematically diverse constellation of imagery (the “anti-heroic mode”). Finally, readers are provided with an entirely new interpretation of the art of Chassériau, whose work of the 1830s and 1840s exhibits with unusual clarity the protean aspect of the anti-heroic mode.
