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 Cornell University Library 
 ND 547.H21 1901 
 
 Painting in France,after the decline of 
 
 3 1924 008 752 622 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008752622 
 
THE FLOWER, 
 
Painting in France 
 
 AFTER THE DECLINE OF CLASSICISM 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON 
 
 AUTHOK OF "CONTEMPORARY FRENCH PAINTERS," "THE GRAPHIC 
 
 ARTS," "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "PARIS," "ETCHING 
 
 AND ETCHERS," ETC. 
 
 aSSttJj JFaurteen ^^ftotogreqii^ic lUuatratfans 
 
 REPRODUCED IN PHOTOGRAVURE 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1901 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 By Roberts Brothers. 
 
 A U rights reserved. 
 
 ^7ii;LS'lf> 
 
CHARLES PHILIBERT MARILLER. 
 
 Dans toutes nos bonnes et longues causeries nous avons 
 parl6 votre langue, et il ne me semblerait pas naturel de 
 vous d^dier ce livre en la mienne. Pendant les ann6es 
 laborieuses et solitaires que j'ai pass^es en province, 
 j'aurais 6t6 complfetement isol6 du monde artistique sans 
 votre voisinage et votre amitiS. Maintenant que votre 
 atelier est ferm6, et que vous etes loin de nous, je sens 
 combien j'ai perdu, et je vous offre ce volume en souvenir 
 de relations qui ont 6t6 pour moi aussi charmantes que 
 profitables, et que je voudrais pouvoir renouveler. 
 
 Pr6 Charmoy, Autun, 
 ler Juillet, 1868. 
 
PRE FAC E. 
 
 The Classical discipline, having been vigorously 
 resisted by Romanticism, was no longer able to main- 
 tain, its authority; and various other forms of art 
 arose independently of it. Of these the most militant 
 and aggressive has been Realism; and the most 
 popular has been that kind of art to which contem- 
 porary French criticism has assigned the barbarous 
 neologism, "Modernity" In very many respects the 
 history of art resembles the history of religion. When 
 a discipline is universally accepted, or has a sufficient 
 number of adherents to prevent the expression of 
 other opinions, it acquires in the course of time such 
 an appearance of permanence as to seem fixed and 
 rooted in the very nature of things. But a time 
 always arrives when the discipline is weakened from 
 within ; and not long afterwards some new idea, the 
 germ of a new discipline, breaks forth into visible 
 existence, even though merely to exist is in its case 
 to be guilty of open rebellion. There is a close 
 parallel between the history of Classicism and that 
 of the Catholic Church. Romanticism, Realism, and 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 Modernism are all Protestant; or, perhaps, a more 
 accurate statement of the case would be this — 
 Romanticism and Realism were Protestant, but Mod- 
 ernism is so entirely independent of Classicism as 
 to have not even the idea of, protesting against it. 
 Meanwhile Classicism is forced to accept — which it 
 does with loud complaints and many an anathema — 
 the position of one of the art religions instead of the 
 art religion ; and it may maintain this kind of exis- 
 tence for a long time to come, shorn of all authority 
 to punish heterodoxy, and compelled to see hetero- 
 doxy lifting its many heads in bold independence, 
 yet still supported by venerable usage, and by the 
 devotion of faithful adherents. 
 
 A discipline which has long exercised supreme 
 power is seldom very justly estimated immediately 
 after the overthrow of its supremacy; and we are 
 still too near to the revolutionary period to appre- 
 ciate the services of Classicism at their precise value. 
 One thing in favor of it is, however, perfectly clear ; 
 we can all see that it was a true discipline, that it 
 had definite purposes in culture, and trained men to 
 these ends with elaborate care, and made them study 
 patiently and long, comprehending perfectly the uses 
 of culture, and willingly giving the long years and 
 the painful labors that it needed. But it is not so 
 clear that the rebellious or independent forms of art 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 have the character of discipline to anything like the 
 same degree ; and in French art education, as Class- 
 icism has been weakened, discipline has been relaxed. 
 Another great virtue in Classicism was its high- 
 minded contempt for the opinion of the uneducated. 
 In literature it effectually excluded the vulgar by 
 adopting two languages never used by them, and 
 which could not be mastered without the labor of 
 half a life. In painting it excluded the vulgar, as 
 much as it possibly could, by greatly interpreting, 
 and never imitating, nature, by never illustrating 
 matters of every-day interest, and by a severity of 
 aspect supported by evident erudition ; and the con- 
 sequence of this bold attitude that Classicism adopted 
 towards persons without culture was that these very 
 persons felt themselves compelled to respect the 
 true students, and no more thought of setting up 
 their crude notions in opposition to culture than an 
 English landowner of the present day thinks of fol- 
 lowing his own notions of the law in opposition to 
 the advice of counsel. If you set an ignorant person 
 before a page of Greek, or the marble Theseus in 
 the British Museum, he knows and feels that he 
 cannot judge of either of them, which is exactly all 
 that he can be made to know, or required to feel; 
 but, if you give him an English book, or a picture 
 of modern life, he has no hesitation about writing 
 
X Preface. 
 
 a criticism of one or the other, and selling it for 
 thirty shillings to some newspaper. 
 
 The movement towards more general sympathy 
 which caused the breaking-up of the classical author- 
 ity was dangerous to art, because it interested the 
 people and made them discuss the matter as if it 
 were within their competence ; and the consequence 
 has been that, in these days, though artists have 
 emancipated themselves from a severe and august 
 tradition, they have fallen under the yoke of a many- 
 headed master, who is in some ways more difficult 
 to serve. The high-priests of Classicism did not, 
 it is true, tolerate the slightest divergence from the 
 severity of their law, but the aspirant had the advan- 
 tage that he could always easily ascertain what was 
 required of him, and knew that his obedience would 
 be rewarded by unfailing encouragement, and his 
 excellence, if he attained it, by honor that was 
 
 - never withheld. It is not so clear what the modern 
 public wants, or will reward ; and many artists labor 
 
 L now in the darkness of a grievous perplexity. Since 
 the public has not yet defined its theory of art, and 
 since all external authority in any degree respectable 
 has now for some time been overthrown, and is not 
 likely to be set up again in our time, I say that the 
 only rule left for an artist to work by is the law of 
 his own sincerest preferences. Modern artists may 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 be broadly divided into two categories: we have 
 those who paint for the market, and those who paint 
 for the pleasure of obeying their own instincts ; and 
 the latter are by far the more respectable of the two, 
 and the more likely to do great things. It remains 
 only to be observed that the great danger of painting 
 in obedience to one's own instincts is the possibility 
 of a belief that culture is no longer necessary ; where- 
 as even our preferences themselves may be modified 
 by culture, and our faculty of choice improved. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive a condition of anarchy 
 more absolute than that which exists at present in 
 the world of art. The Classical doctrine is dead; 
 the pre-Raphaelite doctrine is dead; the movement 
 of Romanticism was spent long ago, and is now seen 
 to have been a mere temporary enthusiasm, useful as 
 a solvent of Classicism. Even Realism is dead also, l 
 or at least gains no new supporters; and the influ- 
 ence of Ruskin, which at one time promised to 
 become dominant in the English school, has ceased 
 even to be perceptible. But although no artistic J 
 creed may be consciously received in these days, the 
 work done in them will bear the impress of the time, 
 and be moulded by it into something less hetero- 
 geneous than the state of apparent anarchy might 
 lead some of us to imagine. If art is not to be 
 allowed to follow much higher ideals than the ideals 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 of society, let us at least hope that it will seldom fall 
 beneath them. The goal towards which popular 
 encouragement is now forcing the art of Painting, as 
 much as it possibly can, has already been reached in 
 another art by a distinguished living novelist, who 
 takes care never to be less intelligent, or less artistic, 
 than the society he describes and writes for, but who 
 is at least equally careful not to go too far beyond it. 
 Henceforth, I apprehend, painting and literature are 
 both destined to go along with whatever intellectual 
 progress may be achieved by society generally, and 
 their chief law will not be any grand artistic faith, 
 such as men used to be willing to starve for, but the 
 condition of the market by which they seem now to 
 intend not to starve.* 
 
 * The classical contempt for the opinion of the ignorant 
 which is praised here as conducive to the true interests of art, 
 does not imply any contempt for persons ignorant of art. A 
 painter may see that his mother knows nothing of art, and still 
 have a respect for her amounting to veneration, just as a scholar 
 may see that his mother knows nothing of Greek, and still be- 
 lieve her to be both good and wise. And even, setting affec- 
 tion aside altogether, the scholar may see that some stranger is 
 ignorant of Greek, and still respect him for his knowledge of 
 matters beyond the range of what is called scholarship. The 
 practical utility of the contempt for uneducated opinion is, that 
 without it no one can pursue severe studies to any good result. 
 The right temper is to do our work as well as we can, without 
 in the least troubling ourselves about either the approbation of 
 the uneducated, or their blame. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The Flower Aubert . 
 
 Deer at the River .... Courbet . 
 
 Dressing for the Ball. . . De Jonghe 
 
 Once upon a Time .... Lobrichon 
 
 The Little Beggar Girl . . Brun . . 
 
 Saying Grace Henriette Browne 
 
 A Maiden of the Abruzzi . Jalabert . . . 
 
 Parting Compte-Calix . 
 
 A Highland Ferry .... Otto Weber . . 
 
 Lighting the Beacon Lamp . Le Poittevin 
 
 The Confession Tissot 
 
 Fellah Woman Landelle . 
 
 The Last Friend Janet Lange 
 
 Study of Trees Corot. . 
 
 Page 
 Frontispiece 
 35 
 
 76 
 78 
 80 
 82 
 
 85 
 86 
 
 95 
 100 
 102 
 118 
 120 
 123 
 
PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 I. 
 
 ALL men, who follow some pursuit which has not 
 money for its first object, work so far at a dis- 
 advantage that money will nevertheless, in spite of 
 all attempts to forget the existence of it, and the 
 tyranny of it, thrust itself continually forward as an 
 intrusive, and importunate, and impertinent consid- 
 eration, from which there is no deliverance, except 
 by some degree of concession and obedience. To be 
 devoted with your whole soul to one religion, and to 
 have another religion perpetually pestering you with 
 claims that it is mighty enough to enforce by the 
 utmost extremities of moral and physical torture, is, 
 and has ever been, the unfortunate position of many 
 a true artist, and writer, and student of science and 
 philosophy. Money-worshippers never suffer from 
 a false position of this kind ; their aims are in unison 
 with all their needs; if they succeed in their one 
 object, which is the accumulation of wealth, the 
 wealth itself satisfies all their instincts and desires ; 
 it gives them luxury and consideration, and it gives 
 
1 6 Painting in France. 
 
 them what is better than any inherited splendor, the 
 inward sense of victory, and pride in a visible and 
 indisputable success. If they fail and suffer, they 
 take the chastisement at the hand of their own master, 
 of the master they have always looked to as the natu- 
 ral ruler of the destinies of men ; it is gold still which 
 by its very desertion of them only confirms the faith 
 and doctrine of their whole lives, their faith in its sun- 
 like glory and warmth, their conviction that whoever 
 loses that light and heat can have no other source of 
 contentment, but must freeze and shiver in chill 
 misery, and grope in a void of darkness. But no 
 man who is devoted to any study whatever for its 
 own sake has this unreserved faith in money, and 
 willing submission to it. To men of this class, money 
 is either an alien power or a hateful private necessity. 
 The earning of it is not the object of life with them, 
 but an interference and an interruption. The con- 
 sideration of salableness in works of literature and 
 art, and of pecuniary returns for scientific investiga- 
 tions, are, so far as intellectual views extend, alto- 
 gether irrelevant. The men who give their lives to 
 great intellectual pursuits, would be turned aside 
 from their chosen paths by the search for material 
 values. The vow of voluntary poverty which many 
 early Christians took upon themselves for the better 
 attainment of their ideal life, and which to this day is 
 perpetuated in the time-honored customs of the 
 Continental churches, is an example of the long 
 
Working for the Market. 17 
 
 rebellion of the soul against a power which it knew 
 to be hostile. 
 
 The power of money over art has never been 
 stronger than it is now, and the manner of its 
 operation, being very subtle and difficult to trace, 
 increases the power by making it irresponsible. 
 When a banker or speculator, some Rothschild or 
 Pereire, goes to the annual exhibition of French Art 
 in the Salon, and buys some picture there, he is not 
 held responsible for the artistic qualities of the work, 
 for which the artist alone is blamed or praised by the 
 newspapers, as the case may be. And yet in a cer- 
 tain intelligible sense it is these bankers, and other 
 rich men, who paint the pictures. They do not mix 
 the colors and apply them with their own hands; 
 nor do they even, except in the case of works 
 directly commissioned by them, offer any sugges- 
 tions as to the choice of subject and manner of exe- 
 cution ; but still, since the great majority of pictures 
 are painted to suit what are perfectly well known to 
 be their tastes, it may be truly said that the artists 
 aim rather at the realization of what the rich man 
 likes than what they themselves care for. Enormous 
 quantities of pictures are in this way painted every 
 year expressly for the market, with care and trained 
 skill, but no more artistic passion or enthusiasm than 
 goes to the manufacture of any other elegant super- 
 fluities. And the evil of it is, that unless a picture is 
 painted in this way, with the most careful attention 
 
1 8 Painting in France. 
 
 to the points which happen just now to make a work 
 salable, it is not likely to be sold at all. It may no 
 doubt occasionally happen that the aspirations of an 
 artist accord precisely with the tastes of buyers, and 
 in cases of this kind pictures may be salable without 
 being expressly adapted to the market; but these 
 cases do not appear to be common. The usual 
 course of an artist's life is something of this kind : — 
 He begins, if he has anything of the true artist in his 
 nature, by working with ardent aspiration after an 
 ideal of his own, but after having done this for some 
 years he finds it difficult to live by his profession, as 
 hitherto pursued, and asks the advice of some suc- 
 cessful artist or dealer, who tells him that if he wants 
 to earn money he must abandon these aims of his 
 and endeavor to adapt himself to the tastes which 
 for the time being are prevalent amongst buyers. 
 The next step is an inquiry into the nature of these 
 tastes, and if the painter is intelligent enough to 
 enter easily into views which differ very widely from 
 his own, he comes at last to understand, after a great 
 deal of study and reflection, what it is that the public 
 looks for and cares about. It is not easy to find this 
 out ; the instinct which defines the state of the public 
 taste is usually the result of much natural tact in 
 combination with long experience, and the best 
 critics living are as children in this matter when 
 compared to experienced dealers such as Goupil, or 
 Agnew, or Wallis. The difficulty is that buyers are 
 
Working for the Market. 19 
 
 usually quite incapable of analyzing or explaining 
 their own feelings about art, and there are the most 
 astonishingly subtle impediments to the sale of pic- 
 tures of which nobody would ever dream who had 
 not studied the matter very closely, and of which the 
 buyers themselves are as ignorant as the very sim- 
 plest of artists; But even if the artist has not accom- 
 plished the very difficult feat of fathoming the public 
 mind, it is enough for our present argument that he 
 should have applied his thoughts to it, because 
 reflections on the tendencies of public taste are 
 usually followed by more or less successful attempts 
 to conform to it, and whether these attempts are suc- 
 cessful or not, they mark the great turning-point in 
 the career of the artist. Hitherto he has worked for 
 his own ideal — henceforth he will try to realize the 
 ideal of somebody else. 
 
 So soon as a painter does this, his career as a true 
 and original artist may be considered at an end, and 
 it is hard upon him that he should be criticised for 
 work which is no longer in any genuine sense his 
 own. It may be urged that the execution is his, and 
 even the choice of the particular subject, and of his 
 models ; but the truth is that since in both execution 
 and choice of subject he has constantly thought of 
 what will catch the buyer rather than of what might 
 satisfy himself, there is not one atom of paint on the 
 canvas which is laid there exactly as he would have 
 it if he had no public to consult. In other respects, 
 
20 Painting in France. 
 
 perhaps, the change of masters will not have been 
 very onerous. The public may be an exacting mas- 
 ter, but every true artist is far more dissatisfied with 
 his own work, when he attempts to realize his own 
 aspirations, than the most critical public is likely to 
 be when he really makes an endeavor to please it. 
 The case is like the parallel one of the moral and 
 religious ideal. We may try to do what is right in 
 the world's eyes, or to satisfy the aspirations of the 
 soul. It is easy to fulfil the little observances that 
 the world requires, the decent outward behavior, the 
 moderate taxes of charity, the regular attendance at 
 church ; but it is not so easy, if we have any moral 
 ideal, to rise to the height of it, and live there, day 
 after day, and year by year. Now these artists, who 
 have abandoned their own ideal in conformity with 
 the requirements of the market, are leaving a hard 
 master for an easy one ; they have been starving on 
 the tops of pillars, like St. Simeon Stylites, and now 
 they have come down from their pillars and may live 
 their little day like everybody else, prosperous crafts- 
 men, working to order, and carefully attending to the 
 exigencies of the mode, like fashionable tailors and 
 bootmakers. 
 
 This comparison may seem exaggerated, but it is 
 quite literally applicable. One of the most success- 
 ful of modern painters of genre owes his fame in a 
 great measure to the excellence of his millinery, in 
 which he is greatly helped by his wife, who kindly 
 
Bohemians and Men of the World. 2 1 
 
 consents to dress in the most expensive and fashion- 
 able manner. It is found that the outlay on this 
 lady's wardrobe is amply repaid by the sale of her 
 husband's pictures, who receives magnificent prices, 
 and never fails to find his market. Much of this suc- 
 cess is due to the dresses, and to the lady whose 
 good taste chooses them for her own wearing. Can 
 we severely blame an artist and his wife, who by a 
 little harmless plotting about millinery, contrive to 
 live handsomely in pleasant Parisian society, and will 
 leave, nevertheless, a comfortable provision for their 
 children? A painter who comes down from his pil- 
 lar that he may gather these advantages, seems the 
 more excusable when we reflect that by staying up 
 there he would have seen his children uneducated 
 and his wife a drudge. 
 
 Artists may be broadly divided into two classes, — 
 the Bohemians and the men of the world. Bohemi- 
 anism is not a natural and permanent state of the 
 mind, but a protest against what is felt to be hostile 
 to certain studies and pursuits, in the received 
 theories of respectability. The extreme Bohemians 
 have three insurmountable defects; they are dirty, 
 they are conceited, and they do not think it a point 
 of honor to pay their debts. This is one of those 
 instances, however, in which respectable society has 
 itself to blame for the condition of its outcasts. The 
 artistic Bohemian loses the good discipline of society, 
 because he finds in it so little sympathy with his 
 
22 Painting in France. 
 
 objects, and especially so little indulgence for his 
 poverty. In circles where art is considered either a 
 degrading handicraft, or a mild form of insanity, and 
 where honorable poverty is held to be ridiculous, 
 there is little encouragement for men who have 
 chosen art as the aim of their lives, and are bearing 
 poverty bravely for its sake. What throws them out 
 of society primarily is this feeling that they can find 
 no sympathy there ; and indeed it is quite surprising 
 how inevitably a young man, who is devoted to any 
 great pursuit which does not promise large pecuniary 
 returns, comes to be considered a fit object for ridi- 
 cule or pity. In France he is familiarly said to be 
 "^toqui" " timbr^" &c., and in England he is pro- 
 nounced to be " mad." In spite of the defects of the 
 Bohemians, it is easy to see that they have been 
 driven into Bohemianism, and are not altogether 
 responsible for its aberrations. 
 
 The artist homnte du vtonde, on the other hand, 
 has none of these visible blemishes, and the present 
 tendency of the profession is to produce men of the 
 world in a constantly increasing proportion. Of all 
 conformists to usage none conform more scrupulously 
 than painters, when once they have made up their 
 minds to quit the Bohemian camp. If this progress 
 continues, it is likely that in two generations artists 
 will be looked up to as models of refinement, — a 
 charming prospect, but involving very serious con- 
 sequences, which are already only too heavily felt. 
 
Sincerity. 23 
 
 When artists are gentlemen of fashion, they must 
 earn incomes large enough to support that character, 
 and they will no more be able to afford the luxury 
 of pursuing art for its own sake than if they were 
 absolutely penniless. Indeed, improbable as it may 
 appear, it is nevertheless true, that painters who 
 never sell anything are always far more courageous 
 in attempting purely artistic enterprises than their 
 successful brethren. The unsuccessful are so accus- 
 tomed to see their pictures return upon their hands 
 that it does not appear to signify very much what 
 they paint, and so they paint very often for artistic 
 purposes only; whereas the successful artist cannot 
 paint for art without the uncomfortable reflection that 
 every quarter of an hour so occupied is costing him 
 ten shillings. 
 
 The distinction between painting for art and paint- 
 ing for the market is so little recognized, that these 
 pages may seem exaggerated or uncalled-for. The 
 work that is done to please and to be sold appears to 
 all for whom it is intended so exactly in accordance 
 with right reason, that they never suspect, whilst the 
 praises of the artist are on their lips, how utterly, to 
 win their favor, he has degraded himself in his own 
 eyes, and in the eyes of all his brethren. To love 
 art with all the strong passion of the man born to do 
 great things, and then, in opposition to all his natural 
 preferences and instincts, to labor day by day in 
 the production of that which he knows to be trifling 
 
24 Painting in France. 
 
 and valueless, merely because it is a marketable 
 commodity, is not this enough to make any man of 
 naturally high feeling despise himself, and bitterly 
 acknowledge the futility of his life? There appeared 
 some time ago, in one of the magazines, an article 
 called " The Story of a Spoilt Life," the narrative of 
 an existence which was supposed to be spoilt because 
 it ended in indigence and the hospital. But what of 
 the spoilt lives that end in luxury and ease, bought 
 at the cost of all their early aspirations? 
 
 Therefore, when amongst the mass of artists who 
 sell themselves we see the few nobler ones stand lofty 
 and pure, like the snows of the immovable Alps, how 
 can we venerate them enough? 
 
 Artistic honor and purity are preserved so long as 
 the painter frankly sets before us his own innermost 
 thought ; and they are sullied and lost when, with a 
 view to gain our approbation and our money, he sets 
 before us what he does not inwardly prefer, but what 
 he imagines will chime in with our own preferences. 
 
 Whatever may be said against Courbet, it cannot 
 be said of him that he has ever fallen away, for 
 one day, from this high and severe law of artistic 
 honor. Many of his pictures are quite unpleasant 
 and repulsive to me; but how I respect the man 
 for never having tried to please me, for never 
 having laid himself out for the small printed com- 
 pliments of critics, or the admiration of messieurs 
 and demoiselles! 
 
Flattery. 25 
 
 But is it not the object of art to please,' — to please 
 us, the very messieurs and demoiselles above men- 
 tioned? There is a theory of this kind current in 
 the world, — a theory first set in motion by one or 
 two critics to please their readers, whom the said 
 theory suited d. merveille, since it flattered them quite 
 pleasantly. But it is utterly degrading to art as an 
 expression of the human soul, for it makes a subtle 
 flattery its whole purpose and aim. What flattery is 
 more subtle and servile than that of expressing other 
 people's views, and not your own, in order to extract 
 money from their pockets? 
 
 The object of great art is not to please either me 
 or you, or any other spectator ; and as soon as ever 
 we see reason to suspect that a painter has been try- 
 ing to please us, we may despise him, or pity him, 
 as a miserable flatterer and parasite. When a truly 
 great artist takes up palette and brushes, he has but 
 one duty, but that is a sacred one — to express his 
 best thought in the way that best expresses it. If the 
 result pleases us, it is well ; if it displeases us, it is 
 well also ; it is probably even better. In any event, 
 if the painter has acted quite faithfully, we have no 
 right to complain of him, and it would certainly be 
 most unreasonable in us to be angry with him for 
 speaking his own mind and not ours. We have 
 everything to gain by the sincere expression of his 
 thought and feeling, but the treacherous element in 
 art is flattery. There is an impression that the only 
 
26 Painting in France. 
 
 artists who live by flattery are the portrait-painters ; 
 but an artist can flatter you just as easily when he is 
 painting a landscape or a group of cattle as your own 
 portrait. He knows that you like neat little touches 
 for foliage, and neat little twirls of the brush for fur, 
 and dots of sparkle on eye and horn, and he gives 
 you these things to flatter you. And he flatters you 
 . equally in that which he withholds and refrains from. 
 Perhaps he would like to paint for tonality, as Troyon 
 did, but he knows that you do not care for tonality, 
 and refrains ; or he would like to paint the splendid 
 and rare effects, as Turner did, but he knows that you 
 ' would be offended by them, and refrains. 
 
 Now with reference to this great quality of sincer- 
 ity in art, we have all of us a certain plain duty to 
 perform. First, I think that we never ought to 
 speak slightingly or sarcastically of any artist who 
 is evidently sincere, and we ought to be able to bear 
 patiently his divergence from our own notions of 
 what is best in favor of his sincerity and truth. I 
 am not speaking here of his truth to nature, but of 
 _his truth to art; that is, his fidelity to his own con- 
 victions about art. And here we may easily fall into 
 one of the commonest and most uncharitable of 
 errors. A belief is prevalent that, when a painter 
 paints in some unusual manner, he is possessed with 
 the idea that this way of painting is for all men, and 
 under all circumstances, the best way; whereas, he 
 probably only thinks that it is the way which suits 
 
Originality. 27 
 
 his own faculties best, and if he thinks so, rely upon 
 it he is right. What is most disliked in the work of 
 truly original men is due to an unfortunate impres- 
 sion, which, so far as I have observed, is almost 
 always communicated by such work, that the maker 
 of it is conceited. For instance, many imagine that 
 Courbet is conceited, but he is only honest. 
 
 The common belief about the famous chief of 
 realism is, that he maintains the doctrine of servile 
 imitation of nature. The doctrine of Courbet, as 
 expressed directly to myself in his own studio, is 
 something diiferent from that — and widely different. 
 He maintains merely this, that every artist, when he 
 paints, should remain absolutely faithful to his own 
 impressions ; and he, Courbet, has boldly obeyed this 
 law in the whole course of his practice. If all other 
 artists obeyed it, the consequence would not be that we 
 should have a uniform servility to nature, but an art 
 as various as human temperaments are various. If all 
 art were strict copyism of nature (as the enemies of 
 realism falsely represent it to be), then all art would be 
 as much alike as photography is; whereas, if Cour- 
 bet's theory, which, it may be observed in this place, 
 was also the theory of Turner, were carried out to its 
 full extent, we should not have any uniformity at all, 
 not even that degree of uniformity which constitutes 
 a school. Nor should we, on the other hand, have 
 that uniformity which springs from a common desire 
 to anticipate the wants of the public. Every artist 
 
28 Painting in France. 
 
 would paint his own impressions, disciplining himself 
 only with a view to express them as clearly and 
 as emphatically as possible. So that this doctrine, 
 which has been called Realism, might have been 
 better called Individualism. It is not material at all, 
 it is intensely and fanatically spiritual, believing not 
 at all in the accurate representation of matter, but 
 surrendering itself utterly to the impressions and sen- 
 sations of the mind. 
 
 A prodigious development of self-confidence ! To 
 believe steadily and firmly all one's life through in 
 the guidance of one's own natural instincts, quite 
 independently of all human precedent and authority, 
 can the vanity of the individual human being carry 
 him beyond such insanity as this ? It is worth while 
 to dwell a little longer on the point, for it concerns 
 not Courbet alone, but all artists, and especially all 
 young artists who are entering upon their labors 
 and forming their habits. It concerns also the pub- 
 lic which is interested in art, and which may feel 
 doubtful as to the degree of liberty it ought to 
 accord to the vagaries of individual eccentricity. 
 
 The real nature of the warfare which under various 
 names, and under apparently different forms, has been 
 going forward in the art-schools of Europe during the 
 last forty years or more, has always been that of a 
 conflict between the commands of authority, and the 
 sincere preferences of the soul. We cannot under- 
 stand a conflict of this kind, and the strength and 
 
Classicism. 29 
 
 heat of passion elicited on both sides, without remem- 
 bering that painting is a direct utterance and expres- 
 sion, just as much as speaking is, and that a painter 
 in every line he lays and in every hue he mixes must 
 say one of two things, — either that which he thinks 
 or that which he does not think. The whole contro- 
 versy lies in this nutshell. The classical school has 
 been insisting for generations on the duty of submis- 
 sion to its authority, on the duty, that is, of saying 
 always what classicism thinks, quite independently of 
 any consideration for the ideas and preferences of the 
 artist; and the classical training has always made it 
 its business to stifle and repress all personal feelings 
 and affections, and even to deny the right of exercis-, 
 ing intelligence, except such a limited amount of it 
 as may be necessary for the perfect reception of a 
 tradition. On the other hand, all the rebels maintain 
 the right to be sincere in art, but many of them lack 
 the courage to be sincere always, and they often 
 paint insincerely still, not out of deference to classi- 
 cism, but in order to catch purchasers ; and the latter 
 kind of insincerity is perhaps the more degrading of 
 the two. 
 
 It does not follow, however, that the submissive 
 men who take upon themselves the yoke of classicism 
 are necessarily in every case insincere. Many men 
 are born, as it were, with hollow places in their minds 
 that can be filled with anything that other people 
 choose to put into them. Cooks have a way of mak- 
 
3© Painting in France. 
 
 ing the pastry of tarts to be filled at some future time 
 with any kind of jam that may be preferred, and so 
 the tart which in the first stage of its existence has 
 no preferences whatever becomes afterwards quite 
 sincerely a strawberry or a raspberry tart as the case 
 may be. So it has been with numbers of second-rate 
 artists. Bred in Paris under the influence of Ingres 
 they were classicists ; if they had been bred in Eng- 
 land when pre-Raphaelitism was fashionable, they 
 would have been pre-Raphaelites, in either case very 
 sincerely. But there is another sort of men who, to 
 pursue the homely simile just made use of, have the 
 jam in them from their birth, as pomegranates and 
 pine-apples have, and who can only be turned into 
 something different by first submitting to be emptied 
 of all that is richest and best in their own nature. 
 
Courbet. 31 
 
 II. 
 
 THERE was once a very large, fine pomegranate 
 in a basket of oranges. And when the oranges 
 were cut, they gave out yellow juice, but when the 
 pomegranate was cut, it gave out red juice. Then 
 all the oranges declared that the pomegranate was 
 the most intensely conceited fruit they had ever seen 
 in their lives — why could it not give out yellow juice 
 as they all did? On which the pomegranate made 
 the following solitary reflections : " It is very curious 
 that everybody calls me conceited, for I never thought 
 about myself either one way or the other till now." 
 And it must be confessed that the pomegranate, 
 though it was quite true that he had never been 
 conceited before, became rather proud and scornful 
 in consequence of the injustice of the oranges, and 
 thought his own juice, red as it was, somewhat better 
 and more valuable than any mere yellow juice ever 
 could be. 
 
 This large, fine pomegranate came into the world 
 at Ornans, in the department of the Doubs, June 10, 
 1 8 19, and was called Gustave Courbet. The child 
 lived at first under clerical influence, and began his 
 
32 Painting in France. 
 
 education at a seminary, but completed it at the 
 , college of Besangon. Few parts of France are more 
 beautiful than the valley of the Doubs, and Courbet 
 has always preserved a strong landscape instinct 
 which may owe much of its vigor to an early delight 
 in the picturesque scenery that surrounded him. 
 He was intended for the bar, but could not resist the 
 passion for painting, and when he was sent to Paris 
 to study law, neglected it altogether for the fine arts. 
 Strictly speaking, he never had anything like what is 
 usually understood by an education ; that is, he never 
 underwent that long, and steady course of discipline 
 which gives great practical certainty and efficiency at 
 the sacrifice of originality. Courbet learned his art 
 in very various ways ; he was at one time pupil of a 
 painter called Flageoulot, a follower of David ; but 
 of course the traditions of the school of David could 
 have no hold upon him, any more than traditions of 
 hen-wisdom have upon young ducks, and therefore 
 we cannot consider this pupilage to have been for 
 Courbet in any sense an education. Afterwards he 
 worked hard at the open atelier kept in Paris by 
 Suisse, a place where there is, strictly speaking, no 
 instruction, but where young and older artists draw 
 just as they like from the living model. He had a 
 few lessons from Steuben, and worked a little in the 
 ^atelier of Hesse. This isolation and independence 
 were serious obstacles to his early career, because 
 they made him disliked by the influential painters 
 
Courbet. 33 
 
 who kept the great ateliers, and who often had the 
 power of rejecting works presented at the exhibition. 
 Courbet was thus rejected during six years, which 
 only confirmed him in his own ways of work, and led 
 to still greater self-assertion in his art. ^ 
 
 It is difficult in these days to realize quite fully the 
 degree of animosity which a nature so independent 
 as that of Courbet must have excited twenty years 
 ago amongst artists devoted to the maintenance of 
 tradition. He was accused of intense pride, an 
 accusation which in some measure justified itself by 
 developing still farther the energy of his self-reliance, 
 and stiffening his originality into stubbornness. When 
 men of original endowment are treated with gentle- 
 ness, and received as if their originality were the 
 most natural thing in the world, it is surprising how 
 willing they are to make great concessions to custom 
 and tradition, and how little they plume themselves 
 upon their peculiarities. But if you repel them, and 
 ridicule them, and treat them with manifest injustice, 
 then they become obstinate, and assert their especial 
 powers emphatically, and all the slumbering pride 
 of their strong natures flashes out in scorn of you, as 
 concussion makes the latent heat of a cannon-ball 
 burst forth in a sheet of flame. It may be doubted, 
 however, whether we have had our true Courbet, or 
 our true Turner, for the pride of both was irritated 
 into a morbid development. If they had been let 
 alone, or received at least without jeering, their art 
 
 3 
 
34 Painting in France. 
 
 might have been equally original, but it would have 
 been less eccentric, — equally forcible, but more 
 urbane. Men of that calibre meet contempt with 
 contempt, and scorn with scorn ; but the scorn harms 
 them by disturbing the balance of their faculties, and 
 especially by depriving their work of gentleness and " 
 amenity. 
 
 The river Doubs, which gives its name to the 
 department where Courbet was born, takes its source 
 in the Jura, flows first to the northeast, then turns 
 suddenly to the left, and after some time turns again, 
 so that it flows henceforth in a direction precisely 
 contrary to its first direction. The tongue of land 
 thus enclosed by the river resembles in shape the 
 end of the Italian boot; and Ornans, the birthplace 
 of Courbet, is situated in the middle of the peninsula, 
 between the young mountain stream at Argon and 
 the mature river that reflects the strong forts of 
 Besangon. Ornans has also a little river of its own, 
 the Loue, which, after having gained strength in 
 many windings, joins the Doubs below D61e. It is a 
 country in the highest degree favorable to the de- 
 velopment of a painter. The valley of the Doubs, 
 easily accessible from Ornans, is one of the most 
 beautiful in France. Some years ago the present 
 writer made up his mind to live there, and explored 
 it in various ways, staying at different places and 
 examining every unoccupied house. Whenever a 
 place seemed suitable, I took care to study its im- 
 
' Courbet. 35 
 
 mediate neighborhood, seeking especially for those 
 natural beauties which are most dear to me, — the 
 rocky dells with pure refreshing streams, the groups 
 of majestic trees, the towering heights of hill and 
 cliff, and the level meadows by the shore of the green 
 transparent river. The whole valley was enchant- 
 ingly beautiful; the hills were lofty enough, and 
 especially steep enough, for sublimity, with bold, 
 cl^ar-cut curves of inexpressible majesty and grace. 
 At their feet was a narrow plain of fertile land, 
 through which wandered the waters of the Doubs — 
 waters so exquisitely pure that they seemed like 
 flowing emerald to me who had come from the banks 
 of the yellow and opaque Yonne. 
 
 In this country Courbet got a love for rocky streams 
 and woody haunts of the wild deer, which is part of 
 his complex nature as an artist. He has a very strong 
 landscape instinct which shows itself not only in the 
 production of many landscapes, but also in the fre- 
 quent choice of sylvan backgrounds. Let it be noted, 
 in the contrast between him and Ingres, that Courbet 
 loves landscape, and paints it with strong sentiment 
 and affection, whilst Ingres neglects and despises it; 
 and when he introduces it at all — as, for instance, 
 the rock and vegetation in the " Source " — does so 
 on strictly conventional principles. This is one of 
 the most marked distinctions between the realist and 
 classical schools. Almost every realist painter enjoys 
 landscape, if only in a background ; but the classicists 
 
36 Painting in France. 
 
 either have no enjoyment of it, or repress this taste 
 as contrary to the severity of their art, 
 
 Courbet does not care for beauty, yet nature lib- 
 erally endowed him with it. He is a well-grown, 
 powerful man, with a face that Sylvestre not inaptly 
 compared to those of the handsome Assyrian kings 
 on the marbles from Nineveh, and the skin of a 
 woman, and an eye of singular beauty and mildness, 
 I never met a man who more entirely conveyed to 
 me the impression of perfect simplicity and honesty. 
 His politeness takes rather the form of kindness and 
 gentleness than ceremony, and so remarkable is this 
 gentleness that one asks how this quiet, beautiful 
 man can have had fire enough in him to fight the 
 world so long. But the fire flashes out now and then 
 in moments of imperious energy. He said to me 
 once, — " Mettez vous en face de la nature, et puis 
 peignez comme vous sentirez — pardieu ! " The final 
 pardieu was electrical, and whenever I set myself to 
 work from nature it rings in my memory yet. 
 
 There is never any opinion about the practical 
 work of painting, though it be founded upon a life's 
 experience, but you will hear some diametrically 
 opposite doctrine, equally supported by long obser- 
 vation and practice. Thus in England we are con- 
 stantly told that for a picture to be safe during its 
 progress, it must be " kept pale." * Courbet, who 
 
 * This is founded on the practice of Turner. Many con- 
 temporary English painters work upon perfectly white grounds. 
 
Courbei. 37 
 
 works always upon dark red or brown grounds, 
 earnestly recommended me to keep my work dark 
 enough, reserving the light for the last, and gradu- 
 ally coming up to them, by thicknesses of opaque 
 color. He once made use of a comparison which 
 clearly explains the philosophy of his execution. As 
 the day dawns, objects gradually become more 
 visible ; out of twilight they come at length into day- 
 light, and at last the sun strikes them with brilliant 
 touches. So a picture by Courbet begins in twilight, 
 and gradually becomes lighter and lighter, till finally 
 come the highest and brightest lights of all. I men- . 
 tion this matter because it has a certain interest, but 
 without attaching more importance to it than it 
 deserves. Whether an artist works from dark to 
 light, or from light to dark, or from a middle tint 
 upwards and downwards at the same time, is of little 
 consequence to the result, except so far as the 
 process may suit his fancy. Whilst we are upon the 
 subject of technical practice, it may be added that in 
 his landscapes Courbet has recourse to all manner of 
 artifices. He seeks especially for the impression of 
 everything that helps to indicate and suggest, but 
 without study of the forms, and the consequence is 
 an immense variety of dots and dabs and draggings, 
 and plasterings with the fingers or the palette knife. 
 
 The practice is a reasonable one for the .preservation of lumi- 
 nous quality, but it often happens that colors on white grounds, 
 from a want of sufficient sustenance beneath them, appear crude. 
 
38 Painting in France. 
 
 out of which confusion the landscape comes finally, 
 true enough in aspect, but without a particle of 
 design. Whatever may be true of the figure, it is 
 scarcely possible to suggest the infinity of natural 
 landscape by any simple painting, and before a 
 picture, whether in water-color or oil, arrives at that 
 degree of confused richness which reminds us of the 
 profusion of nature, it has generally got into all sorts 
 .of messes. Courbet is fond of messes, and of what 
 are called " tricks," and I never saw a palette less 
 orderly than his, but there are certain qualities in 
 nature which he admirably feels and renders. On 
 the other hand, he is eminently straightforward in 
 execution whenever his purpose may be attained in 
 a simple way, and some of his figure pictures are 
 excellent examples of fine brushwork. The choice 
 of his types is so far peculiar that he rejects beauty, 
 or at least has such a horror of prettiness that he 
 would rather paint forms which are frankly ugly than 
 those which in their beauty might incur the imputa- 
 tion of being pretty; but there is nevertheless a 
 certain massive grandeur in his men and women 
 which may well be a sufficient aim for an artist, and 
 which Rembrandt would have accepted as a compen- 
 sation for the deficiency of grace. A story is told of 
 the Empress Eugenie which bears very closely upon 
 this subject. One day she visited the Exhibition of 
 1853, and finding there a picture of horses, very pow- 
 erful but not graceful animals, made some observa- 
 
Courbet, 39 
 
 tion in that sense to a gentleman who attended 
 her. He answered, " Madame, ces chevaux sent 
 des Percherons," — a breed much esteemed for its 
 working qualities. Shortly afterwards Her Majesty- 
 came to the " Baigneuses " of Courbet, in which two 
 immensely powerful women have just come out of 
 the water, and exhibit all their muscular development. 
 " Et celles-ci," said the Empress, " sont, je pense, des 
 Percheronnes." * 
 
 The human side of Courbet's art proves a simple 
 openness to whatever happens before his own eyes 
 (always very valuable to an artist), but suggests 
 neither literary culture, nor any wide range of 
 thought. Seeing men breaking stones, he is struck . 
 by the hardness and monotony of their work, and 
 makes a picture of them, to glorify the humblest and 
 rudest forms of toil. Having taken part in pictu- 
 resque French hunting-scenes, he must needs paint 
 them, and does so in a grand masculine way; the 
 "Hallali du Cerf," and the "Combat des Cerfs," 
 being perfect types of the sort of picture most suit- 
 able for the entrance to a ch&teau near the great 
 French forests. One day, being out on a pedestrian 
 excursion in the environs of Montpellier, he met a 
 
 * A woman of gigantic development has lately exhibited her- 
 self in France as " Premier module de I'Acaddmie de Londres." 
 Such a model would not be selected by any academy; but 
 Courbet would have made studies from her quite seriously. 
 She was what the Empress would call a " Percheronne.'' 
 
40 Painting in France. 
 
 friend of his, M. Bruyas, and commemorated the 
 incident in a picture. The most famous canvases of 
 Courbet have for their subjects the common people, 
 .and everyday events about Ornans, such for instance 
 as the " Enterrement a Ornans," the " Demoiselles 
 de Village," the " Paysans de Flagey," the " Retour 
 de la Conference." Courbet has never, so far as I 
 know, painted any illustration of past history, nor 
 has he attempted to illustrate any important events of 
 his own time. Proudhon attempted to give greater 
 importance to his friend's art than can fairly be said 
 to belong to it; for the philosophy, such as it is, 
 which is at the bottom of this realism, is a very 
 simple philosophy and a very narrow one, as narrow 
 in its way, perhaps, as the stiff little creed of classi- 
 cism itself. Courbet is simply a man of strong natu- 
 ral gifts, who, being at the same time very honest, 
 and very determined, and having no intellectual 
 range beyond the things which he sees with his eyes, 
 has directed his great natural force persistently to 
 the commemoration of the realities about him. 
 Take away the ignorance of the realist, and his con- 
 sequent indifference to the past and the remote, and 
 it is just possible that, by the very enlargement of his 
 sympathies, his art would concentrate itself less 
 powerfully on the actual. Or again, if Courbet had 
 been born with a delicate sense of beauty (and this 
 sense of beauty, be it observed, is not a defect or a 
 weakness, but a faculty half divine), his art would 
 
Courbet. 41 
 
 have been wholly different, and it would probably 
 have been far less original, for he would have been 
 overawed by the revelation of the beautiful in the 
 masterpieces of the past, and would have submitted 
 to them, and perhaps even humbly imitated them. 
 Lastly, he has no trace of the critical faculty, he can 
 execute bad work with satisfaction to himself, and 
 though any excess of critical power in an artist is 
 always detrimental to him by creating dissatisfaction 
 with his work, and so lessening his productiveness, 
 and thereby injuring his skill (which requires inces- 
 sant manual practice), still a certain critical capacity 
 is necessary to every true artist, because it helps him 
 to refine and purify his work, it sustains him in 
 the great labor of selection and omission, it guides 
 him to noble preferences. What I admire in Cour- 
 bet, is not his ignorance, but his sincerity; not his 
 self-satisfaction, but his determination to give noth- 
 ing but that which is his own; not his uncritical 
 energy, but his obedience to the inward voices. I 
 believe that it always amounts to a positive duty for 
 an artist to obey these inward voices, to exhibit, so 
 far as may be possible for him, his own ideal of art; 
 and so far I go heartily with Courbet : but there is a 
 question beyond this on which it appears we are not 
 so likely to agree. I perceive that the inward voices, 
 which said to me very loudly certain things fourteen 
 years ago, say now quite different things, and urge 
 me to other enterprises. It is clear to me that the 
 
42 Painting in France. 
 
 artistic conscience, like the moral conscience, modifies 
 itself greatly as our culture is enlarged, and that, 
 although it is right to obey conscience, it is also at 
 least equally necessary to enlighten it by culture. 
 The fault I have to find with Courbet is that he 
 has never yet perceived this, but has gone on all 
 along blindly obeying his inward voices, without 
 giving these monitors that additional light which 
 might have greatly modified their commands. He 
 has had faith and energy, but neither any culture,* 
 nor even any conception of the use of culture and of 
 the profound changes which it brings about in our 
 habits and beliefs. Two strong passions combine to 
 produce great writers and great painters, — the pas- 
 sion for enlargement and acquisition, and the passion 
 for expression. , Courbet has striven grandly and 
 mightily to express himself, but hardly ever, it would 
 appear, to enlarge and enlighten himself, f 
 
 * At least in the sense of improvement gained b)' reception 
 of the ideas, and submission to the influences of others. So far 
 as Courbet has been able to cultivate himself by continual self- 
 expression, and by the study of nature, he has done so ; but 
 " culture," in the highest sense, implies much more than this. 
 
 f There is not space for further criticism of Courbet's pic- 
 tures in the text, but it may be observed here that even the 
 " Retour de la Conference " is merely a satire against the priest- 
 hood from a very common point of view. Courbet, like most 
 Frenchmen of the middle class, is strongly sceptical and anti- 
 clerical ; and so it was great fun for him to paint priests tipsy, 
 with a peasant laughing at them, and his wife kneeling to them. 
 But surely a satire of this kind does not require any great pro- 
 
Courbet. 43 
 
 His position has been greatly strengthened during 
 the last few years, partly in consequence of the 
 " Femme au Perroquet," and the " Remise de Che- 
 vreuils," which were more agreeable, and apparently 
 more accomplished works than most of their prede- 
 cessors, and also by the separate exhibition of a 
 large collection of his pictures during the summer of 
 1867, and for nearly a year afterwards. Some exten- 
 sion of the artist's celebrity may be due to his friend 
 Proudhon, who warmly supported his art from a 
 moral and political point of view. It would have 
 been interesting to analyze Proudhon's criticism of 
 Courbet, but we have not space for a discussion 
 which could not be brief. Proudhon was one of a 
 considerable class of vigorous intellects which being 
 entirely destitute of any faculty for the appreciation 
 of art, see, nevertheless, that art as an existing fact 
 is too evidently important to be passed over, and 
 so endeavor to comprehend it in their own way. 
 Proudhon could not endure that men should pursue 
 art for its own sake, but would have it made sub- 
 servient to moral and physical progress, which was 
 merely an endeavor to reconcile the existence of 
 art with his ideas of utility. For reasons which are 
 not very clear, it struck Proudhon that the art of 
 
 fundity of thought, or even much wit. The satire was that of 
 a somewhat coarse and uncultivated person ; it would have been 
 possible to wound the priesthood more scientifically and more 
 keenly. To do them justice, they seldom get drunk, and yet 
 are vulnerable enough. 
 
44 V Painting in France. 
 
 Courbet had a special utility of this kind, and once 
 persuaded of this, the democratic philosopher did not 
 care much about the quality of Courbet's pictures, 
 of which he was utterly incompetent to judge, but 
 hoisted his friend upon a lofty pedestal, and wrote 
 chapter after chapter to herald the advent of a sort 
 of art which, if not beautiful, was to be morally and 
 . politically beneficial. If writers who are destitute 
 of the pictorial perceptions, yet have a command of 
 language, become for some reason warmly interested 
 in a discussion about artists, they are able to do con- 
 siderable harm, because they combine the ignorance 
 and wilfulness of infancy with the combative skill of 
 trained intellectual manhood. When a clever talker, 
 who has not a musical ear, rails against the music 
 which has no recommendation except that it is artisti- 
 cally exquisite, and extols some popular air because 
 it has some associations outside of art, he does exactly 
 what Proudhon did when he undertook the eulogy of 
 Courbet. 
 
 The system of separate exhibitions has never been 
 much approved of in France ; and there still lingers 
 much of the old feeling that it is below the dignity 
 of an artist to accept the shillings of spectators. 
 Courbet, however, has on several different occasions 
 disregarded this prejudice, and, perhaps, may have 
 succeeded in partially weakening it. Matters which 
 affect caste and social position are almost beyond 
 the domain of reason, and depend very frequently 
 
Courbet 45 
 
 upon the most fortuitous associations of ideas. It is 
 thought degrading to an artist to accept a shilling 
 from a person who goes to see his picture, because 
 there is an association of ideas with showmen, just as 
 in the higher classes it is thought degrading to paint 
 a picture and sell it, because there is an association 
 of ideas with manual labor. In the same way, if the 
 public could see men of science at work in their 
 cabinets, anatomy would be considered a degrading 
 pursuit, because it would remind the vulgar of butcher- 
 ing. One of the best results of culture is that it in a 
 great measure emancipates our minds from the effects 
 of association, and enables us to judge independently. 
 For instance, in this matter of the exhibition of pic- 
 tures, simple reason, detached from disturbing asso- 
 ciations, sees at once that the painter who receives 
 money for works painted by himself is not paid as 
 a showman but as an artist; he is paid for having 
 painted the picture by persons who cannot afford to 
 buy it, and therefore can only reward him in this way. 
 It may also be observed that the shillings paid at the 
 entrance are usually little more than enough to cover 
 the expenses of these exhibitions, so that if it is 
 degrading to the artist to profit by them, he is sel- 
 dom so degraded. Collections of pictures by one 
 painter are not popular with the general public, on 
 account of the lack of variety, but they are supremely 
 interesting to critics for the light they throw on the 
 development of the artist. 
 
46 Painting in France. 
 
 During the Great Exhibition of 1867, there were 
 two exhibitions of this kind; the one of Courbet, 
 already mentioned, and another of pictures by 
 Edouard Manet, an artist who for the last two years 
 has had the privilege of being the laughing-stock of 
 all Paris, — a very good way of getting into the Tem- 
 ple of Fame, though perhaps not a very agreeable 
 one. Like his predecessor, Courbet, Edouard Manet 
 has devoted himself to other aims than the pursuit of 
 the beautiful, and it is not to be denied that his 
 pictures, on the whole, are rather remarkable for 
 their ugliness ; in fact, the ugliness thrusts itself for- 
 ward in a way so obtrusive that the common specta- 
 tor, who almost always fails to see the aim of the 
 artist, concludes that he cannot possibly have any 
 artistic capacity whatever. A picture, however, may 
 be full of fine and manly work, full of intensity of 
 emotion and keenness of perception, without being in 
 the least pretty; and it would be easy to mention 
 many admirable ones by elder masters which fully 
 deserve places of honor in galleries of art, and yet 
 would be altogether unsuitable for drawing-rooms. 
 The notions current about Manet have, until quite 
 recently, been curiously the reverse of the truth. 
 When people saw that he painted in what they con- 
 sidered a slovenly and audacious manner, they con- 
 cluded that he was an ignorant rapin ; and when he 
 began to be a good deal talked about, they inferred 
 that his manner had been adopted in order to attract 
 
Edouard Manet. 47 
 
 attention and catch purchasers. It turned out, how- 
 ever, that Manet was a gentleman and a man of the 
 world, fond of society, and appreciated in it person- 
 ally, whatever people might think about his pictures. 
 And as for painting in his manner from motives of 
 self-interest, to catch purchasers, it is evident that, 
 with the great majority of his works unsold, he would 
 not have persevered in this path after experience had 
 fully proved that it would lead to no probable pecuni- 
 ary success. The artists who really do paint to catch 
 purchasers are always the least exposed to accusa- 
 tions of this kind, because their art is so entirely in 
 the popular manner that they escape all unfavorable 
 imputations. When a man who has strong private 
 convictions is false to himself and learns the elabo- 
 rate affectation of conformity, he is never accused of 
 affectation, but so soon as he endeavors to express 
 himself, and resolves to be faithful to his own nature, 
 then everybody cries out how conceited he is, how 
 affected he is, and it is said that he has done these 
 things out of charlatanism, to attract attention and 
 get money. If Edouard Manet had not had a private 
 income he would have been compelled to abandon 
 painting years ago; but it so happens that he is 
 comparatively a rich man, and therefore can afford to 
 be sincere. 
 
 The language of English art-criticism is as yet so 
 poor that it often takes a paragraph of explanation to 
 say what one would express in French by a single 
 
48 Painting in France. 
 
 word. Le but de I'art de Manet est simplement la 
 tache. I cannot translate this into English. Things 
 are seen in nature as variously colored patches en- 
 closed by more or less definite boundaries. The 
 most advanced artistic way of seeing is that which 
 sees the patches in their true relation. Artists may 
 be classed according to the kind of truth they look 
 for ; for instance, David used to say that the outline 
 was everything, and that, once a good outline ob- 
 tained, his pupils might put within it whatever they 
 chose. Another theory is that modelling is every- 
 thing, and there is also a theory that the patch (which 
 on the whole is the best English word I can find for 
 la tache') is everything. Now, if you paint for 
 modelling you are pretty sure to neglect the patch ; 
 and if you paint for the patch, though your model- 
 ling may have a certain valuable relative truth, it will 
 be a mere compromise, and therefore, to critics who 
 seek for it exclusively, will seem feeble and irregular 
 and inadequate. The difference between the public 
 and all artists who love their art, and pursue it with 
 some enthusiasm, is that these theories or beliefs, 
 which absorb the whole lives and energies of artists, 
 are regarded by the outside public as technical mat- 
 ters of no concern. The artist paints for some artis- 
 tic purpose, as the line, or the patch, and the people 
 go to his picture for the subject alone, which may be 
 insignificant or even repulsive. Manet's aims are ex- 
 clusively technical ; anything suits him as a subject, 
 
Edouard Manet. 49 
 
 if only it presents a suitable arrangement of patches. 
 As he does not care for the line, it follows that he 
 does not care for beauty of form, and even chiaros- 
 curo is secondary with him, and will be sacrificed on 
 occasion to the exigencies of the patch. The reader 
 may conclude that an artist who devotes himself to a 
 technical aim of this kind is necessarily a man of 
 small intellectual power; but it is curious how the 
 artistic purposes gain in importance as we under- 
 stand art better, and how at last all we ask of a pic- 
 ture is, that it present to us some side of art with skill 
 and power. Thus, after sixty years of servitude to 
 the line, Ingres drew the " Source ; " and it may be 
 that Manet will ultimately do something wonderful 
 and admirable after long servitude to the patch. It 
 is natural that his art should remind us of Spanish 
 work, because he has a necessary affinity with that 
 school; but he is not an imitator, and as M. Emile 
 Zola said in his study of him, the pictures of his 
 which we have seen are the artist's own flesh and 
 blood.* 
 
 Courbet and Manet are both of them realists in the 
 French sense of the word, which has acquired, by its 
 use with reference to a particular sect of painters, a 
 
 * The pictures of Manet which best exemplify his manner 
 of work are " L'homme mort," " L'enfant k I'dpde," " Olympia," 
 " Una Jeune Dame," and " Le Ballet Espagnol." The " D^- 
 jeflner sur I'herbe," much praised by M. Zola, is not so favor- 
 able an example, owing to the necessary absence of some of the 
 most important elements of Manet's system of color. 
 
 4 
 
50 Painting in France. 
 
 meaning considerably more contracted than its natu- 
 ral one. Any intelligent foreign critic who heard the 
 French realists spoken of, without having read or 
 heard French criticism, would suppose that the word 
 included all the painters who base their performance 
 upon the accurate study of reality; but the received 
 sense of the word is much narrower than this. A 
 realist, in France, is an artist who entirely rejects 
 beauty, or at least is supposed to do so (for here 
 again some reservation might be made), and who is 
 supposed to paint whatever happens to be before 
 him, taking the worst material along with the best, 
 and the most vulgar subjects along with the most ele- 
 vating, preferring indeed, when the choice is offered, 
 mean and low subjects to sublime ones. The fact is, 
 however, that the French idea of realism is an exceed- 
 ingly vague one ; and if you ask even an intelligent 
 Frenchman to define it, the chances are that he will 
 construct a definition that would include too much, — 
 that would include whole classes of art which he 
 would not call realism at all. As in the case of the 
 English pre-Raphaelites, no satisfactory definition has 
 ever been arrived at, and yet, however vague may be 
 the use of the word, we come at last to have a general 
 notion of what the public means by a realist picture, 
 just as we know, in a general way, what we mean by 
 a pre-Raphaelite picture. The French " realist," after 
 all, is an artist who works in a particular temper ; and 
 realism is an attitude or humor of the mind, a humor 
 
Edouard ManeL 51 
 
 strongly opposed to that which seeks to please by 
 the flattery of conformity, and therefore opposed to 
 the feeling of polite society in every country. Thou- 
 sands of men whp never cared for painting have the 
 realist temper in its utmost development. They take 
 a malicious pleasure in stating facts somewhat roughly 
 and brutally, so as to shock people who are so very 
 dainty that they will not see things as they are. The 
 value of realism everywhere consists in its being a 
 corrective of the superfine, and though there is often 
 not a little affectation in realism itself, it is useful as 
 an enemy of the far commoner affectation of refine- 
 ment. When realism arose in French literature and 
 art, men of sense were sick of the pretensions to taste 
 which made people write and paint as falsely as they 
 talked in drawing-rooms, and so they came to have a 
 savage hatred for everything that aimed at elegance. 
 They were sick, too, of the affectations of learning and 
 scholarship, and instead of painting subjects from 
 Greek and Roman history, they painted peasants and 
 road-menders. The temper of realism is the temper 
 which has driven many a sensible man from the 
 society of pedants and dandies to that of common 
 sailors and grooms, and which gives so many country 
 gentlemen a serene pleasure in wearing shabby old 
 clothes, and busying themselves about turnips and 
 manure. Learning is good, and artistic taste is good ; 
 but when learning approaches pedantry, and when 
 taste damages the manliness of character by the 
 
52 Painting in France. 
 
 afifectations of dilettantism, any deliverer may be 
 welcomed; and the best of all deliverers are those 
 who save us by giving a new direction to the very 
 pursuits which were injuring us. It is, nevertheless, 
 evident enough that this temper of realism is only 
 valuable for its temporary use, as a reaction, and 
 that, after all, elegance is better than coarseness, and 
 learning than ignorance. The artist who paints a 
 very graceful and refined form is better occupied 
 than Courbet was when he gave weeks to the study 
 of his monstrously fat Baigneuse ; and when David 
 attempted to realize the oath of the Horatii and the 
 Death of Socrates, the long dwelling upon these 
 great subjects was more elevating to the mind of 
 the painter himself than any reflections, however in- 
 genious, on the struggle of muscular " Wrestlers," or 
 the death of a hunted stag. Realism, in short, is a 
 sort of mud-bath which, under certain circumstances, 
 may be highly beneficial to the system; but as a 
 general rule we prefer to keep mud at a distance, and 
 even admit, without accusation of effeminacy, a taste 
 for clean linen and savon de luxe. There is, however, 
 yet another aspect of realism, and a nobler one than 
 its scornful protest against pedantry and dilettantism. 
 It has, in some notable instances, protested quite as 
 boldly against the cold indiff'erence with which men 
 of learning and taste so often pass the sublimity of 
 common life. Realism has undertaken to show, and 
 has proved triumphantly, that common men and 
 
Jean Frangois Millet. 53 
 
 women, such as those who live and work in the 
 broad fields of France, are capable of exciting the 
 poetical emotions. Jean Frangois Millet has done 
 more in this direction than any other artist, except 
 perhaps Jules Breton ; and Millet is the more essen- 
 tially realist of the two. He was born at Greville, 
 in 18 1 5, and studied under Delaroche. He first 
 exhibited at the Salon of 1844, and in his earlier 
 years painted subjects such as " CEdipus," and "The 
 Jews in Babylon," which have little connection with 
 those with which his name is now universally asso- 
 ciated. He lives at Barbison (Seine et Marne), and 
 seeks such poetry as he can find in the fields of wheat 
 and potatoes. Visitors to the Universal Exhibition 
 of 1867 will remember some of the nine pictures he 
 exhibited there, especially, perhaps, the " Glaneuses," 
 and " L'Angelus du soir," and " Planteurs de pommes 
 de terre." His art is direct and very modern in 
 method, and quite singularly profound in sentiment, 
 and his reputation has immensely increased during 
 the last three or four years.* 
 
 Millet is little known in England except to our 
 travelling countrymen. He did not exhibit at our 
 International Exhibition of 1862, and the only pic- 
 ture of his which I remember to have seen in Eng- 
 
 * It may be as well to add that there are three artists of the 
 name of Millet, — Fr^d^ric Millet, the portrait-painter ; Aim^ 
 Millet, who was at first painter and sculptor, but now follows 
 sculpture almost exclusively ; and Jean Francois Millet, who is 
 mentioned in the text. 
 
54 Painting in France. 
 
 land is a study of a ploughed field, with a plough 
 stuck in the middle of it, in which it was difficult 
 to recognize any sentiment beyond a conscientious 
 desire to get the right look of turned earth. 
 
 Jules Breton is fortunate in having one of his very 
 best pictures in the permanent gallery of the Luxem- 
 bourg. "La Benediction des B16s" is, or ought to 
 be, well known to every one who has visited that 
 gallery during the last eight or nine years. It is a 
 characteristic of the policy of the Church of Rome to 
 make her presence felt everywhere, to go forth into 
 the world outside the walls of her edifices, and carry 
 her ceremonial into the crowded streets and the quiet 
 fields. In this picture the priest goes in procession, 
 carrying the host, to bless the standing corn, and 
 with an odd mixture of splendor and homeliness, very 
 touching, and very well felt and rendered by the 
 painter, walks solemnly through the rich land, along 
 the narrow path, in the beautiful sunshine of a bright 
 afternoon. Nothing short of bigotry could make 
 even a true Protestant insensible to the beauty of 
 such a ceremonial. The picture is altogether a de- 
 lightful one; the village maidens in their simple 
 white dresses, the priest in his sacerdotal vestments, 
 the maire and other villagers in their Sunday best, 
 awkward as a feeling of unaccustomedness and bad 
 country tailoring can make them, have a mixture 
 of humor and sublimity incomprehensible by some 
 critics (who call the picture a caricature), but, to my 
 
yules Breton. 55 
 
 feeling, full of charm. A very grand picture, in 
 another order of thought, because this time without 
 humor, is that of the " Weed Gatherers." It is full 
 of the sublimity of long and patient labor, and these 
 poor women, tearing the weeds out of the heavy soil 
 late in the weary day, are they not infinitely nobler 
 and grander than the most successful lorettes of Paris, 
 lolling at the same hour in carriages in the Bois de 
 Boulogne? The "Fin de la Journde," a return from 
 gleaning, is almost as noble; and the humor re- 
 appears in the Garde Champ^tre on the left, but one's 
 pleasure in this work is diminished by the bad color 
 of the wheat, which is given of a foul brown, quite 
 unlike the rich gold of real wheat. It may be 
 observed, by way of parenthesis, that nothing is more 
 rare in painting than a good rendering of wheat. 
 Vicat Cole gets near the color, but is hard in manner, 
 so that his wheat does not look rich enough or 
 mysterious enough. Mr. Linnell the elder gets the 
 color truly, but his strong mannerism repels many, 
 and detracts from the sobriety of his painting. Hol- 
 man Hunt is right also in color, but his wheat has no 
 mystery or mass ; it is so many blades, but never a 
 sheaf, still less a field of several acres. But all these 
 artists, being right in hue, please us better than 
 Breton, whose color on this point is nearly always 
 foul and wrong. There are differences, however, 
 even in Breton's work ; the wheat in the " Benedic- 
 tion " is pleasanter in color than that in any other 
 
56 Painting in France. 
 
 picture I know by him. This tendency to translate 
 delicate golden hues into a foul brown does not seem 
 to affect Breton's perception of other colors ; for 
 instance, in the " Source au bord de la mer " there is 
 much pure and pleasant coloring of sky and water, 
 A defect of this kind ought not to prevent us from 
 recognizing such rare and precious mental qualities 
 as those which distinguish Jules Breton. He is a 
 true poet and true painter, with an infusion of deli- 
 cate humor which reaches our sympathies at once. 
 The " Bdn6diction " is, technically, a work of singular 
 importance in modern art for its almost perfect inter- 
 pretation of sunshine. 
 
Genre. 57 
 
 III. 
 
 THE inconvenient French word genre has now 
 passed into general use in England, because 
 we have unfortunately not got a better word of our 
 own; but as all foreign words must undergo some 
 modification in their meaning before they can be 
 naturalized, this one has become narrowed with us to 
 one class of art, whilst in France it includes all paint- 
 ing which is not either history or landscape. Even 
 in France, however, there is a tendency to restrain 
 the word to domestic and incident painting, and to 
 pictures of very limited dimensions. Strictly speak- 
 ing, Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" is a tableau de 
 genre, because it is neither an historical picture nor a 
 landscape, but it does not answer to the prevalent 
 notion of a tableau de genre because it has no dra- 
 matic incident or illustration of character, and the can- 
 vas is eighteen feet long. The meaning of a word 
 is, after all, dependent upon the way it is commonly 
 used: a word means what it stands for, and not 
 necessarily what the dictionaries say, and the expres- 
 sion tableau de genre in common conversation means 
 a picture of small dimensions representing human char- 
 
58 Painting in France. 
 
 acter dramatically by means of clothed figures. If 
 genre is to be restricted in this way, and there is 
 every probability that in twenty years the dictionaries 
 themselves will so restrict it, then of course it can no 
 longer extend to animal pictures, and portraits, and 
 studies of still life, all of which are as yet theoreti- 
 cally held to be tableaux de genre. It is much to be 
 regretted that we have not a good English word, on 
 account of the lamentable English habit of affecting 
 to pronounce foreign words as they are pronounced 
 by the nations from whom we borrow them, a habit 
 which injures our language, for people will neither 
 learn the real foreign sounds nor use the plain Eng- 
 lish ones ; and even if they could pronounce the for- 
 eign sounds, the intrusion of them in an English 
 sentence would be incongruous and inconvenient.* 
 
 So far as the word genre will be used in this 
 volume, the reader is requested to take it in the re- 
 stricted sense which modern usage has given to it, 
 and not in the comprehensive sense attributed to it 
 
 * For instance, there is the word iclat, which many English 
 people are fond of using, and which few can pronounce. The 
 natural and reasonable way, if they viust use the word, would 
 be to make it rhyme with cat, but being too refined and too 
 well informed to do this, they make an indescribable sound, 
 which they are quite right in supposing not to be English, but 
 which is certainly not French. So with names ; why not say 
 Ingres according to English pronunciation, like increase with 
 the c and s softened ? The English usually call him " Angry," 
 a name which, though suitable to his choleric temper, is not the 
 name he bore in his own country. 
 
Genre. 59 
 
 by the dictionaries. In the following pages the word 
 will mean the class of pictures of small dimensions in 
 which human character is dramatically represented by 
 means of clothed figures. For Instance, all the well- 
 known pictures of Leslie are tableaux de genre. 
 
 The pursuit of this kind of art, which has now 
 become the chief occupation of the schools of 
 Europe, has immensely increased the popularity of 
 paintingj^ because it has interested a. large public 
 which was perfectly indiffe rent to art, and which, 
 in'deecT, though it throngs exhibitions, and buys large 
 quantities of pictures, still essentially remains so. 
 Pictures of genre^ are pop ular; not in proportion to 
 their artistic power, but so far as they are capable of 
 am using people who are uninteres ted in the artistic 
 problems which have occupied the lives of the great 
 painters, and the more brilliant the success of the 
 genre-painters in this direction, the deeper is the 
 injury which they have inflicted upon the art which 
 has loftier aims. It is a far higher ambition in a 
 painter to produce a perfect form, or a passage of 
 exquisite color, than to make everybody laugh by 
 a striking representation of Sancho Panza, or the 
 Merry Wives of Windsor; and the success of genre- 
 painters, even of such intelligent ones as Leslie and 
 Knaus, is dangerous to_art in propo rtion to thei r 
 substitution of hum an for artistic interes t. The 
 world generally is not interested in any art for itself; 
 and it is not painting alone, but music and creative 
 
6o Painting in France. 
 
 literature which have a popularity grounded upon 
 other things than art. The ordinary novel-reader, 
 for instance, does not read for study, does not per- 
 ceive that good fictions are works of noble invention 
 and elaborate art, does not care to learn the best 
 lessons they have to teach, and never for one 
 moment enters into the thoughts and plans of the 
 writer, but runs after the story alone, as a dog fol- 
 lows a hare. The same temper makes people go to 
 pictures for what is called " the subject ; " and it 
 makes them estimate the art of painting, and its rank 
 among human pursuits, according to the interest of 
 the subjects it illustrates, and the vividness with 
 which they are set before the spectator. The con- 
 sequence of this is a profound misconception of the 
 artistic nature and its purposes, and the painters of 
 genre have greatly favored this misconception by 
 paying attention to story and incident in order to sell 
 their pictures. A few artists of various schools, who 
 love art as art, resist this invasion of incident, on the 
 ground that by distracting the mind from art it is 
 even incompatible with it, and they take the most 
 uninteresting subjects they can find, if they afford a 
 pretext for artistic work. This is the real reason for 
 that exceeding slightness of subject which has been 
 so often remarked in French pictures. Many paint- 
 ers in France conscientiously hold the theory that 
 the less story there is in a picture the better, be- 
 cause story distracts the attention from art; and so 
 
Genre. 6 1 
 
 the painters of the naked figure content themselves 
 with a " nymph " or a " Venus," and the landscape- 
 painters are satisfied with three bushes, and a bit of 
 distance, and a cloud. 
 
 The exigencies of genre as art are considerably 
 less than those of the higher art which painted the 
 naked figure of the size of life, and even less than 
 those of that other art, unjustly reputed inferior, 
 which studies the phenomena of the external world. 
 If you examine any popular genre picture, you will 
 find in all probability that at least five-sixths of its 
 surface are occupied by imitations of drapery, and 
 the interiors of rooms with their furniture. Now it is 
 not easy to paint anything, but it is a great deal 
 easier to paint a chair or a table than a tree, and a 
 ceiling than the clouds, and a silk dress than the 
 naked limbs, so that on the whole the work of the 
 genre painter is relieved of many of the chief diffi- 
 culties which torment the student of pure nature, 
 whether he paints landscape or the nude figure. 
 The one great difficulty of this kind of art lies in 
 expression, and therefore the caricaturists, if only 
 they can learn enough of the art of painting to do 
 popular work, and will keep their exaggerations 
 within bounds, are always likely to succeed better in 
 genre than the great painters who are destitute of 
 this especial gift. The point which I desire to insist 
 upon is that men endowed with great natural facul- 
 ties of the essentially artistic kind are likely to be 
 
62 Painting in France. 
 
 surpassed in genre by far inferior men who have the 
 single gift of seizing rapid shades of expression ; so 
 that such men as Leslie, and Heilbuth, and Knaus, 
 would easily, in a time when genre is the only 
 popular form of art, beat out of the field either 
 Titian or Giorgione.* All sorts of short-comings are 
 forgiven to the master orexpression because he goes 
 at once to 'the^ympathies of everybody; and so bad 
 color is bought, bad drawing is bought, bad tonality 
 is bought, when the picture is alive with character. 
 
 But if the painter of genre can get on with slight 
 artistic accomplishments, he needs one bright gift, — 
 intelligence. There is a difference between the great 
 artistic gifts and this faculty of intelligence ; for in- 
 stance, Thackeray and Leslie were very intelligent, 
 but not Turner and Wordsworth; and a score of 
 examples might be cited of men of great power who 
 scarcely, in the strictest sense, appear to have had 
 the gift of intelligence at all. It is an especial fac- 
 ulty, or an especial condition of the faculties, very 
 necessary to critics and painters of genre, but not so 
 
 * I mean that if Titian and Giorgione had lived in our day, 
 and been turned aside to genre painting by the prevalent fash- 
 ion, which it is almost certain that they would have been, they 
 could not have held their own against men like Knaus. I do 
 not mean that if, living now, they painted the pictures known 
 to us as Titians and Giorgiones, those pictures would not be 
 appreciated ; they would have painted nothing of the kind ; the 
 prevailing fashions would have made them attempt genre in 
 order to earn a living. 
 
Genre. 63 
 
 necessary to poets, and painters of landscape or the 
 nude. The inteUigence of the genre-painters places 
 them in an exceptionally easy relation with modern 
 society, which, at least in great cities, is itself intel- 
 ligent, and appreciates the quality in others. To 
 understand human nature well, to be keenly obser- 
 vant, to retain in the memory the marks upon which 
 expression depends, and to paint with fair average 
 dexterity, are the qualifications necessary to these 
 painters. 
 
 It is a great secret of success in their craft to paint 
 costume well, and to know all about it. Modern life 
 they illustrate less frequently than that of the ages of 
 costume : they are fond of the time of Henri IV. and 
 Frangois I., of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. In our 
 own time the costume of women is suitable for art of 
 this kind, but that of men is not; so that when a 
 painter treats contemporary subjects, he is usually 
 careful to exclude the male sex altogether, and the 
 cleverest Belgian (Stevens), and the cleverest French- 
 man (Toulmouche), have won reputation, chiefly by 
 studies of single figures of ladies, very well dressed, 
 and in apartments furnished with good taste. On the 
 other hand, Meissonier, who avoids women so regu- 
 larly that people say he is afraid of them, usually 
 represents men in the costume of the last century. A 
 geni'e-painter who wishes to earn a good income 
 must not be above the careful study of tailoring and 
 millinery, but he may make these studies more inter- 
 
64 Painting in France. 
 
 esting to himself by painting costumes that are no 
 longer commonly seen. In a certain sense the paint- 
 ers of genre, by their strict attention to truth in 
 accessories, have thrown a light upon the life of 
 former ages, and have done more to make us familiar 
 with them than the more pretentious peintres de his- 
 toire. The " historical painters," as they called them- 
 selves, evolved antique life in a great measure out of 
 their own imaginations, but the painters of genre 
 have set it before us with wonderful vividness and 
 truth, so that, although they do not call themselves 
 historical painters, they paint more historically than 
 those who prided themselves upon that title. Even 
 the pictures of modern life which seem to us, what 
 they really are, mere elegant trifles, will in future 
 ages be trifles of remarkable interest, and people will 
 go to Toulmouche and De Jonghe to peep inside a 
 lady's boudoir of this nineteenth century and see the 
 lady there taking off her glove, or putting it oil, or 
 looking at herself in the glass, or ringing the bell, — 
 in short, doing one of those unimportant little actions 
 which afford pretexts for pictures. In this manner 
 painting goes on with one>of its great functions, the 
 illustration of the life of humanity; and the artists 
 who are merely supplying the market with pretty 
 objects of luxury are working for higher purposes 
 than they think. Already genre is beginning to in- 
 clude historical painting very easy and naturally, 
 Meissonier paints the battle of Solferino; G^r6me, 
 
Genre and Classicism. 65 
 
 the reception of Siamese ambassadors at Fontaine- 
 bleau, and the death of Marshal Ney. Contemporary 
 history is best treated by the painters of genre, and 
 no doubt it will be skilfully and abundantly illus- 
 trated by them whenever the male costume becomes 
 suitable for artistic purposes. At present, a gentle- 
 man is not a paintable object, unless he wears knick- 
 erbockers, or a volunteer uniform. 
 
 Genre is technically a rebellion against the classical 
 disci pline in m any ways. First, it pays attention to 
 passing shades of expression which classicism has 
 always disdained; next, it takes note of all sorts of 
 phenomena of light, such as reflected color, which 
 Classicism rigorously refuses ; and again, itdelights in 
 imitating and distinguishing the materials of costume, 
 so^THat you may know at once what kind of silk or 
 satin or muslin has been worn by the model, and 
 Classicism admitted only " drapery " of an abstract 
 kind. This distinction between the spirit of genre 
 painting and that of classicism admits of a brief ex- 
 pression. Classicism rejected the transient, whilst 
 Modernism seizes and records it. 
 
 Another distinction is that genre studies the body 
 less than Classicism did, and the mind more. 
 
 This last is of immense importance, because it 
 makes a step towards harmony with prevalent mod- 
 ern feeling. The classical artists gave their lives to 
 the study of an object which the Christian nations 
 know nothing whatever about, — the human body. 
 
 S 
 
66 Painting in France. 
 
 The only people who study it are artists and medi- 
 cal men. Gentlemen interested in athletic pursuits 
 know something about the development of a few 
 muscles, but of the beauty of the body none but 
 artists are competent to judge, because they are the 
 only people who have opportunities for comparison. 
 Classicism was at home in Greece, because every- 
 body knew and cared about the glory of the perfect 
 frame, and the artists only embodied an ideal which 
 was floating in the minds of all ; but when Classicism 
 attempted to establish itself in the modern nations, it 
 was condemned beforehand to early loss of influence 
 unless it could bring the people round to its own 
 point of view, and make them care to see beautiful 
 bodies, and aspire to become beautiful themselves. 
 If Classicism could have accomplished this it would 
 have rendered a great service, because beauty of the 
 classical kind requires perfect health, and perfect 
 health requires a wise and rational life, without 
 excess in pleasure, or in mental or physical toil. 
 But the tendencies of modern life towards excessive 
 development of special functions, and the difficulty 
 with which people not familiar with the naked figure 
 come to sever the ideas of nudity and immorality, 
 were too strong for classicism to struggle against 
 them permanently, though it gained ground for a 
 time ; and painters, in order to become popular, had 
 to take just as much interest in the body as other 
 people do, — to mind, that is, that the faces of their 
 
Realism Democratic. 67 
 
 women were nice-looking, and that their figures were 
 good enough to carry handsome dresses in a be- 
 coming and fashionable manner. The difference 
 between this and the enthusiasm of the great classical 
 artists for the divine and ideal beauty which the con- 
 stant contemplation of nature had taught them to 
 conceive and strive for, is the difference between a 
 common sentiment and a sublime passion. So far as 
 the study of the human body is concerned, the inva- 
 sion of genre has been the degradation of art ; but it 
 is greatly superior to classicism in the extent of its 
 sympathies and in its understanding of mankind. 
 
 The advent of the most modern forms of art, of 
 fashionable genre-painting, and of the realism which 
 is not fashionable, is traceable, I believe, in a great 
 measure to the constant s pread of democratic ideas. 
 That realism is democratic no one who has seen 
 Courbet's pictures, and read Proudhon's book, can 
 for one moment doubt. That the painting of Toul- 
 mouche and Stevens is democratic, though in quite a 
 different way, may, I think, be proved, though it is 
 not so obvious. The plebeian nature may show it- 
 self in wealth as easily as in poverty; and in culture 
 and intelligence as easily as in ignorance. It is diffi- 
 cult to write upon a subject so delicate as this, with- 
 out enlisting the prejudices and susceptibilities of 
 every reader on one side or the other, especially 
 since the word " plebeian " has acquired a significa- 
 tion of contempt or blame, and " patrician '' associa- 
 
68 Painting in France. 
 
 tions of honor. The reader is requested to detach 
 these associations from both words. By long habit 
 and tradition, an aristocracy acquires certain prefer- 
 ences and ideas, and on the negative side a way of 
 neglecting or despising the ideas which are useless 
 to it. By the necessity of its situation, a democracy 
 acquires certain other preferences and ideas, and an 
 indifference or contempt for those which are useless 
 or injurious to it. There are certain developments 
 of taste which, though exquisite, are plebeian, and 
 these are nowhere more visible than in the pretty 
 Parisian apartments where such painters as Toul- 
 mouche place their well-dressed women. There is 
 nothing incongruous in them, which is as much as to 
 say that there is no trace of the life of former gener- 
 ations, a strikingly plebeian characteristic. Every- 
 thing is very good and expensive, and usually even 
 tasteful, but you see at once that everything has been 
 bought of the upholsterer since M. Hausmann built 
 the new boulevard. 
 
 These painters are sometimes plebeian in another 
 way ; they may have too much intelligence and too 
 little dignity to be in harmony with patrician feeling. 
 The profession of the painter of genre is very closely 
 allied to the theatrical profession. Painting has trans- 
 ferred its services from the church to the theatre, set- 
 ting up a little stage of its own, bounded by the four 
 sides of the picture-frame. The difference between 
 studying a character to act it, and studying the same 
 
Origin of Incident-Pictures. 69 
 
 character in order to paint a figure that shall act it, is 
 not intellectually considerable. 
 
 The way in which a popular incident-picture origi- 
 nates is usually as follows : In the course of his read- 
 ing, which is not often very extensive or original, the 
 painter hits upon some anecdote which is interest- 
 ing as an illustration of some well-known character 
 belonging to the ages of costume. Suppose, for 
 example, that he has been reading Taine's Essay 
 on Racine ; the anecdote about a carp which occurs 
 towards the close of it could scarcely escape his 
 attention : — 
 
 " Un jour, etant invitd chez M. le Due et averti qu'une 
 nombreuse compagnie I'attendait pour diner, il refusa, disant 
 qu'il n'avait point vu depuis huit jours sa femme ni ses 
 enfants, qui comptaient sur lui pour manger une belle carpe. 
 Puis, avec une naivet^ charmante, il montra au messager la 
 carpe, qui coutat environ un ^cu : ' Jugez vous-mSme si je 
 me puis dispenser de diner avec ces pauvres enfants qui ont 
 voulu me r^galer aujourd'hui, et n'auraient plus de plaislr 
 s'ils mangeaient ce plat sans moi. Je vous prie de faire 
 valoir cette raison aupr^s de Son Altesse S^renissime. ' " 
 
 One sees immediately all that a clever painter of 
 genre would make out of such a charmingly char- 
 acteristic little story as this. We should have the 
 great poet with his handsome frank face (Louis XIV. 
 thought it one of the handsomest at his court), hold- 
 ing the glittering fish in both hands, whilst the royal 
 messenger restrains the expression of his amazement 
 
70 Painting in France. 
 
 at the singularity of a man who refuses the invitation 
 of a prince, because he has promised to eat a poor 
 dinner at home with a parcel of children. There 
 would be much to excite the sympathy and interest 
 of all spectators who themselves have any strong 
 development of the parental instinct. Perhaps the 
 young people might be shown in the background ; at 
 any rate we may be sure that no characteristic detail 
 of costume would be neglected by the prudent artist. 
 We should have Racine dressed in a grave and repu- 
 table manner, and the royal messenger in appropriate 
 splendors. The carp would be very carefully imi- 
 tated, in order to win the applause of that large 
 public which supposes imitation to be the aim of 
 art; and through the door of the poet's study, left 
 intentionally ajar, we should have an opportunity of 
 gratifying that disposition to pry into the privacy of 
 celebrated people which is one of the most prevalent, 
 and least respectable of failings. 
 
 In the latest development of genre, the dramatis 
 personce are, however, less intelligent, and less interest- 
 ing than Racine. There appears to be, quite recently, 
 a disposition to neglect that element of intellectual 
 and literary interest which made genre the most 
 amusing of all the forms of pictorial art, and the 
 one which best illustrated human nature. As certain 
 classes of polite society are satisfied with a mere 
 soupqon of wit and information, and consider that 
 they have done their duty to themselves and to each 
 
Mannerisms. 71 
 
 other when they have taken care that their clothes 
 are fashionable and their manners good, so the hero- 
 ines of Toulmouche, and those of a dozen or twenty 
 other artists who follow the track where he has found 
 his gold-mine, are much more distinguished by the 
 excellence of their silks, and the perfection of their 
 upholstery, than by any adornment of the mind. The 
 art of painting splendid sofas, with carefully studied 
 reflections on their shining satin, has become as 
 important as the art of painting expression. The 
 women in these pictures have no brains: they are 
 sometimes pretty ; they always have expensive tastes ; 
 but you never see them doing anything better than 
 lounging, or looking in the glass, or receiving visits 
 from other women as idle and expensive as them- 
 selves. It is precisely the women of this kind, 
 whether they live in marriage or in concubinage, 
 who have given that lamentable direction to the pub- 
 lic opinion of their own class by which it has come 
 to be held a disgrace to them to do anything of any 
 use. They will not work with their hands ; they are 
 too ignorant and incapable for mental labor, and there- 
 fore, in the majority of cases, there is some male slave 
 at work for them, who for his reward may see this 
 luxury (which irritates him), and enjoy such conver- 
 sation as may be carried on with a lady who neither 
 reads nor thinks, nor has ever even acquired that 
 homely wisdom which our equally illiterate grand- 
 mothers gathered in the kitchen and the farm. 
 
72 Painting in France. 
 
 When figure-painting gets down to this, it is plain 
 that it has abandoned its two great objects. First, it 
 set itself to interpret the glory of the body, which 
 was a great thing, and after that it set itself to paint 
 all the brightness of the most brilliant wit and intelli- 
 gence, and all the sweet sympathy of the tenderest 
 hearts. We may rebel against Classicism for its 
 intolerance and for its pride, but we cannot forget 
 the height of its ideal, and its superiority to vulgar 
 interests. We may admit that the painters of intelli- 
 gence failed often on the side of art, but we can never 
 forget their lively humor and their genial interpreta- 
 tion of literature. But when painters turn from the 
 serious study of the naked figure, the only possible 
 foundation for great figure-painting, and no longer 
 care to paint any character worth commemorating, 
 but give their lives to the illustration of beings whose 
 bodies are hidden beneath great skirts and trains of 
 velvet, and whose minds are so imperceptible that 
 they might as well be non-existent, figure-painting 
 becomes nothing more than an assemblage of pretty 
 things. Infinite cleverness may still be lavished upon 
 it; infinite labor and time may be given to the elabo- 
 ration of the costly portraiture of expensive life ; but 
 the art is degraded by its preference of mere furniture 
 to men and women. Jesus asked whether the body 
 was not more than raiment, and these painters answer 
 practically that it is not. As to the soul, they leave 
 that out altogether. 
 
MarchaVs " Pkryne." 73 
 
 A typical instance of a picture of this class was 
 M. Marchal's " Phryne," in the Exhibition of 1868. 
 The picture was one of a pair, the other being " Pen- 
 elope ; " but this other was painted only to give the 
 force of contrast to the first. The Phryne was simply 
 a Parisian lorette of the present day, and the Penelope 
 was a respectable married woman. The pair were 
 sold, I believe, for twelve hundred pounds, and were 
 amongst the most successful pictures of the year. 
 Phryne was very richly dressed in black velvet, and 
 was, on the whole, a type of her class; the face 
 vaguely dissatisfied, and without one ray of intelli- 
 gence, the body ill made and covered with an extrav- 
 agantly voluminous dress. The body, I say, was ill 
 made; it was also indifferently drawn; and, since 
 the mind (though not inadequately interpreted) was 
 evidently both stupid and ill-tempered, it was not 
 worth interpretation. As to the Penelope, she was 
 a commonplace lady (well dressed, of course, though 
 simply), doing what such ladies are accustomed to 
 call "work." 
 
 Now, if the reader will consider with me for a little 
 while all that this Phryne is and is not, he will see 
 what I mean by calling such art " degraded." Sup- 
 pose that some true classic had had to illustrate the 
 subject, he would have given us a severely critical 
 study of the body, selecting the best model he could 
 find (not such a model as this), and refining upon the 
 natural forms. He would have clothed his Phryne 
 
74 Painting in France. 
 
 with no material garment, but he would have clothed 
 her with the ideal ; and we should have had at least 
 this, the best result of antique tradition, and persist- 
 ent study of the life. Or suppose that some modern 
 painter of intelligence, such, for instance, as Leslie, 
 had illustrated this theme, he would have selected his 
 model not for the beauty of her frame, but for that 
 wit and intelligence which have, in some instances, 
 made the influence of these women less degrading. 
 In either case we should have had something human, 
 — a body or a mind ; but M. Marchal has given us 
 only a heavy black velvet dress. All fine art, how- 
 ever, is the product of its age; and if this art is 
 really a just interpretation of modern sentiment, it 
 has a clear right to existence. The inference in that 
 case must be that our civilization is a civilization 
 of material luxury, not of bodily perfection or intel- 
 lectual light. 
 
 There exists, however, in France, independently of 
 the painters of modern luxury, a class of painters of 
 domestic life, who may sometimes be easily con- 
 founded with the others, because, of course, when 
 they paint the richer classes, they have to represent 
 their material accompaniments. The initiated are 
 apt to regard all domestic pictures with some suspi- 
 cion, because it is only too well known amongst 
 artists that when a painter has any difficulty in earn- 
 ing his living, his best chance of a return to prosper- 
 ity lies in affecting appeals to the maternal instincts. 
 
De yonghe. 75 
 
 Children, however, are so very difficult to paint that 
 any considerable success in the domestic line of busi- 
 ness proves something more than a knowledge of 
 what is marketable ; and if an artist manage to do 
 this kind of work without falling into false sentiment, 
 and without losing sight of art, he deserves, of course, 
 just as much consideration as if he painted anything 
 else. For example, De Jonghe's work is of a kind 
 which suits the prevalent tastes so well that it may be 
 painted for the market, but, whether this is so or not, 
 it is quite sincere, and in perfect taste. There is a 
 very charming picture of his, the " Confessional," 
 which proves the yet higher faculty of delicate dra- 
 matic interpretation. Two young ladies are waiting 
 near the confessional till their turn comes, and, as is 
 usual under such circumstances, are occupying their 
 time in prayer. The one nearest the spectator is the 
 subject of the picture; and a sweeter type of un- 
 affected piety does not exist in art. The only thing 
 in literature which equals it, on its own ground, is a 
 stanza in that simplest and tenderest of French songs, 
 " Celle que mon coeur sut aimer," the young lady in 
 that instance being a Protestant : — 
 
 " Au temple pour les malheureux, 
 
 Et pour sa mfere ch^rie, 
 Toujours quand elle prie 
 
 Les pleurs mouillent ses yeux : 
 // fC est pas de prilre 
 Plus pure sur la terre 
 
 Ni mime dans les cieux." 
 
76 Painting in France. 
 
 A subject of quite a different order, "Dressing for 
 the Ball," is given in this volume. This picture owes 
 its great charm to the nice little girl who is just going 
 to be dressed. The slight elevation of the right eye^ 
 brow, so precisely accurate under the circumstances, 
 and so difficult to paint quite rightly, is of itself 
 enough to prove great powers of observation. The 
 reader will probably agree with me in appreciating 
 the good taste shown in the painting of the little 
 girl's mother, who is a very ladylike person indeed. 
 There is taste, too, in the pretty salon where the little 
 scene is placed ; and yet the furniture has not occupied 
 too much of the artist's attention, nor does it intrude 
 upon ours. The secret of that perfect avoidance of 
 vulgarity which marks Gustave de Jonghe's work is a 
 very valuable one to artists, because it enables them 
 to treat the most popular subjects without in the least 
 endangering their own dignity or the dignity of art. 
 Very many painters attempt little scenes of this kind, 
 and fall into the bathos of bourgeois sentiment and 
 Philistinism, — the very conditions of intellect and 
 feeling that are most hostile and dangerous to fine art. 
 That De Jonghe should have been able to illustrate 
 the sentiments of piety* and philo-progenitiveness 
 
 * There is not space to investigate the matter here ; but it is 
 a fact that almost all art which is devoted directly to piety or 
 domestic sentiment is, as art, execrably vulgar and bad. I 
 believe the reason to be that whenever art aims at something 
 outside of itself it comes to nothing. Scientific art is just as bad 
 as religious art. Of course there has been plenty of so-called 
 
De Jonghe. 77 
 
 without incurring the least taint of bourgeois vulgarity 
 is the strongest possible proof of his true artistic 
 refinement and delicate sense of what is worthy of 
 his art. A vulgar artist, being himself a Philistine, 
 paints bourgeois subjects with the insensitiveness of 
 Philistinism; a half-refined one avoids them, dread- 
 ing the least suspicion of a possible sympathy with 
 them ; but a thoroughly refined painter knows that 
 they cannot be vulgar as coming from him, that by a 
 marvellous chemistry of mind no facts in nature can 
 pass through his brain without becoming presentable 
 to the most fastidious. 
 
 "religious art" which is admirable; but the fact is that art was 
 its first object and not piety, the subjects being religious merely 
 because there was a demand for pictures of that kind. 
 
78 Painting in France. 
 
 IV. 
 
 TIMOLEON LOBRICHON has won some repu- 
 tation during the last few years as a painter of 
 children. He began his artistic career with graceful 
 compositions of nude figures, — as, for instance, " Les 
 Vapeurs du Matin," in which the morning mists were 
 represented by nymphs floating in misty air. They 
 were very beautifully grouped, and highly idealized 
 in form ; and the group floated idly, with a lingering 
 indecision, yet an upward tendency, which very truly 
 and poetically interpreted the natural fact. But pic- 
 tures of that kind, though they admit of the most 
 thoroughly artistic treatment, and naturally develop 
 whatever poetical feeling the artist may happen to 
 possess, are not commercially a good investment of 
 his time ; and Lobrlchon has long since abandoned 
 them for the more lucrative study of contemporary 
 childhood. He has acquired, by practice, a clear and 
 simple method of painting, and seems to have a true 
 liking for his subjects and to understand children well. 
 Another subject of childhood given in this volume, 
 "La Mendiante," is by M. Charles Brun, who was 
 formerly a pupil of Picot and Cabanel. My knowl- 
 edge of M. Brun's pictures is not sufficiently exten- 
 
< 
 
 "A 
 o 
 
 o 
 o 
 
Painful Subjects. 79 
 
 sive to permit me to venture on the expression of any 
 general opinion. The one given here was exhibited 
 in the Salon of 1868, and proved much observation 
 and considerable power of rendering expression ; but 
 the picture, though carefully and truly painted, is a 
 very painful one, and it may be doubted whether the 
 power of representing a subject of this kind in a 
 highly finished picture is quite compatible with very 
 delicate sympathies. The question about the treat- 
 ment of painful subjects in literature and art is, how- 
 ever, one of the most difficult in criticism. It may 
 be fairly argued, on the one hand, that to dwell for 
 any length of time upon poverty and suffering in 
 order to make artistic capital out of them is evidence 
 that the artist does not sympathize enough with dis- 
 tress to feel any acute pain in the contemplation of 
 it; but then, on the other hand, it may be argued, 
 just as fairly, that the kind of sensitiveness which 
 shuns the sight of all visible misery is not any evi- 
 dence of mercy, but only proves the selfishness of 
 the nerves. We all know that much distress exists in 
 the world ; if we order it out of our sight, because the 
 idea of it is disagreeable to us, we are not the more 
 merciful on that account. It is probable that the 
 conduct of many of us in this respect is caused by a 
 deficiency of imagination. We have not imagination 
 enough to realize the misery that we do not see, and 
 therefore we are greatly shocked when accident 
 brings us face to face with it. When the imagination 
 
8o Painting in France. 
 
 is powerful enough to realize the actuality of things 
 not familiar to the eyes, the sight of them gives no 
 shock of terror, and does not even surprise us. 
 Everybody knows that there are poor little beggars 
 in the world, and that they must often be very hungry 
 and tired; but most of us give them a penny and 
 forget them as quickly as possible. This particular 
 representative of the class will find her way into 
 drawing-brooms, — thanks to the attractiveness of art, 
 — and may there do some service by reminding the 
 comfortable inmates, that there, are existences in 
 which comfort is unattainable. 
 
 It is better to be brought up in some charitable 
 institution, and to get the benefit of regular discipline 
 and useful employment, than to live on occasional 
 alms extorted by bad performances on the fiddle. 
 Therefore, as to subject, we may more readily sym- 
 pathize with the Benedicit6 of Henriette Browne ; the 
 plain face, the large and simple eyes, and the ex- 
 ceeding simplicity of the dress and attitude, prove 
 how far from the artist's thoughts were the ideas of 
 beauty and of grace. Now, there is a theory, which 
 we ought to miss no opportunity of resisting (and 
 the present is such an opportunity), that the sole 
 province of the art of painting is the beautiful. By 
 its opposition to this theory, realism, in all its forms, 
 has been driven more decidedly towards ugliness 
 than may have been desirable, but the realists are 
 quite right in their opposition to anything like an 
 
THE LITTLE BEGGAR- GIRL. 
 
Henriette Browne. 8 1 
 
 exclusive worship of the beautiful. The province of 
 art includes all visible beauty, but it includes much 
 more. Whatever appeals to our highest and best 
 feelings, is legitimate material for a painter, and Hen- 
 riette Browne has already, on several occasions, en- 
 listed our warm sympathy by subjects from which 
 beauty was either altogether absent, or where it was 
 present only in the not very conspicuous form of a 
 pleasant arrangement of light. In the present sub- 
 ject, simplicity is carried to its extreme even in the 
 lighting and composition, the figure being presented 
 exactly in front, so that the two sides of it are sym- 
 metrically exhibited, whilst both receive the light in 
 precisely the same degree. Henriette Browne has a 
 strong admiration for the brave Sisters of Charity, 
 who devote themselves with so much energy to the 
 alleviation of suffering. No one who, like the author 
 of the present essay, has had frequent opportunities 
 of observing them in their wonderful labors, can re- 
 fuse the honor due to such genuine heroism as theirs. 
 But there is always, unhappily, this reservation to be 
 made, that the Sister of Charity does not work for 
 humanity, but for the Church, which, after all, exten- 
 sive as it is, does not include more than a fraction of 
 the human race. There is, I fear, much bitter secta- 
 rian feeling in the breasts of these most brave and 
 devoted women ; * but notwithstanding this, which 
 
 * I knew a most devoted Sister of Charity in one of the 
 hospitals of Paris, who in a moment of unguarded candor de- 
 
 6 
 
82 Painting in France. 
 
 is perhaps necessary to their efficiency, they are 
 amongst the highest types of heroic doers of 
 good, that the world has ever produced in numbers 
 large enough to form a regular and disciplined body, 
 and their example will remain to the future, when 
 others may emulate their practical service without 
 their sectarian narrowness. Meanwhile, our artists 
 and novelists do well to celebrate these active ser- 
 vants of God, and indeed, ought we not all to take off 
 our hats to theip as they pass on their mission of 
 mercy? 
 
 Sisters of Charity remind me of St. Vincent de 
 Paul, a name that recalls one of the best pictures of 
 Bonnat, which celebrates a very fine action of that 
 most excellent man. One day he visited some con- 
 victs, laboring hard with cannon-balls chained to 
 their ankles, and, observing that one of them seemed 
 exhausted by fatigue, inquired whether a substitute 
 would be accepted. On being answered in the affirm- 
 ative, the saint immediately offered himself, and was 
 
 clared that, as for Protestants, she had no pity for them, and 
 that when they went to hell nobody need be sorry for them. In 
 another town a young friend of mine was ill of typhoid fever (of 
 which he died), and his mother was most anxious to secure the 
 services of two Sisters of Charity as nurses, but as the boy had 
 been bred a Protestant the Sisters were all engaged elsewhere, 
 and could not possibly be spared. On this the mother, who 
 was herself a Catholic, had her boy baptized as a Catholic, and 
 then it was immediately discovered that two Sisters could be 
 spared, and they came to the house, and remained with the boy 
 till he died, and did all they could to save him. 
 
SAYING GRACE. 
 
Bonnat. 83 
 
 chained, and worked that the wearied convict might 
 get rest. Surely there are few deeds on record more 
 worthy of pictorial commemoration ! 
 
 Bonnat is one of the strongest of the younger 
 Frenchmen. His art is frankly based on the Spanish 
 masters, and is open to the objections of some vio- 
 lence in anatomical definition, and too great blackness 
 in shadows. Yet there is more moderation in his 
 smaller pictures in both these respects; and such 
 works as the " Neapolitan Peasants before the Farnese 
 Palace, Rome," or the " Pilgrims at the Feet of the 
 Statue of Saint Peter," are more remarkable for deli- 
 cacy in method than for any obtrusiveness of force. 
 I have a great respect for Bonnat, and great hopes 
 for him. He is already more than an aspirant, he is 
 a master ; and if life and health be spared to him, his 
 future is one of assured success. 
 
 The notice of Bouguereau in " Contemporary 
 French Painters " was so brief that I am anxious to 
 add a paragraph about him here. His manner of 
 painting, so exquisite as to surface and so perfectly 
 accomplished in method, is not so highly esteemed 
 by artists as it is likely to be by the general public. 
 This is a kind of perfection which artists usually 
 regard with distrust, because it seems to aim at finish 
 for its own sake, and not for the sake of the fact or 
 the thought illustrated. There is not, however, a 
 painter living who is more accomplished in his own 
 way ; and Bouguereau has not only much true feeling, 
 
84 Painting in France. 
 
 but often gives evidence of truly artistic taste. As an 
 instance of feeling may be mentioned his picture of 
 a sick child feebly holding a taper before a little altar 
 extemporized in the narrow bed-chamber, the mother 
 earnestly praying for her recovery. The sentiment 
 here is not less pure and admirable than that of the 
 more generally known picture by Henriette Browne, 
 where a poor little sick boy is tended by Sisters of 
 Charity. There was in the Salon of 1 868 a picture 
 of " Sleeping Children," which was very charming, 
 notwithstanding a tour de force of imitative effect in 
 transmitted light, too obviously an appeal to popular 
 wonder. In the same exhibition Bouguereau had a 
 " Pastoral," with nude or semi-nude figures in open 
 landscape, arranged with fine taste, and painted with 
 a kind and degree of finish only too remarkable. 
 
 A finish equal in degree, though rather different in 
 kind, distinguishes the works of Jalabert, especially 
 his portraits. The practical work of such a painter 
 as Jalabert depends greatly on the use of the razor. 
 First, the dead color is laid of about equal thickness 
 throughout, and then scraped down with a very sharp 
 razor till it presents a perfectly smooth and even sur- 
 face ever57where. On this surface, slightly oiled, the 
 artist proceeds to work, this time in thinner color; 
 and after successive scrapings and repaintings the 
 picture arrives finally at a sort of finish remarkable 
 for an extreme equality of surface, which has always 
 a certain charm for the popular mind. And the 
 
AKAIDEN OF THE ABRXJZZI. 
 
yalaberi. 85 
 
 popular mind is right to some extent; for, although 
 roughness of loading would not signify in the least if 
 the picture were always to be seen by a light equally 
 diffused over the whole of its area, it is true, never- 
 theless, that, since pictures are always seen by a light 
 either coming from above or from one side, many of 
 the rough projections of paint will catch lights and 
 project shadows of their own quite independently of 
 the light and shade o-f the picture, and often alto- 
 gether destructive to it. Horace Vernet said, and 
 truly, that light resides in the quality of the tone, and 
 not in the thickness of the pigment; and the love for 
 smoothness of surface which marks Jalabert and some 
 others is perfectly compatible with artistic power, 
 both in color and chiaroscuro, whilst it is more than 
 " compatible " with drawing, being positively favor- 
 able to form. Of Jalabert's works, I like his portraits 
 best, and the single figures which resemble portraits, 
 and are, in fact, portraits of models, more or less 
 idealized. It so often happens in France that when a 
 lady allows her portrait to be exhibited in the Salon 
 she prefers to remain herself anonymous, that there 
 is a difficulty about remembering the picture. For 
 instance, I clearly remember Cabanel's portrait of 
 the Countess of Clermont Tonnerre, exhibited in the 
 Salon of 1863, but I cannot call to mind that of 
 
 Madame L , exhibited by Jalabert in this present 
 
 year, 1868. The figure of a little Italian girl, " Maria 
 Abruzzese," given in this volume, is a favorable speci- 
 
86 Painting in France. 
 
 men of Jalabert ; and, so far as the photograph can 
 render his manner of work, the reader may judge 
 from the delicate painting of the face of the sort of 
 execution the artist gives to a portrait. 
 
 A painter just as accomplished as either Bougue- 
 reau or Jalabert, and therefore, in his way, a perfect 
 master of his craft, is Compte Calix. He essentially 
 belongs to the class of " Peintres Galants," but does 
 not go quite so far as his predecessors in that kind of 
 subject; and thd most cuIi able action of which his 
 heroines may be justly accused is, that they some- 
 times allow themselves to be kissed, or take too curi- 
 ous an interest in that amusement when practised by 
 others. Still, we may be permitted to observe that 
 we have no very absolute confidence in these hand- 
 some and sportive damsels who flutter about under 
 the most rich and graceful foliage in a state of per- 
 petual excitement ; and we have always an idea that 
 their parents must be anxious to get them married 
 and settled. The picture in this book is not exactly 
 of that class: the attitude of the young man is 
 earnest enough, and the expression of the girl serious 
 enough, to entitle them to our respectful sympathy 
 in the difficulties of their present position. If she 
 did not love him, she would not leave him her hand 
 in that way; and if all were quite smooth before 
 them, she would not look so grave. 
 
 Compte Calix paints very freely and lightly, with a 
 luminous quality of touch seldom found in any but 
 
PARTIISTG. 
 
Gusiave Dor'e. 8y 
 
 the most accomplished artists. He is far beyond 
 that tightness of manner and hardness of outline 
 which most young painters have to contend against, 
 and which many older ones do not entirely over- 
 come. His composition is often uncommonly graceful, 
 especially when his backgrounds consist of wooded 
 landscape, and he has an acute perception of the 
 wealth of magnificent foliage. The world he most 
 enjoys is a sort of modern Paradise about some 
 rich man's house, where handsome and well-dressed 
 young women disport under very well-developed trees, 
 Indeed, the world of Corhpte Calix is a prosperous, 
 well-developed world altogether, — a place for people 
 who are very healthy and very merry, and where the 
 trees themselves enjoy long and peaceful summers, 
 and round themselves into great orbs of innumerable 
 leaves. 
 
 The already numerous attempts made by Gustave 
 Dor6 to acquire the reputation of a painter, and 
 especially the exhibition of his pictures at the 
 Egyptian Hall, make some mention of him excus- 
 able here, though his reputation is chiefly founded 
 upon his woodcuts. It is a misfortune inseparable 
 from criticism that if a critic writes very favorably 
 about some artist, although he hedges round his 
 praise with the strictest limitations and reserves, it 
 is believed by the public that his opinion is wholly 
 favorable; and in this way it has been said that I 
 admire Dor6, which is very true; but the rumor 
 
88 Painting in France. 
 
 could not burden itself with certain reservations 
 which I have always made when writing about him, 
 and which are now, perhaps, more than ever neces- 
 sary. Gustave Dor6 is a man of most extraordi- 
 nary endowment ; no artist except Dietrich ever had 
 stronger assimilative power, and besides his immense 
 borrowings from others, he has a great fund of purely 
 original resource. His productiveness has been, as 
 we all know, unexampled and prodigious ; his fecun- 
 dity, in the sense of giving forth fresh ideas, has of 
 course been considerably less so. The same artistic 
 conception is often repeated by him twenty or thirty 
 times under different forms and with different names ; 
 and when the critics found this out, they set up a 
 cry that Dor6 was not really productive, though he 
 seemed so, and a reaction set in against him. But 
 he has as many ideas as most artists have, more 
 than Meissonier, more than G6r6me, many more 
 than some other popular favorites. He has injured 
 himself by working too much in order to make a for- 
 tune, and some thousands of his later designs contain 
 little that is new to us. When an artist or a writer 
 produces too fast, he brings on a certain kind of 
 exhaustion very peculiar in its effects, and which 
 would not be an injury to any routine business, an 
 exhaustion which is not the least hindrance to work, 
 but only to the quality of the work. A writer ex- 
 hausted in this sense goes on writing articles every 
 week with perfect facility; the phrases come quite 
 
Gustave Dore. 89 
 
 easily, and arrange themselves in the neatest and 
 most workmanlike manner, but no fresh ideas are 
 generated. So, in art, a painter or designer can go 
 on covering canvases or wood-blocks long after his 
 mind has ceased to produce new artistic conceptions ; 
 and much of Dord's recent work has been done in 
 this peculiar state of exhaustion. When authors and 
 artists feel this coming on, or awake to the knowledge 
 that they are already in this unfortunate condition, 
 there is only one resource for them, — a change of 
 occupation, or a change of subject which amounts 
 to the same thing. Now, Dor6 has always had an 
 ambition to be a painter, and has rented for years 
 two large studios in Paris, which are crowded with 
 canvases; and although his work in oil has never 
 been much liked by the public, he has found in the 
 doing of it a refreshment after his exhausting labors 
 as a designer on wood. If he could succeed as a 
 painter, it would renovate him and save him. The 
 designer on wood has by this time fully expressed 
 himself, and even repeated himself, the painter not 
 yet. Whether Dord will ever be able to paint thor- 
 oughly well is very doubtful; but if, when in his 
 youth he had just finished the remarkable picture of 
 the " Famille du Saltinibanque," he had made paint- 
 ing his first object, and studied seriously, and resisted 
 the temptation to make fame and money by book- 
 illustration, he might have done something remark- 
 able by this time. Painting, unfortunately, veut son 
 
go Painting in France. 
 
 homme tout entier, will have its man altogether, — all 
 the main current of his thoughts and his ambition, 
 all the best hours of his life. Any sacrifice less than 
 this the Muse of Painting does not accept. A painter, 
 of course, may design occasionally on wood, or etch 
 a few plates, or write upon art ; and we may even go 
 farther than this, and affirm that some occupation 
 wholly outside of art is beneficial to a painter in the 
 refreshment and relaxation of his mind ; but still the 
 Muse will have her daily sacrifice of time, — five or 
 six of the best hours between sunrise and sunset, 
 year after year, from youth upwards. When the 
 sacrifice has been less than this, the Muse looks 
 coldly on her slave; she may grant him a half-gift, 
 but none of her miraculous talismans,* 
 
 I am tempted to add a few observations on the 
 course of criticism with reference to Dor6. For 
 boundless extravagance of laudation I never read 
 anything equal to some French eulogies of him 
 which appeared three or four years ago, and the 
 reaction that has set in against him since is perhaps 
 
 * The best pictures of Dor^ that I have seen are the " Famille 
 du Saltimbanque " and " Le Neophyte." This last picture was 
 exhibited in the Salon of 1868, and represented a young monk 
 seated amongst his brethren, and visibly new to his position. 
 The conception of the subject was strikingly vivid, and the exe- 
 cution vigorous and frank. Many of this artist's landscapes 
 are finely conceived, but these are never executed with sufficient 
 delicacy to be satisfactory. Dord has a true landscape gift, 
 and especially a sense of the sublimity of landscape very rare 
 in France, but his landscape-painting is wanting in refinement. 
 
Repetition. 91 
 
 equally removed from justice. "But Dor6 repeats 
 himself so ! " And pray what famous artist has not 
 repeated himself? Who does not know the three or 
 four moulds in one of which a picture by Landseer 
 is sure to be cast: the stag picture, the heather-and- 
 kilt picture, the horse-and-gentleman picture, the 
 intelligent-dog picture? What artist ever repeated 
 himself more than Claude Lorrain ? * Do we not all 
 know his sun-and-temple picture, his group of trees, 
 and his quiet afternoon? And Cuyp, too, and a host 
 of others, — how steadily they went on year after year 
 painting literally the same picture over and over 
 again with the same materials, the same set of tones, 
 and the same sentiment? But we may go still far- 
 ther, and affirm that Nature, divine and inexhaustible 
 Nature, continually repeats herself also. Almost all 
 lake scenery, viewed from the water, is a repetition 
 of the same composition: a projection of rock or 
 steep stone to the right or the left, crowned with 
 trees, and serving as repoussoir to a mountain in 
 the distance. A trout stream repeats the same pic- 
 
 * We are usually very severe upon foreigners for their de- 
 partures from accuracy in English names, and therefore it is 
 perhaps time that we learned that, since Claude was not a 
 woman, he could not take the final e after the adjective Lor- 
 rain. In every English book he is called Claude Lorraine, a 
 mistake for which we are justly laughed at by the French. It 
 is as absurd as if we were to call Gudin a Parisienne, or Flan- 
 drin a Lyonnaise. The only plausible excuse is that we may 
 be supposed to mean Claude of Lorraine. 
 
92 Painting in France. 
 
 tures over and over again, till the nature of the soil 
 changes, or till it becomes a river, sleepy pool and 
 babbling shallow succeeding each other continually 
 under the same trees, and with shores worn into the 
 same lines and curves. Given the geology and the 
 climate of a region, and any artist accustomed to that 
 formation and that climate knows precisely the sort 
 of stream he will find there, and the three or four 
 pictures that will be repeated along its whole course. 
 And so it is with the backgrounds to figure pictures 
 too. Given, the class and the locality, and you can 
 guess pretty accurately what sort of an interior you 
 will find ; for instance, if the reader is in an English 
 room, the probability is that the window is a guillo- 
 tine, that there is a good deal of cast-iron about the 
 fireplace, that there is a carpet on the floor, a very 
 angular chimney-piece, and that there are six panels 
 in the door. An observant traveller, if transported 
 by some fairy from the interior of any room in 
 France to the interior of any room in England, 
 would know at once by a glance at one of these 
 objects what country he had arrived in. And people 
 are repetitions almost as much as their habitations ; 
 given, the rank, the means, the occupation, and the 
 locality, and you can foretell, in a general way 
 with considerable accuracy, what the subject of your 
 speculation will think, and eat, and buy. Now, since 
 repetition with minor variation is the law of the 
 animate and inanimate universe, it is likely to be the 
 
Otto Weber. 93 
 
 law of artistic production also. And as a matter of 
 fact, easy to demonstrate, we find that artists of all 
 kinds spend their lives in the repetition of a very few 
 original ideas; and that Gustave Dor6 only differs 
 from the artists who have preceded him in this, that 
 he had perhaps twenty ideas to start with, whereas 
 most painters have only ten, or five, or three.* 
 
 In " Contemporary French Painters " I spoke of 
 the English partiality to Rosa Bonheur, and of our 
 consequent injustice to some other Continental paint- 
 ers of the same rank. I mentioned Otto Weber 
 incidentally ; but seeing that he is a Prussian I could 
 not, in a book on French painters, either oflfer a 
 photograph from one of his pictures, or criticise 
 them in detail. The title of the present volume is 
 intentionally somewhat more elastic, and permits me 
 to speak of any artist who lives and paints in France, 
 whether he was born in that country or elsewhere. 
 
 The first picture by Otto Weber that proved his 
 
 claim to high position was exhibited in the Salon of 
 
 1866, and afterwards in Mr. Wallis's exhibition in the 
 
 * Dord is unreliable in all matters belonging to the science 
 of art, his chiaroscuro is very generally false and wrong, and 
 his knowledge of form is little more than elementary. But he 
 is quite an exceptional and peculiar genius, working after his 
 own methods, and getting as much science as he needs, at 
 least for his usual business of book-illustration. When he 
 works on the large scale of his pictures (always dangerously 
 vast) this weakness becomes more evident, and his canvases, 
 in a certain especial sense, are empty, however many figures 
 there may be in them. 
 
94 Painting in France. 
 
 Suffolk Street Gallery. It was entitled " La premiere 
 Neige sur I'Alm (Bavi^re)," and represented Bavarian 
 peasants bringing their cattle down from the moun- 
 tains. The cattle and figures were admirable for 
 perfect freedom of move'ment and truth of design. 
 There is a certain point in animal-painting which is 
 not easily passed, but which is well known to all who 
 have practically attempted that branch of art. You 
 may be able to paint a cow or a horse quite respect- 
 ably in some very common attitude, which the animal 
 can be induced to retain for several minutes at a 
 time, but it does not follow that you are able to put 
 the animal in one of those highly expressive and 
 living postures which do not remain unaltered for 
 one second. To do this you must have some mem- 
 ory and imagination, and a knowledge of the animal 
 ■far surpassing any ordinary accuracy. All the great 
 animal-painters have this power and continually use 
 it, the great amount of life which all recognize in their 
 pictures being mainly due to it. Otto Weber has 
 it in the same degree as Troyon and the Bonheurs, 
 and he has all the other accomplishments necessary 
 to the production of a first-rate cattle picture; his 
 color is delicate and agreeable, though he is not a 
 colorist in the great and peculiar meaning of the 
 word, and his chiaroscuro is fairly good, though he 
 is not in any way remarkable as a master of tonality. 
 His sense of the values of local color as lights and 
 darks is, however, exceptional; the effect of the 
 

 <1 
 
yules Didier. 95 
 
 picture above-mentioned being altogether due to it, 
 and very powerful. His landscape is always excel- 
 lent, and was shown to the greatest advantage in 
 that picture, where the whole country, from the 
 snows on the high mountains to the vegetation in 
 the immediate foreground, was admirably studied 
 and most faithfully rendered. The photograph in 
 this volume is from a picture of Highland cattle just 
 going to pass a ferry; and it will be seen that Otto 
 Weber, in spite of his foreign origin, has entered as 
 completely into the character of our glorious little 
 Highland breed as the best of our native painters. 
 I have seen several other pictures by the same 
 painter, and a few etchings of his, which confirm my 
 favorable opinion, but on the whole consider " La 
 premiere Neige sur I'Alm" his most complete and 
 masterly work. 
 
 Another very respectable cattle-painter is Jules 
 Didier. He was a pupil of L^on Cogniet and Jules 
 Laurens, and gained the Grand Prix de Rome for 
 historical landscape in 1857. This is an honor, how- 
 ever, to which the reader need not attach much 
 weight; and the prizes for historical landscape are 
 now altogether suppressed. What was understood 
 by " paysage historique " was simply an imitation of 
 Claude or Poussin ; and the less the originality of the 
 artist and the smaller his knowledge of nature, the 
 better his chances of success. All constituted acade- 
 mies and schools of art have either neglected land- 
 
96 Painting in France. 
 
 scape-painting altogether, or else enforced the 
 imitation of the so-called " classical " landscape- 
 painters of the seventeenth century ; but it has some- 
 times happened that a young French artist, whilst 
 really possessing that knowledge of the art of land- 
 scape-painting which would have disqualified him for 
 a prize, has prudently suppressed it, or temporarily 
 laid it aside, in order to win a reward which offered 
 him a long and pleasant residence in Rome. This 
 must have been the case with Jules Didier; for it is 
 otherwise inexplicable how so good a painter could 
 have received an honor so dubious. His finest pic- 
 tures have been the result of his residence in Italy, 
 and the long-horned Italian cattle have made him a 
 cattle-painter; so that the " Grand Prix de Paysage 
 Historique" led to something beyond that effete old 
 form of art. The " Bords du Lac Trasim^ne," " La- 
 bourage sur les Ruines d'Ostie," " Une Distraction 
 dans le Piturage, Campagne de Rome," " Pdturage 
 entre Ostie et Castel Fusano," are amongst the best 
 of these cattle-pictures. They are remarkable for 
 great frankness of manner, for a perfect knowledge of 
 the animal represented, and in point of color for an 
 uncommonly fine management of cool grays and deep 
 greens. I may add that Jules Didier's knowledge is 
 by no means confined to bovine animals and land- 
 scape. His " Pr^paratifs de Courses en fitrurie," a 
 picture of charioteers just ready to start for the race, 
 included severe studies of men and horses of a qual- 
 
IHivis de Chavannes. 97 
 
 ity, in point of science, superior to the veiy high 
 average of the contemporary French school. 
 
 When purely decorative painting is exhibited in 
 the Salon or the Royal Academy along with painting 
 that is not of that class, but allows a more frank and 
 striking imitation of nature, it always happens that 
 the more truly decorative the art, the less satisfactory 
 it appears. But when these decorative compositions 
 are seen in the positions for which they were intended, 
 it is surprising how much they gain, and how neces- 
 sary we find it to revise our previous decisions. For 
 example, it is extremely probable that if any reader of 
 this volume happens to be acquainted with the works 
 of Puvis de Chavannes which have been exhibited in 
 the Salons of 1861 and 1863, he has come to conclu- 
 sions not altogether favorable ; he thinks, most likely, 
 that Puvis de Chavannes is very odd and affected, and 
 that the dreamland he lives in is like " Les Limbes " 
 of Casimir Delavigne : — 
 
 Comme un vain rgve du matin 
 Un parfum vague, un bruit lointain 
 C'est ]'e ne sais quoi d'incertain 
 
 Que cat empire 
 Lieux qu'k peine vient ^clairer 
 Un jour qui, sans rien colorer 
 A chaque instant pr^s d'expirer 
 
 Jamais n'expire. 
 
 Partout cette demi-clart^ 
 Dont la morne tranquillity 
 Suit un cr^puscule d'dtd 
 Ou de I'aurore 
 
 7 
 
98 Painting in France. 
 
 Fait pressentir que le retour 
 Va poindre au cdleste s^jour 
 Quand la nuit n'est plus, quand le jour 
 N'est pas encore ! 
 
 Ce del terne, ou manque un soleil, 
 N'est jamais bleu, jamais vermeil ; 
 Jamais brise, dans ce sommeil 
 
 De la nature, 
 N'agita d'un fr^missement 
 La torpeur de ce lac dormant, 
 Dont I'eau n'a point de mouvement 
 
 Point de murmure. 
 
 The truth is that for intensely poetical sentiment 
 few living painters may be compared to Puvis de 
 Chavannes. His art is a poetical abstraction. The 
 region that he paints is not the world, but a painter's 
 dreamland ; and the figures that dwell in it are not 
 men and women, but the phantoms of a powerful yet 
 tranquil imagination. To enjoy works of this kind 
 thoroughly, we must surrender ourselves to them, 
 and live an hour in this world of strange beings, so 
 strong, so stately, so magnificent in irresistible action, 
 so calm in their everlasting rest.* The splendid new 
 museum at Amiens permits this; and in its noble 
 entrance and corridors we may enjoy an art which is 
 thoroughly decorative, perfectly adapted to its espe- 
 
 * There is not space in the text for any special criticism of 
 the works of Puvis de Chavannes, but it maybe added here 
 that their subjects are usually illustrations of some simple 
 theme, such as " Work," " Rest," " War," " Peace," " Sleep," — 
 by means of groups of highly idealized figures the size of life, 
 or larger, in landscape equally idealized. 
 
Le Poittevin. 99 
 
 cial purpose, and which, for these very reasons, looks 
 strange and eccentric when out of its right place. 
 Even the borders round these compositions, broad 
 bands of ultramarine on which are painted a massive 
 chain of flowers, were seen to be indubitably right 
 in their place at Amiens, however doubtful in the 
 Champs filys6es. The dull, dead color of these 
 paintings, that seemed faint and cold beside the var- 
 nish and glare of the salon, revealed at Amiens a 
 consummate knowledge of what in French is called 
 coloration, — a word less strong than couleur, but 
 implying artistic purposes not less serious, nor less 
 difficult of attainment* 
 
 The painter known as Le Poittevin (his real name 
 is Eugene Poidevin) was born in 1806, at Paris, and 
 was a pupil of Hersent. He has studied both land- 
 scape and the figure, having exhibited landscapes and 
 a picture entitled " Les Moisonneurs " so early as 1826 
 and 1827. He has travelled a great deal in England, 
 in France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, etc., and has been 
 a constant contributor to the Salons. His pictures 
 include a variety of subjects, ranging over the three 
 specialties of landscape, genre, and marine, including 
 illustrations of the different countries and people 
 
 * When couleur is attempted, drawing necessarily becomes 
 secondary, as in the works of Delacroix, but coloration is com- 
 patible with the closest attention to form, and implies rather a 
 perfectly harmonious arrangement of tints upon form than the 
 independence of couleur. The tinting of Gibson's " Venus " 
 may have been coloration, but could not possibly be couleur. 
 
100 Painting in France. 
 
 visited in his travels. Le Poittevin is an exceedingly 
 clever painter. There is always a great deal of truth 
 and character in his figures; and his knowledge of 
 landscape and of the sea is equal to that possessed, 
 as a general rule, by professed landscape and marine 
 painters only. Many readers who do not habitually 
 visit the Salon may remember a picture by Le 
 Poittevin at the Universal Exhibition of 1867, lent by 
 the emperor, and entitled " Les Bains de Mer, Plage 
 d'Jfitretat." It is the custom in France for ladies and 
 gentlemen to bathe in full costume, and together; 
 but, though the costume satisfies the requirements of 
 decorum, it does not quite conceal the imperfections 
 of the figure, especially when it gets wet and clings 
 about thin shanks and projecting corporations. No 
 one with any sense of the ridiculous can help being 
 amused when he recognizes fashionable people, who 
 are usually so well helped by dress, in the simple 
 attire of the bather; and although the ladies, with 
 that wonderful instinct that never under any circum- 
 stances deserts them, contrive by the choice of pretty 
 trimmings and nice belts to give a coquettish look to 
 the combination of blouse and short, baggy trousers 
 that constitutes their protection from profane eyes, 
 thus turning defensive armor into a means of attack, 
 still these naiads do occasionally fall short of the 
 classic ideal. It is, however, a happy provision of 
 nature that when people are not admirable they are 
 often amusing; and Parisian ladies and gentlemen, 
 
LIGHTING THE BEACON lAMP. 
 
Aubert. loi 
 
 though less perfect in form than Venus and Apollo, 
 often have the advantage of both those deities in 
 being much more entertaining to spectators gifted 
 with a sense of humor. M. Le Poittevin was such a 
 spectator ; and having, further, the terrible power of 
 setting forth all that he had observed on canvas, he 
 recorded what he had seen so vividly that merely to 
 have looked at his picture is as good as a visit to 
 fitretat itself. Much of this clever observation of 
 character may be traced in the accompanying photo- 
 graph (though here it is much less obvious), which is 
 taken from a picture exhibited in the Salon of 1863, 
 " Les Pr6pos6s a I'Entretien des Phares du Mourdyck, 
 Souvenir de Hollande." In the Salon of 1868 his 
 " Festival au Chiteau " attracted attention by its gen- 
 erally poetical look, and by the good management of 
 various lights. The chateau was seen from outside, 
 from the river; and the contrast between the moon- 
 light and the warm light in the windows and the vari- 
 ously colored lamps on the terrace was rendered with 
 great skill, the lamps being especially brilliant. 
 
 The beautiful picture by Aubert, of which a not 
 inadequate translation in photography serves as a 
 frontispiece to the present volume, is given as an 
 example of the latest phase of Classicism, merging 
 into genre. The figures are perfectly classical in 
 treatment, there is evidence of the closest possible 
 attention to form, and wherever portions of the fig- 
 ures are left unconcealed by drapery they are drawn 
 
102 Painting in France. 
 
 on the strict principles of classical interpretation of 
 the nude. Still, notwithstanding an admirable chas- 
 tity, this is an incident picture, and the incident or 
 situation, however delicately rendered, is of a kind 
 which appeals directly to sensuous feelings. So 
 exquisite is the taste with which the artist has man- 
 aged to convey his idea, that it would not be possible 
 to express it so clearly in written words without com- 
 parativeness coarseness ; an accomplished poet might 
 do it, perhaps, but it is not safe ground for any mere 
 writer of prose. I would ask the reader to give a 
 few minutes to this picture, to observe the remark- 
 able simplicity of the attitudes and the costume, — 
 a simplicity which, in less able hands, would have 
 amounted to awkwardness, but which here is per- 
 fectly graceful — and then to turn at once to the 
 Tissot, the picture of petticoats and parasols. 
 
 A young lady is confessing to another young lady 
 that she is in love with somebody. The place chosen 
 is a convenient one for such revelations, being the 
 margin of a quiet stream, but the costume is scarcely 
 adapted to the place. These voluminous dresses are 
 likely to be caught and torn in the roots of uncivil- 
 ized trees, and those abundant white petticoats (which 
 cost as much in washing as would keep a poor family), 
 will be soiled by earth and stained by berries. I may 
 be excused for talking about the dresses, for nothing 
 in the picture can for one moment contend with them 
 in importance. It is true that there are hands to 
 
THE CONFESSION. 
 
Tissot. 103 
 
 hold the parasols (hands being indispensable for 
 that), and somewhere up in the left-hand corner we 
 finally discover two faces, and then the title of the 
 picture begins to make itself clear to us. 
 
 Now all this curious arrangement shows that we 
 have come to a kind of art directly opposed to the 
 spirit of Classicism. That spirit sought, above all 
 things, simplicity; but in this picture, and in others 
 of its class, simplicity is so far from being the aim 
 of the artist, that he evidently has an opposite pur- 
 pose in view, and arranges these entangled folds of 
 drapery, and sets his figures in this all but impossible 
 attitude (impossible certainly for more than three or 
 four seconds), in order to satisfy some taste or crav- 
 ing in the modern mind which was wholly unknown 
 to the classical one. A taste for intricacy, for quaint- 
 ness, for quantity, suddenly developed itself in Roman- 
 ticism, and may be found in the last of its productions 
 (the " Capitaine Fracasse " of Thdophile Gautier) 
 just as evidently as in its earliest. Romanticism is 
 now dead ; but Modernism, in taking its place, has 
 inherited these predilections ; and as we have writers 
 both in England and France who make a curious 
 intricacy in language a serious artistic aim, so we 
 have painters who seek it to the uttermost in the 
 choice and arrangement of material. Is this an 
 advance upon the taste of Classicism? I believe 
 not ; I believe that the love of simplicity, whenever 
 simplicity is possible, implies altogether a higher 
 
I04 Painting in France. 
 
 condition of the intellect, a severer training, a clearer 
 and more governing reason, a more perfect and better 
 regulated taste. On the other hand, the love of 
 quaintness and intricacy is associated with much that 
 is delightful to us in the Gothic spirit; and though 
 this picture of Tissot's (purposely given as an example 
 of Modernism) shows what we may justly consider a 
 needless or even dangerous excess of it, still there 
 are other pictures by the same artist — especially one 
 or two interiors of quaint old churches with figures 
 at prayer — where it is quite in its right place. 
 
 The most perfect painter of historical incident in 
 France is Pierre Charles Comte. He was born at 
 Lyons about 1815, and studied under Robert Fleury, 
 His art is strictly genre painting, with a strong infu- 
 sion of historical interest, and therefore the " historical 
 painters " of the old school and their admirers look 
 upon Comte as a degraded being ; and if the reader 
 hears him superciliously spoken of as a " mauvais 
 petit peintre," * he need not attribute the calumny to 
 any want of excellence in Comte's work, but simply 
 to the hatred with which a decayed and effete school 
 of art regards its young and vigorous successor. No 
 one has ever possessed the art of giving historical 
 interest to a common incident in a higher degree 
 
 * I remember a conversation amongst several French 
 artists, during which one of them, a distinguished member of 
 the classical school, said, " Un tel meurt de faim, tandisque 
 vous voyez de mauvais petits peintres, tels que Comte, par 
 exemple, qui vendent leurs toiles." 
 
Comte. 105 
 
 than Comte. For example, take the subject of rat- 
 catching. Comte determines to paint a picture of 
 rat-catching, and might easily have found a suitable 
 subject in modern life or in some modern novel. 
 For instance, if he reads English, there is that bit in 
 " Orley Farm " about " a gentleman of great skill in 
 his peculiar line of life, whose usual residence was 
 in the metropolis. Cowcross Street, Smithfield, was 
 the site of this professor's residence, the destruction 
 of rats in a barrel was his profession, and his name 
 was Carroty Bob." Instead of this, Comte goes to 
 Barante's history of the Dukes of Burgundy and 
 finds the following passage : " Dans la derniere annde 
 de sa vie, le roi Louis XI. affaibli par la maladie, 
 pour remplacer la chasse qui avait iii son divertisse- 
 ment favori, imagina de faire prendre les rats du 
 chiteau et de les faire battre avec de petits chiens 
 qu'on dressait k ce gibier." The picture is only a 
 genre picture, so far as it is an illustration of rat- 
 catching; but it is truly an historical picture in this, 
 that it sets before us one of the most remarkable of 
 French sovereigns in the last year of his reign. An 
 historical picture truly it is, a vividly historical pic- 
 ture ; but how contrary in execution to the principles 
 of the old historical school ! For example, the severe 
 old school had a theory that reflections, if admitted, 
 were to be admitted only so far as was necessary for 
 explanation, and yet this picture is altogether illu- 
 minated by reflections; and so striking is the effect 
 
io6 Painting in France. 
 
 of sunshine that it becomes rather doubtful whether, 
 after all, the rat-catching and Louis XI. are not mere 
 pretexts, and whether the real subject of the work is 
 not reflected sunshine. A sunbeam from an unseen 
 window strikes the floor and part of a panelled divi- 
 sion that runs across the room, and the reflections 
 from this in every direction light the whole picture. 
 A man is bending low as he holds the dogs, and the 
 reflection lights his red hose, thence again reverberat- 
 ing, till it illumines the face of a man who is leaning 
 over the wooden partition. The man with the dogs 
 has a comrade in the same duty, whose shadow is 
 visibly cast upwards on the wall from the spot of 
 sunshine. The whole room is lighted from that one 
 bright spot. As a study of expression, the picture 
 ranks high ; the king is eager for his amusement, in 
 a mean, rather timid, but very interested manner; 
 the courtiers are more or less excited or disdainful, 
 a monk very happy to see the sport, one officer of 
 the Scotch guard rather interested, another evidently 
 scorning the whole thing. Throughout, the painting 
 is technically excellent, all textures and surfaces 
 studied to the utmost. I may add that the author 
 of an excellent paper on " Sunshine," in the " Fine 
 Arts Quarterly Review," who preferred to remain 
 anonymous, but who is known to be one of the best 
 authorities on that especial subject, mentioned this 
 picture as a rare and marvellous instance of perfect 
 sunshine in painting. When we consider the pro- 
 
Comte. 107 
 
 digious disadvantages under which a painter works 
 when he attempts a contest with the strong light of 
 nature, a technical triumph of this kind seems little 
 short of the miraculous. 
 
 There is often, in Comte's pictures, a poetical or 
 philosophical sentiment within the apparent subject. 
 In the picture just mentioned, it is evident that the 
 philosophical suggestion or idea is that advancing in- 
 firmity compels us to be contented with lower pleasures. 
 Louis XI. had been passionately fond of the chase, 
 but was brought down to rat-killing by the advance 
 of disease. So in another picture the artist has illus- 
 trated, in his historical way, the profound though 
 usually suppressed emotion with which we revisit the 
 scenes of our early life. A simple genre painter 
 would content himself with presenting to us any old 
 gentleman visiting the house where he had passed 
 his youth ; but Comte, as usual, thinks over the his- 
 torical personages known to him, and fixes upon 
 Charles V. " Charles Quint, apr^s son abdication 
 et avant de se retirer au convent de Saint Just, 
 va revoir le chateau de Gand oii il a ^t6 61ev6." 
 Here we have, then, at once an historical picture, for 
 a great historical personage is set before us ; a cos- 
 tume picture, for the time is an age of costume ; and 
 a philosophical and poetical picture, for it at once 
 awakens profound emotion and reflection on the des- 
 tinies of men. Hardly any of us, however smooth 
 and uneventful the history of our lives, can revisit, 
 
io8 Painting in France. 
 
 unmoved, the place where our career began. This 
 emotion is a better subject for pictorial than for lit- 
 erary treatment J it is difficult, in writing, to say much 
 about feelings of this kind without becoming trivial 
 or maudlin, and a slough of bathos awaits the unwary 
 writer who ventures on them without consummate 
 self-control. But the painter, in a work like this, 
 may set forth some very common and threadbare 
 subject in a novel and attractive form. Here the 
 subject is old and familiar, — the return of completed 
 life to the recollections of youth. The concrete form 
 which gives fresh interest to it consists in the palace 
 at Ghent and the emperor. 
 
 Another emperor, of whom, though still living, we 
 may safely predict the permanent renown, has been 
 fortunate in this : that amongst the multitude of por- 
 traits painted of him, two at least are of first-rate 
 excellence. The portrait of Napoleon III., in a 
 simple court dress, by Cabanel, gives one aspect of 
 the imperial person which may have interest for 
 posterity. The means used by Louis Napoleon for 
 the attainment of his ends were dissimulation and 
 bloodshed; but craft as consummate as his, and 
 cruelty far more odious than his simple determina- 
 tion to clear away all obstacles to his ambition, have 
 in many instances, especially in Italian princes, been 
 perfectly compatible with the most courtly and re- 
 fined manners. Louis Napoleon belongs to the most 
 dangerous of the dangerous classes, that of learned 
 
Cabanel. 109 
 
 and accomplished gentlemen who have no scruples 
 about means. People who know the emperor come 
 from their visits to Compi^gne or the Tuileries con- 
 quered by the charm of his manner. The air of 
 refinement, the courtly and polished look in the por- 
 trait by Cabanel, are quite true to .one side of this 
 remarkable character ; the other half of it no painter 
 could set before us, because it is always hidden. 
 The most perfect portrait, however, that Cabanel 
 ever painted, is probably that of the Countess de 
 Clermont Tonnerre, a lady who by marriage belongs 
 to one of the greatest old families in France, and 
 honors it by her simple dignity. Independently of 
 its value as a mere likeness, it has so much other 
 value as a picture that when it was exhibited, people 
 stopped before it, and were bewitched by it, and felt 
 enthralled by its soft, sweet, womanly grace and per- 
 fect dignity and infinite refinement. This picture is 
 a curious proof of how a great artist can follow a 
 foolish custom, and yet make it wise by the way he 
 does so. Almost every commonplace portrait has a 
 curtain in it. This portrait, not a commonplace one, 
 has also a curtain. But this is a portiire, a curtain 
 before a door, much used in French houses, and the 
 beautiful countess was walking towards it when she 
 paused to look at us. It is of a golden color with 
 armorial bearings worked in it. The background is 
 simply the gray wall of the room, with straight lines 
 painted round the panel, of great use in the compo- 
 
no Painting in France. 
 
 sition. The dress is black velvet, painted carefully 
 and well ; the hands are folded and painted as care- 
 fully as the face, and no doubt just as faithfully; the 
 violet riband round the neck is the most brilliant bit 
 of color admitted. The face is beautiful and interest- 
 ing, with dark hair and eyebrows, and an expression 
 very intelligent and a little sad. And close to this 
 portrait, with its dark and quiet color, close to this 
 clothed lady of modern France, they hung in the 
 Salon of 1863 Cabanel's dazzling Venus lying naked 
 on the sea. She lay in full light on a soft couch of 
 clear sea-water that heaved under her with gleams of 
 tender azure and pale emerald, wherein her long hair 
 half mingled, as if it were a little rippling stream of 
 golden water losing itself in the azure deep. The 
 form was wildly voluptuous, the utmost extremities 
 participating in a kind of rhythmical, musical motion. 
 The soft, sleepy eyes just opened to the light were 
 beaming with latent passion, and there was a half- 
 childish, half-womanly waywardness in the playful 
 tossing of the white arms. The whole figure was 
 colored with a dazzling delicacy. 
 
 This picture, or the "Nymphe enlev^e par un 
 Faune," may be taken as the type of a certain class 
 of Cabanel's works, and the portrait of Madame de 
 Clermont Tonnerre as the type of another class. 
 There remains still a third category, represented by 
 his " Paradise Lost," which was exhibited at the Uni- 
 versal Exhibition of 1867. He can paint a charming 
 
Flandrin. 1 1 1 
 
 portrait of a beautiful woman, or a courtly picture of 
 a gentleman ; he can paint, too, a pretty nymph or 
 Venus, in a charming and only too seductive manner ; 
 but it does not follow that he can paint Adam and 
 Eve in the first overwhelming sense of their ruin, and 
 God Almighty in person coming to condemn them. 
 It is wonderful how easily painters forget that to 
 attempt successfully certain subjects much more is 
 necessary than skilful management of the brush, or 
 mastery over delicate form and color. Cabanel is not 
 Milton, and a subject which might suit Milton exactly 
 is quite unfit for Cabanel. Few living painters may 
 safely attempt these subjects, especially if they have 
 passed their 'lives in Paris, because few believe in 
 them as facts, in the way that Milton believed.* 
 
 The winter of 1829-30 was an especially severe 
 one ; and in a poor little garret of the Rue Mazarine 
 two young painters lived all through it without a fire. 
 One of them got, not easily, a commission to paint 
 the portrait of a gendarme. The price of the portrait 
 was thirty francs, and the gendarme came to the little 
 garret to be painted ; but the ceiling was so low that 
 he could not stand erect, so he had to sit on one of 
 the two chairs that the garret contained. As there 
 
 • It may still be a question, however, whether belief in the 
 historical truth of a tradition or legend is necessary to the per- 
 fect artistic illustration of it. Thorwaldsen was once asked 
 how he, who did not believe in Christianity, carved his colossal 
 apostles. " Neither do I believe in the gods of the Greeks," 
 was his answer, " and yet I make statues of them." 
 
112 Painting in France. 
 
 was no easel, the other chair had to do duty for one, 
 and the painter had to sit upon a wooden box that 
 constituted his wardrobe. The gendarme sat till he 
 was nearly frozen, and the painter painted till his 
 hand was numb. The portrait was a success; and 
 the delighted original munificently gave the painter 
 five francs more than the price agreed upon, and 
 commissioned him to paint his wife. 
 
 Some years later the same painter made another 
 portrait, also of a man in uniform; but this one, 
 instead of the yellow baudrier of the gendarme, wore 
 the grand cordon of the Legion of Honor, and was, 
 in fact, the sovereign of the order and heir of the 
 emperor who founded it. It is probable that this time 
 the model was comfortably warm, and that the artist 
 had an easel, — the model certainly stood up. 
 
 Whatever may have been the qualities of the first 
 portrait, which excited much enthusiasm at the bar- 
 racks, the later one took its place at once as one of 
 the few indisputable masterpieces of this century. In 
 an age when portrait-painting is certainly not great 
 as art, however prosperous it may be as a trade or 
 profession, there have been a few notable portraits, 
 and not one more notable than this. As a likeness, 
 it went far beyond the point of mere imitative resem- 
 blance, and set before us the aspect of the man, — 
 the wonderful mildness and gentleness of a nature 
 which without being bloodthirsty shrinks from no 
 shedding of blood, the calm exterior of the most 
 
Flandrin. 113 
 
 accomplished dissimulator alive. A quiet gentleman, 
 reserved, it is true, yet apparently as frank as is con- 
 sistent with his dignity, willing to take part in amus- 
 ing little games after dinner, entrapped lately by one 
 of his guests into committing himself by some bad 
 spelling, and convicted of his faults, always able to 
 control the expression of his anger, and when the 
 occasion is serious to postpone indefinitely his ven- 
 geance till the best opportunity comes; a military 
 chief, who, if not great in sudden resolves on the 
 battle-field, is unquestionably great in preparing 
 beforehand for the wants of an army and the emer- 
 gencies of a campaign ; a politician, who when foiled, 
 which he is not often, bears his reverses patiently, and 
 bides his time, — such was the man whom Flandrin 
 had to paint. And the painter came to his task in 
 the full maturity of his powers, a master of his art, of 
 all the various accomplishments which go to form a 
 painter, and which have to be acquired separately or 
 successively, working now together in harmonious 
 synthesis. I greatly regret that the limits of this 
 essay do not permit me to speak of Flandrin as a 
 religious painter.* Of his portraits, the finest, after 
 
 * Readers who are not acquainted with the religious works 
 of Flandrin ought to visit the old and curious, and now splendid 
 church of St. Germain-des-Prfes, which is full of his mural 
 paintings, both in the choir and nave. In the nave of St. 
 Vincent de Paul there is also a splendid frieze by Flandrin. 
 At Nismes the traveller will find the church of St. Paul, deco- 
 rated by Flandrin, and at Lyons the church of St. Martin 
 
 S 
 
114 Painting in France. 
 
 that of the emperor, is the portrait of Prince Napo- 
 leon, a thoroughly characteristic picture. Others, 
 of Count Walewski and MM. Marcotte Genlis and 
 Rothschild, were exhibited only in the artist's studio, 
 where they were seen by many visitors, and excited 
 great enthusiasm. 
 
 One of the most recent of French art reputations 
 is that of Gustave Moreau, an artist who, being at the 
 same time laudably ambitious and of independent 
 fortune, has devoted himself to high aims, and suc- 
 ceeded in producing two or three pictures of first-rate 
 excellence in their way. His art is based more upon 
 the study of such masters as Mantegna than any 
 more recent ones ; and no picture leaves his hands 
 that is not long meditated and brought to the highest 
 executive perfection attainable by the master. There 
 are two kinds of art, which in this matter of produc- 
 tion stand at the two ends of the scale: we have 
 artists who try for the power of rapid and compre- 
 hensive work, which by happy selection and emphasis 
 may be completed whilst the impression is still vivid, 
 and this kind of art (of which the great etchers are 
 always accomplished masters) has the quality of 
 
 d'Ainay, also decorated by him. Flandrin was a religious man, 
 and took the greatest delight in labors of this kind. No 
 painting is more magnificent than his, as decoration; it is as 
 decorative as Byzantine work, and more learned. For further 
 information on this subject the reader is referred to the first 
 and second numbers of the new series of the "Fine Arts 
 Quarterly Review." 
 
Desgoffe. 115 
 
 freshness for its principal aim, and succeeds or fails 
 in proportion to the vigor and precision of its first 
 hit ; and there are also artists who naturally elaborate 
 their conceptions very slowly, laboriously purifying 
 and refining them, till after months or even years of 
 meditation and study the finished picture has been 
 completed, as oysters make pearls. Moreau belongs 
 to the latter class, and is a very worthy example of 
 the kind of devotion to art which such labors demand. 
 His "OEdipus and the Sphinx," "Young Man and 
 Death," and " Orpheus " are all, in their own peculiar 
 way, highly wrought and deeply meditated works of 
 art. This is an instance of that complete disdain of 
 popular applause which all artists who can afford it 
 ought to cherish as their best safeguard. Though 
 working on principles very different from those of 
 Courbet, Moreau is equally sincere, and more purely 
 artistic in his aspirations. 
 
 One of Flandrin's pupils, Blaise Desgoffe, has this 
 claim to attention, that he is the most skilful imitator 
 of near objects now alive in the world. Of course, 
 such art as his does not admit of invention, and the 
 highest artistic qualities, except the sense of color, 
 are almost uncalled for here ; but there is a notable 
 difference between Desgoffe's choice of subject and 
 that of vulgar painters of still life. Instead of imitat- 
 ing twopenny beer-bottles, he copies fine vases of 
 crystal and rare old enamels ; instead of representing 
 kitchen utensils, he reproduces the most precious 
 
ii6 Painting in France. 
 
 ivories and agates in the Louvre. His art is therefore 
 noble in its way, being the best use of a sort of talent 
 hitherto often thrown away upon work unworthy of 
 it. Desgoffe's pictures are precious copies of precious 
 things. As to their finish, it goes even beyond our 
 most perfect pre-Raphaelite work. As in all first-rate 
 painting, there is no parade of detail, and a careless 
 spectator might easily pass these pictures without 
 suspecting that there was any extraordinary amount 
 of it in them ; but after studying them for half an 
 hour, one's astonishment grows and grows. Every 
 vein in every agate is studied to the finest of its 
 curves, every surface imitated to the most accurate 
 expression of the exact degree of its convexity, every 
 reflection painted in its full detail. Take a single 
 instance : the principal object in one of his pictures 
 is a splendid vase of rock-crystal, of the fourteenth 
 century; on several of its facets is the reflection of 
 an unseen window. Landseer would have represented 
 those with spots of pure white, Millais with spots of 
 pale gray, with a touch of white for the highest light, 
 the largest of them shaped to a rough expression of 
 the window reflected, the others without form. But 
 Desgoff"e paints every one of them thoroughly, the 
 panes of glass in the window being quite perfectly 
 reflected in the curving surface of the crystal over 
 and over again, with all the modifications resulting 
 from change of place. There is not the slightest 
 attempt in any part of these works to substitute clever 
 
Desgoffe. 1 1 7 
 
 manipulation for fair study and imitation. Without 
 anything of what painters call texture in the paint 
 itself, which is perfectly smooth, there is a repre- 
 sentation of texture in the objects, obtained, as in 
 photography, by fair finish ; * so that all substances 
 — crystal, enamel, agate, ivory, embroidery, metal, 
 and wood — seem simply real. Even Holland her- 
 self never produced so marvellous an imitator. 
 
 * For example, most painters, in painting a rough-cast wall, 
 would plaster the canvas with rough paint ; photography would 
 get the texture of it by giving every minute projection with the 
 light on it and the shadow cast by it. And that is the way 
 Desgofie imitates embroidery. 
 
ii8 Painting in France. 
 
 AS it is necessary to reserve a page or two for 
 landscape, my notice of some figure-painters 
 not yet mentioned in these essays must be briefer 
 than I could have wished. There is Landelle, for 
 instance, who deserves a longer notice than this 
 simple statement that he is one of the most accom- 
 plished painters of the school ; but I count upon the 
 excellent photograph from his " Femme Fellah " to 
 do him better justice than may be done in a para- 
 graph like this. Three other Oriental pictures by him 
 were exhibited in the Universal Exhibition of 1867, 
 proving equal skill and more vivacity.* Boichard is 
 one of the most surprisingly skilful of the painters of 
 modern hfe; such works as his "Gold Fish" and 
 " Game of Jonchets " are quite remarkable for imita- 
 tive excellence, — the screen in the latter picture, a 
 Japanese design in gold upon a black ground, was 
 one of the marvels of the Salon of 1868, the gilding 
 on the screen, though close to the real gilding of the 
 
 * I. " Enfant d'Aisaoui, charmeur de serpents (Tanger)"; 
 2. " Prison de Tanger — le Pain " ; 3. " Prison de Tanger — 
 I'Eau." 
 
FELLAH WOMAN": 
 
yanet-Lange. 1 1 9 
 
 frame of the picture, was perfectly deceptive, though 
 not a particle of gold-leaf was used, and it was all 
 pure painting of metallic lustre and reflection. In 
 the picture of " Gold Fish," which was exhibited in 
 England, a lady and child were in a handsome 
 Parisian room, watching some gold fish. Nothing 
 could be more exquisite than the painting of every- 
 thing in the elegant little salon. 
 
 It would have been no more than fair, too, to give 
 a full page to Janet-Lange, a pupil of Horace Vernet, 
 who has painted several touching pictures of military 
 life. Two of the most affecting were exhibited in 
 the Salon of 1866, " Allant 4 1' Ambulance" and "Le 
 Dernier Ami." The second of these will be at once 
 understood from the accompanying photograph, and 
 needs no comment. In the first an oflScer has dis- 
 mounted and is leading his horse, on which he has 
 placed two wounded men; a third, who is able to 
 walk, but has been blinded by a wound and has a 
 bandage over his eyes as well as one arm in a sling, 
 is holding by the remaining hand to the mane of the 
 horse for guidance. The weather is very wet and 
 miserable, and we see sufferers dimly through the 
 rain. The picture is touching in many ways, — the 
 scene is so dreary, the soldiers so patient; and then 
 the kindness of the officer pleases us. 
 
 Amongst other sins of omission in these essays, 
 has been the considerable name of Plassan, a true 
 artist, uncommonly refined in method, though his 
 
I20 Painting in France. 
 
 subjects are not always very interesting. He is, 
 however, sufficiently well known in England to need 
 no recommendation here. Duverger, too, is begin- 
 ning to be known in England, where his reputation 
 as a highly skilful and observant painter of genre is 
 likely to prosper and increase, I like his cottage 
 interiors best; they are admirably painted, and the 
 figures are full of character. Two of the most per- 
 fect pictures of this class, his "Repentant Daughter" 
 and " Sick Child," have been exhibited in London. 
 
 In the selection of illustrations for books of this 
 kind, genre is sure to predominate, to the all but 
 total exclusion of the severest figure-painting and 
 landscape. I said in the beginning of this essay 
 that in a certain sense the public painted the works 
 of its favorite artists; and in the same sense, it is 
 the public that selects illustrations for books of this 
 kind. The cultivated reader will easily understand 
 how much I regret that there is not one serious study 
 of the nude, and that there are only two studies of 
 landscape, in all the thirty photographs that accom- 
 pany these Essays on French Art. The only art 
 that is thoroughly popular is genre ; and genre is not 
 popular for its artistic interest, but for its human 
 interest. But of genre enough has been said, and 
 more than enough photographed, and surely we may 
 be permitted to give two pages of print and one pho- 
 tograph to the great French school of landscape. 
 
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Landscape-Painting. 1 2 1 
 
 A great school it is, assuredly, so far as the temper 
 of it may constitute greatness. It is not so great in 
 the range of its achievement, hitherto very limited; 
 but when the right artistic temper exists in any school, 
 it is always likely to extend its efforts in time, and to 
 increase its range. The French landscape-painters 
 have not hitherto studied mountains seriously; and 
 this implies that they have not studied the more 
 remarkable phenomena of the sky, which are only to 
 be seen amongst mountains. But they have based the 
 studies of the school upon the picturesque scenery of 
 France ; and France, though despised by tourists, is 
 exceedingly rich in artistic material and suggestion. 
 Her rivers are inexhaustible, and her ancient cities, 
 though greatly impoverished (from the artistic point 
 of view) by the advance of modern improvement, 
 are still true ornaments of nature, as man's works 
 ought to be, not eye-sores as they too often are. 
 But the broad rivers and towered cities are familiar 
 to the English tourist; the districts not familiar to 
 him, such, for instance, as the Morvan, with its hun- 
 dred little valleys and innumerable streams and pic- 
 turesque villages and castles and rocks and boundless 
 forests, are every year more and more explored by 
 the French landscape-painter. 
 
 What seems admirable in the spirit of the best 
 French landscape-painters is their absence of pre- 
 tension, and also their simplicity of purpose. They 
 aim at a purely artistic impression, without troubling 
 
122 Painting in France. 
 
 themselves in any way about scientific delineation, or 
 the interest of the subject, as a natural curiosity or 
 phenomenon. In this respect they are nearer to 
 the high artistic spirit than any other contemporary 
 school of landscape, though there are individual 
 painters in other schools who have this spirit also. 
 The best artistic motives are nearly always destitute 
 of interest for minds not artistically cultivated ; and 
 the natural marvels or curiosities which the bourgeois 
 travels far to see are likely, in the majority of in- 
 stances, to be less suggestive to a true painter than 
 some combination of very common material that he 
 discovers for himself, and which, assuredly, no other 
 human being could discover for him. I remember a 
 tourist who, being asked whether he admired a cer- 
 tain very lovely valley in England, answered con- 
 temptuously that he had seen Switzerland. Now the 
 spirit which dictated this reply was the very opposite 
 of the spirit which lives in the French landscape- 
 painters. Many of them have also " seen Switzer- 
 land ; " but Switzerland does not annihilate their 
 artistic faculties, does not incapacitate them for the 
 appreciation of grandeur and beauty in humbler 
 scenery; and it may be observed that when the 
 artistic faculties are so weak that there is any danger 
 of this, they ought not to be exposed to the risk of it. 
 French landscape-painting is so essentially syn- 
 thetic, aims so much at perfect unity of impression, 
 that it fails often in detail, and seems careless or 
 
Landscape-Painting. 123 
 
 ignorant in design. But on this point there exist 
 differences of opinion. When a true artist finds that 
 he cannot give really good form without injuring his 
 effect, he is quite frank about it, and gives form that 
 has no pretensions to be good. He can do this if his 
 public is highly educated; but if the public is half 
 educated, he must put specious form into his picture 
 to please it, and deceive it into the belief that there 
 is real drawing in the work. You cannot deceive a 
 true critic in this way, and it is of no use trying; 
 but, on the other hand, the true critic does not wish 
 you to take the trouble, being perfectly satisfied with 
 such an amount of form as, in your case, may be 
 compatible with your other qualities. Now, Daubigny 
 has little form, and Corot has still less ; but they both 
 of them draw quite as well as many an English land- 
 scape-painter who is never accused of being ignorant 
 of drawing. I do not choose to mention names, but 
 for thorough ignorance of landscape form some of 
 our popular English landscape-painters may contend 
 with those of France, or of any other country. On 
 the other hand, one or two of our best men (David 
 Cox, for instance) are just as frank in the absence of 
 pretension to form as those honest men across the 
 Channel. 
 
 I have not space here for any adequate analysis of 
 the work of individual landscape-painters, and dare 
 not commit myself to any brief criticism, because it 
 is not possible, in a few words, to express opinions 
 
124 Painting in France. 
 
 that are necessarily complicated by all sorts of artistic 
 considerations. It is the misfortune of all writing 
 upon art that in this kind of literature brevity is neither 
 compatible with truth nor with the pleasure of the 
 reader. Before an opinion about any artist can be 
 valuable, it must be hedged round with many re- 
 serves; and for so thorough an analysis to be read- 
 able, additional space must be allowed for the mere 
 craft of authorship, space for transition and illustra- 
 tion, and room for each paragraph to come happily 
 to its natural close. 
 
 In the course of this volume I have said little in 
 favor of the influence exercised by popular opinion 
 upon art, and by popular interest in it. This influ- 
 ence is, no doubt, in a great degree injurious; but 
 something remains to be said on the other side with 
 which this essay may conclude. 
 
 The public is more interested in art than formerly, 
 or at least more willing to seek amusement in it. An 
 art which is generally interesting, like a literature 
 which has something for all classes of readers, is 
 continually educating its admirers, and preparing 
 them for better things; but an art and a literature 
 addressed only to the few would train no recruits, 
 and would benefit only the instructed, producing 
 outside of their little circle no better result than a 
 hollow pretence of connoisseurship, or a slavish 
 superstition about "rules." Painting, no doubt, 
 often addresses itself to an uncultivated public ; but 
 
Influence of Popular Opinion. 125 
 
 so docs literature too, and, on the whole, with good 
 results. The impression that modern art is frivolous 
 may be due in some measure to the necessities of 
 periodical publication. In literature the larger part 
 of what is produced consists in the hasty comment of 
 the journalist, and the loose narrative of the ordinary 
 writer of fiction ; and if all the literary productions of 
 France had to be published annually in the " Palais 
 de rindustrie," as all her pictures have, how im- 
 mensely the lighter and more careless kind of writing 
 would predominate, and how difficult it would be for 
 the critic to resist the impression of a universal fri- 
 volity, and to find out and appreciate the few literary 
 performances which combine finished workmanship 
 with deep or accurate thought ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
THE WRITINGS OF 
 
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