Author’s Apology : I couldn’t paint golden angels

A nineteenth century sentimental love lyricist of German poetry who was also its sharpest political satirist, wrote a book of art criticism in Paris. He said he was determined to keep to the one subject, but the revolutions of that year broke out and he could not help bringing in his political prejudices and sympathies. He compared himself with an ‘honest fellow-tradesman’, a signwriter whose speciality was to paint red lions. Offered a commission to paint a golden angel as a house sign, he declined, saying he was only capable of painting a red lion, and if he attempted to paint a golden angel it would turn out to look like a red lion just the same. 

This was intended to be by way of being an account of an untypical though individual working life, far from golden and never angelic, but I couldn’t keep the red lion of anarchist history from rampaging

Albert Meltzer 

[The poet is Heinrich Heine, the story appears in the preface to the first volume of The Salon (dated Paris, October 17, 1833). 

This explanation was meant for, but not included in, Albert’s autobiography: I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels: Sixty Years of Commonplace Life and Anarchist Agitation. We have Stuart Christie to thank for giving us the manuscript (you’ll see the text above is a ‘final version’ and the image contains corrections and amendments). KSL]