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 Painting in France, after the decline of 
 
 3 1924 008 752 556 
 
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PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
THE FLOWER. 
 
 AUBERT. 
 
PAINTING IN FRANCE 
 
 AFTER THE DECLINE OF CLASSICISM. 
 
 %n dBssaji 
 
 BY 
 
 PHILIP GILBERT I|AMERTON, 
 
 AUTHOB OF ' CONTEMPOHABY FRENCH TAINTEJiS,' 
 ' ETOmNG AND ETCHEBd,' ETL . 
 
 WITH POUETBEN PHOTOGRAPHIC ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 8EELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54 FLEET STREET. 
 LONDON, MDC(JCLXIX. 
 

 LIBRAR:/ 
 
CHARLES PHILIBERT MARILLER. 
 
 Dans toutes nos bonnes et longues causeries nous avons parle 
 votre langue, et il ne me semblerait pas naturel de vous dedier 
 ce livre en la mienne. Pendant les annees laborieuses et solitaires 
 que j'ai passdes en province, j'aurais ^te compl^tement isole du 
 monde artistique sans votre voisinage et votre amiti^. Maintenant 
 que votre atelier est ferm^, et qiie vous etes loin de nous, je sens 
 combien j'ai perdu, et je vous offire ce volume en souvenir de 
 relations qui ont dte pour moi aussi charmantes que profitables, et 
 que je voudrais pouvoir renouveler. 
 
 Pe6 Chaemoy, Autdn, 
 
 ler JuiUet, 1868. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The classical discipline, having been vigorously resisted by Romanticism, 
 was no longer able to maintain 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 
 contemporary French criticism has assigned the barbarous neologism, 
 ' Modernite.' In very many respects the history of art resembles the history 
 of religion. Wlien a discipline is universally accepted, or has a sufficient 
 number of adherents to prevent the expression of other opinions, it acquires 
 in the coiu-se 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 gviilty of open rebellion. There 
 is a close parallel between the history of Classicism and that of the Catholic 
 Church. Romanticism, Reahsm, and Modernism are all Protestant ; or, 
 perhaps, a more accurate statement of the case would be this — Romanticism 
 and Realism were Protestant, but Modernism 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 complamts and 
 many an anathema — the position of one of the art religions instead of the 
 art religion ; and it may maintain this kind of existence for a long time to 
 
VUl PRErACE. 
 
 come, sliom of all aiithority to punisli heterodoxy, and compelled to see 
 heterodoxy lifting its many heads in bold independence, yet stiU 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 appreciate the services of 
 Classicism at their precise value. One thing in favour of it is, however, 
 perfectly clear ; we can all see that it was a true discipline, that it had 
 definite purposes in cidture, and trained men to these ends with elaborate 
 care, and made them study patiently and long, comprehending perfectly the 
 uses of cultiu-e, and willingly giving the long years and the painful labours 
 that it needed. But it is not so clear that the rebellious or independent 
 forms of art have the character of discipline to anytliing like the same 
 degree ; and in French art education, as Classicism has been weakened, 
 disciphne has been relaxed. Another great vii'tue in Classicism was its high- 
 minded contempt for the opinion of the uneducated. In hteratiu-e it 
 effectually excluded the vidgar by adopting two languages never used by 
 them, and which could not be mastered without the labour 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 illustratmg matters of 
 every-day interest, and by a severity of aspect supported by evident erudition ; 
 and the consequence 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 m opposition to culture than an English landowner of the 
 present day thinks of following 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 aU that he can be 
 made to know, or requhed to feel ; but, if you give him an English book, 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 or a picture of modern life, he has no hesitation about writing 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 authority 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 advantage that he could always easily ascertain what was 
 required of him, and knew that his obedience wordd be rewarded by unfailing 
 encoiu-agement, and his excellence, if he attained it, by honour that was 
 never withheld. It is not so clear what the modern pubHc wants, or will 
 reward ; and many artists labour now in the dai'kness of a grievous per- 
 plexity. 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 hkely 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 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 ; 
 whereas 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 that 
 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 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 was spent long ago, and is now seen to have been a mere temporary enthu- 
 siasm, useful as a solvent of Classicism. Even Realism is dead also, or at 
 least gains no new supporters ; and the influence of Ruskin, which at one 
 time promised to become dominant in the English school, has ceased even 
 to be perceptible. But although no artistic 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 heterogeneous 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 of society, let us at least hope 
 that it will seldom fall beneath them. The goal towards which popular 
 encoiu-agement 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 carefid 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 con- 
 tempt 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 helieve 
 her to be both good and wise. And even, setting 
 affection 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, with- 
 out in the least troubling ourselves about either 
 the approbation of the uneducated, or their 
 blame. 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 THE FLOWER 
 
 DEER AT THE RIVER 
 
 DRESSING FOR THE BALL 
 
 ONCE UPON A TIME 
 
 THE LITTLE BEGGAR GIRL 
 
 SAYING GRACE 
 
 A MAIDEN OF THE ABRUZZI 
 
 PARTING 
 
 A HIGHLAND FERRY 
 
 LIGHTING THE BEACON LAMP . 
 
 THE CONFESSION . 
 
 FELLAH WOMAN . 
 
 THE LAST FRIEND 
 
 STUDY OF TREES . 
 
 Atjbert . Frontispiece. 
 
 COURBET . . . 12 
 
 De Jonghe . . 36 
 
 lobrichon ... 38 
 
 Beun . . 40 
 
 Henriette Browne . 42 
 
 Jalabert . . 44 
 
 Compte-Calix . 46 
 
 Otto Webee 48 
 
 Le Poittbvin , 52 
 
 TiSSOT . . 54 
 
 Landelle ... 62 
 
 Janet Lange . . 64 
 
 COROT ... 66 
 
PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 All men who follow some pursuit which has not money for its first object, work 
 so far at a disadvantage 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 consideration, from which 
 there is no deUverance, except by some degTce of concession and obedience. 
 To be devoted with your whole soul to one religion, and to have another rehgion 
 perpetually pestering you. with claims that it is mighty enough to enforce by 
 the utmost extremities of moral and physical tortiure, 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 luxiuy and consideration, and it gives 
 them what is better than any inherited splendour, the inward sense of victory, 
 and pride in a visible and indisputable success. If they fail and sufier, they 
 take the chastisement at the hand of their own master, of the master they have 
 always looked to as the natural 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, then conviction 
 that whoever loses that light and heat can have no other source of content- 
 ment, 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 hatefid private necessity. The 
 
 B 
 
PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 earning of it is not the object of life with them, but an interference and an 
 interraption. The consideration of saleableness in works of hterature and art, 
 and of pecuniary returns for scientific investigations, are, so far as intellectual 
 views extend, altogether irrelevant. The men who give their lives to great 
 intellectual pursuits, would be turned aside from theu chosen paths by the 
 search for material values. The vow of voluntary poverty which many early 
 Christians took upon themselves for the better attamment of their ideal life, 
 and which to this day is perpetuated in the time-honoured customs of the 
 Continental churches, is an example of the long 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 makmg it uresponsible. When a banker or speculator, some 
 Eothschild 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 certain inteUigible sense it is these bankers, 
 and other rich men, who paint the pictures. They do not mix the colours and 
 apply them with their own hands ; nor do they even, except in the case of 
 works directly commissioned by them, ofi*er any suggestions as to the choice of 
 subject and manner of execution ; but still, since the great majority of pictures 
 are painted to suit what are perfectly well known to be theu- tastes, it may be 
 truly said that the artists aim rather at the realisation of what the rich man 
 likes than what they themselves care for. Enormous quantities of pictui'es 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 superfluities. And the evil of it is, that unless a picture 
 is painted in this way, with the most careful attention to the points which 
 happen just now to make a work saleable, 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 saleable 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 
 
WOEKING FOR THE MARKET. 3 
 
 this kind : — He begins, if lie 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 diflicidt to live by his profession, as hitherto 
 pursued, and asks the advice of some successful artist or dealer, who teUs him 
 that if he wants to earn money he must abandon these aims of his and 
 endeavour to adapt himself to the tastes which for the time being are prevalent 
 amongst buyers. The next step is an enquiry into the nature of these tastes, 
 and if the painter is intelligent enough to enter easily into views which difier 
 veiy 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 usually quite incapable of analysing or explaining their own 
 feelings about art, and there are the most astonishingly subtle impediments to 
 the sale of pictures of which nobody would ever dream who had not studied 
 the matter very closely, and of which the bviyers themselves are as ignorant as 
 the very simplest of artists. But even if the artist has not accomplished the 
 very diflicult feat of fathoming the pubhc mind, it is enough for our present 
 argument that he should have applied Ms thoughts to it, because reflections 
 on the tendencies of pubhc taste are usvially followed by more or less successful 
 attempts to conform to it, and whether these attempts are successful 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 realise the ideal of some- 
 body 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 wUl catch the buyer rather than of what 
 might satisfy himself, there is not one atom of paint on the canvass which is 
 
4 PAINTING IN FEANCE. 
 
 laid there exactly as he would have it if he had no public to consult. Iii other 
 resjoects, perhaps, the change of masters will not have been very onerous. The 
 public may be an exacting master, but every true artist is far more dissatisfied 
 mth his own work, when he attempts to realise his own aspirations, than the 
 most critical pubhc is likely to be when he reaUy makes an endeavour 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 fidfil the little observances that the world requii'es, the 
 decent outward behaviour, the moderate taxes of charity, the regular attend- 
 ance at church ; but it is not so easy, if we have any moral ideal, to rise to 
 the height of it, and live there, clay after day, and year by year. Now these 
 artists, who have abandoned their own ideal in conformity with the requhe- 
 ments of the market, are leaving a hard master for an easy one ; they have been 
 starving on the tops of pillars, Hke St. Simeon Stylites, and now they have 
 come down from their pillars and may live their little day hke everybody else, 
 jDrosperous craftsmen, working to order, and carefully attenduig to the exigen- 
 cies of the modi', like fashionable tailors and bootmakers. 
 
 This comparison may seem exaggerated, but it is quite literally applicable. 
 One of the most successful of modern painters of gem-e owes his fame in a great 
 measure to the excellence of his millinery, in which he is greatly helped by his 
 ^\^fe, who kuidlj consents to dress in the most expensive and fashionable 
 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 success is due to the dresses, and to the 
 lady whose good taste chooses them for her own wearmg. Can we severely 
 blame an artist and his wife, who by a little harmless plotting about millmery, 
 contrive to live handsomely in pleasant Paiisian society, and wUl leave, never- 
 theless, a comfortable provision for then- children ? A painter who comes down 
 from his pillar that he may gather these advantages, seems the more excusable 
 when we reflect that by staying up there he wordd 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. Bohemianism is not a natural and permanent state of the 
 
BOHEMIANS AND MEN OP THE WORLD. 5 
 
 mind, but a protest against what is felt to be hostile to certain studies and 
 piu'suits, 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 honour 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 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 honourable poverty 
 is held to be ridiculous, there is httle 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 feehng that they can find no 
 sympathy there ; and indeed it is quite sirrprising 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 ridicule or pity. In France he 
 is familiarly said to be ' toque,' ' timbre,' &c., and in England he is pronounced 
 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 homme du monde, 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 wHl be looked up to 
 as models of refinement, a charming prospect, but involving very serious 
 consequences, which are already only too heavily felt. When artists are 
 gentlemen of fashion they must earn incomes large enough to support that 
 character, and they will no more be able to afibrd the luxury of pursuing 
 art for its own sake than if they were absolutely pemiiless. Indeed, im- 
 probable 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 accustomed 
 
PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 to see tlieix pictures return upon their hands that it does not appear to 
 signify very much what they paiat, 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 hotu" so occupied is 
 costing him ten shillings. 
 
 The distinction between paintmg for art and pamting for the market 
 is so little recognised, 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 then lips, how utterly, t(j 
 wm their favour, he has degraded himself in his own eyes, and in the 
 eyes of all liis 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 labom' day by day in the production of that 
 which he knows to be trifling and valueless, merely because it is a market- 
 able commodity, is not this enough to make any man of naturally liigh 
 feeling despise himself, and bitterly acknowledge the futUity of liis life? 
 There appeared some time ago, in one of the magazines, an article called 
 ' The Story of a Spoilt Life,' the naxrative 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 
 theii- early aspirations ? 
 
 Therefore, when amongst the mass of artists who sell themselves we 
 see the few nobler ones stand lofty and pure, Hke the snows of the im- 
 moveable Alps, how can we venerate them enough 1 
 
 Artistic honour and purity are preserved so long as the pamter frankly 
 sets before us his own mnermost thought ; and they are suUied 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 imagmes 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 honour. Many of liis pictures are quite unpleasant and repulsive 
 
FLATTERY. 7 
 
 to me ; but how I respect the man for never liaving tried to please me, 
 for never having laid himself out for the small printed compliments of 
 critics, or the admiration of messieurs and demoiselles ! 
 
 But is it not the object of art to please — to please us, the very messieurs 
 and demoiselles above mentioned? 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 a 7nerveiUe, 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 joxi, or any other 
 spectator ; and as soon as ever we see reason to suspect that a painter has 
 been trying 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 faithfidly, 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 artists who five 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 fohage, 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 efiects, as Turner did, but he knows that you would 
 be ofiended by them, and refrains. 
 
8 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 Now with reference to this great quality of sincerity in art, we have all 
 of us a certain, plain duty to perform. Fhst, 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 favour of his sincerity and truth. I am not 
 speaking here of his truth to nature, but of his truth to art ; that is, his 
 fidehty to his own convictions 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 m 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 his own faculties best, and if he tlihiks 
 so, rely upon it he is right. What is most disliked in the work of truly 
 original men, is due to an unfortunate impression, 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 reahsm is, that he 
 maintains the doctrme 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 tins, tliat 
 every artist tvlien he x>aints, should remain absolutehj 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 
 Courbet's theory, which, it may be observed in this place, was also the 
 theory of Turner, were carried out to its fuU extent, we should not have 
 any uniformity at aU, 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. 
 
SINCERITY. 9 
 
 Every artist would paint his own imj^ressions, disciplining himself only 
 with a view to express them as clearly and as emphatically as possible. 
 So that this doctrine, wliich 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 m the accurate representation of 
 matter, but surrendering itself utterly to the impressions and sensations 
 of the mind. 
 
 A prodigious development of self-confidence ! To beheve steadily and 
 firmly all one's life through m the guidance of one's own natural instincts, 
 quite independently of all human precedent and authority, can the vanity 
 of the indiAn.dual human being carry him beyond such insanity as this ? 
 It is worth while to dwell a httle longer on the point, for it concerns not 
 Cotirbet alone, but aU artists; and especially aU young artists who are 
 entering upon their labours and forming their habits. It concerns also 
 the public which is interested m art, and which may feel doubtful as to 
 the degree of hberty it ought to accord to the vagaries of individual 
 eccentricity. 
 
 The real nature of the warfare which under various names, and under 
 apparently difierent forms, has been going forward in the art-schools of 
 Evirope 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 "understand a conflict of this kind, and the strength 
 and heat of passion elicited on both sides, without remembering that painting 
 is a direct utterance and expression, jiist as much as speaking is, and that 
 a painter in every fine 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 controversy hes m this nutshell. The classical school has been 
 insisting for generations on the duty of submission 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 busmess to stifle and repress all 
 personal feelings and affections, and even to deny the right of exercising 
 inteUigence, except such a limited amount of it as may be necessary for 
 
 c 
 
10 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 tlie 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 stUl, not otit of deference 
 to classicism, 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 making 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 England 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. 
 
 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 aU the oranoes declared 
 that the pomegranate was the most intensely conceited fruit they had ever 
 seen in their hves — why could it not give out yellow juice as they aU 
 did ? On which the pomegranate made the following solitary reflections : — 
 ' It is very ciuious that everybody calls me conceited, for I never thought 
 about myself either one way or the other till now.' And it must be con- 
 fessed that the pomegranate, though it was quite true that he had never 
 been conceited before, became rather proud and scornful ui consequence of 
 the injustice of the oranges, and thought his own jiiice, red as it was, some- 
 what better and more valuable than any mere yeUow juice ever could be. 
 
COURBET. 1 1 
 
 This large fine pomegranate came into the world at Ornana, in the 
 department of the Doubs, June 10, 1819, and was called- Gustave Courbet. 
 The child lived at fii'st under clerical influence, and began his 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 
 vigovxr to an early dehght in the picturesque scenery that surrounded him. 
 He Avas 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 wHch gives great practical certainty and efficiency 
 at the sacrifice of originahty. 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 
 yotuig 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 hke 
 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 influ- 
 ential painters 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 difilcult in these days to realise 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 stUl farther the energy of his self-rehance, and stiffening 
 his originality into stubbornness. When men of original endowment are 
 
12 ' PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 treated witli gentleness, 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 them- 
 selves 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 witho\Tt jeering, their art 
 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 dis- 
 turbing 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 bom, takes its source m the Jura, flows first to the north-east, 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 bu-thplace of Courbet, is situated in the 
 middle of the penhisula, between the young mountaui stream at Arjon 
 and the mature river that reflects the strong forts of Besan9on. 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 favourable to the development 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 rmoccupied house. Whenever a place seemed suitable, 
 I took care to study its immediate neighbourhood, seekmg especially for 
 those natural beauties which are most dear to me — the rocky dells with 
 
> 
 
 w 
 
 Q 
 
 o 
 o 
 
COURBET. 13 
 
 piire refreshing streams, the groups of majestic trees, the towering heights 
 of hUl and chflf, and the level meadows by the shore of the green trans- 
 parent river. The whole valley was enchantmgly beautiful ; the hiEs 
 were lofty enough, and especially steep enough, for sublimity, vdth bold, 
 clear-cut curves of inexpressible majesty and grace. At their feet was a 
 narrow plaia 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 wdd 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 frequent 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 m the ' Source ' — does so 
 on strictly conventional principles. This is one of the most marked distinctions 
 between the reaHst and classical schools. Almost every realist pamter enjoys 
 landscape, if only in a background ; but the classicists either have no enjoyment 
 of it, or repress this taste as contrary to the severity of their art. 
 
 Courbet does not care for beaiity, yet nature liberally endowed him with 
 it. He is a weU-grovsm, 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 simphcity 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 sentu-ez — 
 pardieu V The final pardieu was electrical, and whenever I set myself to 
 work from nature it rings in my memoiy yet. 
 
14 
 
 PAINTING IN FRANCji. 
 
 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 observation and practice. Thus 
 in England we are constantly told that for a picture to be safe durmg its 
 progress, it must be 'kept pale.'"" Courbet, who works always upon dark red or 
 brown grounds, earnestly recommended me to keep my work dark enough, 
 reserving the light for the last, and gradually coming up to them, by thick- 
 nesses of opaque colotrr. 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 daylight, and at 
 last the Sim strikes them with brilliant touches. So a picture by Com-bet 
 begins m twilight, and gradually becomes lighter and hghter, tiU finally come 
 the highest and brightest lights of aU. I mention this matter because it has a 
 certain mterest, but without attacliing 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 httle 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, biit 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, out of which 
 confusion the landscape comes finally, true enough in aspect, but without a 
 particle of design. Wliatever 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-colour or oU, 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 
 
 * This is founded on the practice of Turner. 
 Many contemporary English painters worls; upon 
 perfectly white grounds. The practice is a rea- 
 sonable one for the preservation of luminous 
 
 quality, but it often happens that colours on 
 white grounds, from a want of sufficient susten- 
 ance beneath them, appear crude. 
 
COURBET. 
 
 15 
 
 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 
 brush work. 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 pamt forms which 
 are frankly ugly than those which in their beauty might incur the imputation of 
 being pretty, but there is nevertheless a certain massive grandeur in his men 
 and women which may well be a suflficient aim for an artist, and which Rem- 
 brandt would have accepted as a compensation 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 powerful but not graceful animals, made some observa- 
 tion in that sense to a gentleman who attended her. He answered, ' Madame, 
 ces chevaux sont des Percherons,' — a breed mvich esteemed for its working 
 qualities. Shortly afterwards Her Majesty came to the ' Ba'njneuses' 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 veiy 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 picturesque 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 suitable for the entrance to a clidteau near the gi'eat 
 French forests. One day, being out on a pedestrian excursion in the 
 environs of MontpeUier, he met a friend of his, M. Bruyas, and com- 
 
 * A woman of gigantic development has lately 
 exhibited herself in France as ' Premier modele 
 de I'Academie 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 lA-ould call a ' Per- 
 cheronne.' 
 
16 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 memorated the incident in a picture. The most famous canvasses of 
 Courbet have for their subjects the common people, and everyday events 
 about Ornans, such for instance as the ' Enterrement k Ornans/ the 
 'Demoiselles de Village,' the ' Paysans de Flagey,' the 'Eetom- 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 tliis realism, is a very simple 
 philosophy and a very nari'ow one, as narrow m its way, perhaps, as the 
 stiff little creed of classicism itself Couibet is suuply a man of strong 
 natural gifts, wlio, 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 commemr)ration of the reahties about him. Take away the ignorance 
 of the realist, and his consequent indifference to the past and the remote, 
 and it is just possible that, by the very enlargement of Ms sympathies, 
 his art would concentrate itself less powerfully on the actual. Or again, 
 if Courbet had been born with a dehcate 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 have been wholly different, and it would probably 
 have been far less original, for he would have been overawed by the 
 revelation of the beautifid in the masterpieces of the past, and would have 
 subinitted to them, and perhnjis even humbly imitated them. Lastly, he 
 has no trace of the critical faculty, he can execute bad work with satis- 
 faction to himself, and though any excess of critical power m an artist is 
 always detrimental to him by creating dissatisfaction vdth his work, and 
 so lessening Ins productiveness, and thereby injuring his skill (which 
 requii'es incessant 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 labour of selection and omission, 
 it guides him to noble preferences. What I admire m Courbet, is not his 
 ignorance, but his sincerity ; not his self-satisfaction, but his determmation 
 
COURBET. 
 
 17 
 
 to give nothing but that which is his own; not his uncritical energy, but 
 his obedience to the inward voices. I beheve 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 artistic conscience, like the moral conscience, modifies itself greatly as 
 oru- culture is enlarged, and that, although it is right to obey conscience, 
 it is also at least equally necessary to enlighten it by cidture. 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 profotmd 
 changes which it brmgs about in our habits and behefs. Two strong 
 passions combine to produce great writers and great pamters, the passion 
 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 t 
 
 His position has been greatly strengthened during the last few years, 
 partly in consequence of the ' Femme au Perroquet,' and the ' Remise de 
 
 * At least in the sense of imjDrovement gained 
 by reception of the ideas, and submission to the 
 influences of others. So far as Courbet has been 
 able to cultivate himself by continual self-expres- 
 sion, and by the study of nature, he has done so; 
 but ' culture,' in the highest sense, implies much 
 more than this. 
 
 I There is not space for further criticism of 
 Courbet's pictures in the text, but it may be 
 observed here that even the 'Retour de la Con- 
 ference ' is merely a satire against the priesthood 
 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 rec[uire any great profundity of thouglit, or 
 even much wit. The satire was that of a some- 
 what coarse and uncultivated person ; it would 
 have been possible to wound the priesthood more 
 scientifically, and more keenly. To do tliem 
 justice, they seldom get drunk, and yet are vul- 
 nerable enough. 
 
 D 
 
IS PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 Chevreuils/ which were more agreeable, and apparently more accomplished 
 works than most of their predecessors, 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 extension 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 woidd have been interesting to analyse 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 irnporta.nt to be passed over, and so endeavour 
 to comprehend it in their own v/ay. Proudhon c:)uld not endure that men 
 should pursue art for its own sake, but wordd liave it made subservient to 
 moral and physical progress, which ^vas merely an endeavour 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 Coui'bet had a special utility of this kind, 
 and once persuaded of this, the democratic philosoplier 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 mrj rally and 
 politically beneficial. If writers who are destitute of the }iicto]'ial perceptions, 
 yet have a command of language, become for some reason warnjly interested in 
 a discussion about artists, they are able to do consideral)le haiin, Ijecause they 
 combine the ignorance and wilfulness of infancy with the combative skill of 
 trained intellectual manhood. Wlien a cle^-er talker, who has not a musical ear, 
 raUs against the music which has no recommendation except that it is artisti- 
 cally exquisite, and extols some popular air Ijecause it hns 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 stdl Imgers much of tlic old feeling that it is below the 
 dignity of an artist tc) 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 
 
EDOUARD MANET. 19 
 
 social position are almost beyond the domain of reason, and depend very 
 frequently upon the most fortuitoiis 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 labour. In the same way, if the 
 public covld 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 emanci- 
 pates our minds from the effects of association, and enables us to judge 
 independently. For instance, in this matter of the exhibition of pictui'es, 
 simple reason, detached from disturbing associations, 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 exliibitions, so that if it 
 is degrading to the artist to profit by them, he is seldom so degraded. 
 Collections of pictttres 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. 
 
 Durino- 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 iuto the 
 Temple of Fame, though perhaps not a very agreeable one. Like his pre- 
 decessor, 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 uglmess thrusts 
 itself forward in a way so obtrusive that the common spectator, 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 preception, without 
 
20 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 being iii the least pretty ; and it wovild be easy to mention many admirable 
 ones by elder masters which fidly deserve places of honour in galleries of art, 
 and yet would be altogether unsuitable for drawing-ro(jms. 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 considered a 
 slovenly and audacious manner, they concluded that he was an ignorant ra.pin; 
 and when he began to be a good deal talked about, they inferred that his 
 manner had been adapted in order to attract attention and catch 2:)urchasers. 
 It tiu-ned out, lllJ^^•eA■er, that Manet Avas a gentleman and a man of the world, 
 fond of society, and appreciated in it personally, whatever people might think 
 about his pictures. And as for painting ui his manner from motives of self- 
 interest, to catch purchasers, it is evident, that A\'itli the great majjority of his 
 works unsold, he would not have persevered in this path after exijorience had 
 fully proved that it would lead to no probable pecrmiary success. The artists 
 who leally tlu paint to catch purchasers, are always the least exposed to accu- 
 sations of this kind, because them art is so entirely in the populcir manner, that 
 they escape all unfavourable imputations. When a nian who has strong private 
 convictions is false to himself and learns the elaliorate affectation of conujrmity, 
 he is never accused of affectation, but so soon as he endeavours t(j express 
 JtimveJf, and resolves to be faithful to his own nature, tlion e\'er}l)(.idy 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 muney. If Edouard 
 Manet had not had a private income he would have been conjpelled 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 }.;ir;igri:iph of explanation to say what one ^^'(Ju](l express in French 
 by a single word. Le hut de l'<u't da 2Ia.net est stm pie merit lu taeJie. I 
 cannot translate this into English. Things are seen in nature as vari(_)usly 
 coloured patches enclosed 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 e^•el'}■thing, 
 
MANET. 
 
 21 
 
 and tliat once a good ovitline obtained, liis pupils might put within it 
 whatever they chose. Another theory is that modelling is everything, and 
 there is also a theory that the patch (which on the whole is the best English 
 word I can find for la tacJie) 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 modelling may have a certain valuable relative truth, it will 
 be a mere compromise, and therefore, to critics who seek for it exclusively, 
 Avill 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 
 matters of no concern. The aitist paints for some artistic 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 exclusively 
 technical, anything suits him as a subject, 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 chiaroscuro 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 understand art 
 better, and how at last all we ask of a picture 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.* 
 
 * The pictures of Manet -whicli best exem- 
 plify his manner of work are ' L'homme mort,' 
 ' L' enfant k I'^p^e,' ' Olympia,' ' Une Jeune 
 Dame,' and 'Le Ballet EspagnoL' The 'Dejeuner 
 
 sur I'herbe,' much praised by M. Zola, is not so 
 favourable an example, owing to the necessary ab- 
 sence of some of the most important elements of 
 Manet's system of colour. 
 
22 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 Courbet and Manet are both of them reahsts hi the French sense of 
 the word, which has acquired, by its use with reference to a particular 
 sect of pamters, a meaning considerably more contracted than its natural 
 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 reahst, 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 ^^^th the best, and the most 
 vulgar subjects along with the most elevating, 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 exceedingly vague one, and 
 if you ask even an inteUigent Frenchman to define it, the chances are 
 that he will construct a definition that woidd 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-Eaphaelites, 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-Ptaphaelite picture. The French ' realist,' after all, is an artist who 
 works in a particular temper, and reahsm is an attitude or humour of the 
 mind, a humour strongly opposed to that which seeks to please by the 
 flattery of conformity, and tlierefore (ij)}Mjsed to the feehng of polite society 
 in every country. Thousands of men who never cared for pamting 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 every\\here 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 
 
REALISM. 23 
 
 were sick of the pretensions to taste which made ])eople write and pamt 
 as falsely as they talked in drawing-rooms, and so they came to have a 
 savage hatred for everytliing that aimed at elegance. They were sick, too, 
 of the affectations of learning and scholarship, and instead of painting 
 subjects from Greek and Eoman 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 ^^hen learning approaches pedantry, and when taste damages the man- 
 liness of character by the affectations of dilettantism, any dehverer may 
 be welcomed, and the best of all deHverers are those who save us by 
 giving a new direction to the very pursuits wliich were injuring us. It 
 is, nevertheless, evident enough that this temper of reahsni 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 pamts 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 reahse 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 ingenious, 
 on the struggle of muscular ' Wrestlers,' or the death of a hunted stag. 
 Reahsm, in short, is a sort of mud-bath which, under certam 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 effemi- 
 nacy, 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 indifference with which men 
 of learning and taste so often pass the sublimity of common life. ReaHsm 
 has undertaken to show, and has proved triumphantly, that common men 
 and women, such as those who live and work in the broad fields of 
 
24 
 
 PAINTIXG IN FRANCE. 
 
 France, are capable of exciting the poetical emotions. Jean Francois 
 Millet has done more in this direction than any other artist, except 
 perhaps Jnles Breton, and Millet is the more essentially realist of the 
 two. He was born at Gre^dlle, m 1815, and studied under Delaroche. 
 He first exhibited at the Salon of 1844, and in his earlier years painted 
 subjects such as ' GEdipus,' and 'The Jews in Babylon,' whicli have little 
 connexion with those wdth which his name is now universally associated. 
 He lives at Barbison (Seine et Marne), and seeks such poetry as he can 
 find m the fields of wheat and potatoes. Visitors to the Universal 
 Exhibition of 18G7 wall remember some of the ruue pictures he exliibited 
 there ; especially, perhaps, the ' Glaneuses,' and ' L'Angelus du soir,' and 
 ' Planteurs de pommes de ten-e.' His art is direct and very modem in 
 method, and quite singularly proformd m sentiment, and his reputation 
 has immensely increased dtuing the last tlrree or foiu- years.'*''' 
 
 Millet is little known in England except to our travellmg countiymen. 
 He did not exliibit at our International Exhibition of 1862, and the only 
 jDicture of his which I remembei' to liave seen in England, is a study of a 
 ploughed field, with a plough stuck in the middle of it, in vhich it was 
 difficult to recognise any sentiment beyond a conscientious desire to get 
 the right look of turned earth. 
 
 Jides Breton is fortunate in having one of his very l^est pictures in 
 the permanent gallery of the Luxembourg. ' La Benediction des Bles ' is, 
 or ought to be, well known to eveiy one •\\'ho has A-isitcd that gallery during 
 the last eight or nuie years. It is a characteristic of the policy of the 
 Church of Borne to make her presence felt everywhere, to go forth into 
 the world outside the walls of her edifices, and cany her ceremonial into 
 the crowded streets and the c[uiet fields. In this picture the priest goes 
 in procession, carrying the host, to bless the standing corn, and with an 
 odd mixture of splendour and homeliness, vciy touching, and very well 
 felt and rendered by the painter, walks solemnly through the rich land. 
 
 * It may be as well to add tliat there are 
 three artists of the name of Millet — Frederic 
 ^lillet, the portrait-painter; Aime Millet, who 
 
 was at first painter and sculptor, but now follows 
 sculpture almost exclusively ; and Jean Franouis 
 Millet, who is mentioned in the text. 
 
JULES BRETON. 25 
 
 along the narrow path, in the beautiful sunshme of a bright afternoon. 
 Nothing short of bigotiy could make even a true Protestant insensible to 
 the beauty of such a ceremonial. The picture is altogether a delightful 
 one ; the village maidens in their simple M^hite 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 mixtiu-e of humour and sublimity incomprehensible by 
 some critics (who call the picture a caricature), but, to my feeling, full of 
 charm. A very grand picture, in another order of thought, because this 
 time without humour, is that of the 'Weed Gatherers.' It is full of the 
 sublimity of long and patient labour, and these poor women, tearing the 
 weeds out of the heavy sod late in the weary day, are they not infinitely 
 nobler and grander than the most successful lorettes of Paris, loUing at the 
 same hour in carriages in the Bois de Boidogne ? The ' Fin de la Journee,' 
 a return from gleaning, is almost as noble ; and the humour reappears in 
 the Garde Champetre on the left, but one's pleasvu-e in this work is diminished 
 by the bad coloiir of the wheat, which is given of a foul brown, quite unhke 
 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 colour, but is hard in manner, so that his wheat 
 does not look rich enough or mysterious enough. Mr. Linnell the elder 
 gets the colour truly, but his strong mannerism repels many, and detracts 
 from the sobriety of his painting. Holman Hunt is right also in colour, 
 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 aU these artists, being right 
 in hue, please us better than Breton, whose colour on this point is nearly 
 always foul and wrong. There are differences, however, even in Breton's 
 work ; the wheat in the ' Benediction ' is pleasanter in colour than that 
 in any other picture I know by him. This tendency to translate delicate 
 golden hues into a foul brovm does not seem to aflPect Breton's perception 
 of other colours ; for instance, in the ' Source au bord de la mer ' there is 
 much pure and pleasant colouring of sky and water. A defect of this kind 
 ought not to prevent us from recognising such rare and precious mental 
 
26 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 qualities as those which distinguish Jules Breton. He is a true poet and 
 true painter, with an infusion of delicate humour which reaches our sym- 
 pathies at once. The ' Benediction ' is, technically, a work of singular 
 importance in modern art for its almost perfect interpretation of sunshine. 
 
 The inconvenient French word genre has now passed into general use 
 m England, becaiise we have unfortunately not got a better word of our 
 own ; but as all foreign words must undergo some modification in their 
 meanuig before they can be naturahsed, this one has become narrowed 
 with us to one class of art, whilst in. France it includes all pamting which 
 is not either history or landscape. Even in France, however, there is a 
 tendency to restram the word to domestic and incident painting, and to 
 pictures of very limited dimensions. Strictly speaking, Rosa Bonheur's 
 ' Horse Fair ' is a tableau, de genre, because it is neither a historical picture 
 nor a landscape, but it does not answer to the prevalent notion of a tableau 
 de genre because it has no di'amatic incident or illustration of character, 
 and the canvass 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 expression 
 tableau de genre in common conversation, means a pictuj^e of small dimen- 
 sions representing human eharaeter d )xnnat.ically by means of elothed fgiires. 
 If genre is to be restricted in this way, and there is every probabHity 
 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 theoretically held to be tableaux 
 de genre. It is much to be regretted that we have not a good Enghsh 
 word, on accovmt of the lamentable English habit of afPecting 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 English ones ; and even if they 
 could pronounce the foreign sounds, the intrusion of them in an English 
 sentence would be incongruous and inconvenient.* 
 
 * For instance, there is the word eclat, which 
 many English people are fond of using, and which 
 
 few can pronounce. The natural and reasonahle 
 way, if they must use the word, would be to make 
 
GENRE. 27 
 
 So far as the word genre will be used in this volume, the reader is re- 
 quested to take it in the restricted sense which modem usage has given to it, 
 and not in the comprehensive sense attributed to it by the dictionaries. In the 
 foUowmg pages the word will mean the class of pictures of small dimensions in 
 ivhich human character is dramatically represented by means of clothed figures. 
 For mstance, aU the well-known pictures of Leshe 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 painting, 
 because it has interested a large pubhc which was perfectly indifferent to art, 
 and which, indeed, though it throngs exhibitions, and buys large quantities of 
 pictures, still essentially remains so. Pictines of genre are popidar ; not in 
 proportion to their artistic power, but so far as they are capable of amusing 
 people who are uninterested 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 colour, than to make every- 
 body laugh by a striking representation of Sancho Panza, or the Merry Wives 
 of Windsor ; and the success of genre painters, even of such intelhgent ones as 
 LesHe and Knaus, is dangerous to art in proportion to their substitution of 
 human for artistic interest. The world generally is not interested in any art 
 for itself ; and it is not painting alone, but music and creative literature which 
 have a poptdarity grounded upon other things than art. The ordinary novel- 
 reader, for instance, does not read for study, does not perceive 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 follows a hare. The same temper makes people go to 
 pictures for what is called ' the subject ; ' and it makes them estimate the art 
 
 it rhyme with cat, hut being too refined and too 
 well informed to do this, they make an indescrib- 
 able sound, which they are quite right in sup- 
 posing 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. 
 
28 PAINTING IN PKANCE. 
 
 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 consequence of this is a profound misconception of the 
 artistic nature and its purposes, and the painters of genre have greatly 
 favoured tliis 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 ui French pictm-es. Many pamters in France conscientiously hold 
 the theory that the less sto)-y there is in a picttu-e the better, because story 
 distracts the attention from art, and so the painters of the naked figure content 
 themselves with a ' nymph ' or a ' Yenus,' and the landscape-pamters 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 liigher 
 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 piipular genre picture, you will find in all 
 probability that at least five-sixths of its surface are occujDied by imitations of 
 drapery, and the interiors of rooms with their fui-niture. Now it is not easy to 
 paint aivjthing, but it is a great deal easier to paint a chau' 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 pamter is reheved of many of the 
 cliief difficulties which torment the student of pure nature, whether he paints 
 landscape or the nude figure. The one great diificulty of tliis kind of art lies 
 in expression, and therefore tlie caricaturists, if only they can learn enough of 
 the art of painting to do popular W(jrk, and will keep their exaggerations 
 within bounds, are always likely to succeed better in genre than the gTcat 
 painters who are destitute of this especial gift. The point which I desii'e to 
 insist Lipon is that men endowed with great natural faculties of the essentially 
 artistic kind are likely to be surpassed in genre by far inferior men who have 
 the single gift of seizing rapid shades of expression, so that such men as Leshe, 
 
GENRE. 29 
 
 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 shortcomings are forgiven to' the master of expression because he goes 
 at once to the sympathies of everybody, and so bad colour is l^ought, bad 
 dravs^ing 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 inteUigence ; for instance, 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 faculty, or an especial condition of the faculties, very necessary 
 to critics and painters of genre, but not so 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 intelligent, and apjjreciates the quality iii others. 
 To understand human nature well, to be keenly observant, to retain in the 
 memoiy the marks upon which expression depends, and to paint with fan- 
 average dexterity, are the quaHfications 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 hfe 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 oru' 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 
 Frenchman (Toulmouche), have won reputation, chiefly by studies of single 
 
 * I mean that if Titian and Giorgione had 
 lived in our day, and been turned aside to genre 
 painting by the preTalent fashion, which it is 
 almost certain that they Tvould 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 appre- 
 ciated ; they would have painted nothing of the 
 kind ; the prevailing fashions would have made 
 them attempt genre in order to earn a living. 
 
30 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 figures of ladies, very well dressed, and in apartments fumished with good 
 taste. On tte other hand, Meissonier, who avoids women so regularly that 
 people say he is afraid of them, usually represents men in the costume of 
 the last century. A genre-painter who wishes to earn a good income must 
 not be above the careful study of tailormg and millinery, bu^t he may make 
 these studies more mteresting to himself by painting costumes that are 
 no longer commonly seen. In a certain sense the painters of genre, by their 
 strict attention to truth in accessories, have thrown a Hght upon the life 
 of former ages, and have done more to make us familiar with them than 
 the more pretentious pe/z^ires d' histoire. The 'historical painters,' as they 
 called themselves, 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 pictiu^es 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 on, or looking at herself in the 
 glass, or ringing the bell, — in short, doing one of those unimportant little 
 actions which afibrd 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 beginnmg to include historical painting very easy and naturally ; Meissonier 
 paints the battle of Solferino ; Gerome, the receptif.m of Siamese Ambassadors 
 at Fontainebleau, 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 iilusti-ated by them \A"henever the male costume becomes 
 suitable for artistic purposes. At present, a gentleman is not a paintable 
 object, unless he wears knickerbockers, or a volunteer uniform. 
 
 Genre is technically a rebellion against tlie classical discipline in many 
 ways. First, it pays attention to passing shades of expression which classicism 
 
GENRE AND CLASSICISM. 31 
 
 has always disdained, next it takes note of all sorts of phenomena of light, 
 such as reflected colour, which Classicism rigorously refuses, and again it 
 delights in imitating and distinguishing the materials of costiime, so that 
 you may know at once what kind of silk or satin or muslm has been worn 
 by the model, and Classicism admitted only ' drapery ' of an abstract kind. 
 Tliis distinction between the spirit of genre painting and that of classicism 
 admits of a brief expression. 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 modern feeling. The classical artists gave their 
 lives to the study of an object which the Christian nations know nothmg 
 whatever about — the human body. The only people who study it are artists 
 and medical men. Gentlemen mterested in atliletic pursuits know something 
 about the development of a few muscles, but of the beauty of the body none 
 biit artists are competent to judge, becaiise they are the only people who 
 have opportunities for comparison. Classicism was at home in Greece, because 
 everybody 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 estabhsh 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 beaiitifrd themselves. If Classicism could have 
 accompUshed this it would have rendei^ed a great service, because beauty 
 of the classical kind requkes perfect health, and perfect health requii'es a 
 wise and rational life, without excess in pleasure, or in mental or physical 
 ton. But the tendencies of modern Hfe towards excessive development of 
 special functions, and the difilculty with which people not familiar with 
 the naked figure come to sever the ideas of nudity and immoraUty, were 
 too strong for classicism to struggle against them permanently, though it 
 gained ground for a time ; and painters, in order to become popidar, had 
 to take just as much interest in the body as other people do ; to mind. 
 
32 PAINTING IN FKANCE. 
 
 that is, that the faces of their women were nice-looking, and that 
 their figures were good enough to carry handsome dresses in a becoming 
 and fashionable manner. The difference between this and the enthusiasm 
 of the great classical artists for the divine and ideal beauty which the 
 constant contemplation of nature had taught them to conceive and strive 
 for, is the difference between a common sentiment and a subhme passion. 
 So far as the study of the human body is concerned, the invasion of genre 
 has been the degradation of art; but it is greatly superior to classicism in 
 the extent of its sympathies and in its understanduig of mankind. 
 
 The advent of the most modern forms of art, of fashionable genre- 
 painting, and of the realism which is not fasliionable, is traceable, I 
 believe, in a gxeat measure to the constant spread of democratic ideas. 
 That reahsm is democratic no one who has seen Courbet's pictures, and 
 read Proudhon's book, can for one moment doubt. That the r>aintmo- of 
 Toulmouche 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 itself in wealth as easily as in poverty ; and in cidture and 
 intelligence as easily as in ignorance. It is difficult to write upon a 
 subject so dehcate as this, without enlisting the prejudices and suscepti- 
 Ijilitics of every reader on one side or the other, especially since the word 
 'plebeian' has acquired a signification of contempt or blame, and 'patrician' 
 associations of honour. The reader is requested to detach these associations 
 from both words. By long habit and tradition, an aristocracy acquires 
 certain preferences 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 
 situati(ju, a democracy acquires certam other preferences and ideas, and an 
 indifference or contempt for those which are useless or injurious to it. 
 There are certam developments of taste which, though exquisite, are 
 pleljeian, and these are nowhere more visible than in the pretty Parisian 
 apartments where such painters as Toulmouche place their well-dressed 
 women. There is nothing incongruous in them, which is as much as to 
 say that theie is no trace of the life of former generations, a strikingly 
 plebeian characteristic. Everything is very good and expensive, and 
 
ORIGIN OF INCIDENT PICTURES. 33 
 
 usually even tasteful, but you see at once that everything has been 
 bought of the upholsterer since M. Hausmann biiilt 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. Pauiting has transferred its services from the 
 church to the theatre, setting 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 character in order to paint a 
 figure that shall act it, is not intellectually considerable. 
 
 The way in which a poptdar incident -picture originates is usually as 
 foUows. In the course of his reading, which is not often very extensive 
 or original, the painter hits upon some anecdote which is interesting 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 invite chez M. le Due ot 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 una naivete cbarmante, il 
 montra au messager la carpe, qui coutat environ*un ecu : " Jugez vous-meme si je me puis 
 dispenser de diner avec ces pauvres enfants qui ont voulu me regaler aujourd'hui, et 
 n'aujaient plus de plaisir s'ils mangeaient ce plat sans moi. Je vous prie de faire valoir 
 cette raison aupres de Son Altesse Serenissime." ' 
 
 One sees immediately all that a clever painter of genre would make 
 out of such a charmingly characteristic 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), holding the glittering fish in both 
 hands, whilst the royal messenger restrains the expression of his amaze- 
 ment 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 
 
34 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 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 reputable manner, and the royal messenger in appropriate 
 splendours. The cai-p would be very carefully imitated, in order to win 
 the applause of that large pubhc 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 faihngs. 
 
 In the latest development of genre, the dramatis personce are, however, 
 less intelligent, and less interesting 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 aU the forms of 
 pictorial art, and the one which best illustrated human nature. As certain 
 classes of pohte society are satisfied with a mere soupfon of wit and 
 information, and consider that they have done tlieu- duty to themselves 
 and to each other, when they have taken care that their clothes are 
 fashionable and their manners good, so the heroines of Toidmoiiche, 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 sUks, and the perfection of their upholstery, than by any adorn- 
 ment 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 
 themselves. It is precisely the women of this kind, whether they live in 
 marriage or in concubinage, who have given that lamentable direction to 
 the public 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 
 
maechal's 'phryne.' 35 
 
 their hands, they are too ignorant and incapable for mental labour, and 
 therefore, 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 conversation as may be carried on with a lady who neither 
 reads, nor thinks, nor has ever even acquired that homely wisdom which 
 our eqiially illiterate grandmothers gathered in the kitchen and the farm. 
 
 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 aU the 
 brightness of the most brilliant wit and intelUgence, 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 intelligence failed often on the side of art, but Ive can never forget their 
 lively humour and their genial interpretation of literatvire. 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 illiistration 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 labour 
 and time may be given to the elaboration 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. 
 
 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 
 * Penelope ;' 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 beheve, for twelve hundred pounds, and were amongst the most 
 
36 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 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 intelligence, the body ill made and 
 covered with an extravagantly volurouious 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 common- 
 place lady (well dressed, of course, though simply), doiag what such ladies 
 are accustomed to call ' work.' 
 
 Now, if the reader will consider with me for a httle while all that 
 this Phryne is, and is not, he will see what I mean by callmg such art 
 ' degraded.' Suppose 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 covdd find (not such a model as this), and 
 refining upon the natural forms. He would have clothed his Phryne with 
 no material garment, but he would have clothed her with the ideal, and 
 we should have had at least tins, the best result of antique tradition, and 
 persistent study of the life. Or suppose that some modem painter of 
 intelhgence, such, for instance, as LesHe, 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 some- 
 thing human, a body or a mind ; but M. Marchal has given us only a 
 heavy black velvet dress. All fine art, however, 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 mference in that case must be that our 
 civilization is a civilization of material luxury, not of bodily perfection or 
 intellectual 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 confounded with the others, because, of course when they paint the 
 richer classes, they have to represent then material accompaniments. , The 
 initiated are apt to regard all domestic pictures with some suspicion. 
 

 W 
 
 c 
 o 
 
 Pi 
 
 p 
 
DE JONGHE, 37 
 
 because it is only too well known amongst artists, that, when a painter 
 has any difficulty in earning his living, his best chance of a return to 
 prosperity lies in affecting appeals to the maternal instincts. Children, 
 however, are so very difficult to paint, that any considerable success in 
 the domestic line of business 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 dramatic interpretation. Two young ladies 
 are waiting near the confessional tdl 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 
 unaffected 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 cceur sut aimer ; ' the young lady, in 
 that instance, being a Protestant : — 
 
 Au temple pour les malheureux, 
 
 Et pour sa m^re cherie, 
 Toujours quand elle prie 
 
 Les pleurs mouillent ses yeux : 
 11 n^est pas de priere 
 Plus pure sur la terre 
 
 Ni m^me dans les deux. 
 
 A subject of quite a different order, 'Dressing for the Ball,' is 
 given in this volrune. This picture owes its great charm to the nice 
 little girl who is just going to be dressed ; the shght elevation of the 
 right eyebrow, 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 
 
38 
 
 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 the good taste shown m 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 httle 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 httle 
 scenes of this kmd, and fall into the bathos of hounjeois sentiment and 
 Pliilistuiism, the very conditions of intellect and feeling that are most 
 hostde and dangerous to fine art. That De Jonghe should have been able 
 to illustrate the sentiments of piety'"' and philo-progenitiveness, without 
 incuiTmg the least taint of houiycois 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 PhiHstmism, a half- refined one avoids 
 them, dreacUng the least suspicion of a possible sympathy with them; but 
 a thoroughly refined painter knows that they cannot be vulgar as coming 
 from hnii, that by a marvellous chemistry of mind, no facts in nature can 
 pass tlu'ough his brain without becommg presentable to the most fastidious. 
 Timoleon Lobrichon has won some reputation during the last few years 
 as a painter of chddren. He began his artistic career with gracefid 
 compositions of nude figures, as for instance, 'Les Yapeurs du Matin,' in 
 which the morning mists were represented by nymphs floating in misty air. 
 They were very beautifully grouped, and highly idealised 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 pictures 
 
 * 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 had. I believe 
 the reason to be that whenever art aims at some- 
 thing 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 
 ' 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. 
 
3 
 
THE LITTLE BEGGAR -GIRL. 
 
 Brun. 
 
LOBRICHON AND BRUN. 39 
 
 of that kind, though they admit of the most thoroughly artistic treatment, 
 and naturally develope whatever poetical feehng the artist may happen to 
 possess, are not, commercially, a good investment of his time, and Lobrichon 
 has long since abandoned them for the more lucrative study of contemporary 
 chUdhood. He has acquired, by practice, a clear and simple method of 
 painting, and seems to have a true Hking for his subjects and to understand 
 children well. Another subject of chUdhood given in this volume, La 
 Mendiante, is by M. Charles Brun, who was formerly a pupil of Picot and 
 Cabanel. My knowledge of M. Brun's pictiues is not sufficiently extensive 
 to permit me to venture on the expression of any general opinion. The 
 one given here was exliibited in the Salon of 1868 and proved much 
 obsei'vation, and considerable power of rendering expression ; but the picture, 
 though carefully and truly painted, is a very pamful 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 treatment of painful subjects in hterature and art 
 is, however, one of the most diffictilt 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 sympathise enough with distress, 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 evidence 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 pi-obable that the conduct 
 of many of us in this respect is caused by a deficiency of imagmation. We 
 have not imagination enough to realise 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 is powerful enough to realise the actuality 
 of things not famihar 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 
 
40 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 and tired, but irjost 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-rooms, 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 sympathise with the Benedicit^ of 
 Henriette Browne ; the plain face, the large and simple eyes, and the 
 exceeding 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, Reahsm, in all its forms, has 
 been driven more decidedly towards ugliness than, may have been desirable, 
 btit the realists are quite right in their opposition to anytlring like an 
 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 Henriette Browne 
 has already, on several occasions, enhsted 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 subject, 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 symmetrically exhibited, whilst both receive 
 the Hght in precisely the same degree. Henriette Bro'vme 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 labours, can refuse the honom' 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 
 
BONNAT. 
 
 41 
 
 Cliurcli, which, after all, extensive as it is, does not include more than a 
 fraction of the human race. There is, I fear, much bitter sectarian feeling 
 in the breasts of these most brave and devoted women;* but notwithstand- 
 ing this, which 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 regiilar and disciplined body, and then- 
 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 servants of God, and, indeed, 
 ought we not all to take off our hats to them 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 convicts, 
 labouring hard with cannon -balls chained to their ankles, and, observing 
 that one of them seemed exhausted by fatigue, enquired whether a sub- 
 stitute would be accepted. On being answered in the affirmative, the 
 saint immediately offered himself, and was 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 violence in anatomical definition, and too great blackness in shadows. 
 Yet there is more moderation in his smaller picttu'es, in both these respects ; 
 and such works as the 'Neapohtan Peasants before the Farnese Palace, 
 
 * I knew a most devoted Sister of Charity in 
 one of the hospitals of Paris, who in a moment of 
 unguarded candour declared that, as for Protest- 
 ants, 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 conld to save him. 
 
 G 
 
42 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 Rome,' or the 'Pilgrims at the feet of the Statue of St. Peter/ are more 
 remarkable for delicacy 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 pubhc. 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, 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 extemporised in the narrow 
 bed-chamber, the mother earnestly praying for her recovery. The senti- 
 ment here is not less pure and admirable than that of the more gene- 
 rally known picture by Henriette Browne, where a poor Httle sick 
 boy is tended by Sisters of Charity. There was in the Salon of 1868 a 
 picture of ' Sleepmg Childi'en,' which was very charming, notwithstanding 
 a tour de force of imitative effect m transmitted light, too obviously 
 an appeal to popular wonder. In the same exhibition Bouguereau had 
 a ' Pastoral,' with nude or semi-nude figrnes m open landscape, arranged 
 with fine taste, and pamted with a kind and degree of finish only too 
 remarkable. 
 
 A finish equal in degree, though rather difierent 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 colour is laid of about equal thickness throughout, and then scraped 
 down with a very sharp razor tiU it presents a perfectly smooth and even 
 surface everywhere. On this surface, slightly oiled, the artist proceeds to 
 work, this time in thinner colour, and after successive scrapings and repaintiags 
 
SAYING GRACE. 
 
 i\l.MK. IlF.NRIETTE BkuWNI' 
 
JALABERT AND COMPTE CALIX. 43 
 
 the picture arrives, finally, at a sort of finish, remarkable for an extreme 
 eqiiality of surface, which has always a certain charm for the popular mind. 
 And the 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, 
 nevertheless, that since pictures are always seen by a light either coming 
 from above or from one side, many of the rough projections of paint wdl 
 catch lights and project shadows of their own quite independently of the 
 hght and shade of the picture, and often altogether destructive to it. Horace 
 Vernet said, and triily, that hght resides in the quahty 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 colour and chiaroscuro, whilst it is more than ' compatible ' 
 with drawing, being positively fe,vourable 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 idealised. 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 
 dif&culty 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 figiu'e of a Httle Italian gii-l, 
 ' Maria Abruzzese,' given in this volume, is a favourable specimen of Jalabert ; 
 and so far as the photograph can render his manner of work, the reader 
 may judge, from the dehcate painting of the face, of the sort of execution 
 the artist gives to a portrait. 
 
 A painter just as accomplished as either Bouguereau 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 the most culpable 
 action of which his heroines may be justly accused is, that they sometimes 
 allow themselves to be kissed, or take too curious an interest m that 
 amusement when practised by others. Still, we may be permitted to observe. 
 
44 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 that we have no very absolute confidence in these handsome and sportive 
 damsels, who flutter about under the most rich and graceful foliage in a 
 state of perpetual excitement ; and we have always an idea, that then- 
 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 woidd not leave him her 
 hand in that way, and if aU were quite smooth before them she would 
 not look so grave. 
 
 Cijmpte Calix paints very freely and lightly, with a luminous quality 
 of touch seldom found in any but the most accomplished artists. He is 
 far beyond that tightness of manner and hardness of outline wMch most 
 young painters have to contend against, and which many older ones do not 
 entirely overcome. 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 Compte Calix is a prosperous, weU-developed world 
 altogether, a place for people who are yerj healthy and very merry, and 
 where the trees themselves enjoy long and peaceful summers, and round 
 tliemselves into great orbs of innumerable leaves. 
 
 The already numerous attempts made by Gustave Doi'O to acquire the 
 reputation of a pamter, and especially the exhibition of his pictures at the 
 Egyptian HaU, make some mention of hini excusable here, though his 
 reputation is chiefly founded upon his woodcuts. It is a misfortune 
 inseparable from criticism, that if a critic writes very favourably 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 
 favourable ; and in this way it has been said that I admire Dore, which 
 is very true, but the rumour could not burden itself with certain reservations 
 which I have always made when writing about him, and which are now, 
 
A MAIDEN OF THE ABRUZZI. 
 JALAEERT. 
 
GUSTAVE DOR^. 45 
 
 perhaps, more than ever necessary. Gustave Dor6 is a man of most 
 extraordinary endowment ; no artist except Dietrich ever had stronger 
 assimilative power, and besides his immense borrowings from others he 
 has a great fund of piirely original resource. His productiveness has been, 
 as we all know, unexampled and prodigious ; his fecundity, 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 
 imder different forms and with different names ; and when the critics found 
 tills out they set up a cry that Dore 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 Ger6me, many 
 more than some other popular favourites. He has injured himself by 
 working too much in order to make a fortune, and some thousands of his 
 later designs contain httle 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 exhausted in this sense goes on writmg 
 articles every week with perfect facHity ; the phrases come quite 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 canvasses or wood-blocks long after his mind has ceased to produce 
 new artistic conceptions, and much of Dore'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, Dor^ has always had an ambition to be a painter, and has rented 
 for years two large studios ia Paris, which are crowded with canvasses ; 
 and although his work in oil has never been much liked by the pubhc, he 
 has found in the .doing of it a refreshment after his exhausting labours 
 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 fuUy expressed 
 
46 
 
 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 himself, and even repeated himself, the painter not yet. Whether Dore 
 will ever be able to paint thoroughly well is very doubtful ; but if when 
 in his youth he had just finished the remarkable picture of the ' Famille 
 du Saltimbanque,' he had made pauiting his first object, and studied seriously, 
 and resisted the temptation to make fame and money by book illustration, 
 he might have done something remarkable by this time. Painting, unfor- 
 tunately, vcut son homme tout entier, will have its man altogether, all the 
 main current of his thoughts and his ambition, all the best hours of his 
 Ufe. 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 afiirm that 
 some occupation wholly outside of art is beneficial to a painter, in the 
 refreshment and relaxation of liis roind ; 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 Dov6. 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 
 equally removed from justice. 'But Dore 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 siu-e to be 
 cast, the stag picture, the heather-and-kilt picture, the horse-and-gentleman 
 pictiure, the intelligent dog picture ? What artist ever repeated himself 
 
 * The best pictures of Dore 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 sub- 
 ject was strikingly vivid, and the execution 
 
 vigorous and frank. Many of this artist's land- 
 scapes are finely conceived, but these are never 
 executed with sufScient delicacy to be satisfac- 
 tory. Dore has a true landscape gift, and espe- 
 cially a sense of the sixblimity of landscape very 
 rare in France, but his landscape-painting is 
 wanting in refinement. 
 
PARTING. 
 Ciimpte-Calix. 
 
REPETITION. 
 
 47 
 
 more than Claude Lorrain ■/' do we not all know liis sun-and-temple picture, 
 his group of trees, and liis 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 agaia with the same materials, the same set 
 of tones, and the same sentiment ? But we may go stUl farther, 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 pictures over and over 
 again, tdl the nature of the sod changes, or tUl 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 chmate knows precisely the sort of stream he wUl 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 Enghsh 
 room, the probability is that the window is d guillotine, that there is a 
 good deal of cast-iron about the ffi-e-place, 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 transpoited by some fairy from the ulterior 
 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 
 
 * We are usually yery severe upon foreigners 
 for their departures 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 
 Lorrain. 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 
 Flandrin a Lyonnaise. The only plausible excuse 
 is that we may be supposed to mean Claude of 
 Lorraine. 
 
48 
 
 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 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 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 Dore 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 
 painters 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 offer 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 Suffolk Street Gallery. It was entitled ' La premiere neige, sur 
 I'Alm (Baviere),' and represented Bavarian peasants bringing their cattle 
 down from the mountains. The cattle and figures were admirable for 
 perfect freedom of movement 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 respectably in some very common 
 attitude, which the animal can be induced to retain for several minutes at 
 
 * Dore 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. Bnt 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 canvasses, in a certain especial sense, are 
 empty, however many figures there may be in 
 them. 
 
Q 
 
WEBER AND DIDIER. 49 
 
 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 memory 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 recognise in their pictures being mainly due to 
 it. Otto Weber has it in the same degree as Troy on and the Bonheurs, 
 and he has aU the other accomphshments necessary to the production of 
 a first-rate cattle pictiu-e ; his colour is dehcate and agreeable, though he 
 is not a colourist in the great and peculiar meaning of the word, and his 
 chiaroscuro is fauiy good, though he is not in any way remarkable as a 
 master of tonality. His sense of the values of local colour as lights and 
 darks is however exceptional, the effect of the picttne above mentioned 
 being altogether due to it, and veiy powerful. His landscape is always 
 excellent ; and was shown to the greatest advantage in that picture, where 
 the whole country, from the snows on the liigh mountains to the vegetation 
 in the immediate foreground, was admirably studied and most faithfully 
 rendered. The photograph m 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 Httle Highland breed as the best of our native 
 painters. I have seen several other pictures by the same pauiter, and 
 a few etchings of liis, winch confirm my favourable 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 Leon Cogniet and Jules Laurens, and gained the Grand Prix de 
 Rome for historical landscape in 1857. This is an honour, however, to which 
 the reader need not attach much weight, and the prizes for historical land- 
 scape 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 natm-e, the 
 better his chances of success. AU constituted academies and schools of art 
 
 H 
 
50 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 have either neglected landscape-painting altogether, or else enforced the 
 imitation of the so-called 'classical' landscape-painters of the seventeenth 
 century ; hut it has sometimes happened that a young French artist, whilst 
 really possessing that knowledge of the art of landscape-painting which 
 would have disqualified him for a prize, has prudently suppressed it, or 
 temporarily laid it aside, in oi'der to win a reward wliich offered him a long 
 and pleasant residence in Rome. This must have heen the case with Jules 
 Didier, for it is otherwise inexpHcable how so good a painter could have 
 received an honour so dubious. His finest pictures 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 
 Trasimene,' • Labourage sur les mines d'Ostie,' ' Une distraction dans le 
 paturage ; campagne de Rome,' ' Paturage 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 colour, for an uncommordy fine management 
 of cool grays and deep greens. I may add, that Jules Didier's know- 
 ledge is by no means confined to bovine animals and landscape ; his 
 ' Preparatifs de courses en Etrurie,' a picture of charioteers just ready to 
 start for the race, included severe studies of men and horses of a quahty, 
 in point of science, superior to the very high average of the contemporary 
 French school. 
 
 When pm^ely decorative painting is exhibited m 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 necessary 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 conclusions not altogether favourable ; he thinks^ most likely, 
 
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES. 51 
 
 that Puvis cle Chavannes is very odd and affected, and that the dreamland 
 he lives in is like les Limhes of Casimir Delavigne :■ — ■ 
 
 Comme un vain reve du matin 
 
 Un parfiim vague, un bruit lointain 
 
 C'est je ne sais quoi d'incertain 
 
 Que cet empire 
 Lieux qu'a peine vient eclairer 
 Un jour qui, sans rien colorer 
 A chaque instant pr6s d'expirer 
 
 Jamais n'expire. 
 
 Partout cette demi-clarte 
 Dont la morne tranquillite 
 Suit un crepuscule d'ete 
 
 Ou de I'aurore 
 Fait pressentir que le retour 
 Va poindre avi celeste sejour 
 Quand la nuit n'est plus, quand le jour 
 
 N'est pas encore ! 
 
 Ce ciel terne, oil manque un soleil, 
 N'est jamais bleu, jamais vermeil; 
 Jamais brise, dans ce sommeil 
 
 De la nature, 
 N'agita d'un fremissement 
 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 pamters 
 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 tranqiiil 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 
 
52 
 
 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 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 especial pin-pose, 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 dijubtful in the Chumps Elijsers. 
 The dull, dead colour of these paintings, that seemed faint and cold beside 
 the varnish 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, t 
 
 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 landscape 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, &c., and has been 
 a constant contributor tn the Salons. His pictures include a variety of 
 subjects, I'anging over the three specialities of landscape, genre, and marine, 
 including illustrations of tlie different countries and people visited in his 
 travels. Le Poittevin is an exceedingly clever pamter ; there is always a 
 great deal of truth and character in his figures, and Iris knowledge of land- 
 scape 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 ; 
 
 * There is not space in the text for any special 
 criticism of the works of Puyis de Chavannes, 
 but it may be added here that their subjects are 
 usually illustrations of some simple thoD:e, such 
 as ' Work,' ' Rest,' ' War,' ' Peace,' ' Sleep ; ' by 
 means of groups of highly idealised figures the 
 size of life, or larger, in landscape equally ideal- 
 ised. 
 
 I When couleur is attempted, drawing neces- 
 sarily becomes secondary, as in the works of 
 Delacroix, but coloration is compatible with the 
 closest attention to form, and implies rather a 
 perfectly harmonious arrangement of tints vpon 
 form than the independence of couleur. The 
 tinting of Gibson's ' Venus ' may have been color- 
 ation, but could not possibly be couleur. 
 
LIGHTING THE BEACON LAMP. 
 Le Poittevin. 
 
LE POITTEVIN, AUBEKT. 53 
 
 plage d'Etretat.' It is the custom in France for ladies and gentlemen to 
 bathe ha 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 recognises 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 circumstances, 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 armour into a means of 
 attack; stUl 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, 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 humour. M. Le Poittevin was such a spectator ; and having, further, 
 the terrible power of setting forth all that he had observed on canvass, he 
 recorded what he had seen so vividly, that merely to have looked at his 
 picture is as good as a visit to Etretat itself Much of this clever observation 
 of character may be traced in the accompanying photograph (though here 
 it is much less obvious), wMch is taken from a picture exhibited in the Salon 
 of 1863, 'Les preposes h, I'entr^tien des Phares du Mourdyck, souvenir de 
 Hollande.' In the Salon of 1868 his ' Festival au Chateau ' attracted attention 
 by its genei'ally poetical look, and by the good management of various lights. 
 The chateau was seen from outside, from the river, and the contrast between 
 the mooidight and the warm light in the windows and the variously colotued 
 lamps on the terrace was rendered with great skill, the lamps being especially 
 brilliant. 
 
 The beautifol picture by Aubert, of which a not inadequate translation 
 in photography serves as a frontispiece to the present volrune, 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 
 
54 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 possible attention to form, and wherever portions of the figures are left 
 unconcealed by drapery, they are drawn on the strict principles of classical 
 interpretation of the nude. Still, notwithstanding an admirable chastity, 
 this is an incident picture, and the incident or situation, however dehcately 
 rendered, is of a kind which appeals directly to sensuous feelings. So 
 exquisite is the taste with which the artist has managed to convey his 
 idea, that it would not be possible to express it so clearly in written words 
 without comparative 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 remarkable 
 simphcity of the attitudes and the costume — a simpUcity which, in less 
 able hands, would have amounted to awkwardness, but which here is 
 perfectly 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 margia of a quiet stream, but the costume is scarcely adapted 
 to the place. These voluminous dresses are Hkely to be caught and torn 
 in the roots of uncivihsed 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 pictrue can for one moment contend 
 with them in importance. It is true that there are hands to 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 ciurious arrangement shows that we have come to a kind 
 of art dkectly 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 
 purpose 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 craving in 
 
THE CONFESSION. 
 
 TiSSOT. 
 
COMTE. 
 
 55 
 
 the modern mind, which was wholly unknown to the classical one. A taste 
 for intricacij, for quaiutness, for quantitij, suddenly developed itself in 
 Romanticism, and may be found in the last of its productions (the Capitaine 
 Fracasse of TheophUe Gautier) just as evidently as in its earliest. Roman- 
 ticism is now dead ; but Modernism, in taking its place, has uiherited 
 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 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 vsdth 
 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, stiU. 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 bom at Lyons about 1815, and studied under 
 Robert Fleury. His art is strictly genre painting, with a strong infusion 
 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 than Comte. For example, take the subject of rat-catching. Comte 
 
 • I remember a conversation amongst several 
 French artists, during -whicli one of them, a dis- 
 tinguished 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.' 
 
56 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 determines to paint a picture of rat-catching, and might easily have found 
 a stiitable subject in modern hfe 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 dernifere 
 annee de sa vie, le roi Louis XI. afiaibli par la maladie, pour remplacer 
 la chasse qui avait ete son divertissement favori, imagina de faire prendre 
 les rats du chateau et de les faire battre avec de petits chiens qu'on dressait 
 a ce gibier.' The picture is only a genre pictui-e, so far as it is an illustration 
 of rat-catching, but it is truly an historical pictm'e in this, that it sets before 
 us one of the most remarkable of French sovereigns, in the last year of 
 his reign. A Hstorical picture trvdy it is — a vividly historical pictvue — 
 but how contrary in execution to the jorinciples 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 illuminated by reflections, and so striking is the 
 effect of sunshine, that it becomes rather doubtful whether, after all, the 
 rat-catching and Louis XL are not mere pretexts, and whether the real 
 subject of the work is not reflected sunshine. A svmbeam from an unseen 
 window strikes the floor, and part of a panelled division 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 reverberating, 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 Ins 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 
 
COMTB, 5 7 
 
 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 prodigious dis- 
 advantages under which a painter works, when he attempts a contest with 
 the strong Hght of nature, a technical triumph of this kind seems httle 
 short of the miracidous. 
 
 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 infirmity compels 
 us to be contented uith lower pleasures. Louis XL had been passionately 
 fond of the chase, but was brought down to rat-kUling by the advance of 
 disease. So in another picture the artist has illustrated, 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 historical personages 
 known to him, and fixes upon Charles the Fifth. ' Charles Quint, apr^s 
 son abdication et avant de se retirer au convent de Saint Just, va revoir 
 le chateau de Gand ou il a et^ elev^.' Here we have then at once an 
 historical picture, for a great historical personage is set before us ; a costume 
 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 
 destinies of men. Hardly any of us, however smooth and uneventfid the 
 history of our lives, can revisit, unmoved, the place where our career began. 
 This emotion is a better subject for pictorial than for literary treatment ; 
 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 unwaiy 
 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 
 
 I 
 
58 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 subject in a novel and attractive form. Here the subject is old and familiar, 
 tlie return of cornph'tt'd 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 portraits painted of him, two at least are of hrst-rate excellence. 
 The portrait of Napoleon the Third, 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, biit craft as consummate as his, and cruelty 
 far more odious than his simple determination to clear away all obstacles 
 to his ambition, have in many instances (especially in Italian princes) been 
 perfectly compatible with the most courtly and refined manners. Louis 
 Napoleon belongs to the most dangerous of the dangerous classes, that of 
 learned and accomplished gentlemen who have no scruples about means. 
 People who know the Emperor come from their visits to Compiegne or 
 the Tuileries conquered by the charm of his manner. The air of refinement, 
 the courtly and pohshed look in the portrait by Cabanel, are quite true 
 to one side of this remarkable character ; the other half of it no painter 
 cordd 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 honours it by her simple dignity. Independently 
 of its value as a mere likeness, it has so much othei' 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 perfect 
 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 eveiy commonplace portrait has a cm-tain in it. 
 Tlris portrait, not a commonplace one, has also a curtain. But this is a 
 portiere, a cvirtain before a door, much used in French houses, and the 
 beautifid Countess was walking towards it when she paused to look at 
 
CABANEL. 59 
 
 US. It is of a golden colour with armorial bearings worked in it. The 
 background is simply the grey wall of the room, with straight lines painted 
 round the panel, of great use in the composition. The dress is black velvet, 
 pamted carefully and well, the hands are folded and painted as carefully 
 as the face, and no doubt just as faithfully ; the violet riband round the 
 neck is the most brilliant bit of colour admitted. The face is beautiful 
 and interesting, with dark hair and eyebrows, and an expression very 
 intelligent and a little sad. And close to this portrait, with its dark and 
 quiet colour, 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 hght 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 Httle rippling stream of golden water losing itself 
 in the azure deep. The form was wUdly voluptiious, the utmost extremities 
 participating in a kind of rhythmical, musical motion. The soft sleepy 
 eyes just opened to the Hght 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 coloured with a dazzling 
 dehcacy. 
 
 This picture, or the 'Nymphe enlevee 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 Universal Exhibition of 1867. He can paint a charming portrait 
 of a beautiful woman, or a courtly picture of a gentleman ; he can pamt, 
 too, a pretty nymph or Yenus, 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 rmn, and God Almighty in person coming 
 to condemn them. It is wonderful how easUy painters forget that, to 
 attempt successfully certain subjects, much more is necessary than skilful 
 management of the brush, or mastery over dehcate form and colour. Cabanel 
 is not Milton, and a subject which might suit Milton exactly is quite unfit 
 for Cabanel. Few hving painters may safely attempt these subjects, especially 
 
60 
 
 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 if they have passed their Hves in Paris, because few beheve in them as 
 facts, in the way that Milton beheved.'"" 
 
 The winter of 1529-30 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 ol 
 a gendarme. The price of the portrait was thhty francs, and the gendarme 
 came to the little garret to be painted, but the ceihng was so low that 
 he coidd not stand erect, so he had to sit on one of the two chairs that 
 the garret contained. As there was no easel the other chair had to do 
 duty for one, and the painter had to sit upon a wooden box that constituted 
 Ills wardrobe. The gendarme sat till he was nearly frozen, and the painter 
 painted till his hand was niimb. The portrait was a success, and the 
 delighted original munificently gave the pamter 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 haudrier of the gendarme, 
 wore the grand cordon of the Legion of Honoiu-, 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 barracks, 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 hkeness, it went far beyond the 
 point of mere imitative resemblance, and set before us the aspect of the 
 man, the wonderful mUdness and gentleness of a nature, which without 
 being bloodthhsty shrinks from no shedding of blood, the calm exterior of 
 
 * It may still be a question, howuver, wliether 
 belief in the historical truth of a tradition or 
 legend is necessary to the perfect artistic illustra- 
 tion of it. Thorwaldsen was once asked huw 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.' 
 
GUSTAVE MOREAU. 
 
 61 
 
 the most accomplished disshnulator alive. A quiet gentleman, reserved, it 
 is true, yet apparently as frank as is consistent with his dignity, willing to 
 take part in amusing little games after dmner, 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 vengeance 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 emergencies of a campaign ; a politician, wbo 
 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 aU the various accomplishments which go to form a painter, and which 
 have to be acquu-ed 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 that of the Emperor, is the portrait of Prince 
 Napoleon, a thoroughly characteristic picture. Others, of Count Walewski 
 and MM. Marcotte Genlis and RothschUd, were exhibited only m 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 succeeded in 
 producing two or three pictures of first-rate excellence in their way. His art 
 
 * Eeaders wlio are not acquainted Trith the 
 religions works of Flandrin ought to visit the old 
 and curious, and now splendid church of St. 
 Germain-des-Pr^s, 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 d'Ainay, also decorated by him. 
 Flandrin was a religious man, and took the 
 greatest delight in labours of this kind. No 
 painting is more magnificent than his, as decora- 
 tion, 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 Keview.' 
 
62 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 is based more upon the study of sucli 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 production stand at the two ends 
 of the scale : we have artists who try for the power of rapid and comprehensive 
 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 quahty oi freshness for its principal aim, 
 and succeeds or fails m proportion to the vigour and precision of its first 
 hit ; and there are also artists who naturally elaborate their conceptions very 
 slowly, laboriously purifying and refining them, tUl 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 labours 
 demand. His ' (Edipus and the Sphinx,' ' Young Man and Death,' and 
 ' Orpheus,' are all, in their own peculiar way, liighly 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 Desgoflfe, 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 colour, are almost uncalled for here ; but there 
 is a notable difference between Desgoffe's choice of subject and that of viilgar 
 painters of still life. Instead of imitating twopenny beer-bottles, he copies 
 fine vases of crystal and rare old enamels ; instead of representing kitchen 
 utensUs, he reproduces the most preciotis ivories and agates in the Louvre. 
 His art is therefore noljle in its way, being the best use of a sort of talent 
 hitherto often thrown away upon work unworthy of it. Desgoffe's pictm^es 
 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 
 
FELLAH WOMAN. 
 Landelle. 
 
DESGOFFE, LANDELLE, BOICHARD. 
 
 63 
 
 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 accm-ate 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 liis 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 wovdd have represented those with spots of pure white ; 
 Millais with spots of pale grey, 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 Desgofie 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 manipidation for fair study and imitation. Without 
 anything of what painters call texture in the paint itself, which is perfectly 
 smooth, there is a representation 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 herself never 
 produced so marvellous an imitator. 
 
 As it is necessary to reserve a page or two for landscape, my notice of 
 some figiu-e -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 
 paragraph like this. Three other Oriental pictures by him were exhibited 
 in the Universal Exhibition of 1867, proving equal skill and more 
 
 * For example, most painters, in painting a 
 rougli-cast wall, would plaster the canvas with 
 rough paint ; photography would get the tex- 
 ture 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 em- 
 broidery. 
 
64 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 vivacity.* Boichard is one of the most surprisingly skilful of the painters 
 of modern life ; such works as his ' Gold Fish ' and ' Game of Jonchets ' are 
 quite remarkable for imitative 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 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 everything 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 Yernet, who has painted several touching 
 pictures of military life. Two of the most affecting were exhibited in the 
 Salon of 1866, 'AUant a I'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 officer has dismounted, 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 consider- 
 able name of Plassan, a true artist, uncommonly refined in method, though 
 his subjects are not always very interesting. He is, however, sufficiently 
 well known in England to need no recommendation here. Duverger, too, 
 is beginning to be known in England, where his reputation as a highly 
 skilful and observant painter of genre is likely to prosper and increase. 
 
 * 1. 'Enfant d'A'isaom, charmeur de serpents (Tanger)'; 2. 'Prison de Tanger — le Pain'; 
 3. ' Prison de Tanger — I'Eau.' 
 
Q 
 w 
 
LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 65 
 
 I like his cottage interiors best, they are admirably painted, and the figures 
 are full of character. Two of the most perfect 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 ah but total exclusion of the severest figure-painting 
 and landscape. I said in the beginnmg of this Essay, that in a certain 
 sense the public painted the works of its favourite artists ; and in the 
 same sense, it is the public that selects ihustrations for books of this kind. 
 The cultivated reader will easUy 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 accompany 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 photograph, to 
 the great French school of landscape. 
 
 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 mountams 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 ai'e mexhaustible, and her ancierrt cities, though 
 greatly impoverished (from the ar-tistic point of view) by the advance of 
 modem 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 hundred httle valleys and 
 innumerable streams, and picturesque villages, and castles, and rocks, and 
 
 K 
 
66 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 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 pretension, and also their simphcity of purpose. They 
 aim at a purely artistic impression, without troubling themselves in any 
 way about scientific delineation, or the interest of the subject, as a natviral 
 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 minda not 
 artistically cultivated, and the natiural marvels or curiosities which the 
 bourgeois travels far to see, are likely, in the majority of instances, 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 tomist who, being asked whether he 
 admired a certain very lovely valley in England, answered contemptuously 
 that he had seen Switzerland. Now the spirit which dictated this reply, 
 was the very opposite of the spirit which hves in the French landscape- 
 painters. Many of them have also ' seen Switzerland,' 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 synthetic, aims so much at 
 perfect imity of impression, that it faUs often in detail, and seems careless or 
 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 dravdng 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 
 
in 
 W 
 W 
 A 
 H 
 
 (n 
 O 
 
 > 
 Q 
 
 H 
 
 o 
 
LANDSCAPE-PAINTING. 67 
 
 satisfied with svich an amount of form as, in your case, may be compatible with 
 your other qualities. Now Daubigny has Httle form, and Corot has still less, but 
 they both of them draw quite as well as many an Enghsh landscape-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 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 reserves ; and for 
 so thorough an analysis to be readable, additional space must be allowed for 
 the mere craft of authorship, space for transition and illustration, and room 
 for each paragraph to come happily to its natural close. 
 
 In the course of this volume I have said little in favour of the influence 
 exercised by popular opinion upon art, and by popular interest in it. This 
 influence 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 pubHc is more interested in art than formerly, or at least more willing 
 to seek amusement in it. An art wliich is generally interesting, like a 
 literature which has something for aU classes of readers, is continually 
 educating its admirers, and preparing them for better things ; but an art 
 and a hterature addressed only to the few, would train no recruits, and wovld 
 benefit only the instructed, producing outside of their little circle no better 
 residt than a hoUow pretence of connoisseurship, or a slavish superstition 
 about ' rules.' Painting, no doubt, often addresses itself to an uncultivated 
 pubhc ; but so does literature too, and, on the whole, with good results. 
 The impression that modern art is frivolous may be due in some measure 
 
68 PAINTING IN FRANCE. 
 
 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 litei-ary 
 productions of France had to be piiblished annually in the Palais de 
 I' Industrie, as all her pictmes have, how immensely 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 fiivolity, and to find 
 out and appreciate the few literary performances which combine finished 
 workmanship with deep or accurate thought ! 
 
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 AN ESSAY. 
 
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 Lighting the Beacon 
 
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 Tissot. 
 
 De Jonglie. 
 
 Henri cite Browne. 
 
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 Landelle. 
 
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 Little Beggar Girl 
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 Once on a Time . 
 Study of Trees . 
 Deer at the River 
 Highland Ferry . 
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 Death of Leonardo da Vinci 
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 Landscape . 
 Ploughing . 
 
 Camp' 
 
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 H. Vcrnct. Before the Attack . . Protais. 
 
 Robert. Return of the Flock . . Jacque. 
 
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 Boy with Cabbage-Nets. 
 
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