tix V '' • 
 
 I 
 
 . ‘ K. 
 
 ■ 
 
 /? 
 
 > 
 
 
 
 it 
 
 \ 
 
 Lt% 
 
 t 
 
 
 \ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Getty Research Institute 
 
 https://archive.org/details/saloncollectiono01carr_0 
 
CHARLOTTE CORDAY, 
 
 -Ai.lUlSL L hALL 
 
 NEV/t’. .iv]/ 
 
ff. 
 
 ■M’,- 
 
 J 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 . •; ,/ sv ••/V . . 
 
 A 
 
4 
 
The Salon 
 
 A COLLECTION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 CHOICEST PALYTINGS RECENTLY EXECUTED BY 
 DIS TING UI SHED E UR O PEA N A R TIS TS 
 
 n.I.USTRATED WITH FORTY PHOTOGRAVURES, PREPARED ESPECIALEY 
 FOR THIS WORK BY MESSRS. GOUPIL & CO.. OF PARIS 
 
 TOGETHER WITH 
 
 NUMEROUS ORIGINAL DESIGNS BY THI'I MOST EMINENT MODERN 
 PAINTERS, REPRODUCED I.N FAC-SIMILE 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 Prof. CHARLES CARROLL 
 
 OF THE NEW YORK. UNIVERSITY 
 
 ASSISTED BY RENE DELORME, ARMAND SILVESTRE, GVSTAVE 
 GOETSCIIV, AND OTHER EOREIGN EXPERTS. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 SAMUEL L. HALL 
 
 757 Broadway 
 
 i88i 
 
Copyright, i88i, by Samuel L. Hall 
 
 Trow’s 
 
 Printing ano IIookbinding Comimny, 
 201-213 \2tk Street, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In preparing" the present work the publisher aims to 
 oft'er to the cultivated portion of the American public a brief 
 but expressive record, which shall comprise the best and 
 latest data illustrating the present state of French delineati\ e 
 art. Viewed in this light, it will form, he ventures to hope, 
 not merely a source of pleasure, an entertaining or decora¬ 
 tive object for the library or the drawing-room, but a means 
 of instruction There is little neetl to enlarge, on this occa¬ 
 sion, on the merits and relative position in art of the modern 
 French school. To students of art-history the mere mention 
 of such names as Gerome, Couture, d'royon. Millet, Corot, 
 Ingres, Idelacroix, Rousseau, and d’Aubign)', is ample war¬ 
 rant for the statement that the I'rench painters of the last 
 half century have had a vital, if not predominating influence 
 on the whole aesthetic progress and culture of the period. 
 lApecially has this been felt in our own growing school ot 
 representative art. The crisj) suggestiveness, the dramatic 
 fire, and the profound scientiflc knowledge and technique of 
 the best French workmen have had a peculiarly stimulating 
 effect on the receptive and adaptive spirit of our own paint¬ 
 ers. It is not too much to say that the strongest and most 
 original of American artists have been among the most 
 
IV 
 
 PR EF A CE. 
 
 earnest to adopt and develop this freshening influence 
 from across the sea. Many of them are proud to rank 
 as disciples of the great I'renchmen; and whatever be the 
 future reserved for American art, its development can hardly 
 fail to show abiding traces of this inspiring and guiding 
 force. 
 
 beyond the mere satisfaction of the eye,—the temporary 
 pleasure to be gained from the graceful art reproductions 
 of the present work,—lies the intellectual interest of the 
 comment. In preparing the letter-press the publishers have 
 not attempted to furnish—as is not uncommonly done in simi¬ 
 lar cases—a purely popular exposition, addressed to a class 
 of readers presumably little, if at all, versed in the subject mat¬ 
 ter. For works so signiflcant as the best specimens of the 
 Paris Salon, the accompanying text should evidently take a 
 higher range than the mere explanatory legend of a cheap 
 picture-book. The material most appropriate for the pur¬ 
 pose is clearly that of the F'rench edition—the criticisms of 
 the best Parisian fcnillctonistcs —marked as they are by the 
 subtle but liberal appreciation, the clear statement and the 
 epigrammatic point so characteristic of their class. The 
 critical element of P’rench literature thus aptly blends with 
 and supplements the illustrative inteiest of the engravings. 
 1 he work here offered is, in all essentials but the language, 
 precisely the Paris edition of the “ Exposition des Beaux 
 Arts.” Thus presented, it should constitute a more homo¬ 
 geneous whole than if pieced out with a mere Americanized 
 commentary. In reliance, therefore, on the well-known skill 
 and authority of the gentlemen commissioned to prepare the 
 
PR EF A CE. 
 
 V 
 
 original letter-press, it has been translated almost literally. 
 The translator has striven to do his work with the utmost 
 possible fidelity; to give the whole spirit, and nothing but 
 this, of his original, with only such use of paraphrase, such 
 change in phrase or coloring, as may be necessary in order 
 to give it clearness to American readers, or flow and smooth¬ 
 ness to American ears. Whatever deflciency it may show, 
 as a mere matter of exegesis, it can hardly fail to supply an 
 instructive pagm of concise aesthetic criticism, as suggestive 
 and significant, in its own way, as the pictures themselves. 
 
 With these few words of introduction the publisher sub¬ 
 mits his work to the attention of art-lovers throughout the 
 
 o 
 
 country. It has been his intent to appeal to a high and cul¬ 
 tivated taste rather than to the more superficial forms of so- 
 called popular appreciation. Whether he has succeeded, 
 the public estimate of his enterprise must be trusted to de¬ 
 cide. In any case, it may be permitted him to modestly 
 hope for such measure of approval as is fairly due to well- 
 meant and earnest effort. 
 
I" 
 
 ffr ■ 
 
 
 W 
 
 I*-- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 T*,. 
 
 
LIST OF PRIZES 
 
 AWARDED RV THE JURY 
 
 AT THE 
 
 SALON FOR 1880. 
 
 PAINTING AND SCULPTURE. 
 
 MEDALS FOR EXTRAORDINARY MERIT. 
 
 MoRDi'lAime Nicolas). Painting. 
 
 TatLM.AS (Gabriel Jules), Sculpture. 
 
 SALON PRIZE. 
 
 SUCHETET (Auguste). 
 
 PAINTINCx. 
 
 FIRST CLASS AIEDALS. 
 
 DaGNAN-Bouveret (Pascal Adolphe). 
 
 Leroll (Henry). 
 
 Pelez (Fernand). 
 
 C,4ZIN (Jean Charles). 
 
 SECOND CLASS IMEUALS. 
 
 Bourgeois (L’rbain). 
 
 Besnard (Paul Albert). 
 
 CouRTOis (Gustave). 
 
 Dant.un (Joseph Eidouard). 
 
 I'eyen (Eugene). 
 
 Gilbert (Victor Gabriel). 
 
 Guillon (Adolphe Ircnee). 
 
 Le Blant (Julien). 
 
\ 111 
 
 L IS T OF PRIZE S. 
 
 Lhermitte (Leon Augustin). 
 Monvel (Louis Maurice Boutet dej. 
 Renouf (Emile). 
 
 Rozier (Dominique). 
 
 Rougueron (Jules James). 
 Vernier (Emile). 
 
 Vely (Anatole). 
 
 THIRD CLASS MEDALS. 
 
 Aublet (Henri). 
 
 Auguin (Louis Augustin). 
 B,4LL.4V0INE (Jules Frederic). 
 Barillot (Leon). 
 
 Bonnefoy (Henri). 
 
 Beaumetz (Etienne). 
 
 Bo.mpart (Maurice). 
 
 Dupre (Julien). 
 
 Dawanl' (Albert Pierre). 
 
 Euelfelt (Albert). 
 
 I'OUBERT (Emile Louis). 
 
 Haquette (Georges). 
 
 Hareux (Ernest Victor). 
 
 Krug (Edouard). 
 
 Larcher (Jules). 
 
 Lix (Frederic Theodore). 
 
 M.arais (Adolphe Charles). 
 
 Motte (Henri Paul). 
 
 Muraton (Mme. Euphemie). 
 Mouillun Alfred). 
 
 Peraire (Paul EmmanueP. 
 
 OUGST (Eugene), faience. 
 
 R.avaut (Rene Henri). 
 
 Rivey (Arsene). 
 
 Valadon (Jules Emmanuel). 
 
 HONORABLE MENTION. 
 
 Artz (Adolphe). 
 
 Backer (Mile. Harriette). 
 
 Beyle (Pierre Marie). 
 Bouchet-Doumencq (Henri). 
 Boudier (Edouard Louis). 
 
 Boudet (Leon). 
 
 C-4LMETTES (Fernand). 
 
 Claude (Eugene). 
 
LIST OF PRIZES. 
 
 IX 
 
 Colin (Gustave Henri'. 
 Colin-Libour (Mine. Uranie). 
 U.4RDOIZE (Emile). 
 Demont-Breton (Mine. Virginie). 
 Uesbrosses (Jean). 
 
 Demarest (Guillaume Albert). 
 Deve (Eugene). 
 
 Du Paty (Leon). 
 
 Flameng (Maria Auguste). 
 
 Fleury (Mme. Fannyj. 
 
 Frappa (JosG. 
 
 Gieneutta (Norbert). 
 
 Guillaume (Mile. Noemie). 
 
 J.4DIN (Emmanuel Charles). 
 Laugee (Georges). 
 
 Leleux (Mme. Arinand Emilie). 
 Mauve (Anton). 
 
 Martin (Francois). 
 
 Matifas (Louis). 
 
 Michel-Levy. 
 
 Morlot (Alphonse Ale.xis). 
 PiCKNELL (\V. L.). 
 
 Piot-Nurmand (Alexandre). 
 Pompon (Paul). 
 
 PoPELiN (Gustave). 
 
 Raub (Charles Francisque). 
 
 Royer (Lionel). 
 
 Salome (Emile). 
 
 Saubes (Leon Daniel). 
 
 Sauvaige (Louis Paul). 
 
 Sauzay (Adrien). 
 
 Winter (Pharaon Abdon Ldon de). 
 
 SCULPTURE. 
 
 FIRST CLASS MEDALS. 
 Lanson (Alfred). 
 
 SECOND CLASS MEDALS. 
 
 Barrau (Theophile). 
 
 Boisseau (femile Andre). 
 Dumaige (Etienne Henri). 
 Gemito (Vincenzo). 
 
X 
 
 LIST OF PRIZES. 
 
 Lefebvre (Louis). 
 
 Lombard (Edouard Henri). 
 
 Paris (Auguste). 
 
 SucHETEi' (Auguste). 
 
 THIRD CLASS MEDALS. 
 
 Borrel (Alfred), medallion cngra\in 
 Broussard (Andre Pierre Henri). 
 COULON (Jean). 
 
 Dore (Gustave). 
 
 Enderlin (Joseph Louis). 
 
 Gatti (Jesualdo). 
 
 Guglielmo (Lange). 
 
 Longepied (Leon Eugene). 
 Lecourtiep ( Prosper). 
 iMORE.AU (Louis Auguste). 
 
 Ple (Henri Honore). 
 
 Richard (Felix). 
 
 Rodin (Auguste). 
 
 Roger (Fr.in 9 ois). 
 
 Vaudet (Auguste Alfred). 
 
 HONORABLE MENTION. 
 
 Beylard (Charles). 
 
 Basset (Urhainf 
 Beer (Frederic). 
 
 Bion (Paul Laurent). 
 
 Cornu (\Mtal). 
 
 D A R1; E F e u I L L E (P a u 1). 
 Godebski (Cyprien). 
 
 LoRiMIEr (Edouard). 
 
 Mouly (Jean Joseph Fi'anqois). 
 Oge (Pierre Marie Francois) 
 Perrin (Jacques). 
 
 Pezieux (Jean Alexandre). 
 Robert (Eugene). 
 
 Saint-GAUDENS (Augustin). 
 Thomas (Mile. Mathilde). 
 
T he explorer who 
 would make his way 
 through the Fine Arts 
 Exhibition this year must 
 go axe in hand, so dense 
 is the tan cried under- 
 brush, the bewildering 
 and tormenting chaparral 
 of poor works, without 
 thought, or scope, or tal¬ 
 ent, or ideal range. Bet¬ 
 ter than the axe might 
 be the torch, as readiest 
 means of cure for this 
 epidemic of paint which, 
 year by year, gets more 
 intense and more terrible. 
 
HISTORICAL FAINTING. 
 
 Oh ! for some purifying influence to clear the air of the 
 miasma which is slowly, but surely, sapping the life of 
 l^'rench art! 
 
 Even now, the better class of artists, who shun puff¬ 
 ing and self-advertisement, are flocking away from the 
 annual salon. How shall the younger generation grow 
 in strength and wisdom, when their masters are driven in 
 disgust to their tents ? Though it may sound like preaching 
 in the wilderness, it must be said that the Salon is no place 
 to unpack and put on view, for a month or two, the toy-shop 
 wares of cheap incompetence. The .Salon should stand wide 
 open to originality, skill, and knowledge, and to none other. 
 
 It is not very clear why first-class workmen should risk 
 appearing at all in such an incongruous medley. Most surely, 
 if Delacroix, Ingres, Rousseau, Troyon, or Millet were alive, 
 they would not appear on the walls ; and whoso has any 
 doubt on the matter need only ask why Jules Dupre stays 
 away. 
 
 And so, having aired our mind, and said our word of 
 justifiable vexation, let us begin at once with the Historical 
 Painters—a vague sort of term not very easy to define. 
 Wdth a little care, however, we may hope not to trench on 
 the labors of our colleao-ues who are to treat the other de- 
 
 O 
 
 partments represented this )'ear on the walls of the Palais 
 des Champs-Elysees. 
 
 Pass, then, respectfully, but without lingering, before the 
 nol>le contributions of Jules Breton and Eerolle—landscapes 
 —but historical landscapes with figures—and let us get 
 straight to the work of Puvis de Chavannes, “ Young Pi¬ 
 cards Practisiiig with the Spear." 
 
 This cartoon is colossal in size, and fills one of the walls 
 of the large end room on the right as you come in by the 
 square chamber. It is a masterly work, in which the artist 
 
Bf.R I HANI) (J.)— May^Kcritc in ihc Church. 
 
Duchesne (1-2 ) — Cluirlotte Corday- 
 
Pexnt j?ar Couftouf 
 
 Phoh’oi'iivurr' A ( ' 
 
 DANTE AND VIRGIL 
 
 HALL, 
 
 NJ^WYORK 
 

 I 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 7 
 
 of the earlier cartoons—Peace, Labor, War, Rest, and Sleep, 
 of the five paintings in the Amiens Museum, and of the Pan¬ 
 theon frescoes, has illustrated the new theme of patriotic 
 sports —a fitting and, as it were, necessary pendant to 
 his wonderful decorations in the museum of the Picard 
 capital. 
 
 The undertaking was daring, and the result one which 
 may well interest the most indifferent observer. Its striking 
 points are the style, the bold and dashing treatment of the 
 whole picture ; its purity of drawing ; its intense action ; its 
 varied movement ; and, with all its studied simplicity and al¬ 
 most abruptness of treatment, its naturalness. The Amiens 
 authorities can hardly fail to feel its charm, and bespeak the 
 execution of this powerful sketch to complete the decoration 
 of their museum. 
 
 Of the heroic style, a good specimen is the fine ceiling 
 —The Triumph of P'rench Sculpture—by M. Tony Robert- 
 Fleury, intended for the Palace of the Luxembourg. 
 
 The well-known artist of the “ Warsaw Massacre,” the 
 “ Pillage of Corinth,” and of “ Pinel,” makes his first attempt 
 at decorative painting with masterly brilliance and effect. No 
 coarse or exaggerated treatment, no offensive boldness of 
 coloring, no forced display of perspective, but an able, and 
 expressive synthesis of his theme ; and all with but two fig¬ 
 ures. Sculpture sits pensive on a throne of clouds, her left 
 hand resting in a natural and easy attitude on her bent knees, 
 and her right hand pointing to the symbols of the statuary’s 
 art. Fame, with outstretched wings, holds in her left hand 
 her hundred-voiced trumpet, while with her right she pre¬ 
 pares to place a laurel crown on the head of Sculpture. The 
 pure and serene sky about the figures is filled with fluttering 
 amoretti; and a medallion border gives finish to this ver)- 
 happy composition, as calm as it is strong, one of the most 
 
8 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 noteworthy ceilings which have come under our notice for 
 many years. 
 
 M. d'hirion’s two cartoons for the War Office have also 
 some excellent decorative merits. In the first, the artist has 
 very happily acquitted himself in handling a theme—“Law 
 delended by I'orce ”—to which events not long past have 
 lent a certain tinge of irony. “ Law,” personified by a grace¬ 
 ful female figure, sits in an attitude of repose, intent on the 
 tablets of the social code, which rest upon her knees. A 
 little apart, Force, represented as a warrior, in vestment of 
 fur, leans with head and arm against a truncated pillar, in a 
 proud firmness of attitude very discouraging to any interrup¬ 
 tion of his tranquillity. The artistic and studied folds of the 
 drapery in the Avork suggest the striking style and warm 
 tone of eighteenth century decoration, but the composition 
 is original, and the execution masterly. M. Thirion’s second 
 bit is “France in Arms offering Peace,” a fitting pendant, in 
 all regards, to the other. His figure, “Euterpe,” is a good 
 illustration of his readiness and versatility in handling widely 
 diftering subjects. 
 
 M. Pastien Lepage, working on parallel lines with Jules 
 Preton and Millet, without exactly trenching on their specific 
 field, exhibits this year a Jeanne d’Arc, which is destined to 
 make a stir in artistic circles—a Jeanne d’Arc which is alto¬ 
 gether fresh and original in conception, not at all like the 
 same heroine as painted by Chapu or Fremiet, but com¬ 
 pletely naturalistic in treatment. True to the rural instincts 
 of his birth and education, the artist has sacrificed the 
 legendary element to the interests of realism. His point of 
 view, though novel, has ample artistic warrant. To his eye 
 the heroic maid appears rustic, if not coarse, of outward 
 seeming, but with a certain poetry in her very simplicity— 
 a plain country-girl, such as he has already painted in his 
 
'I'oNY-ROBEH'r I'LF.l'RY. — The Triumph of French Sculpiure. 
 
 { Fragment.) 
 

HISTORICAL PAINTING. II 
 
 “Potato Harvesters”—a face whose subtle meaning lights 
 up hard and homely features, and a form in which dignity 
 and grace are veiled, if not hidden, by her sordid peasant 
 dress. Under this coarse exterior the spectator is left to 
 guess the soul, glowing with mystic faith and ardor, its 
 native innocence lit by a ray of divine inspiration which 
 warms its latent devotion to life, till its germs of patriotic 
 
 self-sacrifice blossom in noble achievement, and the poor ser¬ 
 vant-maid becomes the saviour of her country. It is far from 
 our intent to discuss M. Lepage’s standpoint; we merely 
 state the ideal he has clearly had in view. Wdiy not say at 
 once that we heartily sympathize with it } The picture of 
 the poor rustic drudge, listening to her voices in the orchard 
 of her father’s little farm, has a singular power over the 
 emotions, and so presented, it has a finer sublimity than 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTIXG. 
 
 I 2 
 
 under the graceful and angelic guise in Avhich the por¬ 
 traiture has so often been essayed. It is to be regretted, 
 however, that the painter has tried to give visible delinea¬ 
 tion to the voices. The public and the heroine are on the 
 same footing in the matter. i\s she ditl not see her voices, 
 neither should the spectator be made to see them, but 
 should be left to infer them from the expression of her 
 features. Still there is interest and instruction in the work 
 of an artist Avho essays to cpiit the beaten track and speak a 
 new artistic language. Misunderstood, perhaps, at first, his 
 effort will in the end com[)el renewed attention, and the 
 appreciation it merits. 
 
 There are noble traits in the picture by Gervex, “ Sou¬ 
 venir of the Nitjht of the Fourth.” The theme is the melan- 
 choly episode sung by Victor Hugo in the extract from the 
 “ Chatiments,” which opens with the verse- 
 
 “ The child zvas shot—tzvo balls in his brain." 
 
 In a garret room a poor old woman, weeping with eyes 
 where age has almost dried the fount of tears, is undressing 
 the gasping figure of her little grandson, while the doctor, 
 among the surrounding group of men, indicates by his atti¬ 
 tude that all is over. Among the horrified spectators in the 
 background are seen the faces of Victor Hugo and Edward 
 Plouvier, the last a poor portrait. Murky lamplight falls on 
 the centre of the picture, while the rest of the garret is in 
 darkness, and the Avhole makes up a composition full of 
 promising qualities, and strongly marked with the best traits 
 of the modern school. It is a live work ; it carries its pain¬ 
 ful meaning straight to the heart and brings the tears to our 
 eyes with a direct impressiveness we are almost tempted to 
 complain of hardly need the aid of painting to inten- 
 
• 'f 
 
Bol'LANGI'.R (G.)—/'’or Coiditry. 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 17 
 
 sify the lesson of sorrow which Hugo, the avenging poet, 
 has already graven so deep in his terrible verse. 
 
 In the sudden and surprising changes of front among 
 the artists of this year’s salon, one of the most notewor¬ 
 thy is the new departure of M. Luminais. Quitting for a 
 moment the realm of legend—his ancient Gauls, his picket 
 truards and combats of heroes, and buckler-enthroned chief- 
 tains—he returns to history; the Punishment by Clovis of 
 his rebellious sons. The two poor wretches, hamstrung 
 and cast upon a float, are slowly drifting down the .Seine 
 toward the Abbey of Jumieges, where chance shall bring 
 their raft to shore and gain them asylum. The subject is 
 too deliberately tragic to greatly stir the feelings, the compo¬ 
 sition and detail too carefully scientific and correct to leave 
 us much impulsive illusion. Yet through all the theatrical 
 paraphernalia we still trace the sad lines of sober history, 
 calling up, with a strange earnestness and sting of reality, 
 the stern facts of the past, and casting the shadow of Shake¬ 
 spearean tragedy over the old fable of the chronicler. 
 
 M. J. P. Laurens carries out the logical direction of his 
 own imaginative development in the singular bit which he 
 exhibits this year, “ Honorius (Later Empire).” The child 
 emperor sits holding in one hand the sword, in the other 
 the globe, while the diadem on his brow casts over his 
 almost childish features the restless shadow of power, the 
 painful responsibility of sole authority. His sad, hxed gaze 
 seems as if bent, in question, on the horizon of the future, a 
 horizon lurid with sunset clouds of blood and ruin. With 
 its precise rigidity, its strongly marked character, and its 
 monotonous coloring, the work looks as if it had just stepped 
 out of some quaint old Byzantine frame. 
 
 We shall speak, farther on, of the various interpreta¬ 
 tions of Charlotte Corday, for which M. d'urquet, with his 
 
i8 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 sympathetic feeling for classification, has set apart a special 
 room. But before touchinor on the terrible drama which 
 
 o 
 
 has consecrated the slayer of Marat as the avenging angel 
 of assassination, it would be fitting to glance one instant, 
 with M. Mclino-ue, at the domestic life of the great dema- 
 gogue, “ the people’s friend.” In Melingue’s picture, Marat 
 is working in bed, with proobsheets scattered about the 
 floor, his pen between his teeth, and his thoughts busy—if 
 we may judge by his frowning brow—with matters of pain¬ 
 ful moment. The fittings and furniture of the room, all the 
 appurtenances of this terrible episode, are interesting in 
 their realism and absolute fidelity to fact, a fidelity, however, 
 which must be taken on trust; as the pick and spade of 
 modern improvement have swept away the authentic build¬ 
 ing which stood at the corner of the Rue de I’Ecole de 
 Medecine, opposite the Rue Dupuytren. In the narrow 
 limits of an easel picture M. Lucien Melingue has, with his 
 usual ability, given a very sincere and graphic rendering of 
 a striking page in history, an instructive memorial amply 
 worth preserving. 
 
 A pupil of Gerome’s first manner, M. Courtois, inspired 
 at once by Dante and Gustave Dore, takes us into one of 
 the circles of the Inferno—among the traitors who have be- 
 trayed their country. The work gives sign of some praise¬ 
 worthy talent, but shows, throughout, far more literary 
 knowledge than skill in execution. It is a scrap of dry and 
 studied learning, with nothing emotional in it, save perhaps 
 in the figures of Dante and Virgil—dry with a conscious 
 correctness in which it would be pleasant to catch some hint 
 of erasure or afterthought. Still, as an attempt, and in view 
 of M. Courtois’ previous efforts, it is worth mention. 
 
 With M. Sautai we follow Dante into exile. Banished 
 from his native soil, his wife and children driven from the 
 
HISTORICAL FAINTING. 
 
 19 
 
 roof which had sheltered their domestic peace, he sets forth 
 on his painful journey, to beg at Sienna and Arezzo a nig¬ 
 gardly and unwilling hospitality. M. Sautai has chosen for 
 his sketch a moment when the great poet was fain to rest 
 his weary limbs on the benches outside the palace walls, 
 where he sits musing and abstracted, in a quiet corner, with 
 his modest bundle—his only baggage—beside him. A knot 
 of two or three citizens are curiously scanning his features, 
 worn by that inner flame and travail of the spirit which con¬ 
 sumes the flesh as the sword its scabbard. The canvas is 
 radiant with a keen interest far more engrossing than the 
 comparatively mechanical work of M. Courtois. Clearly, the 
 emotional element in art is one of its most resistless fascina¬ 
 tions, and the one which all art-lovers are inclined to demand. 
 We wish to feel in an aesthetic work—to see all over it, so to 
 speak—the clearly defined traces of the artist’s thought; to 
 read in it the record of his doubts, his cares, and his aims, 
 till we enter so closely into sympathy with his labor and its 
 processes that we seem to feel his very heart-beats. This is 
 what a cultivated appreciation e.xacts of all noble work, and 
 this alone holds sway over our sensibility; the creative work¬ 
 man, as in the famous maxim of Horace, must begin by feel¬ 
 ing himself the joys and sorrows he would impart to us. 
 
 This almost self-evident principle may e.xplain the in¬ 
 difference with which we are tempted to hurry past many 
 wmrks of considerable merit in mere mechanical regards, 
 works which, in spite of skilful and laudable execution, lead 
 to no fine sesthetic result, and leave no enduring impression. 
 
 What, for example, do we bring away from M. Besnard’s 
 ‘‘After Defeat: an Episode of War and Invasion in the Fifth 
 Century ? ” In this inconclusive effort everything is left crude, 
 weak, and imperfect. The observer may infer, to be sure, 
 that a great battle has been fought, a town taken and sacked. 
 
20 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING, 
 
 while the Inhabitants, driven In terror from their homes, are 
 wandering forth on the sad chance of finding or founding, on 
 some kindlier shore, other firesides and other roof-trees. 
 The composition is w'orked out with painful and inordinate 
 minuteness, but shows no fine qualities to justify the outlay. 
 The drawing is hopelessly bad, the masses chaotic and broken 
 up, so as to leave no main point of concentration for the eye 
 and thou£rht, and the execution is weak and morbid. For 
 an easel-painting of moderate size the subject would have 
 done well enough ; it is pitiful to see a good theme watered 
 and diluted to fill ten times its proper space. In aiming at 
 the large, the artist has merely succeeded in being exagger¬ 
 ated and out of proportion. M. besnard is not one of the 
 men of emotion, and so we leave him. 
 
 We have no better luck with M. Matejko, a sensational 
 painter, who falls this year far behind what his former con¬ 
 tributions might lead us to hope. Perhaps it is well to know 
 that long ago, on July 15, 1410, there was fought at Griine- 
 wald a mighty battle between the Poles and the Order of 
 Teutonic Knights. But in 1880 no one knows or cares about 
 this old-time fight, nor are we much the better off for M. 
 Matejko’s picture. Here are some forty square yards of 
 canvas plentifully covered with paint, but what it is all about 
 is not so clear. The average spectator will wish he could 
 pay a professional Investigator to pick out the heart of the 
 mystery, and verily he would earn his money. The cata¬ 
 logue, to be sure, informs us that it was a terrible struggle— 
 nearly two hundred thousand warriors engaged—and the 
 slaughter something without parallel in history. But the 
 painting tells us little or nothing, and interests us, if possi¬ 
 ble, still less. In short, the “Battle of Griinewald” is a 
 vast spread of canvas, chaotic and hasty in plan, and blun¬ 
 dering in execution, which looks for all the world like a great 
 
1 
 
 I’Al.MAKDl 1 (V.) —Jihitnhc of iWn'iH rc. 
 

r 
 
EMPERIOR HONORIUS 
 
 oAMULL I. HALL 
 fTEWr'OPX 
 
Dk Cm. I,IAS {II.) — I he Self-Devotion of the Chevalier c/'.lssm 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 25 
 
 bit of decorative paper-hanging. It would make a very good 
 puzzle, on a gigantic scale, for ingenious and idle people, 
 who might pass hours in piecing out and fitting together the 
 corresponding legs, heads, and bodies of these furious com¬ 
 batants, who, by the by, look as little furious as may be, with 
 all their ostensible rage for extermination. Standing before 
 such a work as this, the mind impulsively recurs to other 
 artists—men who have really painted history. Remember¬ 
 ing Delacroix, with his “ Battle of Nancy” and his “ Taille- 
 bourg Bridge,” we see at a glance the vast gulf between 
 the mere manipulation of colors and the genius which has 
 power to call back the past and set it in visible pre.sence be¬ 
 fore us. Farther back, but still within the limits of this cen¬ 
 tury, we summon up in thought the pale features of Gericault, 
 and with them comes the memory of his picture, now in the 
 Louvre—“The Wounded Cuirassier”—a work whose mere 
 recollection, simorests a certain shudder of artistic emotion— 
 
 o o 
 
 one single, stern figure, an entire poem in itself, before whose 
 uplifted sword the whole crowd of M. Matejko’s manufac¬ 
 tured warriors would fiee in dismay. 
 
 In the Square Room, with the “ Battle,” we can merely 
 mention the “ Miraculous Draught of Fishes,” by M. Le- 
 hoLix; a work mainly to be noted for the indication it gives 
 of premature artistic decline in the painter, though it took 
 a prize in the Salon of 1874. 
 
 M. Lix has tried to put fresh life into “ Camille Des¬ 
 moulins at the Palais Royal,” but has fallen short of the suc¬ 
 cess he aimed at and doubtless hoped. He has given us 
 merely a gigantic lithograph, no more. His friends would 
 be better pleased to recognize his hand in those “ Scenes of 
 Alsacian Life ” in which he is really strong. 
 
 M. Ravaut, on the other hand, a pupil of J. P. Laurens 
 and Butin, sends a contribution which has excited general 
 
26 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 attention. The subject is “ A Child Raised to Life by St. 
 Renedict.” M. Ravaut, palpably following in the footsteps of 
 M. Olivier Merson, opens his career with a very earnest and 
 significant production, in which he has treated a purely legen¬ 
 dary theme with the warmth and vivacity of human feeling. 
 
 It would be pleasant to be able to say as much of M. 
 Georges Recker, with his “Christian Martyr” dying at the 
 foot of a stairway—a stairway as unlike Jacob’s as possible 
 -peppered with arrows by three warriors above in the guise 
 of Zulu savages. 
 
 Refore leaving the vestibule of the Scpiare Room the 
 visitor should notice the mural paintings of M. Collin, which 
 show traces of imitation of Puvis de Chavannes, Priou, and 
 others. 
 
 In another quarter of the Exhibition Ruilding, M. Gus¬ 
 tave Roulanger exhibits an Invocation to Patriotism, very 
 lofty and martial in style and manner. The artist leads us to 
 the land of the ancient Gauls—or Franks rather, to judge by 
 the costumes and accoutrements. A group of warriors are 
 setting forth to battle, turning, however, for the last words 
 of warlike cheer and inspiration from their Druid priest. To 
 their fierce ardor no danger seems formidable, no achieve¬ 
 ment impossible. There is great beauty in the figures of the 
 lovers, locked in close and farewell embrace, and great power 
 in the contrasted group at the right, where the most eager 
 of the combatants presses forward in response to the trum¬ 
 pet-call of the picket in the middle distance. M. Rou¬ 
 langer has been complacently dallying for a long time past 
 with a namby-pamby class of subjects which it is pleasant 
 to see him throw aside for work worthy of his manliness 
 and real force. 
 
 The story of Marat, already alluded to in connection 
 with the remarkable picture of M. Lucien Melingue, is 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 29 
 
 illustrated under sundry forms in this year’s exhibition. It 
 would hardly become the aesthetic commentator to drop the 
 thread of critical remark and enlarge upon the details of 
 revolutionary history, nor would all the ink he might shed 
 in the task do much toward whitening the character of 
 this unlovable personage, most reprehensible perhaps in that 
 he did more than almost any man of his time to discredit 
 the great popular uprising of 1789. A monster of cruelty, 
 he was only the more dangerous from the very sincerity 
 and disinterestedness of his fanaticism. If we may trust 
 the intense and vivid portraiture of David, the misnamed 
 “Friend of the People” was not alien to touches of 
 human feeling and benevolence. By an autograph note— 
 the last he ever wrote—he is said to have directed the 
 sending a small sum in assignats to some poor woman 
 whose name has escaped record. 
 
 After such a master-work as David’s Marat, it might 
 be thought that later artists who were tempted to follow in 
 his steps in the treatment of historical subjects, would at least 
 have hesitated to take up the same theme. But the present 
 exhibition refutes the surmise, and gives further proof of the 
 old principle that art is as endless as effort, and ever renews 
 or tries to renew itself in infinite series of reproduction. The 
 several contributions of Messrs. Weertz, Clere, and Aviat, 
 in the same room, are all devoted to the Death of Marat. 
 
 M. Clere has given us a triptych with three compart¬ 
 ments—Charlotte Corday Ascending the Winding Staircase 
 to Marat’s Rooms—The Assassination—and, finally, her 
 arrest. The whole may be summed up as a good deal of 
 work and elaboration for a very meagre result. 
 
 M. WTertz has chosen for his picture the moment when 
 Marat’s room is crowded with the revolted populace of the 
 “ Sections ” and the lower class of working-women. The 
 
30 
 
 HISTORICAL FAINTING. 
 
 latter, transformed by Revolutionary rage into furies of the 
 guillotine, seem bent on tearing the heroic assassin limb 
 from limb, while Charlotte Corday, in momentary terror at 
 their onslaught rather than remorse for the terrible deed 
 accomplished, recoils against the wall. The artist's version 
 differs radically from the conception to which contemporary 
 record has accustomed us. History has reported her as an 
 avemjinof force—a heroine. In makino- her a vulrar crimi- 
 nal M. Weertz has either misread the facts or lacked power 
 for a hio^her treatment. 
 
 o 
 
 In whatever light we examine the character of Char¬ 
 lotte Corday, we are forced to one of two conclusions—to 
 view her either as a monomaniac, insane on the one point 
 of takincr venofeance on the monster, Marat, or as one of that 
 larger class of political assassins who lay their plans, carry 
 them into execution, and offer their lives in penalty, all with 
 e([ual deliberation and self-possession. In paying this 
 penalty, political assassins are always clothed, to their own 
 eyes at least, in the robes of martyrdom, and they meet 
 their fate martyr-like, without coarse bravado, but without 
 shrinking or fear. By the weakness and cheapness he has 
 put into the figure and attitude of his heroine, as by the 
 panic with which she seems overwhelmed, M. Weertz in¬ 
 dicates a totally different view. 
 
 A very different work is the Charlotte Corday of M. 
 Aviat, different in type as in locality. Again the scene is 
 Marat’s room, but a room, this time, which gives signs of 
 having been orderly, neat, and trim, before the accomplish¬ 
 ment of the fatal act. Marat, reclining in his bath-tub, 
 might be thought asleep, and the hand of death seems to 
 have lent a certain peaceful and humane expression to his 
 usually haggard features, an imaginative element in com¬ 
 mon with the conception and treatment of David’s picture. 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 Behind the window curtains, white and clean as the hangings 
 of a school-girl’s chamber, Charlotte tries to shut out the 
 sight of the hideous work her own hands have wrought. 
 On her calm features can be read no trace of the terrible 
 emotion which, we feel, must be raging within. Yet in her 
 whole mien and attitude is a sort of tragic elevation and 
 e.xcitement which enfolds her like a mantle, and prompts the 
 pallid gleam of a half-smile which plays upon her ashy lips. 
 The spectator sees at a glance that she is listening to the 
 hurried footsteps which come storming up the staircase, that 
 each thundering knock at the door finds its echo in her very 
 soul, and her excited imagination stands face to face with 
 the whole terrible drama of discovery and retribution. So 
 drawn, the whole situation is evident, logical, and cogent, 
 far more impressive in its awful and mute relation of the two 
 actors—the dead victim alone with his living slayer, than 
 amid all the cheap and commonplace accessories with which 
 M. Aviat’s rivals have tried to fill out their pictures. 
 
 The execution is thoughtful and discreet, and shows 
 a noteworthy elegance of style, especially in the masterly 
 handling of the whole scale of tone in the white and gray 
 tints. M. Emery Duchesne closes the list with a Charlotte 
 Corday “Going to Execution,” an excellent commencement, 
 full of promise for the future. 
 
 In the “ La Tour d’Auvergne,” of M. Moreau de Tours, 
 there are some excellent features very successfully handled. 
 The hero of the army of the Rhine, the warrior of Unter- 
 hausen, lies dying of a lance-wound through the heart, while 
 a comrade gently raises the body, and the scattered sur¬ 
 vivors of his division gather about him to assist in the 
 last sad offices. The main fault of the picture is per¬ 
 haps a certain lack of cohesion and relation in the en¬ 
 semble; the grouping is too much scattered, and leaves 
 3 
 
34 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 too many breaks in the composition. M. Moreau de 
 Tours is very happy with scenes where the grouping is 
 simple and the interest concentrated on a single point, 
 as, for instance, his picture—“Trance”—in the Salon of 
 1879; but he has not yet gained full command of his 
 methods in canvasses requiring greater complexity of plan 
 and detail. He shows unmistakably, however, that true 
 artistic temperament which always presses on toward a 
 higher level of achievement. His picture this year is 
 highly creditable, and deserves both notice and commen¬ 
 dation. 
 
 M. Betsellere, who has recently died in the very flower 
 of his age and his artistic activity, leaves a last memorial 
 of his talent in a “ Dumouriez,” which shows marked indi¬ 
 viduality. The general, whose faithless and wavering con¬ 
 duct has brought him into discredit and suspicion with his 
 men, is summoned by the volunteers of a battalion from the 
 Marne to obey the orders of the Convention, with the inti¬ 
 mation that they have all sworn, Brutus-like, to stab him to 
 the heart at any hesitation in fulfilling his patriotic duty. It 
 is a striking bit of work, full of lite and movement, and 
 breathes an afflatus which it is sad to know has been so 
 untimely cut short. 
 
 M. Mathey’s “ Last Supper ” is fraught with all sorts 
 of good intentions, but puzzles the observer no little with its 
 mixture of modern tendency engrafted on mediaeval relig¬ 
 ious feeling. The miracle of the “ Breaking of Bread,” by 
 which Christ declared himself to his disciples, is represented 
 as occurring in an Alsacian farm-house. The disciples look 
 as it they had stepped out of one of Ribot’s pictures, and in 
 the foreground a group of children are olayinof around a 
 cradle evidently carved in the Black Forest. The picture 
 seems to have had some hidden symbolism in view, or to 
 
Comte (P. C.) —Frauds I. R'ui^u!^'* the Carps of Fontaiticblcau. 
 

 ■r 
 
 
 ■f 
 
 
 I 
 
 \ 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 ! 
 
 •ft 
 
 i 
 
 •■ f 
 
 . 1 
 
 j • 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 
 4 
 
 I 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 37 
 
 have followed out some line of individual thoucrht which is 
 
 o 
 
 not clear to the average observer. There is a stimulating 
 snap and cleverness in the technique, blended with an eccen¬ 
 tricity in composition and local color, which is puzzling to a 
 deofree. 
 
 o 
 
 IMAIGNAN (A.) — The Last Moments of Chlodobert. 
 
 Besides his mural painting for the city of Belfort, M. 
 ]\TaiQ"nan sends a “ Death of Chlodobert,” which would be 
 highly interesting but for a slight vagueness in indicating 
 the period of history to which it belongs. In the murderous 
 frenzy which marked the reign of Fredegonda—stronger in 
 her infernal genius for destruction than her equally cruel but 
 less energetic husband, Chilpcric—the death of Chilperic’s 
 last surviving son passed almost unheeded. He fell a vic¬ 
 tim to the terrible plague which ravaged the kingdom about 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 38 
 
 580 A. D., whose symptoms were the breaking- out of boils 
 and ulcers over the whole body, burning fever, vomiting, 
 fierce pains in the loins, and headache. Chilpcric himself 
 was attacked with it, but recovered. Appalled at the gen¬ 
 eral suffering around her, Fredegonda felt some slight re¬ 
 lapse of gentler humor, and bowed a moment before the 
 hand of destiny, which she had so often defied. In the 
 graphic pages of Gregory of Tours, this female fiend is de¬ 
 picted as a sort of Northern sorceress or Frankish Medea, 
 as wicked as fair, her life one long series of witchcraft and 
 poisoning, steeped in sanguinary superstition, and sur¬ 
 rounded by a retinue of young assassins whom her fatal 
 potions and still more fatal beauty had enslaved to her will, 
 but for once the royal helicate feels some touch of fear. 
 She has ordered her attendants to bear her husband’s son— 
 the last but one—to the tomb of St. Medard, and there, be¬ 
 side the couch of the dying man, she bows her head in grief 
 and terror, while Chilpcric frantically struggles as if to push 
 apart the walls of the vault and give air to the expiring suf¬ 
 ferer. The work is a good illustration of M. Maignan’s 
 peculiar talent, uneven and incomplete, but nothing if not 
 original. It may be doubted, however, whether the observ¬ 
 ers of his picture get any very clear notion of the legend 
 it aims to illustrate. 
 
 M. Cazin is a painter who never fails to make his mark 
 at each successive Salon—fresh, delicate, and refined, with a 
 brilliancy like Memling or Van Eyck, spite of the delightful 
 simplicity of his methods. We have seen, again and again, 
 paintings a la circ by this admirable executant, which were 
 especially effective, and for purity of drawing and excel¬ 
 lence of technique might rival with ancient frescoes. This 
 time, with methods at every one’s disposal, M. Cazin wins 
 a new triumph with a “Tobias’’and an “ Ishmael,” both 
 
THE SUFFERERS OF JUMIEGES 
 
f 
 
Lehoux (P. a. P .)—The Miraculous DraK^ht of I'ishcs. 
 

 1 
 
 % 
 
 s. 
 
 ' 'i 
 
 i 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 41 
 
 very elegant in drawing and really exquisite in execution. 
 The first-class medal which the artist carries off this year 
 was adjudged him, it may be stated, by an almost unani¬ 
 mous vote of the jury. 
 
 M. Gilbert paints in the very extreme of the modern 
 style, and with great force and impressiveness. His “ Morn¬ 
 ing at the Fish-Market ” is a bit of true, healthy art, after 
 the old masters’ own heart. M. Peley goes farther than 
 M. Gilbert in the same direction ; he gives himself up more 
 entirely to the influence of realism, and borrows his inspir¬ 
 ation from Zola—the revolutionist of modern fiction. In 
 outspoken boldness of treatment he is as frank and as true 
 to nature as the author of “ L’Assommoir.” If, in the one, 
 “ Big Jenny ” had her poet, in the other she has found her 
 painter. 
 
 And still the series of names crowds upon us for men¬ 
 tion, clogging our pen and bewildering our imagination, so 
 that we are fain to pass with mere enumeration, “ A Church 
 Nook,” by Bonvin ; “The Masked Ball,” by Hermans; the 
 “ Prayer to St. Januarius,” by Lematte ; “The Tourney’s 
 Prize,” by Gues; “ Blanche of Navarre,” by Palmaroli; 
 “ The Self-Devotion of the Chevalier d'Assas,” by de Cal- 
 lias ; “ Louis XVI. and Parmentier,” by Delance, and along 
 line of others too numerous to recount. 
 
 We cannot conclude, however, without a word touch¬ 
 ing the “ Henry of Guise before Henry III.” of M, Aublet, 
 a restless artist, never satisfied with the line he has last 
 adopted, who paints, one moment, the “Garrison Wash¬ 
 room of the Reserves,” and the next is off again with a para¬ 
 phrase of Pierre de I’Estoile, a terribly long step, and un¬ 
 fortunately, backward. M. Debat-Ponsan sends an episode 
 from the Massacre of St. Bartholomew ; M. Paul Robert 
 paints the “ Sprites of the Forest,” coming forth from the 
 
42 
 
 HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 tree-trunks as they might have done in the realm of Armida. 
 Two canvasses, after Goya, are by M. Lira ; “ The Depu¬ 
 ties of Ghent at the Palace Gate of Charles the bold,” by M. 
 Delperce; a fragment from Coppee’s “Benediction,” very 
 neatly put together by 
 M. J. Girardet, and we 
 may further notice the 
 contributions of M. 
 
 Dawant, who copies 
 
 J. P. Laurens; of II. Motte, an 
 archaeologist, mighty for rum¬ 
 maging among ruins ; and of Du- 
 pain, wdio, in style, adopts alter¬ 
 natively the lofty and the horrible, 
 and not without good results. 
 
 .Such, rapidly summed up, is 
 the balance-sheet of Historic Art 
 in the Salon of 1880—a balance 
 which, it must be frankly ad¬ 
 mitted, is on the wrong side of 
 the ledger. Lbidoubtedly among 
 the artists enumerated there are some who suo-grest <^ood 
 hopes for the future ; but who can say how far the Salon 
 of 1881 may confirm the pleasant anticipations we are war¬ 
 ranted in basing on this year’s work ? 
 
Aublet (A.) —Visit of Henri dc Guise to Henry HI. 
 
Laurens (J. P. )— Honoring. 
 

 
 f 
 
 
 
GlI.liEKT (j.)—- v/ L orncr of the Pish I\Ia)'kci: Alofy/i?/^. 
 
”11 
 
 \ 
 
Constant (Benjamin.) — The Last of the Rebels. 
 
V- 
 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 
 
 *1 
 
 < 
 
HISTORICAL PAINTING. 
 
 51 
 
 A main fault with our artists is their over-versatility— 
 a versatility which flows from lack of firm conviction and 
 earnest purpose. Without clearly defined estimate of their 
 own powers and best tendency, they glide into any or all 
 lines of work with equal readiness—and equal mediocrity. 
 Wdiere they should study their own bent, and take counsel 
 of their own natures, they study the taste or whim of the 
 time, with disastrous results to their own efficiency and suc¬ 
 cess. 
 
 Yet what a lesson might be learned from the men, so 
 recently in full tide of life and work, who labored through¬ 
 out their whole career with a single-hearted devotion to one 
 idea !—the strong all the stronger for the patient application 
 under which their genius ripened to full fruition, the weaker 
 still sustained and inspired by their fidelity to the single 
 faith that was in them. If the former were giants, the latter 
 may figure not ill beside them. Why need we recall the 
 memory of Gericault, Ingres, Delacroix, Scheffer, Rousseau, 
 Millet, Troyon, Decamps, and the rest? All of these men, 
 from the humblest to the mightiest and most famous, pur¬ 
 sued one purpose, developed 07 ie line, dreamed one dream 
 of art, worshipped one ideal. If the great ones won glory 
 and the lesser at least honorable repute, herein, and herein 
 alone must the secret be sought. To live and die in conse- 
 cration to one idea, is the only ambition worthy of the true 
 artist. Whoso works in other fashion makes pictnres, he 
 does not create. 
 
) 
 
M GUSTAVE MOREAU ex- 
 • hibits, this year, two very 
 singular but striking canvasses, 
 “ Helen ” and “ Galatea”—not, per¬ 
 haps, specimens of his very best 
 work, but decidedly the most original 
 to be found in this year’s salon. It 
 is no very high praise to say so ; for 
 in proportion as our artists advance, 
 year by year, in mere manual dex¬ 
 terity, the fundamental conception of 
 their work seems to grow more and 
 
 more tame and commonplace. Most of them show just 
 enouofh of theme and intention to gfive excuse for a few 
 
 costumes, a bit of landscape, or a set of furniture or acces¬ 
 sories. As for any such thing as clearly developed thought, 
 historical or otherwise, it might be hard to find among the 
 
54 
 
 THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 three thousand exhibitors more than a score or two who 
 seem to have triven it a moment’s heed. 
 
 M. Moreau’s pictures, on the contrary, never fail to 
 afford sueSfestive matter for fruitful meditation ; he has the 
 especial merit, abovn most of his compeers, that he sets you 
 thinking, and his work needs frequent and careful scrutiny 
 for complete appreciation. More than this, his works stay 
 by you ; the impression they leave is durable, and his 
 “ Helen ” or his “ Galatea,” once seen, is not easily forgot¬ 
 ten. The recollection clings in the memory with something 
 of the weird fascination of scenes or forms we have seen in 
 dreams. The two figures which he has called up with the 
 subtle necromancy of his pencil fasten on the imagination 
 like the fair and dazzling but fantastic visions of the opium 
 or the hashish eater. 
 
 His Helen is the Helen of the Trojan war—with all 
 the fatal beauty which sent so many heroes to destruction in 
 the pride of their youth and vigor—which swept away whole 
 generations of “ articulate speaking men ” in the frightful 
 hecatombs of ancient warfare—the same perennial type 
 which in all lands and all ages still stirs up the flame of 
 jealousy and hatred—the same woman whose voice and 
 glance, to-day as thousands of years ago, has power to 
 awaken the sleeping savagery, the ineradicable animal in¬ 
 stinct which lies dormant in all human constitutions. 
 
 The picture shows us Helen—a flower in her hand— 
 standing calm and u[)right, in rigid impassiveness, on a crum¬ 
 bling fragment of Trojan wall, the sunlight glinting from her 
 auburn hair, ligliting up the azure of her eyes, and tinging 
 with a richer glow the sunset crimson of her lips. Draped 
 in the countless folds of a gold-embroidered mantle, and her 
 head encircled with a heavy coronal, her straight, still figure 
 rises among the tufted mosses and weeds ^vhich luxuriate 
 

 is'l . . 
 
 r 
 
THE LORD GAVE ANB THE LORD HATH TAEEH AWAE 
 
MuKBAU 
 

 
 
 I 
 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 57 
 
 among- and over the cyclopean masonry, like the blossom 
 which fitly crowns their rank verdure. 
 
 In stern contrast with this element of womanly beauty 
 and life is the pile of corpses at her feet, the bodies, in 
 tangled heap, of all the youthful heroes who died in her 
 defence—Paris, Helenus, Hipponous, Troilus—their tender 
 limbs still pierced with the darts of the Grecian archers. 
 Their figures still show the contour and symmetry of ear¬ 
 liest youth ; their heads droop, with a sort of bird-like grace, 
 upon their shoulders, and their eyes are closed in a deep 
 repose w'hich might look like slumber, but for the stern, sad 
 shadow Avhich the hand of death has cast over their boyish 
 features. It is a picture of death as the ancient artists drew 
 it, softened and consoled with a sort of smiling tenderness, 
 which leaves in the heart of the victim only one painful 
 trace, the mournful regret for the fair light of da)- which 
 their eyes may no longer see. No shock of terror or de¬ 
 spair distorts their features, their stillness is not the rigidity 
 of slaughtered victims, but the fading fall of blossoms culled 
 before their prime. 
 
 In the background a late sunset casts its dying gleam 
 over the wine-colored waves of the /Ptgean and lights ii[) 
 with dusky l)lue the rocks of Tenedos on the horizon, while 
 the silver crescent of the moon, sharp-cut against the twi¬ 
 light sky, gives the key-note of the thought with its emblem 
 ot apotheosis. 
 
 M. Moreau’s painting embodies and syml)olizes the 
 ancient idea of the fatal power inherent in feminine charm, 
 with an admixture of more modern feeling which lends it a 
 darker and more tragical hue. The Greek mind, with its 
 lighter, more joyous tendency, took a more cheerful view 
 even of human passion and error. All its creations, how¬ 
 ever sad, cruel, or misanthropic the subject matter, are set 
 
5^ 
 
 THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 off by a bright, poetic atmosphere which veils their more 
 sombre features. In their works ot imagination the ancients 
 took as much pains to gloss over as we to enhance the in¬ 
 herent ugliness ol human nature, and delighted as earnestly 
 in raising mortal existence above its mean earthly level as 
 we in plodding through the mire of baser commonplace. 
 Thus the story of Helen, her hrst elopement, her marriage 
 with Menelatis, her escape with Paris, and the war it led to 
 —the whole legend, fraught as it is with crude and cynical, 
 if not revoltins^f realism, ifrew under their treatment to a 
 poem glowing with grace and beauty, the most fascinating 
 narration of all imaginative literature. The varied haps of 
 the royal vagrant are shaped to a wondrous tale of godlike 
 or heroic adventure, and the beauty of the chief personage 
 has become for all time the symbol of feminine charm with 
 its resistless si)ell. 
 
 In the picture under consideration, I lelen appears in sad¬ 
 der licflit and with more fateful sicrnihcance. The embodied 
 personihcation of ruin, it is fitting she should be painted tri- 
 um[)hant over heaps of slaughtered \fictims, cause and effect 
 blending in one allegorjc The philosophic moral of the 
 work is easily read—the old, old story of woman’s suprem* 
 ac)', the everlasting omnipotence of beauty, before whose 
 sway the greatest and wisest are but as helpless jDuppets, 
 mere scraps and remnants of their stronger selves. Nor 
 need we be limited here to the mere consideration of special 
 loss or damage springing from woman’s faithlessness or in¬ 
 satiate desire and caprice. .Such a picture may teach us a 
 more impressive lesson, as the memory ranges over the ruin 
 of states and empires, the never-ending-still-beginning wars 
 and feuds which have swept whole nations from the face of 
 the earth—the rending apart of social and national ties— 
 all the irreparable disaster, in short, of which woman’s fatal 
 
Mukci'I' (A. N .)—The Good Sauiarita?!. 
 
■ wNK. ^ 
 
 « 
 
 i 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 6l 
 
 fairness lias been the germ, and which crowd the pages of 
 history with only too frequent and too ready illustration. 
 Such is the deeper and higher sense in which the allegory 
 of Helen should be read, and such the reflections awakened 
 by this suggestive painting, more suggestive perhaps in its 
 implication than in the artist’s conscious intent. 
 
 In fitting correspondence with this somewhat metaphy¬ 
 sical elevation of the artist’s thought, is the wonderful and 
 almost supernatural brilliancy of the coloring in which he 
 has told his story. His palette seems to have been set by 
 some fairy hand, which spread upon it the dazzling crimson 
 of the ruby, the azure of the sapphire, and the green of the 
 en'ierald—a jewelled mosaic, which, to a distant eye, lends 
 the painting something of the fantastic splendor of the un¬ 
 real world it sprang from. But the result is not a matter of 
 hazard or empty display. The artist is a cunning magician ; 
 and his light and practised hand, while it fills the canvas 
 with gems, frames and harmonizes them with absolute taste 
 and dexterity. If a hasty observer might judge him a mere 
 enthusiast, calling up in his day-dreaming these strange 
 shapes of a visionary world, a sounder appreciation will 
 show him for what he is, a man of deep and subtle thought, 
 as well as a thoroughly trained colorist, for whom the ulti¬ 
 mate refinements of his art have no secret yet untold. 
 
 M. Moreau’s second subject, “Galatea,” is drawn from 
 the realm of pure mythology, and gives us the sentimental 
 episode of the Nymph of the Sea with the giant Polyphemus. 
 The golden-haired daughter of Nereus, the personification 
 in ancient mythology of the white and curling foam which 
 fringes the crest of the breakers, is seated in her grotto, 
 deep down in the caves of ocean, dreaming, no doubt, of 
 her shepherd-lover Acis, and heedless of the cyclops Poly¬ 
 phemus, whose great head is dimly seen in the chiaroscuro 
 
62 
 
 THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 of the background, gazing pensively at lier in an attitude of 
 the deepest admiration. It should be remarked that the 
 artist, deviating from the accejDted tradition, gives his Cy¬ 
 clops three eyes instead of one. Was it perhaps a subtle 
 whim of the painter to allow the giant the conventional 
 human pair for daily and commonplace use, wdille the third 
 and superior luminary might be kept bent upon his mistress, 
 in entranced and single-eyed devotion ? 
 
 Around the lovers the wildest submarine flora spreads 
 its bewildering and almost appalling luxuriance, carpeting 
 the ocean-bed and draping the walls of the grotto with pink 
 anemones, and blood-red coral, and spreading sea-fans, and 
 starry astrmas, while stray tendrils of fibrous seaweed float 
 and twine about the sea-nymph’s gleaming figure, enthroned 
 and bloomings amidst all this wealth of verdureless vegfeta- 
 tion, the choicest of all its blossoms, the pale flower of the 
 sea. 
 
 The inner-meaning of the composition, if it has one, 
 escapes our scrutiny. Until such shall appear, and it seems 
 hardly worth while to linger over the quest, we are fain to 
 refer the reader to Pascal’s sage maxims on the obscurity 
 of scriptural texts, and pass on. The real merit of the can¬ 
 vas is the execution, which is masterly beyond description, 
 none the less so that it is very hard to say how the artist gets 
 at his effects. Galatea’s nude flgure, for instance, while a 
 little indistinct in drawing, is amazing for its beauty of mod¬ 
 elling and for the mysterious oddity of the method—whether 
 oil-painting, or pastel, or aquarelle, or perhaps, as is more 
 likely, a mixture of all three. The accessories are still 
 more striking and interesting. Under the artist’s dainty 
 hand the color shines like enamel, each stroke of the brush, 
 every touch of impasto gleaming with the translucid bril¬ 
 liancy of the precious stone. If to many tastes such excess 
 
Lkkoux (Hector) I'eitii/. 
 
>1 
 
 f. 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 « 
 
 il 
 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 65 
 
 of finish Is repugnant, it may at least be said that when car¬ 
 ried to such exceptional perfection it indicates very high 
 executive skill. 
 
 M. Moreau, in brief, worthily maintains the exceptional 
 position he has taken among the artists of the day, a coign 
 of vantaofe from which it micrht be hard to dislodije him 
 while few of his rivals will be likely to get so far. It is his 
 misfortune, perhaps, to possess in excess a (giality in which 
 others are deficient—a certain over-refinement and attenu¬ 
 ation of his thought, to the vanishing point where it almost 
 disappears. 
 
 It was in the Qrenius of ancient art to brinof down all 
 creative ideas to the standard of clearness and simplicity. 
 The modern artist proceeds on a different plan, and works 
 up from the concrete human fact to a philosophic general¬ 
 ization. Starting with ancient legend for his material, he 
 reads into it and reads out of it a meanintr which never en- 
 
 o 
 
 tered the heads of its creators. Instead of formalizing old 
 truths under a new shape, he takes up and uses the old for¬ 
 mulas for the expression of utterly modern ideas. 
 
 Only choice and exceptional talents may safely risk 
 the attempt. Unfortunately such efforts lead to little good 
 result: they have not the inherent force necessary to create 
 a new school. k)oubtless the mind of man needs, and alwa)'s 
 Avill need, types and symbols ; the fundamental ideas w'hich 
 form its life will always, for entire comprehension and 
 appreciation, need to be presented in visible and tangible 
 form ; they must, as it were, clothe themselves in human 
 shape. But why this ever-recurrent effort to galvanize old- 
 time artistic embodiments .which to modern feeling have 
 lost their meaning? Is the human imagination too with¬ 
 ered and powerless ever to originate new types for the 
 thoughts and feelings of the present ? 
 
66 
 
 THE ANTIOUE. 
 
 I'he ancients found symbols for all the powers of na¬ 
 ture which lay within their ken ; who shall embody in new 
 symbols all the wondrous forces revealed to our later and 
 wiser time ? 
 
 There is a fine thoug-ht in the “ Cain ” of M. Cormon, 
 who has taken his subject from Victor Hugo’s “ Legendes 
 des Siecles,” and paints for us Cain fleeing from the stings 
 of conscience. Ever since the death of Abel he has been 
 wandering over forest and plain, seeking some restful 
 nook of earth’s surface, but linding none. Age has over- 
 taken him on his endless journe)-, but his knotty limbs 
 
 under the pelting of the pitiless storms have grown tough 
 as weather-beaten oak. .Small comfort to him in a sap and 
 \ igor which threaten to drag out his tormented life beyond 
 all mortal limits. His lamily and servants share his head¬ 
 long flight; his wife, old, and gray-hairetl, and wild of mien 
 and feature, is borne behiml him on a rough litter of boughs, 
 with her two grandchildren on her lap. One of the sons, 
 beside the train, carries his j'oung wife in his arms ; for only 
 a manly stride can keep pace with the murderer’s frantic 
 career. Counting on no halts, the little troop of retainers 
 have hung their provisions beneath the litter, while two of 
 them carry on their shoulders the game they have hastil)' 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 67 
 
 killed on the way. At the head of the procession walks the 
 wretched patriarch, with stretching stride, wild stare and 
 wilder gesture—on, on, ever onward, turning neither to left 
 nor riofht, like one who'still hears sounding in his ears the 
 Eternal Voice bidding him give account ot his brother, ever 
 fleeing from the awful stare of the remorseless Eye, which, 
 as the poet tells us, glared upon him through walls of brass, 
 behind embattled ramparts, and deep beneath the earth, in 
 the darkness of his self-appointed sepulchre. 
 
 The most apparent and striking feature in M. Cormon’s 
 picture is its movement. The personages all hurry on as if 
 b'ate were on their track, with a hurried swing which is par¬ 
 ticularly impressive. The general coloring of the picture 
 has a sort of pallid, fierce, and hungry tone, which, in the 
 human figures, becomes a livid clay-color. If in such abrupt 
 realism M. Cormon carries truth to history a little too far, 
 he has scientific warrant for the savage brutality he has 
 thrown into this episode from the primitive life of humanity, 
 the Age of Stone. Yet even in his fidelity to nature we 
 detect a certain wavering, on the artist’s part, between .Sci¬ 
 ence and Biblical record. The picture is not precisely and 
 literally true to either—the scriptural legend, with its sub¬ 
 lime and poetic depth of terror, nor the strictly historical 
 scene, as it might liave been, with less of grandeur and im¬ 
 portance, but illustrating more sharply the ferocious primal 
 instincts of our kind in the infancy of tlie race, the interest¬ 
 ing but terrible record of man’s first crime. The compro¬ 
 mise between these extremes, which the artist has adopted, 
 is not thoroughly well chosen, as indeed compromises rareh’ 
 are. 
 
 Still, the attempt to do as much as he has done, is note¬ 
 worthy and laudable. M. Cormon is an artist and a scholar, 
 and if his work this year does not entirely win our sympa- 
 
68 
 
 THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 thies it at least claims the respect—often better than mere 
 success—which is clue to earnest and lorceful effort. 
 
 M. Morot’s “ Good Samaritan ” is a fine bit of academic 
 study. The wounded traveller, stripped of his garments, is 
 seated on the beast of the kindly wayfarer, who, himself 
 likewise stripped to the skin, bears up the sufferer on his 
 shoulder, as they slowly wend their way down the rocky 
 chasm which closes in the background of the picture. The 
 two studies of the nude are treated with notable victor and 
 technical knowledge, but show little trace of the feeling which 
 the subject might fittingly inspire. The scriptural text runs: 
 “ A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and 
 fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment and 
 wounded him, and departed leaving him half dead. And by 
 chance there came down a certain priest that way, and when 
 he saw him he passed by on the other side. And likewise 
 a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him 
 and passed by on the other side. P)Ut a certain Samaritan, 
 as he journeyed, came where he was, and when he saw him, 
 he had compassion on him, and went to him and bound 
 up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his 
 own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of 
 him.” 
 
 Such is the theme the painter has chosen, and which 
 must furnish the norm for our criticism, as it is not to be 
 supposed for an instant that M. Morot, in selecting it, con¬ 
 templated merely a pretext for technical execution in the 
 clever and brilliant bit under discussion. Of the moral ele¬ 
 ment—the lesson of human charity so strikingly adminis¬ 
 tered by the great Teacher—the work unfortunately shows 
 no sign. It does not even very clearly indicate its own sub¬ 
 ject, and almost any other title for it would do equally well. 
 In contrast with the modern production we may find, in the 
 
Le Roux (Hector)— Sc/iool of r<-s/,i/s. 
 

i 
 
 ■\ \ 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 71 
 
 “ Good Samaritan” of Rembrandt in the Louvre, a delinea¬ 
 tion of the same subject which offers a model of composi¬ 
 tion. Comparison between the two might be out of place, 
 as derogatory to the older master as unfair to the younger. 
 It might have been hoped, however, that careful study of 
 the classic masterpiece would have prompted M. Morot to 
 a more earnest effort to comprehend and render the real 
 feelinof of his theme. How could he fall to feel the fine 
 atmosphere of heavenly pity, the celestial radiance shed 
 over the whole canvas, which in this, as in all his works, 
 seems to flow instinctively from Rembrandt’s pencil; and 
 feeling it, how could he fail to be touched and instructed by 
 its lesson ? The good Samaritan is seen knocking at the 
 inn-door while his servants carry in the wounded man. 
 Every one and everything shows the eager bustle of kindly 
 emotion. The wayfarers have clearly come at last to hospit¬ 
 able shelter, where pitying hands shall bind up the sufferer’s 
 wounds and dress them with oil and wine. The individual 
 types, to be sure, are coarse. The oriental hostelry takes on 
 the shape of a common Dutch tavern, ideal grace and local 
 color are quietly set aside, but the feeling is all there, and 
 the warm and luminous atmosphere is pregnant with the 
 soft glow of helpful sympathy ; faces, gestures, everything 
 breathes human gentleness and kindness, and everything 
 tells the real story of the parable in the plainest words. 
 
 Apart from this criticism on the lack of vigorous en¬ 
 forcement of his meaning, M. Morot’s painting calls for only 
 words of praise. As a mere bit of painting it is remarkably 
 strongf, and the modellin[f of the wounded fmure shows the 
 very perfection of scientific skill. In the technical methods 
 of his art the painter has little or nothing to learn ; it only 
 remains for him to advance from the mere vehicle to the 
 fuller expression of the thought to be conveyed. 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 M. Gazin's “ Islimael ” and “Tobias” are two canvasses 
 replete with delicate and winning poetic feeling. They 
 would hardly take the eye of the superficial class who hun- 
 trer for loud colorincj and brilliant effects ; their charm is 
 of that quiet, unobtrusive character which suits the scripture 
 episodes they represent, and gives them the calm beauty 
 of artistic oases—two little bits of freshness and verdure 
 in the blank and desert waste of idealess work about 
 them. 
 
 To cpiote Scripture again: “And Abraham rose up 
 early in the morning, and took bread and a bottle of water 
 and gave it unto Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, and the 
 child, and sent her away : and she departed and wandered 
 in the wilderness of Ileer-sheba. And the water was spent 
 in the bottle, and she cast the child under one of the shrubs. 
 And she went and sat down over against him a good way 
 off; for she said, “ Let me not see the death of the child. 
 And she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice and 
 wept.” 
 
 M. Gazin has chosen the moment when Hagar, her last 
 drop of water exhausted, and with it her last hope of life, 
 weeps less for herself than at the fate which threatens her 
 son, while Ishmael, too )’Oung to take in the reasons tor her 
 sorrow, hangs upon her neck with a childish and caressing 
 im[)ulse which is very true to nature, and as truthfully and 
 charmingly rendered. Sad as the little group is, it still 
 l)reathes a very touching and tender feeling. The sur¬ 
 rounding landscape bears slight resemblance to the bound¬ 
 less desert solitudes of the East, with no living object to 
 vary the monotony to the eye, no sound to break the 
 deathly silence to the ear. It looks more like a sandy tract 
 in the Landes or, it mierht be, in the Forest of Fontaine- 
 bleau, with underbrush and llowering broom-plants and a 
 
THE ANTKJUE. 
 
 73 
 
 wood-crowned horizon. Far Ije it from our thoug'ht to turn 
 this into matter of blame to the artist. INI. Gazin conceives 
 his landscape after a certain fresh and youthtul fashion ol his 
 owm, with a naivete which seems to us more essentiall)' 
 true than the unsympathetic bluntness of more realistic 
 drawing-. 
 
 From his owm point of view' he was perfectly right in 
 painting just as he has done, and wdiat his picture loses in 
 literal correctness it gains in essential truth to the ideal. 
 To our mind, when an artist takes up a subject on which 
 mere archaeolotrical research has no licj-ht to o-ive, he should 
 surrender himself freely to the inspiration of the action he 
 w'ould paint, frankly and boldly translating it into his ow'ii 
 language, and, giving his own adaptation, as it wmre, instead 
 of an anxious resurrection of the literal historical occurrence, 
 w'hich might perhaps prove more picturesquely effective, but 
 assuredly would speak less distinctly to the fancy and less 
 warmly to the feelings. Painting is, or should be, something- 
 more than a mere back-scene in a spectacle ; it aims not 
 merely to tickle the eye, but to interpret facts, to take up the 
 dead, dry details of history and legend, and set them living 
 and breathing again at the touch of its magic pencil. At its 
 bidding the literal event—in modern or ancient days—at home 
 or abroad—takes on a new embodiment and is translated into 
 a younger language. In historical painting the occurrence 
 to be treated is shut in and framed, as it wmre, in such nar- 
 now and precise limits of detail, that the artist's first care 
 must be mechanical and literal accuracy. In legendary art, 
 the thought is the main thing to be looked at; the artist is 
 free to turn it into his own language, and the phrase wdiich 
 most fitly does this is the best for his purpose. Rembrandt 
 did not greatly err from essential truth in the modern treat¬ 
 ment he gives his scriptural subjects. In representing his 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 74 
 
 characters uith the costumes, movements, and—one is al¬ 
 most tempted to say, the language—of his own day, he has 
 made his meaning clearer than he could have done by set¬ 
 ting them back in the times when they really lived, times 
 which lose their interest for us precisely as they recede from 
 our view in the dim perspective of the past. For a conclusive 
 instance of this principle take Bida’s Bible. In the illustra¬ 
 tions every detail is literally true to fact, the fruit of study 
 on the spot. As we think ot the eternal calm which our 
 imagination is apt to associate with the Orient, it is easy to 
 fancy the event occurring exactly as the artist has shown it. 
 Yet, in looking at his pictures, while we are struck with ad¬ 
 miration for his talent, and our curiosity stimulated with the 
 delineation of unfamiliar lands, or life, or customs, we feel 
 little or none of the })eculiar emotional stir which the subject 
 is inherently fitted to arouse. While they interest us, they 
 leave us cold as ice. In the final analysis, M. Cazin’s 
 Ishmael might give occasion tor much sharp comment on its 
 shortcomings in drawing, and still more in coloring, but 
 these detects may be easily overlooked in view of its more 
 strikinor merits. We feel in no haste to draw the artist’s 
 
 o 
 
 attention to imperfections which he, after all, is probably 
 more keenly aware of than any one else. 
 
 The second canvas, “ d'obias,’’ is not less poetic and 
 graceful than its pendant. The elder Tobias, blind, and, as 
 he fancies, drawing near his end, summons his son Tobias 
 and says : “ Go presently and find out some trustworthy man 
 to go with thee, and pay him for his trouble, that thou 
 mayst receive this money during my lifetime. And Tobias 
 went and found a young man of fair stature, with his loins 
 girded as for a journey.” 
 
 Into this meeting of Tobias and the angel the artist has 
 thrown very little of anything like specifically scriptural or 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 75 
 
 even Oriental character. He has placed his figures in a fresh 
 and smiling landscape, where Tobias meets the heavenly mes¬ 
 senger in a grass-grown footpath, beside a still pond, while 
 on the slope of a distant hill a pretty country house, with 
 roof of tiles, gleams in the cheerful sunlight. The whole 
 scene presents the familiar features of a bit of our own brench 
 landscape, and the youthful Tobias, instead of the Jewish 
 youth of tradition, just entering on the boundary of an East¬ 
 ern desert, becomes a modern peasant lad preparing to quit 
 his paternal roof-tree, with bundle on shoulder. Unskilled 
 in the world and its ways, he is starting from home, as if for 
 an easy walk to the next village, in his every-day clothes, 
 with his hat cocked saucily over his ear. “ Wdiere is he 
 going?” the spectator naturally queries. The answer comes 
 naturally, “To town, of course—a long, long way off, to 
 collect a little money owing his father, and, no doubt, at the 
 same time to find employment. No doubt, too, he will meet 
 in his wayfaring some poor but honest girl of his own class, 
 and marry her, as young Tobias did Rachel. Then, with a 
 little money laid up, they will come back to their native 
 village, their family and friends, the cottage with the red- 
 tiled roof, the sleepy little pond, and all the peaceful sur¬ 
 roundings of their childhood.” 
 
 To the rustic mind, this first sallying forth from home is 
 a fateful and eventful expedition, and the old mother is dis¬ 
 solved in tears at thoimht of all the dangers which must 
 beset her son. Too many, alas ! like him, have quit their fire¬ 
 side only to perish on the way, or else to forget, in the 
 pleasure or prosperity of their new life, the poor old parents, 
 unweariedly uncomplaining, waiting for the child who shall 
 never come back to them. Thank Heaven for the others 
 who, strong in moral purpose and sound early training, 
 sacredly guarding in their hearts the love of parents and 
 
THE ANTIQUE. 
 
 76 
 
 home, go forth onl)' to return—the favored wayfarers for 
 whom Raphael stands waiting at the threshold to lead them 
 through the snares and temptations of life, back to their 
 peaceful hreside at last, richer in the things of the flesh, 
 and in those of the Spirit not poorer, than when they 
 went. 
 
 GASTON SCHEFER. 
 
tic drama, 
 two 
 
 A S far l)ack as the last 
 centur)-, Diderot, 
 who lived in the same da}' 
 with Greuze and Chardin, 
 called attention to the e\'en 
 then growinii; development 
 of gcmc painting-, and the 
 equally noticeable fallings off 
 in Historic Art—“the eter¬ 
 nal rivalry,” as he called it, 
 “ between prose and [poe¬ 
 try ” — only another form 
 of the old antagonism be¬ 
 tween traged}' and domes- 
 
 And the great critic, sitting in judgment on the 
 contending parties, gave as his decision that, whereas, 
 
78 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 historical painting calls for a higher range of thought, more 
 imagination, and a finer poetry, genre painting emphatically 
 requires truth of treatment. It was to be expected that our 
 own period, with a passion for truth in delineation which runs 
 to the verge of realism, should give birth to a school of gen¬ 
 re painters strong in numbers, at least, if not in talent and 
 Influence. Old classifications in the matter of artistic produc¬ 
 tion have been swept away, and, whereas Diderot admitted 
 but two categories, history and genre, the modern art school 
 shows a dozen or more. History, to be sure, remains in¬ 
 tegral in its comparative solitude and neglect, but genre has 
 branched off into endless subdivision. Landscape has gone 
 on its own way as a distinct school, and not the least credit¬ 
 able of the brotherhood. Portrait painters, military painters, 
 marine painters, animal painters, flower painters, still-life 
 painters, have all grouped themselves into as many separate 
 artistic families, and all have been favored with a share of 
 hortune’s smiles. Spite of this minute subdivision of labor, 
 genre painting has not yet begun to exhaust the vast field 
 which lies within its scope. Its domain is as widens modern 
 existence, with all its complex and endless variety of action 
 and interest; its function is to draw for us the life of the house 
 and family, to record our daily habits, to set before us scenes 
 in street or plain, to give reality to customs, traditions, festi¬ 
 vals, ceremonies—to be, in visible fashion, the chronicle and 
 brief abstract of the time. It has a right, too, to go back to 
 other days, and illustrate the love-making, duelling, supping 
 and serenading of former centuries ; to give bodily shape to 
 legendary types of prince or plebeian in generations long 
 gone ; to show us, dusky in the torchlight, or glittering in 
 the radiance of candelabra and flambeaux, the sullen pic¬ 
 turesqueness of Louis XIII. men-at-arms, or the foppish 
 elegance of dainty cavalier and high-born lady. Genre 
 
' ■—— 
 
 Vely (A )—Pint Love. 
 
GENRE. 
 
 81 
 
 painting takes its themes at its own sweet will—on a Paris 
 quay, or under a pretty girl’s window in Seville or Madrid. 
 It makes its way through the most distant lands and the 
 most varied surroundings with an almost boundless horizon 
 of selection and efficiency. 
 
 Wath the vast e.xtent of the field and the countless throng 
 of harvesters, why should the harvest be so scanty and the 
 sheaves so light ? Why should genre painting, like the 
 mountain of the fable, bring forth year by )'ear only its one 
 poor mouselet of achievement ? 
 
 The reason is not far to seek. First, while the number 
 of e.xhibitors has grown beyond all measure, the percent¬ 
 age of real artists in the lot has remained extremely limited. 
 .Second, of all the men who have attempted this line, four- 
 fifths seem actuated by an irresistible repulsion for nature 
 and the most absolute scorn for their model. P'orgetting 
 Diderot’s fundamental principle that genre requires truth to 
 reality, they set up, amid imaginary and impossible surround¬ 
 ings, a lot of equally imaginary stuffed figures of rags and 
 pasteboard, which are usually as weak and eccentric in 
 drawing as they are wretched in technique. 
 
 There are still a few, undoubtedly, who do their best 
 to copy nature, according to their lights. But, great heav¬ 
 ens, with what eyes ! An artist may lack eye as a musician 
 lacks ear; and there are eyes which stupidly copy at hap¬ 
 hazard just what comes within their ken, the good, the bad, 
 or the detestable, alike. In their hunt after truth they for¬ 
 get the claims of art, whereas nothing but the blending of 
 the two can produce really good work. If I needed an 
 illustration for my phrase—the blending of art and truth— 
 I might cite, for e.xample, such a work as the portrait of 
 Ulysse Bertin, by Ernest Duez ; one of the few canvasses in 
 the Salon which, with simplicity and judicious choice of 
 
82 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 subject, unites conscientious observation of nature, beauty 
 of style, and perfection of technical execution. 
 
 So much for general preliminary reflections, and now 
 for a review of the pictures in detail. Such a review must 
 of necessity be a trifle summary ; if the critic lingered to 
 take cognizance of all the works which are faulty and unsat¬ 
 isfactory in general effect, though relieved by fragmentary 
 traits of good drawing, or coloring, or laudable tendency, he 
 might fill a volume. The .Salon of 1880 is replete with what 
 I might call artistic small change, but displays a lamentable 
 dearth of sterling coin. For the enumeration of all the 
 works which show pure metal, two or three pages would do 
 well enough. In the wish, however, to avoid narrowness 
 or prejudice, I will try to swell the list by mentioning along 
 with the really first-rate works such as seem to me among 
 the only moderately bad. 
 
 To begin with the former class, M. Dagnan-Bouveret’s 
 picture, “An Accident,” seems to me one of the absolutely 
 satisfactory kind. The painter, the same one who has given 
 us “ Manon Lescaut,” here sketches a little family incicient 
 in the humble surroundings of a rustic dwelling. One of 
 the children, playing with a pruning-knife, has gi\'en him¬ 
 self an ugly cut in the wrist. The poor little lad, pale and 
 scared, sits on a bench beside a blood-stained basin, hold¬ 
 ing out his arm to the doctor, who has been hurriedly sum¬ 
 moned. The whole family, farm-hands and all, cluster 
 around to watch the operation of bandaging the wound, 
 and the graded scale of their regard for the unlucky urchin 
 may be read in a glance at their faces. The father stands 
 hanging his head, restless, but angry and indignant at his own 
 helplessness to aid or comfort, while the sister sits sobbing 
 in a corner between the blue-canopied bedstead and the old 
 family clock. The mother, too uneasy to keep still, is on 
 
\’iin,I,l',MOT (C’ ) — A\-7', ric\ 
 
GENRE. 
 
 S5 
 
 foot like her husband, anxiously keeping- her e-ye on her lit¬ 
 tle favorite while she gets ready the handkerchief to serve 
 as a sling for the wounded arm. Seated around upon the 
 benches, with their elbows on the table, the farm-hands are 
 earnestly watching the young doctor, as he deftly rolls and 
 fastens his linen bandages, with some pity in their stolid 
 features, but more curiosity. 
 
 A very effective trait is the pallid and set face of the 
 boy, in high light and sharp relief against the dark back¬ 
 ground of the old country chimney-piece. 
 
 The subject is excellently chosen, and the execution 
 thoroughly .satisfactory and quite worthy of the theme. The 
 drawing is correct throughout, and figures and accessories 
 broadly and vigorously handled, with a good, rich, juicy ivi- 
 pasto. The picture, in short, has such varied and rounded 
 merits that it may well catch the eye and fasten the atten¬ 
 tion of the passing visitor as well as the more technical 
 critic, for M. Dagnan-Bouveret has spent on it a prodigious 
 amount of ability. He was known already for the remark¬ 
 able talent, the close observation, skilful composition, and 
 really exceptional execution of his previous works, and his 
 contribution for this year assures him a i)Osition among our 
 best painters. 
 
 M. A. Roll, who last year exhibited a “ Silenus,” verj- 
 noteworthy for its broad and vigorous treatment of the flesh 
 tones, has chosen his subject this year from every-day life, 
 and sets before us the dread drama of the working-classes 
 —the “ Strike.” The strike, as we have had too much rea¬ 
 son to know, may easily turn to actual warfare, and warfare 
 of the saddest kind—the war for bread ! 
 
 And this is the idea which M. Roll’s picture strongly 
 emphasizes. In a dreary landscape, evidently in the “ Black 
 Country” of the coal regions, is seen a crowd of miners 
 
86 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 kept in restraint by a squad of gendarmes. The beaten 
 part)-, for no word better hts the appearance of the strikers, 
 make up a very dramatic cluster of faces darkened alike 
 with passion and the sooty dust of their daily labor. One 
 workman is seated in the foreground, gnawing his clenched 
 fist for rage, while the other arm hangs in the helplessness 
 of despair at his side. Behind him, half-hidden by the stout 
 
 Roll (A.-I'.).— The Mineys' Strike. 
 
 quarters ot a gendarme’s horse, is seen a woman nursing her 
 infant. One furious malcontent at the left stands with raised 
 arm in act to hurl a bit of stone or coal at the troops, while 
 his wife clings to him to hinder an action which would con¬ 
 vert the striker’s legal and justifiable inactivity into an overt 
 act of criminal violence. The general carbon hue of every¬ 
 thing in scene and accessories, the miners’ blouses, stained 
 

 r 
 
CONVENT SCENE IN VENICE 
 
Dhl-OBBE (F. A .)—The Bath. 
 

 ,v 
 
Mouginot (C.)—Gal/ant Masker 
 
« 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 f 
 
 
Lobriciion (T .)—The Tortures of Tantalus. 
 

GENRE. 
 
 93 
 
 with the traces of the coal-working, and their faces lowering 
 and dark with passion, all go to make up a total which, from 
 the colorist’s point of view, is unpleasantly dull and monot¬ 
 onous, but terribly expressive in its rendering of the grim 
 drama of the laboring poor. M. Roll deserves credit for 
 his boldness in attacking a subject superficially so little in¬ 
 viting, as well as for the vigor and truth of his handling. 
 
 The great Hungarian, Munkacsy, one of the masters in 
 modern genre painting, is unrepresented in the Salon of this 
 year. He is hardly to be blamed for keeping out of the 
 melee, and there are plenty of the best workmen to keep him 
 company in shunning any share in an institution which be¬ 
 gins to give sign of having outlived its usefulness. 
 
 To those who admire the Hungarian master, with his 
 firm, vigorous touch, and his large and broad treatment of 
 small things, may be commended M. F. C. Uhde’s picture 
 of “ The Singer.” The scene may be imagined as in some 
 out-of-the-way nook of Spanish Flanders or Brabant. The 
 room in which he has grouped his characters can belong 
 only to one of those quaint old houses with roof-tree and 
 gables carved into steps, which give such a picturesque mid¬ 
 dle -age flavor to the quay of the Marche-aux-Herbes in 
 Ghent. Ever smce the sojourn of the Spanish conquerors 
 the land has kept, as it were, a borrowed gleam of southern 
 sunlight, which lingers everywhere and in everything—in 
 the great black eyes of every girl who passes in the street, 
 in each petty detail of building or furniture, in every trait 
 of local manner or habit. So M. Uhde’s “ Singer,” in de¬ 
 fault of stage, has climbed upon a table, as her southern 
 sister, the Madrilena, would undoubtedly have done. With 
 her heavy and fleshly coarseness of contour she is anything 
 but fascinating, but she should be clever and witty, to judge 
 from the evident and uproarious delight of her auditors. 
 
94 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 The fellow scraping the fiddle at the right of the picture, 
 apparently her regular accompanist, is smiling, for the hun¬ 
 dredth time, no doubt, at the spic}^ impropriety of the re¬ 
 frain. To revive, so far as Jiiay be, the freshness of a de- 
 light grown somewhat stale with repetition, by the stimulus 
 of a sympathetic feeling with his hearers, he turns toward 
 the audience his hang-dog stroller’s face, its ugliness aptly 
 set off by the black ribbon drawn over an equally black eye, 
 fit type of mourning for the last ro.w he has gone through 
 in the last noisome den they visited. 
 
 All the bystanders are laughing more or less noisily, 
 according to their differing individuality. A gray-coated 
 man-at-arms, in the front row, roars explosively. His neigh¬ 
 bor, of more excitable temperament, besides grinning from 
 ear to ear, brandishes his drinking-glass in visible token of 
 admiration. A smoker, from jaws wide open in merriment, 
 lets out a guffaw and a cloud of gray smoke at one breath, 
 while a deaf man, behind him, puts his hand to his ear, 
 speaking-trumpet fashion, to catch all he can of the song. 
 All the figures repay examination, and the spectator could 
 pass hours before this interesting canvas, fraught as it is 
 with the most minute and careful observation, and executed 
 with such richness of material and method. In saying that 
 M. Uhde’s picture reminds us of Michel Munkacsy’s peculiar 
 manner, I have given it the highest praise in my power. 
 
 While M. Uhde has drawn his inspiration from the Low 
 Countries—the birthplace oigcin-c painting—our own city of 
 Paris has supplied, this year, a wealth of interesting themes 
 to the artists who aim to be the faithful chroniclers of their 
 time. And, after all, what more fruitful and varied field of 
 observation than a city street, with its infinite diversity of 
 aspect, and character, and action ? And when once an artist 
 has made up his mind to (luit the seclusion of his studio and 
 

JiMKNEZ (L .)—The Ante-Chamber of a Minister. 
 

 
 
 ■m- . 
 
 
 .u: 
 
 •4 \ L 
 
 IT * -I. 
 
 
 .. :•*.. 
 
 
LefEBVRE {G.)—A Deplorable Fall. 
 
GENRE. 
 
 lOI 
 
 come out into broad daylight for his subjects, how very wide 
 awake and alert he should keep himself, if he would grasp all 
 the shifting shades of the marvellous panorama ! 
 
 M. Guillemet is one of the men who have eyes out of 
 doors. As he loitered alontr the banks of the Seine, he was 
 struck with the picturesqueness of the old Ouai de P)ercy, and 
 set bravely to work to paint it. In his picture, the foreground 
 is taken up by the left bank of the river, with its old shanties 
 and clumps of trees. From bank to bank spreads the gleam¬ 
 ing surface of the Seine, broken only here and there by 
 scows and steamers, while the right bank stands out be)'ond 
 in more level contour and more delicate lines. A prominent 
 and delightful feature in the work of this very admirable ar¬ 
 tist, is his simplicity of method, or, more strictly, his method 
 of simplifying and subordinating every detail to the general 
 harmony of his picture. I spoke, not long' ago, of artists who 
 had no eye. M. Guillemet’s eye is very true indeed. He 
 not only has a delicate perception of tones and values, but 
 he has furthermore the faculty of generalizing, and taking in 
 the whole scene he tries to paint, in one sweeping and com¬ 
 prehensive view. 
 
 Leaving this painter, Avith his strength in generalization, 
 we next pass to one equally strong in treatment of detail -- 
 I\I. Jean beraud. His “ Public Ball,” though studied from 
 nature—no mean merit—at first glance creates rather aston¬ 
 ishment than pleasure. The eye needs time to get used to 
 the strong realism of the trees, with their tops fading- off 
 into the dark blue of the night-sky, and their under branches 
 blazing with the coarse glare of the gaslights. The sharp 
 contrast between the cool darkness of the night-air and the 
 flare of artificial illumination is painful, but no fault of the 
 artist—rather of the reckless impudence with which the 
 managers of open-air balls and concerts set to work to so- 
 
102 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 phisticate and deform nature. Trees were clearly not created 
 to be lit from beneath with gas, petroleum, or electricity ; 
 witness the fact that under this destructive treatment they 
 generally wither and perish. 
 
 I however this may be, hi. Reraud’s picture is carefully 
 studied, and very spirited in composition. The painter has 
 made a very close examination ot the sort of people who 
 haunt these resorts; he has set out to give us, so to speak, 
 the synthesis of the dance-cellar, and has done it well. In 
 the motley crowd whirling and jigging to the strains of the 
 band, all the main types and well-known features of the old 
 frequenters crop out—the “kept woman,” very handsomely 
 kept, and far too handsomely dressed ; the girl who is on 
 the lookout for a customer, beside the other one, who takes 
 her Aveary way of life gaily, and is having the wildest of 
 “ good times ; ” the poor shop-girl just entering on her sad 
 career, out of work and out of bounds for the nonce, her 
 lean figure sharply defined by her plain black dress, with the 
 one little knot of colored ribbon in her hair. M. Reraud has 
 left out but one feature that I can think of. Mis menagerie 
 of haiqnes, to be complete, should include the prosperous 
 hag, stout and well-fed, who has made her market, and comes 
 back to old scenes from vicious habit and love of excitement. 
 
 I take great pleasure in hi. Gilbert’s “Nook in the Fish 
 Market.” In the gray dawn of early morning, the gloomy 
 half-light of a dull day in Paris comes sifting through the 
 window-frames and skylights of the market-house. Thoimh 
 it is hardly day, and the gas-jets are not yet out, the whole 
 thrimg of market people are up and busy. The tidal train 
 has just brought in the most tempting selection of still-life 
 subjects—(jf the finny order—some splendid specimens of 
 which are set out in baskets in the foreground, while two 
 men have gone to work to clean them. One of them, kneel- 
 
J^rint ptWi^l J'f K^orot. 
 
 T’/u>tot/ravNrt O-oupUi^i. 
 
 THE GOOD SAMARITAN. 
 
 SAMUEL L HALL 
 HEWYOBK 
 

 
 
 (5a 
 
 -i 
 

 X. 
 
 
 
 5:1 
 
 
 I 
 
 -.H 
 
 

 f 
 
 w 
 
 ' ^ i 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 ■ils 
 
f 
 
 ] 
 
 M- i 
 
GENRE. 
 
 109 
 
 ing, catches a big conger-eel by the head, while the other 
 stops a moment to light his pipe for a smoke—the comfort¬ 
 ing first smoke of the morning. A woman is passing behind 
 them with a tray-load of smaller fish, and beyond appears 
 the outlined figure of a market porter, bending under his 
 heavy burden. In the background, behind the railings, is 
 seen the busy crowd of market-folk, setting out their stalls 
 and getting ready to serve-up its daily provision to that 
 modern Gargantua—the Parisian stomach. The whole bit 
 is genuine and good, and much to M. Gilbert’s credit. 
 
 Quitting the fish department, let us step out into the 
 field for a breath of fresh air. 
 
 Rural nature has had very brilliant treatment this year. 
 The best picture in the .Salon, M. Breton’s “Evening,” is a 
 country scene, and ]\I. Leroll’s “ Shepherdess,” which I 
 should like to praise at greater length, is a work of the 
 same class. In both these excellent canvasses, the feeling 
 of the scene and surroundings seems to so completely pre¬ 
 dominate over and harmonize the personages of the com¬ 
 position, that it might be more fitting to class them among the 
 landscapes—with figures—than in the de[)artment of gr;/;r. 
 
 I have still M. Hugo Salmson’s “ Batteurs d’ (Eillette ” 
 for my consolation, and no small comfort, too. 
 
 After taking a prize at the Stockholm Academy, some 
 years ago, M. Salmson came to Paris to finish his artistic 
 education, or, rather, to begin it all over again. The result 
 shows that he has made good use of his time, and very judi¬ 
 ciously forgotten all he had learned before. For some time 
 he lelt his way along, exhibiting Dalecarlian peasants in pic¬ 
 turesque red costumes, and painted, especially, a conserva¬ 
 tory interior which attracted a good deal of attention, but at 
 last found how to put his talents to the best use, by painting 
 rural scenes. Some of his earlier pictures will be easily 
 
1 10 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 remembered, such as his “ Arrest in a Picardy Village ”—a 
 bit of drama from the life oi the peasant, very truthlully given, 
 d'his year IM. Hugo Salmson exhibits the “ Po[)py Gather¬ 
 ers.” The landscape in which he has set the hgures of his 
 laborers is treated discreetly and simply. The figures them¬ 
 selves, for accuracy and truth of delineation, remind us of 
 Millet, and the whole makes a good picture. 
 
 Among the painters who know, as we said above, how 
 to use their eyes, M. Feyen-Perrin is certainly one of the 
 most talented—a very graceful and poetic artist, who seems 
 to wander in some enchanted land of reverie and marvel, 
 some pleasing mythologic world, which holds his imagination 
 spellbound with its charm, and gives to all his compositions, 
 with all their modern and realistic character, a vague sug¬ 
 gestion of the purest antique types. 
 
 In his “ Return from Fishing—Low Tide,” I am espe¬ 
 cially taken with the figures of the two young girls in the 
 foreground, as they march ahead of the main body of fisher- 
 tolk, with the l)old, Iree swing and graceful \ igor peculiar to 
 the seafaring race, between them they carry by the handles 
 a heavy creel, and the foremost and prettier girl holds, be¬ 
 side, a basket on her lelt arm, resting against her hip. The 
 gesture, attitiule, and poise of the head are all fine—a per¬ 
 fect harmoin’ of line and movement, a natural dignity of 
 pose, which suggest the knowledge and skill more peculiarly 
 recpiired tor Historic Art. 
 
 behind the two pretty girls comes the long line of fisher¬ 
 men, clearly tlefined against the dim background of sea and 
 sky. I he whole canvas breathes a subtle charm, still fur¬ 
 ther enhanced by the harmony of the execution—a dream¬ 
 like languor which clothes the hard lines of fiare fact with its 
 softerfing poetry. I he girls are simple Cancale fisherwomen, 
 but, in looking at the pure, classic outlines of their features, 
 
Jacquin(J. Goose Play. 
 
SCAI.BKRT (J.) — . t Good Bottle. 
 
Gi.UCK (E.)— I'hc Tavern "The Brass Pat." 
 
n 
 
GENRE. 
 
 II7 
 
 the imaofination reverts to the most graceful creations of 
 
 o o 
 
 ancient song—to Nausicaa, the sea-princess—the one sunny, 
 smiling figure in Homer’s immortal poem. 
 
 Another excellent picture is M. Guillaumet’s “Palanquins 
 of Lao^houat,” which resembles the work last mentioned— 
 less in tone than in the whole feeling of the drawing and 
 composition—in the artist’s clever way of borrowing from 
 nature some of her finest lines. The “ Palanquins of La- 
 ghouat ” stand out upon the camels’ backs like great out¬ 
 spread fans, their outline cut in strange relief against the 
 glowing sky and the well-known simple forms of the Arab 
 out-of-doors architecture. In its remarkable wealth of color¬ 
 ing the picture gives an excellent impression of Algerian 
 landscape—of Arabic Algeria, that Ts—the only part of the 
 country with any charm for an artist’s eye. 
 
 M. Aime Perret’s picture, “ The Conflagration,” is 
 worthy of his notable talent. At the left of a snow-clad 
 landscape is seen the burning house, with firemen dragging 
 up the engine from the mairie of the neighboring village. 
 The composition is full of snap and swing. Country fire 
 brigades have been the butt of endless fun and “chaff,” but 
 this particular company suggests nothing of the sort. They 
 are not making themselves ridiculous on parade, but facing 
 danger ; and they mean business. The artist deserves credit 
 for the skill with which he has avoided any hint of the comic, 
 and made his interpretation of this little domestic drama 
 earnest and to the point. 
 
 M. Dantan’s “ Sculptor’s Studio ” has gained great and 
 deserved applause. As in the picture just cited—only in a 
 greater degree—the main effect lies in the contrast of black 
 and white. The background is a white wall, covered with 
 busts, scraps of modelling, and bas-reliefs, which, with their 
 different shades of marble and plaster, fill up the whole scale 
 
GENRE. 
 
 I l8 
 
 of pure, l:)luish, and )’ellowish white tone. Against this high 
 light is relieved the dark hgure of the sculptor, who has 
 climbed on a box to chisel more at ease at his mythological 
 bas-relief. At the artist’s feet a female model, in all the 
 splendor of her glowing flesh tones and fine figure, is taking 
 a moment’s rest. The elements are simple—a nude female 
 
 Rougehon fhe Vei! at a Carmelite Ccvcnt. 
 
 figure, and a man in sombre dress, against a white back¬ 
 ground but tlif'y tell the whole story. You see at once 
 how sharply the lines must stand out, and how strongly 
 the work enchains the attention of every passing visitor. 
 While the picture is effective at the first glance, it only gains 
 by longer examination ; for every detail is executed with 
 conscientious care and skill. 
 
r 
 
 ,fr 
 
 
 , \ It 
 
Brun (A.) — .-I Proi’cnqal Fishing-Boat (Tartan). 
 

 
 Brown (J. L.)— Seasiifc, Souvcfrir. 
 

 Mektiek (MIIl-. a .)—The Music I.cssou. 
 
GENRE. 
 
 127 
 
 Pass to one of the pleasantest among painters, M. Gus¬ 
 tave Jacquet, who has picked out an especially sunny corner 
 in the realm of genre painting in which to sit and tell his smil¬ 
 ing tale of olden time. His pencil has a touch of the fop and 
 •the flatterer in its marvellous skill at drawing the fair faces 
 of our great-grandmother’s day, the rustling folds of old 
 brocades, or the sheen of heavy satins, the magic lustre of 
 gold lace, and the dazzling glow of the rose. Looking at his 
 picture, “ The Minuet,” we are tempted to compare him with 
 such artists of the last century as Watteau, Boucher, or 
 Nattier, and this, too, to M. Jacquet’s advantage, superior as 
 he is to his predecessors in method. Look, for instance, at 
 the woman dancing, in her long, stiff corsage of pearl-gray, 
 and holding her white satin skirt spread like an apron. 
 How good it all is ! Look, too, at her neighbor, standing 
 with her back to the spectator, gorgeous in all the richness 
 of her mauve satin dress, with its heavy flowered brocade ! 
 Behind them is seen the music-gallery, gracefully decorated 
 in scrolls and arabesques on a pure gold ground. With its 
 fascinating brilliance of coloring, and the pleasant sug¬ 
 gestions of its subject-matter, the picture, on a gallery-wall, 
 would be as precious a bit of cheer and inspiration as a ray 
 of spring sunshine—an embodied fairy spectacle, with the 
 puns and bad spelling omitted. 
 
 My admiration for M. Jacquet’s work in nowise hinders 
 my doing full justice to M. Manet, whose “ Dinner-Party,” 
 comfortably seated at table at Lathuille’s, seems to either 
 wildly exasperate or as wildly amuse three-fourths of those 
 who look at it. The color shows a sort of fierce and big¬ 
 oted malice prepense in the use of the blue tints, which 
 reminds us of Schaunard’s famous song in the “ Vie de 
 Boheme.” So far forth, the work is offensive and weari¬ 
 some. Yet, with all this needless harshness of treatment. 
 
128 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 how nice is the feeling for values, and how well it gives the 
 fresh feeling of the open air. A glance at the canvas shows 
 that it was conscientiously painted, and in single-hearted 
 fidelity to nature. The figures were painted just as they 
 sat, on the spot, and not in the deceptive half light of the 
 studio. 
 
 After M. Manet’s picture we pass to “The Storm” of 
 M. Cot, a bit of triumphant conventionality. Paul and Vir¬ 
 ginia—the same idyllic young people we saw in the swing 
 in another of the artist’s pictures—are scurrying for the 
 woods, with theatrical strontium lightning and sheet-iron 
 thunder playing about them, wrapped in tempestuous dark¬ 
 ness managed by the gasman. It is prudent in them to 
 hurry, no doubt, but there is really nothing to fear. To a 
 close examination, they are clearly made of glazed china, 
 and would shed rain like a couple of Dresden mantel orna¬ 
 ments. 
 
 Perhaps it is hardly fair to “ chaff” over a work whose 
 patient execution may fairly claim sober criticism. Let it 
 be said, then, in sad earnest, that M. Cot, to my mind, car¬ 
 ries science to extremes. He knows how to paint as well 
 as any one, and better than most; but he finishes and pol¬ 
 ishes to excess. His surface is so very sweet, and soft, 
 and sheeny, that his flesh ceases to be flesh, and his leaves 
 are not leafy. In trying to dress up and improve on nature 
 he merely runs away from her, and, with all his hard work, 
 gives us a result which is neither true nor pleasing. 
 
 After so much insipid untruth, we thirst for a little tart 
 realism; so, next to the “Ex-Voto” of M. Ulysse Bertin, 
 where, for once, we can find good solid human beings, as 
 solidly painted. With all his family about him, and his 
 youngest midget in his arms, a fisherman is going up to 
 the village chapel to offer up thanks for his safe return. He 
 
Feyen-Perrin (F. X. Return from Fishing at Low Tide. 
 

 
 J 
 
Mosi.er ([\.)—T/ie Weddin^-Drei 
 

 f 
 
 
 
 
 
 r. 
 
Geoffroy (J.)— .1 Future Savant. 
 
THE OFFERING TO GOD 
 
 .:Z\/ 'fun*' . 
 

 , M-* 
 
I 
 
GENRE. 
 
 137 
 
 has been whittling out and rigging a little boat in memory 
 of the frightful tempest he has gone through, which, his 
 prayer once finished, he will hang on the church walls as a 
 votive offering {ex-voto). Such is the simple story of this 
 excellent picture, laudable alike for its breadth and firmness 
 of touch, its good composition, and its genuine artistic 
 feeling. 
 
 Much in the same style is M. Claude Cely’s “ Old Pea¬ 
 sant Woman.” The good old lady—in some village of 
 Picardy, to judge by her costume and surroundings—seems 
 to have outlived all her kith and kin, and now, in her wrin¬ 
 kled age, she sits solitary by the chimney-corner with its lofty 
 old-fashioned mantel. That is all—a very simple story sim¬ 
 ply told, but very impressive for all that. It is carefully and 
 conscientiously studied from nature, without any namby- 
 pamby weakness of touch or color; and, in nine cases out of 
 ten, to make a painting true is to make it beautiful as well. 
 
 And apropos of sincerity in art, it would be unfair to 
 overlook M. Lhermitte’s “ Grandmother,” whom we find 
 sittinor on a wooden church-bench, with her little orand- 
 daughter kneeling in prayer on the pavement at her side. 
 In this bit the whole effect lies in the contrast between the 
 fresh young face of the girl and the wan and laded features 
 of the old lady; and the painter has made it very eloquent 
 by his treatment. He has been especially happy in the 
 painting of the old lady’s hands, one of those test-points in 
 execution on which most artists fail, if they do not shirk 
 them altotrether. 
 
 Nature again supplied the theme for M. Buland’s 
 “ Pious Offering.” At the church door a young girl, in her 
 white confirmation-dress, stands tending a temporary altar, 
 hung with lawn and dressed with roses. An old beggar, 
 thankful for the goodness of Him who has urged upon us the 
 
138 
 
 GENRE. 
 
 prime duty of charity, stops before her, as he comes out of 
 church, to drop into her contribution-box one of the pennies 
 that morning- bestowed on him. The whole makes up a bit 
 of realism blended with emotional feeling which would be 
 just the thing for the pen of Fran9ois Coppee, and the pic¬ 
 ture, though perhaps a trifle dry in execution, is still one of 
 the best in the Salon. 
 
 Our next work touches the same strino- of tender feel- 
 
 o 
 
 ing. It is a sad little bit of domestic drama—a young 
 mother, in mourning garments, weeping beside an empty 
 cradle. The interior is in a Dutch dwelling, evidently ; wit¬ 
 ness the gaily painted wooden cradle with its suggestion of 
 early joys and hopes, its sad appeal to the mother’s tears, 
 reminding her as it does, with its bright coloring, of all the 
 happy moments passed beside it in caressing and lulling to 
 rest the darling she has lost! How empty and untrue, 
 through all her seeming resignation, the poor bereaved 
 woman must find the words which her lips murmur with no 
 echo in her heart: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh 
 away!” The studied simplicity which M. Bischoff shows 
 in the treatment of this little scene is highly pleasing; his 
 forceful pencil brings out every detail in strong and bold 
 relief against the background of the white wall with its or¬ 
 naments in Dutch tiles. 
 
 Worthy to be classed with this is M. Eugene Feyen’s 
 “ Watcher Asleep ”—another mother, but this time a happy 
 one. Her poor little fisher-hut is mean enough, but what 
 matters the meaofreness of the setting- while it holds her 
 
 c? o 
 
 jewel—her child ! 
 
 In children, those exhaustless springs of joy and sor¬ 
 row, gxnre painters have found a favorite theme for prac¬ 
 tice. M. Adrien Marie, who is very happy in drawing their 
 little fits and tempers, gives us a small child in a i)assion. 
 
Feyen (E.)— S/ccpi?!^ Cradk-Rocker. 
 
Gill (A )— I he Drunken Man. 
 
f 
 
 ;iia 
 
 '.<41 
 
Delacroix (E.) - The . h/^e/as. 
 
it 
 
 
 I 
 
 A 
 
 ■3 
 
GENRE. 
 
 147 
 
 shaking his miniature fist at a big cat, while the cat good- 
 humoredly declines to take up the affront, and sits placidly 
 smiling behind his whiskers. M. Adrien entitles this funny 
 little passage at arms “ Generosit)c’' 
 
 M. de Blaas takes us with him into a \Anetian convent 
 in the last century. The nuns have set out, it would seem, 
 to hold high festival to St. Catherine, the patron saint of 
 big girls and little, so they have allowed Piilciiiello, with his 
 puppet-show, to set up his stage in the convent parlor, 
 where he wofully bemauls Ar/ccc/iino, Pcdrolino, Mata- 
 inoro, and all the other dolls in the repertoire. Fancy 
 how the little maidens enjoy it, each one after her own 
 temperament and with her own individual way of showing 
 it. One girl looks meditative about it, while another stares 
 in amazement. A third face shows a smile which gets no 
 farther than the eyes, while her comrade shows her more 
 impulsive temper by throwing herself back and roaring, 
 open-mouthed, whereby she gets mildly snubbed by the 
 attendant Sister, as the presence of parents and Iriends in 
 the boxes enjoins primness and good behavior. The whole 
 scene admits, and even calls for, a good many figures ; but 
 the composition is very skilful, and the story is simply, 
 evenly told, without break in that general harmony which 
 forms a prime condition of all good work. 
 
 Again, more children, poor ones this time, cowering 
 like a nest of young birds in the woods of La Saudraie. The 
 poor little people are old acquaintances, for Vdctor Hugo has 
 told the tale in his novel “ Ninety-Three.” M. Henri Pille has 
 painted them with apt force and life, taking for his purpose 
 the moment when the covey of little rebels is flushed, so to 
 speak, by the approach of the blue-coated Republican soldiers. 
 
 M. Edelfeld, in his picture, “ Burial of a Child,” shows 
 us a Dutch funeral on the banks of the Zuyder Zee. The 
 
GENRE. 
 
 148 
 
 little blue coffin lies across the Ijoat, which is rowed by the 
 sorrowing father, while the mother and family are w'eeping 
 at the stern—a very noteworthy bit ol character-painting, 
 interesting for its choice of subject, as for the talent dis- 
 
 j^layed in the exe- 
 - ■ » cution. 
 
 If similarity 
 
 / in feelincr had 
 IH-^ 
 
 been taken as a 
 
 standard of classi- 
 fication in ar¬ 
 
 ranging the Sa¬ 
 lon, M, Jundt’s 
 p i c t ti r e would 
 hang by that of 
 M. Edelfeld. Be¬ 
 side the Dutch 
 boat-funeral 
 would be set the 
 Alsacian boat¬ 
 wedding—a par¬ 
 ty of groomsmen 
 rowinu- back the 
 
 O 
 
 new married cou¬ 
 ple over a calm 
 lake studded with 
 bulrushes and gay 
 with the fairest 
 shapes of flags 
 and water-plants. The bright and dainty festival tone of the 
 procession harmonizes well with the poetry of the lake back¬ 
 ground, and the whole piece is one of the best of M. Jundt’s 
 long list of good pictures. 
 
 Cot (P. a.). — The Storm. 
 
r 
 
I'cintpar Haqlu tle. 
 
 rhotc^ou-are. Got^xl&C'^ 
 
 FISH WOMi^^ OF DIEPPE. 
 
 SAMUEL L HAIL 
 

 >] 
 
 I 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 n * 
 
Moreau {A.}~T/ie Cc?ih 
 

 \ 
 
 
 ■'j 
 
 ■4^ 
 
 
 I 
 
Faven (I >.)—The Marriage in Extremis, 
 
GENRE. 
 
 157 
 
 And while we are on the theme of peasants and their 
 costumes, let me make mention of M. Mosler’s Breton rus¬ 
 tics, as shown us in his ‘‘Wedding Toilet -a pretty girl 
 and her intended, shopping for the ribbons, stuffs, and em¬ 
 broidered goods of the trousseau. The artist merits our 
 thanks for his absolute fidelity of reproduction, in all the de¬ 
 tails of this very pleasing composition. Day by day the 
 picturesque and distinctive costume of our rural population 
 is falling more and more into disuse, and the day seems not 
 far off when we shall have to refer to the record offered in 
 such works as these, to get any notion of the pretty dresses 
 worn by our villagers in times gone by. 
 
 M. Emile Renouf exhibits a very pleasing bit—a fisher¬ 
 men’s graveyard, with a woman and child kneeling in prayer 
 on the moss-grown granite flagstones. The two mourners 
 face the spectator, and the stern, sad landscape around 
 them accords with the feeling of the place and circumstance. 
 The canvas is good throughout, the composition fine, and 
 the execution harmonious and strong. 
 
 It is harder to speak concisely of M. Ferdinand Pelez’s 
 contribution, though it shows some first-rate qualities, and, 
 ot all the work exhibited this year, is perhajjs the only bit 
 which suggests the style of Chardin. His “ Washerwomen ” 
 are well set on the canvas ; the one in the foreground, gazing 
 out at the spectator while she wrings her linen over the tub, 
 is a good solid bit of a girl, and rather interesting too ; but 
 the execution is not so easy to praise. It lacks that calm 
 certainty and self possession which are precisely the distin¬ 
 guishing merits of the great master just mentioned. M. 
 Perez’s painting shows vigor, but he works too hard for it. 
 
 M. Sargent’s picture, “Ambergris Smoke,” shows a 
 curious blending of technical skill with the whimsical taste 
 of the dilettante. An Eastern woman, magnificent in her am- 
 
GENRE. 
 
 158 
 
 pie drapery of white woollen, sits watching a censer placed 
 at her feet, from which the pungent fumes of burning amber¬ 
 gris are curling up to her nostrils. The high light of the 
 room, of the woman’s white figure, and of the smoke, make 
 up altogether a singularly striking and effective ensemble. 
 Such variations on one tone of color are not, to be sure, 
 among the most difficult achieveiiients of the art; but it takes 
 knowledge, and a good deal of it, to juggle with them as 
 deftly as M. Sargent. 
 
 In trying to do the same thing with the red tones, in 
 his large canvas, “ The Opera Mall,” hi. Hermans has not 
 done nearly as well as M. Sargent with his amber smoke. His 
 picture—to borrow a scrap ol studio slang, leased on that old 
 classic whim which found relation l)etween harsh sounds and 
 gaudy colors—his picture is “ loud.” Pit)' it should be so, 
 for it is full of careful study. In the turmoil of people and 
 things in his composition, we might pick out some very well- 
 drawn types and episodes which show close observation, 
 such, for example, as the two pretty w'omen in red fleshings, 
 in the foreground. All which only shows what we knew 
 belore, that good fragments do not necessarily make up a 
 good picture. 
 
 The only tank I can And with M. Outin,in his “Autumn 
 Races,” is his over-delicacy of touch ; his picture is just a 
 little too pretty. Sky, earth, water, and figures, are all too 
 dazzlingly neat and trim, after the fashion of Toulmouche, 
 with his famous parquet floors scrubbed and polished to the 
 last point of waxen lustre. M. Outin has plenty of clever¬ 
 ness, and, with a little more freedom and “ eo,” would make 
 a first-rate artist. 
 
 M. Jules Worms, as clever as Outin, but not too clever for 
 the good of his practical skill, has put together a ver\' amus¬ 
 ing scene of life in Spain, dkvo women with one lover have 
 
BaauI'.U (L. M.) — (ji'or^e Washington Taking Leave of his Mother 
 
iC 
 
 i 
 
 i . 
 
 \ 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
Hermans (C .)—.i Masked Hall. 
 
i 
 
 « 
 
 
 f 
 
 0 ^ 
 
Sai MSON {\\.)—'J7te Po/i/y Hdrvrst. 
 

 
 
 
 
iPkotoifnivitre Goupil&C^ 
 
 GENERO SITY 
 
 SAM LJEJ, i,IIAU...OTr\YYORlE. 
 

GENRE. 
 
 167 
 
 gone to the justice to settle their quarrel and define their 
 title. Nothing could well be funnier than the smiling face 
 of the muleteer, who seems to be the article in dispute. 
 
 On the same humorous scale of satire, M. Adan has 
 very brilliantly handled a scene from Swift; Gulliver, alter 
 building him a boat, showing the giants and giantesses of 
 Brobdingnag how to sail it. 
 
 o o 
 
 It would be wrong to omit mention of “ An Ascension 
 in the Year VIII.,” painted by M. Kaemmerer—a master in 
 genre-painting—full of his well-known charm of coloring and 
 grace of drawing. Hastily running over the long list of 
 pleasing canvases, with their gay display of bright-colored 
 vesture in old fashioned patterns, we may note as among 
 the most interesting, M. Jimenez Aranda’s “ Bookworms 
 M. L. Aranda’s “A Minister’s Anteroom;” “Marat’s Bust 
 in the Colonnade of the Market-house,” by G. I. Cain ; and 
 “ The Maid-ofall-work,” by M. Boutet. Perhaps I should 
 add among the list of pretty things, M. Vely’s “ Dawning 
 Sentiment,” for M. Vely’s work is always pretty even when he 
 would have it large—a graceful painter, who follows Jean 
 Goujon and d’Allegrain, and makes his figures cover a good 
 deal of canvas. 
 
 M. Rougeron, in his “ Taking the Veil at the Carmelite 
 Convent,” treats a scene of religious usage with impressive 
 solemnity and fine emotional effect. 
 
 In my list I find a final lot of good pictures : “ The 
 Return,” by Le Pic—a marine view with a stormy sea, over 
 which a little vessel is bringing back to England the remains 
 of the ill-fated young prince who perished in Zululand. Fur¬ 
 ther, M. Yon’s “ Canal of La VilletteM. Lapostolet’s 
 “Outer 1 larbor of Dunkerque and M. Mols’ “ Ouai Henri 
 IV.” Of the three, I much prefer Lapostolet’s picture, which 
 is the broadest in grasp and conception, and best in execution. 
 
Lakciier (J.) — Christ in the Scpulchrt 
 
Debat Ponsan (E. D.)—.-i? Doorway of the Louvre on Saint Bartholomew's Dav. 
 
i 
 
 { 
 
Lellux (A .)—An Italian Servant. 
 
Saintpierre (G. C.)—A>t Unexpected Caress. 
 
n 
 
 '/ 
 
GENRE. 
 
 177 
 
 Study from nature, and M. Andre Gill’s “ Drunkard.” In the 
 latter, the artist has borrowed a pag-e from the “ Assom- 
 moir ”—CoLipeau coming home intoxicated, and falling on 
 the floor between la Gervaise and Nana. It has created 
 much comment, and I share in the general admiration it ex¬ 
 cites, while I regret that the execution is a little dry in com¬ 
 parison with the fine, rich impasto of his former picture, 
 “The Captain.” 
 
 RENE DELORME. 
 

Lmermitte (L. a.) — The Grandmother. 
 
I 
 
 i 
 
 
M OSLL R (H .)—^pifui ing^. 
 

 ii 
 
 •A.. 
 
r 
 
THE STUDIO. 
 
I 
 
 T would be hardly fair to feel, or to 
 express, any great surprise at the 
 relatively obscure position held in the 
 present Salon by the younger school 
 of Nude Art. The men who fill, at 
 the School of Fine Arts, the position 
 of masters in this line—Messrs. Bou- 
 guereau and Cabanel—are not the sort 
 of men to inspire their pupils with any 
 very absorbing passion for this class 
 of work. In design they stand for 
 little more than the rear-guard of the 
 school of David, and, as colorists, for 
 nothing at all. There is just one man 
 who might have a salutary influence 
 in giving freshness to the traditions of the school, and throw¬ 
 ing into its teachings the inspiring force of personal feeling 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 I 84 
 
 —who might, in short, exercise the authority of a master 
 over public instruction in the nude. But this man has never 
 been called to the task—M. Henner, I mean—and the secret 
 of his power seems likely to die with him. 
 
 No one can observe, without regret, the decline of a 
 form of art which is, and always must be, the most beautiful 
 and noble of all forms. No study can ever take the place 
 of that which wc devote to the human figure, with its marvel¬ 
 lous flexibility of aspect, its delicate vivacity of tone, its ad- 
 miral)le harmony of proportion and exquisite equipoise of 
 movement. The theme is one of inexhaustible interest and 
 charm, and it seems like mere jesting to say that modern 
 forms of dress have robbed it of its appeal to our sense of 
 the present and real. Its interest is as fresh and actual now 
 as ever, though injudicious partisans have threatened to 
 make it distasteful, by incessantly calling in the aid of ancient 
 mythology to keep it alive. Why should they ? The true 
 artist needs no legendary matter or treatment to help him, 
 when he would paint the female figure in the primal adorn¬ 
 ment of its OAvn beauty, in all the triumph of its majestic 
 contour. 
 
 1 he trouble does not lie with the triteness of the theme, 
 and if our painters neglect it, their coldness springs from 
 other sources. The tyrannous sway and general popularity 
 genre painting is due to the fact that it is the only branch 
 which readily lends itself to the narrowness of our dwellinofs 
 ami surroundings, and the commonplace mediocrity of our 
 taste. And so, artists like M. Feyen-Perrin, after gaining 
 high rank as painters of the nude, are deserting it for portrait 
 or marine subjects; while others who, like M. Jean Beraud, 
 were on the way to become masters in this line, have taken 
 to chronicling the ^linutice of lite in Paris—the life especially 
 delighted in by \ isitors from abroad. Last year, M. Roll 
 
Hknner (J. J .)—The Fountain. 
 
i.1 
 
Bouguereau (A. W.)—7/;^- FlascUation. 
 
sent us a magnificent study in flesh-painting, live and realis¬ 
 tic, which reminded us of Rubens, but this year he lollows it 
 up with no pendant. The pupils of the Villa hledicis, after 
 all their Roman art-study, are the first to desert this severe 
 and exacting but delightful branch of their profession. From 
 this point of view we firmly believe that a thorough revival 
 will be needed, if our school of the nude is to preserve its 
 high aim, its character, and its masculine vigor. 
 
 PUVIS l)B ChAVANNES (P.)— Yoini^^ Picards Exercising with the Lance. 
 
 But from all this it would be wrong to infer that the 
 department of the nude, in the present exhibition, is entirely 
 devoid of interest; far from it. It can still show two great 
 masters, whose potent individuality is, and will still be de¬ 
 voted to its illustration—M. Puvis de Chavannes and M. 
 Henner. 
 
 The former sends an immense cartoon, the literal first 
 sketch ot a long decorative panel meant for the Amiens 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 190 
 
 Museum, and a model from which the student might learn, in 
 one hour, more about drawing than from twenty years’ study 
 at the Palais de la Rue Bonaparte. In a landscape designed 
 with a large and lofty simplicity peculiarly his own, he shows 
 us a group of young men, in Picardy, practising with the spear. 
 In the centre is a group of eight figures, one of whom steps 
 forward to hurl his javelin, while another, hanging back, 
 playfully brandishes and tosses his own. The target is at 
 the right. Near it, but farther forward, is a group of by¬ 
 standers, one of whom—a woman—kneeling on one knee 
 with a child in her arms, and her back to the spectator, is a 
 masterpiece of graceful and symmetrical flow of line. Behind 
 the contestants, at the left, a man of middle-age seems to be 
 telling some tale of warlike adventure to a couple of women, 
 half reclining on a turf-clad hillock. .Still farther in the back¬ 
 ground, two young girls are busy with household work, 
 while an old crone is scolding a little girl lor breaking and 
 sj)illing a jug of milk. The attitude of the child, hiding its 
 tear-stained face with its arm, is capitally conceived, as true 
 in drawing as in feeling. With its blending of the idyl and 
 the epos, this fine composition is really the pride of this 
 year’s Salon—like a page of Victor Hugo or Homer, astray 
 among the motley leaves of this volume of trite adventure 
 and cheap romance. 
 
 How well it bears out what I have been saying! Noth¬ 
 ing, after all, could be more modern than this superb work, 
 but with a (juality which I might take leave to call the eter¬ 
 nally modern, the sum and comprehension of all perma¬ 
 nently interesting features. At first glance it reminds you of 
 a Parthenon bas-relief Look at it a little longer, and you 
 see easily enough that the figures are not merely Greek 
 models modernized, as Louis David would have treated 
 them, but real, downright, lusty young rustics of Picardy, 
 
Bonnat 
 
Cabanei, (A )—Phtdie. 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 195 
 
 with just such forms and features as you might see there 
 any day, and with heavier muscles than we find in the 
 Laocoon or the Cincinnatus. Nor has the artist borrowed 
 his landscape, like Poussin, from the trite traditions of Ar¬ 
 cadia. It is a bit of real, fertile, lush P'rench meadow-land, 
 with its sheaves and winrows, and long files of trees mark- 
 ine out the horizon lines. So, as I have said, in character 
 of figures and landscape, the work is modern of the mod¬ 
 erns ; in idea, classic with the thought which runs through 
 the ages. Ludiis pro Patria, says the descriptive legend 
 attached. These lads are practising for the defence, some 
 day, of their native land. If the motto has any covert 
 meaning, it is very discreetly conveyed, for the thought is 
 broad and familiar as the hopes of all conquered nations, 
 which, while resting from past reverses, brood over the 
 hopes of retaliation to come. Trite or not, however, it 
 serves to lend a finer meaning to this already fine compo¬ 
 sition. 
 
 It is, as I have said, full of good drawing. An admi¬ 
 rable quality of M. de Chavannes, as a designer, is his con¬ 
 cise way of putting his figures in relation, and the extreme 
 simplicity of line employed to indicate motion. Thus, in the 
 picture under discussion, the group of youths are practising 
 a very robust and violent exercise, yet you will not find one 
 whose pose disturbs the general harmony of the composi¬ 
 tion. Even the fellow hurling the spear seems to put in¬ 
 to it no uncomfortable effort. The academic method shows 
 its real robustness and vigor precisely in this avoidance of 
 exaggerated muscular development and distorted move¬ 
 ments or features. Young men show their strength by 
 nobler and larp^er means. If we set beside these grand 
 bits of modelling one of M, Bonnat’s nude figures, we 
 at once feel the difference between the two traditional 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 1 96 
 
 methods, and see which of them has real dignity of 
 drawing. 
 
 And yet what immense effect the artist attains with 
 this scrupulous economy of means ! He teaches us the 
 same theoretical lesson we have learned before from the 
 graven stone of many an ancient monument. In this whole 
 long series of figures we find no loop-hole for cavil over 
 any break in the dignity of the principal lines, any lapse of 
 clearness or simplicity, any bagging in the interest. Noth¬ 
 ing could be more varied, yet nothing could more com¬ 
 pletely blend to the final unity of the whole. Each grouj; 
 offers a different form of action, yet all are welded in one 
 forceful conception, whose close tissue shows no broken 
 link. Really, for those who are conscientiously seeking a 
 great school of the nude, M. Puvis de Chavannes’ is as 
 good as the most famous masters of any age. Ilis works, 
 it is true, borrow a peculiar element from their very intent, 
 which is, primarily and essentially, decorative. They should 
 be seen on the spot where they really belong, to most thor¬ 
 oughly enjoy their wonderful refinement of taste, and the 
 masterl}^ way in wliich they are fitted to their appropriate 
 position and purpose. Marseilles, Amiens, and Poitiers can 
 1)oast of three of his best works; but Paris claims, perhaps, 
 the Imest of all, in the “ Life of .St. Genevieve,” at the 
 Pantheon, a much needed offset to the decoration of the 
 rest of the building. Still, spite of the special direction his 
 studies have taken, they form a magnificent source of in¬ 
 struction for our younger students of the nude, who could 
 ask no better models. Their lofty intellectual features make 
 their study only the more to be commended, in an age 
 which h as lost, along with all feeling for poetry, the poetry 
 Itself, and expressly scorns in works of art that essential 
 spiritual element without which all real art-work becomes 
 

 
 
 vN'’ ' '''\y^^ 
 
 ^ho y^'.^-^ ^'i^, <?-7£y "^' 
 
 Bali.AVOI.ne (] ) — 7Vu’ Interrupted Sittiu.^. 
 

 J-^/tjOtff^ravure C'~ 
 
 THE LITTLE CHICKWLED SELLER 
 
 SAMUEL L.HALL. 
 
 NEWYORK . 
 
.1 
 
 ■> 
 
 'i 
 
 dl 
 
 1 
 
 
 
Fkkrault (L .)—The Triumph of Love. 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 201 
 
 impossible. In my opinion, we are under the greatest 
 obligation to M. Puvis de Chavannes for being, as he is, 
 not only a great painter, but a thinker as well. 
 
 M. Henner, like M. de Chavannes, a poet and a great 
 painter, is yet like him only in kind of talent and aspiration. 
 He even seems to affect a sort of indifference as to the 
 meaning and aim of his work or the interest of its theme. 
 No one would seem to care less for legendary dress or fab¬ 
 ulous detail. His heroines answer to no familiar name, and 
 they puzzle and fascinate us with their beauty, but they tell 
 us no story. But in just his avoidance of picturesque data 
 and historic enhancement lies the real greatness of this 
 powerful artist. The theme he handles has no supplemen¬ 
 tary interest to borrow from chronicle or record; it is its 
 own best interest. To the end of time, when the spheres 
 shall stay their weary round through space, one single nude 
 female figure, backed by a bit of sky, a scrap of foliage, and 
 a bubbling fountain is, and will remain, the most superb 
 sight ever seen by human eyes. What care we for her 
 name. She is fair, and we ask no more. Such an one it 
 was who tendered the first man her insidious apple ; such 
 an one let loose the anger of the gods on fated Ilium ; she 
 it was who, for a price, has a thousand times betrayed, and 
 will as often again betray human kind—the fateful partner 
 whom destiny has chained at our side, our never-dying foe, 
 the too seductive worker of our helpless ruin. What daz¬ 
 zling visions of glory and joy nestle in the triumphant ra¬ 
 diance of her golden hair ! What hopes have sunk to sleep 
 in the warm shadow of her half-revealed bosom ! In the 
 revelation he continually gives us of the deathless charm 
 which lingers about her lightest movement, and in his fine 
 setting of natural scenery, the fitting background for her 
 beauty, M. Henner himself keeps the freshness of immortal 
 
202 
 
 THE NUDE. 
 
 youth, and succeeds in remaining at once classic and essen¬ 
 tially modern. 
 
 Hie gelidi fontes, hie niollia prata, Lyeori ! 
 
 As evening draws on and the azure of the sky grows dusky 
 a moment before bursting into the amber glories of sunset, 
 the foliage takes on a darkness lit only by a tinge of russet 
 which hints the last rays of the descending sun. Against 
 this dense and sombre curtain is seen the figure of the 
 nymph, kneeling with one knee on the brink of the spring, 
 one hand lolded across her bosom, and her auburn hair 
 drooping in waves about her face and neck, gazing at her 
 own image in the calm mirror which repeats, in counter¬ 
 part, the blue arch overhead. While the outlines of the 
 figure stand out from the dark azure of the sky, the legs are 
 relieved against the background of the shadowy foliage. 
 The whole is finely harmonized, and the irresistible charm 
 which blends with its power, leaves a haunting impression 
 on the memory. It is, like all M. Henner’s nude figures, 
 painted in monotone—a final test of skill among masters of 
 figure painting—but a monotone so absolutely delicate and 
 beautiful as to make it one of the achievements of contem¬ 
 porary art. No one so well as M. Henner can render the 
 ivory sheen which plays over the feminine contour, and show 
 the warm tint of the life-blood coursing beneath the trem- 
 ulous amber tones of the skin. No one is so fully master of 
 that delicacy of modelling which, without a break in the 
 unity of tone, hints by subtle shades of relief at every inflex¬ 
 ion and every movement in this dazzling concrete of star¬ 
 dust and moonlight. 
 
 “Wondrous, ideal mould of woman’s form !’’ 
 
 to quote from Victor Hugo, and the verse seems to have 
 been written for a motto to M. Henner’s painting. To me 
 
SCHUTZENBERGER (L. F.)_ The 
 
« 
 
fiUMBERT (P\)— Salome^ 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 207 
 
 it is no blame to say that he repeats himself. So does na¬ 
 ture, but we never get tired of her. Indeed, M. Henner is 
 almost as great in landscape as he is in figure. Corot’s 
 “ Vision of Virgil ” seemed to shiver in the early breath of 
 the dawn with its feet bathed in the morning dew. M. 
 Henner’s vision rests by the spring at the twilight hour, 
 when the light comes down to gather fresh strength and 
 retemper its blunted rays, when the daylight heat has 
 scorched out even the tepid moisture of the air, and night 
 begins to enfold the mountain slopes and the sleepy foliage 
 with its mourning veil. Corot’s nymphs are dancing in the 
 dewy rays of dawn, Henner’s sadly and pensively gazing at 
 the sunset. And yet silly people are found to reproach him 
 with lack of composition ! What composition could be as 
 good as the strong, earnest, infectious feeling of life and 
 nature which his pictures carry with them? To paint high 
 art we must begin by discarding low methods and means. 
 He who shows us womanly beauty bathed in the atmos¬ 
 phere of worship which breathes from nature and natural 
 things, paints high art, if any one does. From the stand¬ 
 point of aesthetics as well as from that of coloring, M. Hen¬ 
 ner is a great master, and one of the glories of the French 
 school, not only of the present but of all time. 
 
 M. Bonnat’s “Job” dates from a much lower form of 
 artistic tradition ; it is merely a good, workmanlike bit of 
 the kind we summarily dismiss with the brief commendation, 
 “Very clever.” Now to be clever in art amounts to little; 
 what we want to find is the beautiful. In his anatomy M. 
 Bonnat affects the dreary exaggerations of certain special 
 conditions. Every one will remember his “ Crucifixion ” at 
 the Palais de Justice, with a principal figure so painfully lean 
 that the eye could count the ribs—lit up, too, by some mys¬ 
 terious system of illumination utterly unlike anything in day- 
 
2o8 
 
 THE NUDE. 
 
 light or daylight objects. His “ Job ” seems modelled from 
 the same data. The old beggar-man sits unsightly in his 
 repulsive nakedness, one leg bent back under the other, 
 in the posture of a man who would kneel if his strength 
 allowed. The gesture of his half-extended arms is eloquent 
 in its wretched appeal to the commiseration of every chance 
 passer. The aged head, with its venerable silver beard and 
 two light-colored eyes, which look like pits in snow, is 
 slightly thrown backward and up. Save for the shadow of 
 the beard on his chest, and the deep, contorted wrinkles of 
 the skin, every detail is in high light, while a scrap of dark 
 stuff is drawn over the right leg, and the stomach, criss¬ 
 crossed with a network of tangled veins, stands out in 
 amazing sharpness of relief. A very remarkable bit of tech- 
 niqiic, certainly ; but, to say nothing of the absolute lack of 
 idealism which pervades it, from its dry severity to the sober 
 charm of Puvis de Chavannes, or the harmonious beauty of 
 1 leaner, is a long step. 
 
 Rut in another sense it is quite as far from M. Bonnat’s 
 vigorous and learned studies to the platitudes of M. Bou- 
 guereau. His “ .Scourging of the Saviour” might stand for a 
 model how not to paint; for the whole has a certain preten¬ 
 tious air which makes it look as if meant for a model for 
 some one. The sufferer hangs by the hands from two iron 
 rings, the body writhing backward, and the legs dragging 
 on the ground, while two executioners lash him with thongs, 
 and a third is binding rods for a new variety of torture. In 
 the background a crowd of indifferent bystanders are seen 
 ranged before a Doric gateway in selected studio positions. 
 The noteworthy point in the whole picture is the air of set 
 purpose and conventional arrangement in the attitudes, as if 
 the whole thing were got up for a tablean vivant. The three 
 men with the thongs and rods are planted in pseudo-classical 
 
GiaCOMOTTI (F. H .)—The Centaur and the Nymph. 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 211 
 
 poses, without the least visible trace of vitality. You feel 
 that the scourge will never fall, and the rods never get tied. 
 Even the figure of Christ is introduced only to get in an 
 emaciated body and an anatomical effect in the cramped con¬ 
 tortions of the feet upon the ground—the elements of the 
 work which monopolize technical interest and attention. For 
 M. Bouguereau is fond of braving difficulties in drawing, and, 
 to do him justice, always comes off victorious. In this regard 
 he is wondrously skilful; probably no one ever modelled so 
 many hands and feet in so many curious and exceptional at¬ 
 titudes. But why tack these amazingly finished bits of line 
 drawing on poor, suffering historical painting? No one will 
 ever be got to believe that the Saviour went through all this 
 scourging and vile insult merely for the pleasure of showing 
 how the muscles of the toes contract with pain. Yet, psycho¬ 
 logically speaking, that is all we get from the picture, to 
 say nothing of the coloring, which is dull in surface, and dry 
 and unpleasing in tone. 
 
 Altogether better, spite of a similar triteness of theme, 
 is his “ Young Girl and Cupid.” In a dimly lighted landscape, 
 under a tree with serrated leafage, very scientifically and 
 minutely drawn, a young girl is seated on a rock, bending 
 slightly forward, and, Avith outstretched arms, pushing away 
 the winged youngster, who aims at her with an arrow in his 
 right hand, while the left leg is bent in an effort to clamber 
 on her lap. The lines of the girl’s figure are very flowing 
 and graceful, and set off with very pleasant effect against the 
 background. The arms are a little stiff and conventional, 
 but fairly correct. There is a certain charm in the face, 
 affected and even a trifle silly as it is, and the feet, resting 
 entirely on the toes, serve to heighten the effect. The 
 child’s figure is agreeable in feeling, though the modelling 
 is not strong, and the warm amber tone of the flesh relieves 
 
212 
 
 THE NUDE. 
 
 and contrasts well against the tone of the sky. Altogether 
 the picture will hardly rank above the painter’s average 
 work. It entirely lacks dramatic interest and strong coloring, 
 but it justifies the public indulgence for an artist who, spite of 
 a tendency to dryness and conventionality, really has talent. 
 
 It is, however, far from deserving to rank beside M. 
 Cabanel’s “ Phaedra,” i.c., as low down. In this picture, 
 try as I may, I can find no single quality of color or compo¬ 
 sition which is not at least quite as conventional as the two 
 just mentioned, while it is far from showing the same inge¬ 
 nious drawing. On a couch, of the shape fashionable during 
 the Empire, in a room of theatrical pattern—which looks 
 like the side scenes of the Odeon—lit by two lamps, one of 
 them smoking, lies a woman, with her head half wrapped in 
 a black veil decked with silver. One hand rests on the 
 forehead, the other droops on the coverlet, half resting on 
 the stomach and outstretched legs. Seated at her feet is a 
 woman, slee])ing, with her hands spread open on her knees; 
 and an old crone, her eyes red with weeping, gazes at her 
 with hands clasped in despondent attitude over her knees. 
 Such is the weary and wearisome creature we are asked to 
 take for the daughter of Minos and Pasiphae : the inces¬ 
 tuous spouse, parched with pitiless fever of desire; the 
 love-sick, desperate queen, with her sublime wail: 
 
 “ Hapless wretcli ! still alive ! still enduring the sight 
 Of the god of my sires—sacred emblem of light!” 
 
 Certainly tragic horror was never embodied in a tamer 
 conception ; and it is a strange and beautiful sight to see 
 how M. Cabanel translates Racine ! Why, we repeat, need 
 we abuse the fine old legends to give excuse for such mean- 
 ingless figures? Instead of “ Phsedra,” it would be nearer 
 the mark to call the canvas “A Courtezan Moping;” it 
 
Bertrand (].\—The Bini-Charmer. 
 
\ 
 
 Ilf 
 
 

 .-.V ’ 
 
 \ 
 
 r 
 
AN ACCIDENT- 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 215 
 
 would save the anticlimax of recalling a whole cycle of lofty 
 memories and splendid fable to get at a result so absolutely 
 null. All this might count for nothing if the work showed 
 any trace of interest as a bit of painting, bar from it; the 
 drawing of the chief figure is absolutely cheap and poor, 
 and the modelling meagre beyond example. M. Cabanel’s 
 impasto grows thinner with each new canvas, without gain¬ 
 ing in delicacy of touch, while his tone remains curiously 
 dull and coarse. In harmony, too, the work shows the ut¬ 
 most poverty of resource ; there is no pleasant relation in 
 his way of leading up from the pale violet tints of the back- 
 fjround to the dead white of the flesh. The Salon swarms 
 with works which show a less practical hand, but it would 
 be hard to find many so absolutely uninteresting, and its 
 lesson and tendency is just the sort of thing which our 
 younger painters should shun. 
 
 hi. Colmon’s “ Cain ” shows us a handful of human waifs 
 swept along the earth by the breath of some awful and 
 mystic power. In a desert, the horizon-line broken by a 
 brown mud wall, over sands parched by the noon-day heat, 
 the malefactor wends his way, his family following in sad 
 procession; wild-haired, ragged men, dusty children, and 
 tired, care-worn women, bedewing the weary way with the 
 sweat of their ang-uish and their toil. At the head walks 
 the patriarch, like a man stumbling and groping through the 
 dark, with his blood-stained hands. After him comes the 
 rest of his race, bearing, on a rude litter, an old woman and 
 their provision of meat. There is a certain grandeur in the 
 ensemble—a certain picturesque interest in the sight of a 
 whole race lashed by the stings of one man’s remorse, and 
 crushed beneath the enduring- curse of one man’s ill-doing. 
 A brief examination, however, will show that the work has 
 no fine quality to raise it to the real grandeur of the fine text 
 
 r 
 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 216 
 
 from the “ Legencles cles Siecles,” which it illustrates. Sim¬ 
 ply to set this immense canvas opposite the work of M. 
 Puris de Chevannes, would be the most concise and com¬ 
 prehensive criticism. M. Colmon shows a certain boldness 
 and freedom in his treatment of the nude, but absolutely 
 no leeling- for plastic. Cain’s neck and shoulders are simply 
 monstrous, and one or two huge figures in the group leave 
 us in doubt whether they be men or women. The whole 
 canvas is earnestly designed, and, from a decorative point, is 
 at first glance very imposing, as I have said. It is hard to 
 say, however, how the painter explains his light, and the 
 coloring is pallid, wan and dull. The best thing about it is 
 a certain logical consistency in the impression it makes, 
 which helps to explain its imposive first effect. 
 
 M. P'errier’s “ Salammbo ” was on the catalogue, and, 
 though now removed from the gallery, claims mention, as 
 specimens of the nude are scarce enough this year to 
 make its absence felt. The heroine of Eustace P'laubert’s 
 clever book is seen struggling, with voluptuous languor, 
 in the embrace of an enormous serpent, her lip bleeding 
 from the rude caress of its forked tongue. His heaviest 
 folds are wrapped about her buxom figure, and the tail, 
 after encircling the legs, makes a double spiral about her 
 arm, outstretched in an attitude of lassitude, not unmin¬ 
 gled with pleasure. Her head is thrown back, resting on 
 the heavy masses of her raven hair, and the bust stands 
 out under the pressure of the serpent-coil above the ab¬ 
 domen. On the same carpet with this writhing group, a 
 kneeling slave is playing on the lute. Of M. Ferriers 
 coloring it would be well to speak very cautiously; it is 
 easier to accord frank praise to his seemingly very true 
 ideal of the female figure in plastic regards, as illustrated 
 in the simple, yet harmonious, lines of the painting. 
 
Pekrault (V.)—Love Asice-p. 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 219 
 
 We pass, by an easy transition, to M. F. A. Clement’s 
 “ Circassian Slave,” outstretched and nude like the Sa- 
 lammbo, but with flowers and jewels, not venomous ser¬ 
 pents, to divert her solitude. Solitude, I say, for so far as 
 companionship goes, we need not count the two attend¬ 
 ants sitting at her feet, smoking, and harmlessly watching 
 over a virtue which seems in no danger. The composition 
 is a trifle trite and conventional; but there is excellent 
 modelling in the chief figure, and a unity of tone very 
 essential to the matter. The drawing is florid and not 
 unpleasing, and the coloring, if not very delicate, is yet 
 soft and agreeable. Taken altogether it may be fairly 
 added to the small list of noteworthy pictures this year. 
 M. Comtat, too, sticks to the same high range of subject, 
 and it would be a pity to discourage him. But his “ Nymph,” 
 besides being too violently modern in treatment, is very 
 puerile in modelling. M. Comtat is an estimable and tal¬ 
 ented young artist, but he should beware of lapsing into 
 that feebleness of execution, and thinness of iinpasto, with 
 which M. Cabanel makes such a dreary mess of his later 
 works. His temperament, never, apparently, very mas¬ 
 culine, seems to be growing more and more effeminate. 
 
 One brief glance at M. Foubert’s “Satyr and Nymphs,” 
 which is not near so good as M. Roll’s “Silenus” of last 
 year. Strictly speaking, such subjects need a touch of 
 natural dash and enthusiasm, or an ingenuity of invention 
 which shall raise them to the symbolic plane; or, better 
 yet, first rate execution of the nude. None of these good 
 things appear in the present picture, a large canvas, 
 showing three girls, with heads absolutely void of charac¬ 
 ter, and no fine elevation of plastic in the forms, engaged 
 in teasinof a bearded Faun, who looks like a srood aver- 
 age practising attorney. One smears his face with grape- 
 
220 
 
 THE NUDE. 
 
 juice, a second steals his cone-tipped staff, and the third, 
 behind him, is enjoying his perplexity, the whole in a 
 tame bit of landscape, a sort of cross between Arcadia 
 and Neuilly-sur-Marne. In background, M. Giacomotti’s 
 “Centaur and Nymph” is a great improvement on the 
 other, but hardly in the figures. There is something not 
 very seemly in Dejanira’s liberal display of hips and 
 thighs as she sets her loot in the hand of Nessus, who is 
 hoisting her on horseback after the most approved circus- 
 clown fashion. The Nymph, who is anxiously scanning the 
 distance as if dreading the wrath of the deserted Hercules, 
 is rather graceful with her half-seen profile ; but both fig¬ 
 ures are cheap in tone, and, consequently, not really good. 
 
 M. Merle’s “Fallen Hebe” covers her face with one 
 hand while her empty wine-jar droops from the other, A 
 light drapery streams back from her two arms, and the 
 background is taken up with an allegorical vision show¬ 
 ing the triumph of the gods, and the downfall of those 
 who incur their wrath. The whole painting is notabl) 
 lacking in vigor. M. James aims at largeness of manner 
 in his “Bird Charmer” a berry brown nymph against a 
 Ijlue sky, piping to the tree-tops with her long tibia or 
 double flute. The work has a faint flavor of imitation—a 
 vaofue simcrestion of Henner—and loses, it is needless to 
 say, by the comparison. Decoratively speaking, however, 
 it is well enough, and its most marked fault is the way 
 in which the girl’s waist is set into her hips, the one too 
 long drawn out and loose-jointed, the other too meagre. 
 
 The visitor will have an agreeable surprise in a pic¬ 
 ture by M. Ballawine which is much better than could 
 have been hoped from his past work. In his “Interrupted 
 Sitting” is seen a girl sitting on a divan, in a studio, 
 with a palette and a guitar lying beside her; nude, except 
 

 FoUBERT (E. L, )—Satyr Toi ine?itid by iS'yinplis, 
 

 A 
 
 • ' 
 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 223 
 
 for a black shawl, which half reveals her snowy bust and 
 her legs bare from the knee down. The flesh tone is 
 exquisite, the head pretty and spirited, and the whole 
 modelling extremely delicate; a very charming bit, as en¬ 
 joyable for the general eye as for the critic, who looks 
 deeper than the simply picturesque. The transition is 
 natural to the similar subject of M. Bompard, “A Model 
 Resting.” But M. Bompard’s model displays her beauty 
 with a serene disregard of flg-leaves, lying with her back 
 to the spectator, in a room with a top-light, and strewn 
 with the various small accessories of the studio. The dif¬ 
 ferent objects are treated with admirable vigor, while the 
 torso is broadly and firmly done in rich and juicy tone— 
 a thoroughly good bit of painting. A little stiffness may 
 be noticeable in some details—the lines of the stomach, 
 for instance, are not very flowing—but the work unmis¬ 
 takably shows the hand of an artist, destined, perhaps, to 
 carry out the promise suggested by M. Jean Berand’s 
 “Leda,” which all connoisseurs remember. 
 
 M. Humbert’s “Salome” reposes on a seat, crowned 
 with a variegated halo, which sheds a rather harsh light 
 on her auburn tresses. With both hands she holds, resting 
 against the arm of the chair, a golden charger, with the 
 blood-stained head of John the Baptist. She seems to 
 gaze at the frighthil object with gentle indifference, her legs 
 crossed under her in a restful and easy fashion, while the 
 drapery she has just laid off droops upon the ground. 
 Behind her, a tree, with serrated foliage, stands out dark 
 against a light sky, and at the right, within reach, is a 
 vase, of brilliant blue, filled with flowers. 
 
 The tone of the work is highly conventional and arti¬ 
 ficial, but still infinitely better than M. Humbert’s later con¬ 
 tributions. This one is more like one of his better works. 
 
224 
 
 THE NUDE. 
 
 the “ Massaoncla. ” Though a trifle meagre in execution, it 
 has some good decorative quality ; but it is very far from 
 being high art. We need not linger over M. Wagrez’ 
 "Orestes,” with the three Furies plucking at his' cloak, a 
 sort of classic version ol Joseph and Mine. Potiphar, only 
 with three termagants instead ol one. The conception of 
 the work lacks spirit, and the execution is little better. 
 
 M. de Liphart’s "Science” is in a sitting posture, lifting 
 
 the veil from the head of a Sphinx. 
 It is a large figure, of good decora¬ 
 tive quality, and the merit of being 
 painted in a single tone. 
 
 It would be wrong not to men¬ 
 tion two pretty little bits by Mme. 
 Demont-Breton, " The Spring,'’ 
 and " April Flowers.” The first, 
 the better of the two, gives us a 
 female figure standing by a foun¬ 
 tain. The color is juicy and the 
 tone very pleasing. The other lies at length in a green 
 meadow, and has most of the pleasant quality of its pendant. 
 
 M. Blanchard’s " Francisca di Rimini” stands out 
 against a background of dark sky, while her lover stands 
 near. The execution lacks crispness, but the composition is 
 interesting in its way, though I must take exception to the 
 little cloud about the loins of the female figure. Such little 
 artistic tricks, for propriety’s sake are apt to be failures. The 
 nude is chaste enough of itself, when loftily treated, and 
 has no need to l)e "trussed up”—to quote from Diderot— 
 with such ostentatiously decent half-clothing. I cannot con¬ 
 clude without mentioning M. Chartran’s "Mandolin Player,’ 
 a trifie dull in tone, but graceful withal, and M. Daux s 
 "Woman and Doves,” very delicate intone, the light rose- 
 

 Wagrf.z (J, C.)—0/c-sU’s. 
 
THE NUDE. 
 
 225 
 
 tint of her pretty hg^ure exquisitel)' relieved ag-ainst a mass 
 of outspread blue drapery, hi. Bontel’s “ Lesson ” shows 
 a nude female hgure poring over a scrap of writing; an 
 academy study, painted with a full brush, but absolutely \’oid 
 of character. M. Parranet’s “Sleeping Cupid ” runs too 
 much to pink and white, and M. Schiitzenberger’s “ Gior¬ 
 gione ” runs away from the real Italian coloring altogether. 
 
 Orry (A .)—The Sleeping Diana. 
 
 I'urther to be noted are M. Orry’s “ Sleeping Diana,” an 
 agreeable composition on a small scale, with a pleasant 
 sort of poetry in it; and M. Parrot’s female figure stretched 
 under an apple tree in blossom, a little over classic, but still 
 correct in drawing. .Special mention is due to M. Gustave 
 Moreau’s “ Galatea,” dazzling- in her shower of qolden 
 hair and precious stones ; a brilliant illustration of the 
 literal side of art, so to speak, but full of a hue dreamy 
 suggestiveness, which is more than can be said of most 
 of the pictures we have reviewed. 
 
 ARMAND SILVESTRE. 
 
I 
 
 
 
 r 
 
T o comment on landscape, 
 and landscape painters in 
 
 the Salon, is a pleasant task, for 
 our French artists seem born for 
 this special work, as English¬ 
 men are born to colonize the 
 uttermost ends of the earth, 
 and a Spaniard is supposed to 
 play the guitar in his cradle. 
 When we look at the history of 
 painting, we find landscape al¬ 
 most a modern invention. The 
 school of so-called “ primitifs ” 
 devotes all its energies to repro¬ 
 ducing the human features ; the \Tnetians, with \Tronese, 
 care for little else but the splendor of palatial architecture ; 
 
 COLIN (P .)—Decorative Panel. 
 

 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 the Romans, with Raphael, in their occasional use of land¬ 
 scape give us nothing but the scantiest hint of a scrap of 
 road or a thread of rivulet. For all these artists, nature 
 has no meaning. In the earlier times of art, trees, houses 
 and rocks are all reduced to the same indifferent dead 
 level; the painters seem to parade their sovereign scorn 
 for all inanimate objects, and treat them as strictly secondary 
 elements. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, however, two strangers, 
 both Frenchmen, made their appearance in Rome, bring¬ 
 ing with them that germ of national genius which they 
 themselves had not consciously recognized ; and straight¬ 
 way they began to read in Nature what the Romans had 
 disdained to look at. Poussin sets up his easel in the 
 field : Claude Lorraine goes down to the beach, and stud¬ 
 ies the dying light of sunset on the water. Sun ! Sea! 
 Mere were ol)jects which the Romans had always treated 
 as mere accessories when they allowed themselves to treat 
 them at all. 
 
 True, these early efforts showed the tendency of the 
 time, the pompous artificiality of the age of Louis XIV. 
 Poussin had not got so far as to paint nature in undress ; 
 he tricked her out with ringlets and jewels, and decked 
 her in manufactured graces, and put her in fit state for 
 presentation in the salon of Versailles. Claude Lorraine, on 
 the other hand, piled up chimerical palaces, crowded with 
 lords and ladies in court costume, and adorned with rococo 
 colonnades. They were Frenchmen of their time; and, 
 travel where they might, they never shook from their feet 
 the dust of their native soil. 
 
 The rei^n of the c^’rand and artificial school of land- 
 scape lasted long. It chimed in with the same tendency 
 in tragedy, with the full-bottomed wigs and stiffly recti- 
 

 y ^ -A 
 
 v" 
 
 ■»•. . ^:. —• 
 
 ■■ 
 
 ' r" .^ .: r, 
 
 
 ,•>• ■ » 'V^ tTV.'S.-.' ■'-iV“-S •• ■'!.*•" 
 
 ■■■:■.' O' -iK 
 
 I;. ^'?'’ V 
 
 
 V ^^ 4 " ¥ ' •■’ 
 
 «■ p . - ' .«• ••' - ' P^'S'- •^- -• 
 
 ■ ' .. 
 
 P <•;;}%■.■!, •_ ■,■•, 
 
 w.-- 
 
 IM 
 
 '■ . ■ '"Jp 
 
 
 
 ‘..J vVj 
 
 : J ■■•■.-& -■- ■’”■% 
 
 . . v' 
 
 
 
 
 ■1. ''- ■■•'VI 
 
 
 'X'i 
 
 S.-' • . •♦>. 
 
 i n^: 
 
 
 r 
 
4 
 
 ■■ 
 
 N ' O 
 
 i-i' - i! use of Itu^ 
 s • •: A^nr 'oi '.V SQrup r.; 
 
 ■ ..r'’,s>s, tmun%e 
 
 . '. hr'; I ..; . house*' 
 
 i-uv i-j ,.riv rJ'i^iaicr'ent 
 
 ' to p.^aMrlt: > ;gn sCO-r>>. 
 
 iid trt.-i;-iju !.j . . ■ ty ■seconOa ■" 
 
 century, h'.■,■■■<. ,-. ■, stfan]|t^ 
 
 nyif-■ app,ra:-aic ■ ■ HxJine, 
 
 n of natioif.i y -ci.r?. chich l? 
 
 ciQusly recoy'-i;t,'>-;' ’ 
 
 .1' N.iilurt' vVipit- ' ■ i^t’inans- n r - . 
 seis.f ' ■ ecsel''in * ■ 
 
 'V • 
 
 cs uu^.-n to if'' ■ 
 
 . w ■ ;■{ -SunJ S* 
 
 ’ f'loinarf' ''^■w^ayg-tre«.. 
 
 ;ts < ' vn- untie? 
 
 ' ■ '■'• •''TV' ' ■ 
 
 ; c y-' ro i , ind d<>^- ; 
 
 c oul , . ' 
 
 ■- f: 
 
 i -f-- ■' ' Lorr^i;-. I . 
 
 '■ ■_ i.'^)W'C^v** 
 
 . • . .* .>v' , 
 
 ,osf'’c''. ,y\s?ith'- 
 
 i • '.'■ ir tiir*' 
 
 -' - f*om rW ' 
 
 :'s. .olKMi; •• . :, 
 
 fcriknv- 
 •'■y, ■ aniJ 
 
 ■r-J 
 
THE SHE 
 

 jJik 
 
13K K NIKR (C.) —-1 / orning. 
 
f- 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 « 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 4 
 
 
JUND'I' (G.) -Riturn of the Bride. 
 
J ! 
 
Knight (D, l<.)-r/^c^ Halt (Fragment). 
 
L A NDSCA PE. 
 
 235 
 
 linear architecture and clipped yew-trees and boxwood 
 hedges of the day. We have done with all that now¬ 
 adays once for all. Just as the novel-writers are throw¬ 
 ing aside the merely fanciful element in narration, and 
 coming closer to pure and simple observation of fact, so 
 with the painters. They are tired of “classic arrange¬ 
 ment” and the laws of symmetry hammered into them in 
 the class-room; it strikes them with a refreshinof sense 
 of conviction that Rembrandt, for instance, when he saw 
 a barn, painted a barn, and went straight to the truth 
 by the shortest road. And, after all, Rembrandt teaches 
 probably as good lessons as M. Paul P'landrin or M. 
 Aligny. 
 
 In the Salon this year, the so-called historic school 
 of landscape is quite unrepresented, save for a few timid 
 folk who anxiously try to run with the hare of academic 
 conventions and the hounds of popular taste. So long 
 as the earth turns on its axis, we shall always find a 
 few of these timorous, undecided people, always ready to 
 shout for King or Commons with the veering of each 
 new breeze. 
 
 I confess I had expected something better of M. 
 Camille Bernier with his masculine boldness and sincerity 
 of style; and his “Morning” is rather a disappointment. 
 His trees are very solemn trees, no doubt, with the richest 
 of branchage and leafage; oaks, seemingly, such as the 
 old Gallic Druids would have chosen to lend their shelter 
 to a sacrifice, or supply the sacred emblematic ivy. Wdiy, 
 then, this mixed and imperfect satisfaction I take in the 
 result? Simply because I feel as if M. Camille Bernier 
 were trying to “humbug me,” if I may be allowed 
 the expression; because the work has the look ot 
 having been got up with a sort of effort and malice 
 
 r 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 236 
 
 prepense which instinctively puts me on my guard. Near 
 the trees above mentioned I see a boat, with a fisher¬ 
 man getting ready to cast his nets. But the boat is a 
 canvas and pasteboard machine from the side scenes of 
 the Opera Comique, just the sort of thing to utterly 
 destroy your faith in boats in general. It makes me 
 think of the “dear little women” in red handkerchiefs 
 which Cerot used to drag into every one of his land¬ 
 scapes under pretext of “giving them animation;” as if 
 you could make me believe that wherever Cerot happened 
 to lay his pencils and color-box there, forsooth, were sure 
 to be his “ dear little women,” red kerchiefs and all, pick¬ 
 ing up sticks ! 
 
 Lintelo {C. )— Mangel-wurzel. 
 
 In the other extreme from M. Camille Bernier is M. 
 \"on, with his “ Banks of the Marne at Isle-les-Villenoy.” 
 Here, at all events, we stand in the front rank of 
 modern tendency. It is a ver)' familiar scene he offers 
 us : grass, meadows, clumps of trees, and quiet, white cot¬ 
 tages, shut in 1)y the gentle slopes Sainte-Beuve was so 
 fond of, and crowned by the parish steeple of some name¬ 
 less village; a perfectly cjuiet pastoral scene. M. Yon 
 
Node (Cn.) —7//£- Lez . 
 
■•V i'.'./ //"A •■’7—(■'.■O ( [ 
 

I 
 
 Rai’IN (A.)— Aiiliimii. 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 243 
 
 makes no attempt to “give animation” to his work. The 
 two peasant women walking along the bank are of the 
 pattern usual to these out-of-the-way corners of e.xistence 
 —-you don’t go to Isle-les-Villenoy for a crowd. 
 
 Nor must you look for life and stir on the calm 
 birches of the Lez, to which M. Node invites us. The 
 Lez ? Where under the sun is the Lez ? you will ask; 
 for never was river which made less noise in the world. 
 The Lignon always reminds us of Mile, de Scudery, and 
 the Loire gets some celebrity from the poetic wanderings 
 of Ronsard; but nothing but the stray roaming of an 
 idle painter in the department of I’Herault ever unearthed 
 the Lez. On looking into the matter, I find that while 
 the torrents of Languedoc and Provence are dry nine 
 months of the year, the Lez keeps the same level winter 
 and summer, and has no current, while the banks are 
 thickly wooded. A very different stream is the Oise, 
 which fresh-water sailors frequent and M. Veyrassat likes 
 to paint. M. Veyrassat, by the way, has betaken himself 
 to the rural districts. His “Little farm” represents a 
 ploughman resting; his horses, harnessed to some sort of 
 modern prize cultivator, have stopped to take breath, 
 while a little lad looks on with the indifference natural to 
 youngsters who have not begun to take life in earnest. 
 
 We find a bit of Alsatian life in M. Junedt’s “Coming 
 from the Wedding,” and are glad to see it, interested as 
 we are in everything from Mulhouse or Colmar, or even 
 Guebwiller or Schelestadt. M. Colin’s decorative bit, 
 “The Storks,” is also worth a glance. 
 
 The severity of last winter stirred up several of our 
 artists to new energy; so, braving the frost, and shivering, 
 knee-deep in snow, under the cutting blast, they went to 
 work to leave to posterity a record of last December 
 
244 
 
 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 and its events. Some of the Americans went down by 
 the Saumur railway to see the Loire frozen over; but M. 
 Luigi Loir thought enough of such fascinating and awful 
 things were to be seen in Paris. He was right. The 
 sight of the Seine frozen over offered subjects of interest 
 tor the most exacting in such matters. M. Loir’s picture 
 looks like a bit of the passage of the Beresina, or, better 
 still, of the Stygian shades. Dim phantoms, with great 
 coat-collars turned up, or fur-trimmed cloaks, flit over the 
 sleety pavements like souls in torment with Charon at their 
 heels ; the sky is dark with drifting clouds, and the dark, 
 lonely spectral outlines of the houses stand out sharply 
 in the chance gleams of daylight. One thing about it 
 I do not like. I cannot help fancying that the street 
 passengers look like the very same Parisians with whom 
 M. Loir took us last year to the “ Inundation at Bercy.” 
 So the poimlation of Paris would seem to be made up of 
 some dozen inquisitive people who never change—-we are 
 never to get rid of Gill, the caricaturist, and always and 
 everywhere we must see Mile. Sarah Bernhardt! 
 
 A favorite site for painters of scenes in Paris is the 
 Bridge of Austerlitz, with its view of Notre Dame, so it 
 seems natural enoLmh to find M. Guillemet at work there. 
 
 o 
 
 His picture, taken from a point near the wine-stores, is 
 commendable for breadth of execution, and its freshness, 
 freedom, and correctness of tone, of which he shows 
 especial knowledge. His sky and water are alike excel¬ 
 lently done, but his earth is less successful in manipula¬ 
 tion. It would be unfair to expect him to handle all four 
 elements at once. The ground in M. Guillemet’s picture 
 seems made of liquid mud, decaying matter, and unsightly 
 detritus, whereas he took his stand exactly at the local¬ 
 ity of one of the city piers, as neat and clean as muni- 
 

 r 
 
SLEEPING CUPID 
 
Fkekic lTii.]—Carav^„ Bchocai Meaa a„d C\uro. 
 
r 
 
 ■ J r 
 
 • <• 
 
 
 
 
(^^)—In the Pou/tr 
 
1 
 
 1 
 
 
jAi'Y (L. A I—/// ihe Plain at Villers-Cotterets. 
 

 
 '1 
 
 < 
 
 
LAN DSC A PE. 
 
 251 
 
 cipal care and attention can make it. But he could not 
 do without the pier, else his picture would have lacked 
 local correctness; so M. Guillemet must take his place 
 with the rest, in the list of “arrangers.” But I beg him 
 —and even in legal phrase, “call on him —to drop such 
 bad company; he has nothing to gain and everything to 
 
 Watelin (L. V.)— The Mill on the jVes/e — Mornifi^if Scene. 
 
 lose with associates who carry their morbid fancy to such 
 unwarrantable extremes. 
 
 M. Arsene Dubois gives us art in its reposeful 
 phase. For six months at a time he shuts himself up in 
 his country house in Champagne, a little way from Troyes, 
 a region we have to thank for Miy-nard and Girardin, 
 to say nothing of the pork-butchers. As Horace found 
 all he wanted at Tibur, so M. Arsene Dubois sticks to 
 
252 
 
 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 the Departement de I’Aube, and a very small nook of it, 
 hardly even down on the map. He might be called the 
 man from Cresantignes, so assiduously does he paint its 
 hills, ponds, potato-helds, orchards, and market-gardens. 
 Cresantignes for ever! I took a last look at the village 
 in the Exhibition of 1879, and, lo! here we have it again 
 in 1880. The Cresantigne foliage at twilight seems to 
 take on a warm tinge, which is much to its credit, as if 
 it had borrowed from the Dutch school a touch of its 
 chiaroscuro. 
 
 And really nothing could well be more poetic than the 
 open fields at nightfall. Take a man with lyric yearn¬ 
 ings in his soul, and set him beneath the pale beams of 
 the Goddess of Night, and you are pretty sure to find 
 that literature has gained by a new sonnet, or music by 
 a new romanza. If a toll from the village steeple hap¬ 
 pens to chime in with the first twinkle of starlight, so 
 much the better—the cup of inspiration will brim and run 
 over. In Revolutionary days, bells had no such ideal 
 significance; they were cast for warlike uses. It was a 
 stern, practical period, from which have come down to 
 us a few national songs with a whiff of gunpowder in 
 every stanza, but not a strain of poesy. 
 
 In those days, what, we may naturally ask, would 
 have become of M. Jules Mreton, with his sad and pensive 
 turn of mind? Probably the “Winnowers” would never 
 have seen the light. This year the artist sends us other 
 winnowers, more pretty and attractive than ever. One 
 has carelessly dropped off in a nap; another is stretch¬ 
 ing her stiffened limbs to shake off the autumn chill; a 
 third is gazing about her with a sort of dreamy vague¬ 
 ness, which is very pleasing. M. Breton’s country women 
 are very different things from the stupefied and brutified 
 
Dupke (J .)—Moxvers of J..uccr)7c Grass. 
 
1 
 
 f. 
 
 
 •tf 
 
 
 % 
 
 I 
 
 II 
 
 
 i ^ 
 
 ' \ 
 
VkVRASSAT (J, J .)—The Liitle Farm. 
 
S’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 wiiif 
 
 U? 
 
 I1> 
 
 a.j 
 
 '" '* 
 
 c 
 
 '. v, 
 
 • } 
 
 K_ , i 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 257 
 
 creatures whom Millet studied, with such hard rustic 
 earnestness, through the long winter evenings, M. Breton 
 keeps the proper medium between the ideal and the real¬ 
 istic ; if he avoids, on the one hand, the school-girl 
 prettiness of Florian, neither does he sink to the coarse¬ 
 ness of Zola. I doubt, however, whether village girls 
 are always as charming as painters make them out. M, 
 Feyen-Perrin has given us a revised version of the 
 Cancale oyster-women ; M. Bouguereau dresses us up his 
 bevy of lovely Italian girls. M. Knight puts resistless 
 fascination into his Poissy milkmaids; and I don’t see 
 why I may not be honestly obliged to M. Jules Breton 
 for a thrill of sincere and healthful emotion. Lovers of 
 nature are happy people, happier than they know them¬ 
 selves, for they have the added satisfaction of making us 
 sharers in their joy, far away, restful and calm, far from 
 the city’s din, far from civilization and all its sophistica¬ 
 tions, where no actress smiles beneath the gas-light, and 
 no fumes from the cheap restaurant taint the pure even¬ 
 ing air. 
 
 M. Knight seems to me sure to win an excellent 
 place among the painters of village scenes. His “Halt” 
 shows steady and conspicuous improvement; the com¬ 
 position is exquisitely careful and discreet, the coloring 
 subtle and delicate, and the tone pleasing. The spectator 
 is tempted to wonder what the two girls have stopped 
 by the fence to talk about—love-secrets, mayhap, or the 
 last quotations in the vegetable market ? I like the first 
 guess rather the better; at twenty, with eyes as bright 
 as theirs, sentiment is apt to get ahead of speculation. 
 You are very comely girls, my dears; and I fancy the 
 village Don Juan is as much puzzled between you as 
 Paris shilly-shallying between Venus and Minerva. 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 258 
 
 Rut perhaps, after all, Paris would have handed over 
 his apple to M. Lerolle’s “ Shepherdess,” for she is 
 lovely enough to cure Alccste of his misanthropy and 
 stir him to o'entler indulgence for Ccliincnc with all her 
 false and fair sisterhood. Such a shepherdess would 
 shine as a bright particular star among the sweetest of 
 Nanterre rosiercs. Her face is as pure as her bearing is 
 shy and modest, and the lambs, who may be trusted as 
 good judges in the premises, browse the green twigs from 
 her maiden hand in kindred and sympathetic confidence. 
 They may well feel trustful in the good-will of their 
 young mistress, who, for blows, gives them caresses, and 
 carries them in her bosom, and decks their necks with 
 garlands. M. Lerolle’s canvas is of large dimensions, 
 and at first sight a subject so simple and idyllic seems 
 hardly capable of extension over so much surface. But 
 in fact the canvas is so well filled that we are conscious 
 of no gap. Any such which threatened to occur have 
 been deftly supplied with fitting matter—white-rinded wil¬ 
 lows, a ploughman with his team—a rocky ledge dimly 
 seen through the blue haze of the noonday heat. The 
 picture has a fine effect of distance, light, and air, with 
 a fresh breeze palpably stirring the foliage. M. Lerolle 
 paints like a man fresh from reading a Virgilian eclogue, 
 a song of Goethe, or a sonnet of Coleridge. 
 
 It is sad to see hi. Francais drifting backward into 
 the ranks of the Old Guard. His hand has lost its 
 lightning, his ideas are getting fat and scant of breath, 
 and his genius has mounted spectacles. Where can he 
 have been to find such whitey gray tones and such 
 platitude of effect? Clearly M. Francais is ten years 
 behind the times. 
 
 M. Sege, on the contrary, steps forth in all the 
 
FouCAUCOUKT (G. he) —The Ruins of the " Chateau de Clisson. 
 
I 
 
 A 
 
 
 It 
 
 % 
 
 
THE SPRING. 
 
 M/UviUELL H.-LT-. 
 
/ 
 
UUBOIS (C. E.) — 77/^ Quay " Foiida)nc?ite A'liova" at Vcrtic 
 

 {■ 
 
 ■ ■"*- 
 
 -I 
 
 ! 
 
 »■: 
 
 •^.1 
 
LANDSCA PE . 
 
 263 
 
 serene audacity of extreme youth—no need to hunt up 
 his birth-register; his work bears no sign of wrinkles 
 or gray hairs. His “View of Coubron,” in Seine-et-Oise, 
 must have been ordered by the real-estate owners of the 
 neighborhood, so strongly does it savor of ground lots for 
 sale and villas to let. M. Sege’s picture offers all the 
 inspiriting promise ot an auctioneer’s prospectus; a mere 
 glance at his blooming fields, housed in convenient and 
 cheerful sites, green meadows, splendid kitchen-gardens, 
 and fertile soil, fills us with a wild desire to pack up our 
 household goods and migrate to this Eden of delights. 
 “’Tis there I’d live—’tis there!” sighs Mignon, with M. 
 Ambroise Thomas’ accompaniment. Some fine morning— 
 M. SeQfe aidinof and abetting—we shall start on an ex- 
 ploring expedition among these fine things, and woe to 
 the luckless painter if they do not come up to sample ! 
 
 We are haunted with a suspicion that M. Hanoteau, 
 too, is playing a like sly little game with us; but 
 perhaps not. His “Sleeping Waters,” true to their name, 
 are drowsy with their prompting to slumber under their 
 still and shady coppice, near the motionless flags and 
 water-lilies, where the dragon-fly hovers on his wings of 
 quivering gauze. M. Hanoteau’s water is very special 
 and exceptional water, of a certain and mysterious dia¬ 
 mond clearness and transparency. The fish whose high 
 privilege it is to swim in it, must be ranked among the 
 very upper-tendom of finny society, with all the means 
 and leisure to sport and frolic and stare out of windows 
 and taste all the delights of a more than Neapolitan 
 do/cc far Jiientc, unabashed by the fear of being sent 
 back to the bottom—and the mud. 
 
 And speaking of Naples, what a lucky fellow is that 
 excellent artist, M. Jean Benner, who winters at Capri, 
 
264 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 but in much more innocent lashion than the savage old 
 voluptuary Tiberius, who lived there before him. His 
 “ Street in Capri ” is rather a different affair from the Rue 
 Vivienne—women sitting with their knitting-work along 
 the whitewashed walls, boys going about with baskets 
 of oranges on their heads, and scraps of old stone 
 stairway and other scraps of older blue sky overhead. 
 
 Hanoteau (tl.) —Sleeping Waters. 
 
 The Italian women of M. Hebert and M. Schnetz 
 are mere academy studies, as conventional as possible. 
 l)ut M. Ifenner’s Capri girls are a very different thing 
 from the studio models who huddle into Monge Square 
 toward evening. M. Benner is to the manner born in 
 Capri—no one thinks of posing for him ; when he wants 
 a sketch from life, they just let him sharpen his pencils 
 and go to work! 
 
o 
 
 C- 
 
 abin at BilhDiconrf; Snow Effect. 
 
|r 
 
 
 •>*;4s 
 
 ■ •« 
 
 i 
 
 
liKi-.roN (J. A.) 
 
t 
 
 ' I 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 269 
 
 In just the same way the Highlanders seem to treat 
 M. Gustave Dore, the one Parisian to whom it is given 
 to know, by personal experience, the real tacts about the 
 much-vaunted Scotch hospitality. It gives one a shudder 
 to think of the mountain heights he had to climb in order 
 to paint his souvenir of “ Loch Carron.” Nothing of the 
 sort can be found at less than two thousand feet above the 
 sea-level—such silver showers of waterfall, such tangible 
 rainbows, such herds of cattle dotting the moss-grown 
 rocks, such bottomless ravines with blue lakes gleaming 
 through, such cairns and caverns and snow-peaks as go 
 to make up M. Dore’s picture of Loch Carron. Perhaps 
 his imagination a little runs away with him. M. Dore is 
 wonderful for restoring scraps of middle-age work, to 
 say nothing of his fanciful rendering of the seven circles 
 of the Inferno, which he never saw; but even with his 
 touch of exaggeration it is pretty sure that M. Gustave 
 
 Dore is the only modern painter who can “tackle” a 
 
 glacier without getting the worst of it. 
 
 P’or really the task is too much for any human 
 strength. Vast spaces and gigantic conglomerations of 
 natural features are little fitted for landscape treatment. 
 Face to face with the great spectacles of the physical uni¬ 
 verse, man feels his weakness; immensity is beyond his 
 painting. On the terrace at Pan, at the foot of the 
 
 Cirque de Gavaline, in the Pyrenees, on Giotto’s Tower 
 in Florence, viewing the Jungfrau from Interlaken, un¬ 
 der the dome of St. Peter’s—in any or all these places 
 the man will be carried away with enthusiasm, but 
 the painter drops his brush. For once he will let his 
 
 art go and admire with the single-hearted delight of 
 the everyday tourist; and if you say, “ What a hue 
 subject for a picture! ” he will be apt to shrug his 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 270 
 
 shoulders in a way to shock your self-esteem, if you 
 have any. 
 
 l^ut take a painter to regions usually held unattrac¬ 
 tive, without mountains to climb or torrents to cross or cas¬ 
 cades to remind the cockney of the miniature Niagaras 
 at St. C'loud, and he will stop in delight to gaze at a 
 clump of bushes beside a spring, or a house with poultry 
 clucking and hens pecking around it and the family wash 
 drying on a clothes-line. These are poor, humble mat¬ 
 ters of detail which M. Dore despises; yet M. Lavieille 
 takes great pleasure in just such poor matters, and the 
 chances are that he is riijht. 
 
 O 
 
 M. Pelouse’s “Early Leaves” is one of the prettiest 
 bits in the Salon; a wood whose naked boughs show that 
 the strong rain of winter’s blasts is just giving place to 
 the soft breath of spring. Already the twigs are tufted 
 with tender crreen, and the oak-l;)ark begins to swell and 
 burst with rising sap, while the birds break silence in 
 their first timid attempt at song, and the turf begins to 
 take on a tinge of brighter green. Solvititr acris hions 
 grata vice vcris ct Favosii. 
 
 Every one to his taste. M. Pelouse affects the early 
 spring — M. Rapin the dying autumn. October often 
 comes to us veiletl in a hazy and gentle radiance which 
 is very tempting to the artist’s fancy. There is a sad 
 poetry in all decline and fall. M. Rapin is peculiarly 
 happy in rendering the mournful hill-slopes bare of their 
 pristine glory of vine-leaves, and the melancholy moun¬ 
 tain-peaks silvered with the first layer of autumn hoar-frost. 
 
 Pine rocky cliffs, where the kingfisher might perch, 
 and majestic oaks which might shelter the nightingale, 
 make up the elements of M. Zuber’s picture, “The Flon 
 at Massignieu.” 
 
 o 
 
Hf.AUVAIS (A.)— A»ioh_^ Th>' lilies {Berry); Winter 
 
i 
 
Rapin (a.J—/]//// 
 
 i^c's C 'rcssoj/^//crt-Js. ’' 
 
! 
 
 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 ~75 
 
 In his picture, “La Nuit Verte,” M. Dardoise has 
 recorded a curious effect of moonlight in some unnamed 
 region, a phenomenon worth a report to the Institute, or 
 a committee of scientific examination at least. The scene 
 looks like a glorified fairy tale where the Golden Fly 
 might hover and buzz about the slender twigs and the 
 transparent ideal waters, green as molten emerald. 
 
 With M. Hareux’s “Cottage near Ouilleboeuf” we get 
 
 ZuBER.— The Flon at Alassig^nicii. 
 
 back to real and literal darkness—a midnight sketch of 
 gloom so dense that we can barely make out here and 
 there a pear-tree, or a pile of vegetables, or a melon- 
 frame, and just miss stumbling into a well like the astrol¬ 
 oger in the fable. Just one little shy, quivering ray of 
 light sifts through the closed shutters of the silent farm¬ 
 house, and leaves us much in the case of the poor 
 peepers at the monkey’s magic lantern. “ Gentlemen : 
 
276 
 
 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 Here you have the sun and planets and the story of 
 Adam and Eve and different animals and Norma7idy by 
 niooiiligJit!" The comparison fails in one point—M. 
 Hareux has fora-ot to lig-ht his lantern. We strain our 
 eyes, and prick up our ears to hear what the painter may 
 have to tell us, and are sorely tempted to fall foul of 
 him with reproaches. “How, in heaven’s name,” we feel 
 like asking, “ did you manage to bring away any trace 
 of anything perceptible from the depths of such pitchy 
 gloom; or, remembering them, how could you paint them? 
 It would have been shorter work to take your canvas and 
 spill a bottle of writing-ink over it—it would have done 
 just as well.” 
 
 From such a realm of shade, it is pleasant to come 
 out into the daylight and take a good breath of fresh air 
 in the cheerful work of M. Eapostolet and M. Paul Peraire. 
 In their company we may go sailing over a stream as 
 charming as the one Mme. de Scudery gave us in her 
 map to “Cyrus the Great.” Her famous “River of Soft 
 Sentiment” seems to flow aorain in the smiling; bits of the 
 Seine at Port Louviers and at St. Denis. The water is cov¬ 
 ered with flitting skiffs with their crews of pleasure-seekers 
 in Sunday clothes, and the little excursion steamers groan 
 under their deck-load of school-boys and holiday youth 
 in general; while all along the bank the cockney angler 
 spreads his simple wiles for the hapless gudgeon, the 
 dreadful pickerel, or the fleeting and fugacious bream. 
 In all his gush of artistic expression, M. Eapostolet ob¬ 
 serves a certain moderation; but M. Paul Peraire boldly 
 dresses his river in tints as gorgeous and dazzling as the 
 Mediterranean, and plants it with nut-trees and ash and 
 elm of Brobdingnagian proportions, for the promenade of 
 his Parisian Gullivers. 
 
■y ' 
 
 V 
 
 
SAMOELX H>XL 
 
CoosEMANS (J. T.)—A'//n-m' Pluntaiioiis. 
 
COLLART (Mine. M.)—77/f Cottage. 
 

 • 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 28 [ 
 
 M. Phileas Roy has thought fit to leave to posterity 
 something like a photograph of the “ Bridge of Alma on 
 an August Evening.” Country people, who do not know 
 how Paris looks in summer, may possibly buy M. Roy’s 
 picture. For my part, I am puzzled to tell just where the 
 painter stood, nor am I clear about it yet. There is no 
 great harm in copying scenes of every-day life, but then 
 you must go about it with the exceptional talent of Jean 
 Steen or Van Ostade. M. Roy gives us a policeman in 
 white trousers, a lady talking to a shop-clerk, a huckster- 
 
 Delpy (H. C. )—Autumn Harvest. 
 
 woman pushing a barrow, a city water-cart man manu¬ 
 facturing mud as he goes, while in the background the 
 Trocadero Palace looms magnificent in its two Moorish 
 towers and the Mercie statue of Fame, which looks so 
 for all the world like a fly on a lemon—a whole series 
 of details, in short, which will prove very edifying, no 
 doubt, as historic documents for the researches of the 
 next century. When Ouicherat or Edouard Fournier, or 
 any other of the great investigators of future days, shall 
 anxiously propound some momentous question as to the 
 
282 
 
 LAN DSC A PE. 
 
 trousers worn by policemen in August under the Third 
 Republic, the aspiring student, who has routed out M. 
 Roy’s picture from the archives of some up-country mu¬ 
 seum, will^ be sure of a prize from countless archaeological 
 societies, and the doors of the Institute will open for his 
 coming. 
 
 What is to become of poor, painting plebeians, when 
 the great and noble of the earth begin to dabble with 
 the brush ? The family of Chabran is famous for blood 
 and lineage, from the days of Alfonso II. down to the 
 present day; yet M. Elzear de Sabran, as he modestly 
 entitles himself in the catalogue, not content with his 
 inherited honors, steps into the arena of art and sets 
 himself to rival the poor simple folk who smudge for 
 their daily bread. Shall 1 dare to confess that M. Elzear 
 de Sabran does not, as usually happens in such cases, 
 find his ancestral escutcheon a sure ticket to mediocrity ? 
 Mis “ Sigean Pond” would hold honorable place in a gal¬ 
 lery of first-rate work, and in no sense suggests the idle 
 pastime of the dilettante. 
 
 Next come two foreigners, from mutually distant 
 points of the compass. M. Smith - Hald, whose given 
 name, Erithiof, shows his Scandinavian birth, has painted 
 “A Steamer Station” on the coast of Norway. A very 
 different thing from the landing-place at Bas- Meudon. 
 d'he handful of passengers waiting on the landing-stage 
 look dull and chilly, and show little alacrity in going on 
 board. I cannot help fancying that Shakespeare’s Hamlet 
 would have found his sadness only the heavier for such 
 fellow-travellers. Hamlet, I say, for who knows but the 
 march of improvement may have turned the storied Castle 
 of Elsinore into a steamer-landing? 
 
 M. Amedee Bandit, a Swiss, cultivates the department 
 

 
 I 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 e 
 
 
 i 
 
nmuftn.’ -j) sioyiKj 
 
f 
 
 
 
 
 1 \ 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
L A N D SC A PE. 
 
 287 
 
 of the Landes, or rather, sojourns there, for he would 
 have tough work to cultivate it. But after all, to my 
 mind, the Landes have been sadly slandered by unimagi¬ 
 native people who could find no beauty in them, whereas 
 they really have much of the melancholy, if monotonous, 
 poetry of the Great Desert. It has become conventional 
 to find poetry in the vast sandy plain of the Sahara, yet 
 we cry out at the dreariness of the Landes with their 
 great ocean sweep of pine and heather; which is about 
 as consistent as human notions generally are. hi. Bandit 
 does not share the popular prejudice; he loves to paint 
 lonely pools with their fringe of reedst and peasants 
 stalking over the plains on their long stilts, and the stony 
 fields, which lie along the Gascon Gulf, and relishing this 
 queer diet himself, ends by getting us to relish it too. 
 
 M. Theodore Frere paints a “ Caravan between 
 Mecca and Cairo.” Camel-drivers squatting on the ground 
 to wait for their lunch and coffee, ami their two beasts 
 waiting for the next start, while a crowd of pilgrims 
 swarm among the tents under the palm-tree shade, and 
 high in the warm evening sky long lines of migratory 
 birds are winging their way to the rocks and sands ot 
 Arabia Petraea. It is just such a scene of Arab life as 
 Reyer or Delioux might set to music. M. Theodore Frere 
 is faithful to his old love for the Fast, and meets with fit 
 return ; though Orientalism in art should fade out every¬ 
 where else, it would never cease to nestle warmly in the 
 heart and fancy of this earnest, sincere, and ever interest¬ 
 ing artist. 
 
 And now, let all lovers of fish—fried fish, stewed fish, 
 eel-pie, or what not—make their respectful acknowledg¬ 
 ments to M. Alphonse Moutte for his work, a piscatorial 
 denizen of Poissy casting his nets. The untechnical soul 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 imagines that by just throwing out a drag or a troll you 
 can haul in any amount of perch or shiners. Far from 
 it; M. Moutte gives us a notion of the trials of the trade, 
 which are severe enough now, and will be worse yet, 
 when the great collecting sewer carries its pestiferous 
 infection among the pretty villas which dot the slopes 
 around Saint-Germain-en-Laye. M. Moutte’s river, as it 
 is, looks as black and nauseous as the Styx; let us hope 
 he may not turn out an unconscious prophet. 
 
 My notedjook contains sundry other scattered memo¬ 
 randa, the “honorable mentions” not so much of the jury 
 as of the public voice. “A Morning at Chateau-Landon,” 
 and “Fort of Pont-Aven,” by M. Defaux. 
 
 “ L’Isle-Adam,” by M. de Mesgrigny, a pretty land¬ 
 scape, much in the style of one of Gretry’s operas co- 
 mique, but too minute in the painting of the foliage. 
 
 M. Appian’s “Last Snow” falls under the same cen¬ 
 sure ; it would be much more satisfactory without such 
 ostentatious nicety in detail. 
 
 “August at Valiere,” by M. Chabry, a bit of Atlantic 
 seascape, blue as larkspur, whereas I never saw the At¬ 
 lantic when its color was not something between gray 
 and bottle-green ! 
 
 “ Solitude,” by M. Auquin, the rocks characteristi¬ 
 cally painted with the peculiar and well-known features 
 of the Limousin region. 
 
 “ Plains of Villers - Cotterets,” by M. Japy. The 
 painter, I should say, is smitten with emulation of Mil¬ 
 lais’ horizons, and squanders the air and distance he so 
 admires as if there were no bill to pay. But really grand 
 and broad treatment of landscape is one thing, the un¬ 
 healthy extravagance of the panorama another. 
 
 “View of Beziers,” by M. Eugene Baudouin ; and, by 
 
Dameron (C. ¥^.)—Farm. at Kcrlavfn (Finistcre) Eve>?in. 
 
i 
 
 ■m 
 
 
Devk —,7 at Millenunit. 
 

 i ■ 
 
 
 
 
THE PONT 
 
c 
 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 
 II 
 
 
LANDSCAPE. 
 
 293 
 
 the same hand, “Washerwomen going to the River Lez” 
 on the road from Pont-Juvenal to Montpellier, both bright, 
 airy pictures, full of that southern poetry and cheerful 
 spirit so associated with the Langue d’Oc. 
 
 To sum up, the French Landscape School this year 
 maintains the high rank it took at the World Exhibitions. 
 We have had losses, to be sure: Corot, Diaz, Theodore 
 Rosseau, Villevieille, and Chintreuil could not live forever; 
 but they have left pupils, who step by step have come to 
 wear their mantle with dignity. As I said at the outset, 
 the traditions have somewhat changed. Landscape has 
 begun to work on new principles and in a new direction; 
 but such change is inherent in the nature of art, and 
 the student will find it a long way from the Loggic of 
 the Vatican to the ceiling of the Galerie d’Apollon, or the 
 sinewy compositions of M. Puris de Chavannes. It has 
 been our desire to point out, as nearly as possible, all the 
 noteworthy landscape in the Salon this year; for any 
 possible omissions we beg the indulgence of the sufferer— 
 it was our oversight and not our intent. In the bewilder¬ 
 ing multitude of three thousand nine hundred and fifty- 
 seven contributions, the critic may be pardoned if he some¬ 
 times lose his head ; very [rrobably we may have need of 
 the e.xcuse. But let unappreciated genius take comfort! 
 Just because it is genius, it is sufficient unto itself and 
 needs not our feeble approval. 
 
 DANIEL BERNARD. 
 

 c 
 
 t 
 
 ff 
 
L I’^T me preface my review of the 
 military department of the Sa¬ 
 lon with an expression of regret that 
 it missed the names of two painters 
 who have lately taken first rank in 
 this line. I mean M. de Neuville and 
 M. Detaille. Their absence is of a 
 kind to be unavoidably felt; none the 
 less that the greater part of the mili¬ 
 tary canvases this year entirely fail to 
 offer any adequate compensation. 
 
 It looks, altogether, very much as if our best and most 
 popular painters of military subjects had mutually agreed to 
 send nothing to this E.xhibition. No contril)ution comes 
 from M. Berne-Bellecour who won such repute with his 
 
 a96 
 
296 
 
 MIL ITAR V L IF E. 
 
 “Cannon Shot,” nor from M. Protais, whose way of telling 
 a tale of soldierly adventure has such fascination for the 
 female soul. Of all our really distinguished painters, M. 
 Dupray alone makes his appearance with one of his delight¬ 
 ful works, as clever in conception as in execution. It is 
 greatly to be hoped that Messrs, de Neuville and Detaille, 
 who have been tempted away to England this year, will 
 not delay giving us another chance to admire a new spe¬ 
 cimen of their handiwork; we urge it for our own satis¬ 
 faction, and somewhat, too, for their own sake. 
 
 Such as they are, the military pictures this year prove 
 to demonstration that the “grand” school of battle painting 
 is dead once for all, and that in all Europe, just now, there 
 is not an artist, M. Matejko not excepted, who can bring it 
 to life again. Baron Gros himself could not do it, though 
 he should come back from the other world on purpose. 
 Our military painters have frankly and fa’rly taken up the 
 line of study and physiologic observation, first traced out 
 by Charlet, with his old soldier Raffct, and his African 
 chasseurs and turcos, bristling with literal accuracy and 
 verisimilitude, and by Horace Vernet himself with his little 
 bits of military episode, and anecdote told on canvas. The 
 evolution which they first set going has moved slowly but 
 surely on. The events which have passed under our own 
 eyes—with the instruction they carried to the mind of an 
 artist—and the broad universal set and tendency of the 
 age, which from day to day more forcibly enjoins sincere 
 study and nice observation of persons and things, all have 
 contributed to swell the current and enforce the lesson. 
 We have got it now by heart. Military painting will never 
 again essay the hopeless task of setting before us on a 
 few leet of canvas, fabulous and impossible combats, with 
 whole battalions writhinsj and struo^tjlinof in a wild confu- 
 
Dupray (L. H.) — Casting a Shoe. 
 

 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 ■ ’■' ■ ■ 
 
 
 
Sergknt (L. C.)~Firui!r the First Shot. August 30, 1870. 
 
MILITARY LIFE. 
 
 301 
 
 sion of a heady fight, compositions crammed with studied 
 and dramatic horrors, for which the artist has drawn en¬ 
 tirely on his own fancy. The military painting of the day 
 will aim to interest us in the real and human features of 
 Avar and Avarriors, to stir our sensibilities not so much by 
 the fury and turmoil of the ensemble, as by the expression 
 of emotion, by conscientiously rendering the various feel¬ 
 ings Avhich animate the soldier in his dreary duty of slay¬ 
 ing his felloAv-men. And more than this : it Avill paint him 
 as a man, Avith his OAvn peculiar features, movements, and 
 attitudes, in all the occupations of his daily life. 
 
 In this Avay, and this only, do the three cleA^er artists 
 above mentioned understand their art— Messrs, de Neu- 
 ville, Detaille, and Dupray. With all their difference of 
 endoAvment, temperament, and character, the three men 
 concur in the rare perfection Avith Avhich they delineate the 
 type of the French trooper in all its varying phases and 
 manifold forms. De Neuville, Avho leans to the emotional 
 and dramatic side of his study, sees him as he is in action, 
 and paints his energy, boldness, careless courage, and good 
 natured jollity in the midst of danger. Detaille subjects 
 him to minuter scrutiny, analyzes him, turns him inside out. 
 He can count you, Avith equal readiness, the buttons on his 
 jacket, or the beats of his heart. He has him, so to speak, 
 at his fingers’ ends, from the tip of his pompon to the seam 
 of his gaiters; and paints him, just as he is, Avith a avou- 
 drous skill and vivacity Avhich never fails him. Dupray 
 takes him as he comes out of garrison, folloAvs him to his 
 seat on the guard-house bench if he is on guard, or if oft 
 duty, lounging along the bastion Avith his sweetheart, or 
 junketing in suburban beer-gardens on Sunday, or at “his 
 uncle’s,” Avhen he has to resort to “the spout.” He excels 
 particularly in his Avay of draAving him in the saddle, Avith all 
 
302 
 
 MILITARY LIFE. 
 
 his Specific dragoon movements and attitudes of planting him 
 firmly in his seat, and making him one with his horse. And 
 so the three artists mutually supplement each other, all there 
 together paint the French trooper in his fullest expression. 
 
 M. Dupray, as I have said, is the only one of the 
 triad who exhibits this year. His picture, “ Casting a 
 Shoe,” gives us a village street, with two gendai'ines in 
 gaudy uniforms halting before a blacksmith’s shop—one 
 sitting still while the other dismounts. The gendarmes, we 
 know, are lordly fellows who hate waiting; so the whole 
 shop is in a buzz of excitement. While Gomas, who 
 now carries on the business, if we may believe the sign, 
 hastily dons his leather apron and gray velveteen cap, 
 Gomas, junior, the heir-apparent of the smithy, hurries, 
 nail-box in hand, toward the horse that has cast the shoe, 
 now standing quietly with the rider at his head. The 
 whole village is in a stir, and all the neighbors have come 
 to the door to watch the operation, while a dog barks at 
 safe distance from the horses’ heels and a woman sfoes 
 by pushing her barrow along the white and dusty high¬ 
 way. Further down the road we catch a glimpse of the 
 cure takinq his recrular constitutional after mass. The 
 whole story is told in a very subtle, clever, and life-like 
 way. The small figures are painted with incomparable 
 freedom and boldness, to each character its own appro¬ 
 priate movement, and all with an ease and vivacity which 
 have the most life-like effect. The attitude and expression 
 of Gomas the elder are especially happy. What was he 
 about when the policemen came to claim his services ? 
 That’s no one’s business, here he is now, anyhow; so 
 hurry! another strap round that hoof, there you are, he 
 is quite at your service. All this hurry and bustle is put 
 into a gesture with surprisingly realistic force. 
 
Du Pa'I y { L.)— 0 >? the 'I'rain. 
 
• ‘ ‘ -fi i'- 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ '' .t^;- 
 yy, ".■* ■ 
 
 : -i'. - 
 
 
 M 
 
 
 y »'xn. 
 .'“'S >■’" 
 
 

MILITARY LIFE. 
 
 307 
 
 The scrap of village landscape where all this goes 
 on is very spirited in touch, yet very true to nature. 
 “Casting a Shoe” has altogether an original and indi¬ 
 vidual quality about it which may help to console us for 
 the dreary conventionality of most of the other contribu¬ 
 tions. 
 
 In a very different line, M. C. Blant, a young artist 
 of excellent promise, has done himself credit with a pic¬ 
 ture which is as well executed as it is strouQf and stir- 
 ring in composition. The theme is borrowed from the 
 war in Vendee, a choice of subject dealing with scenes 
 of civil turmoil for which M. C. Blant shows decided 
 preference and as decided ability. Last year he gave us 
 Larochejacquelin leading his chonans to battle; this year 
 his canvas is entitled “Formed in Square.” 
 
 On a hill near Fougeres, a little squad of republican 
 soldiers, the “Blues,” are surprised and surrounded by a 
 swarm of foes, and the gray-bearded old commander gives 
 the order to form square and begin firing. Straightway 
 from all four sides of the square, bursts forth the blaze 
 and rattle of musketry. While some of the c/ionans with 
 their dropping fire from the neighboring bushes and cop¬ 
 pice, open ugly gaps in the ranks of the column, others 
 rush up to the assault with guns and farm-tools, to make 
 short work of the little band of heroes. But the wall of 
 men is wary and firm. Wrai)ped in smoke, and half-hidden 
 by the heaps of dead and dying, it keeps its solid front 
 and spreads death among the enemy’s ranks with a cool 
 and stubborn bravery before which the insurgent peasan¬ 
 try will be fain to give back. 
 
 Such is the excellent work which has won its author 
 —along with outspoken public approval—a second medal 
 from the Jury. M. C. Blant claims our warmest con- 
 
3o8 
 
 sM I LIT ARY LIFE. 
 
 gratulation. The composition is highly dramatic, and the 
 arrangement faultless. In the slain insurgents scattered 
 over the right foreground, many of them half-hidden by 
 occasional patches of high grass, he has given us some 
 fine bits of strong masculine execution. The ground too 
 is also solidly painted and good in perspective and effect 
 
 Le Blant (J .)—Charge of the Batallion—Battle of I'otigcres, 1793. (Fragment.) 
 
 of distance. The band of clionans rushing up at the left, 
 calls for more qualification. The outlines seem to me too 
 sharply cut out against the gray of the sky, without 
 sufficient gradation of tone; and the various figures of' 
 the party might have been better grouped and blended 
 in a way to produce a more picturesque and harmonious 
 relation. Rut, these slight defects notwithstanding, M. C. 
 Riant’s picture is one of the kind which by their inherent 
 interest, as well as their technical excellence, claim ap¬ 
 proval from artists and public alike. 
 
JuGl.AR H.)— The spy. 
 
t 
 
 C- 
 
 ■i 
 
 ■v> 
 
 n 
 
 ■f 
 
 ,ii 
 
JazeT ( P. L. )— Departm-e of the Squadron. 
 
3 . 
 
 '4 
 
 . -il. 
 
 -a 
 
MILITARY LIFE. 
 
 313 
 
 M. Girardet finds in the history of Spanish warfare a 
 subject for an important work hung in one of the rooms 
 of the foreign section. It represents an episode of the 
 siege of Saragossa, and is directly taken from Francois 
 Coppee’s poem, “The Benediction.” 
 
 After the entry of the French, a party of monks and 
 citizens have gathered on the church steps, resolved to 
 sell their lives dearly. Some of them have barricaded 
 and garrisoned the buildings, while others await the 
 enemy at the door. The French rush on to the attack, 
 and one of them has fallen, brained with a crucifix by a 
 monk likewise stretched on the flag-stones by the shots 
 of the enemy. Another monk, armed with another crucifix, 
 swings it like a mace, for a blow at the first man who 
 comes near, and one soldier has Qrot a staQ^srerins!' knock 
 in the attempt. At the top of the steps are two other 
 monks, one holding out the monstrance as if to call 
 down vengeance on the sacrilegious invaders, the other 
 clinging to his side ; but the square is filling with French 
 soldiers from every side, and the mad resistance must 
 soon end. 
 
 M. Girardet’s picture is evidently dramatic in choice 
 of subject, and the composition does it justice. Though 
 far from being as good as M. C. Blant’s picture just 
 alluded to, it has some bits which are very meritorious. 
 In the figure of the white clad monk brandishing his 
 crucifix before bringing it down on his adversary’s head, 
 the backward swing and muscular effort of the arms are 
 very energetic, as the skull of the old soldier rushing up 
 in the foreground can testify. 
 
 The soldiers are a trifle confused in grouping; in 
 the mixture of legs it is hard to assign them all the 
 right owners. The old soldier just mentioned, with all 
 
314 
 
 MI LIT A R y LIFE. 
 
 his running- does not run, but sticks fast in full career. 
 The right leg is raised and ought to be off the ground, 
 but by bad management of the shadow seems to rest on 
 the pavement, and is too long to foot. 
 
 The general tone of the picture is good ; neither too 
 bright nor too sober, and the buildings round the square 
 are well put and well painted. The most serious objec¬ 
 tion to the work is its lack of individuality; the painter 
 seems under the influence of both Horace Vernet and de 
 Neuville, especially the latter. 
 
 “Departure of the Squadron” is the title of M. Jazet’s 
 contribution, and very pleasant and sentimental it is. A 
 non-commissioned officer of cuirassiers, before quitting the 
 village where his squadron has halted, tries to get a kiss 
 from a pretty girl, who is warding off the attack, but with 
 a faintness of resistance that consorts ill with her ostensi¬ 
 ble severity, while a saucy-looking wench beside her seems 
 urging that she might as well give in; for a kiss or two 
 once in a way, or oftener, is no killing matter. 
 
 Will he get the kiss, or will he not? Whichever 
 he does it won’t help the picture, which is fairly drawn, 
 but thin and untrue in color. 
 
 M. Lancon sticks to his warlike subjects, and his 
 mind seems still wandering through the labyrinth of suf 
 fering of the terrible invasion year. His picture recalls to 
 mind one of the bloodiest contests of the Rhine campaign, 
 where the French, after driving the Prussians out of the 
 village of Monzon, took care, before following up their ad¬ 
 vantage, to shelter their dead and wounded from the sun 
 beneath a cart to which a horse was tethered. The Prus¬ 
 sians, resuming the offensive, drove the French back in the 
 village, where they fought as skirmishers from house to 
 house, and this return is the theme the painter has chosen. 
 
r 
 
 JUGLAR (V. }l.)~T/ie .S>v. 
 

 
 It 
 
 1 
 
 'J 
 
 -f 
 
Lanc^ON (A.)— ll'a/- {F7'a^7ncfif). 
 
* 
 
 
 C' 
 
 1 : 
 
 
 
 
 \:i 
 
 
 
 J 
 
MILITARY LIFE. 
 
 319 
 
 M. Lancon is a worthy artist, and one of our most 
 noted animal painters; some of his lions and lionesses 
 are capital bits of work. As a draughtsman of military 
 scenes too, he is much sought after by publishers of illus¬ 
 trated books. Unfortunately with all these good qualities 
 he is but a second- or third-rate artist. His “War” is cor¬ 
 rectly drawn and well-arranged, but the unpleasant color 
 spoils the effect. Still some parts are praiseworthy enough. 
 
 PoiLLEUX Saint-Anoe -— Reception of Prefect Valentin ly General Vhrick. 
 
 Another young painter of military scenes is M. Du 
 Paty. He sends two pictures this year, both of them in¬ 
 dicating the real artistic temperament. One of them is 
 a bivouac at the untimely hour when the soldiers are 
 roused out of their slumber and their tents by the tattoo 
 of the reveille, when day is just breaking, and a general 
 chorus of cock-a-doodles rises from all the neighboring 
 villages and farms. M. Du Paty’s picture shows us the 
 
320 
 
 MILITA_RY_ LIFE. 
 
 men at the important business of getting their morning 
 coffee, gathering around their pots and pans in pictur¬ 
 esque groups lit only by the fire-light. 
 
 His second picture, “On the Train,” gives us a party 
 of the reserves, crowding the seats of a railway carriage 
 and killing time as best they may, on their tedious way to 
 join their corps, in singing, chattering, drinking, reading, or 
 musing. Each of these minute faces has its own individual 
 character and expression, for they are painted with a free 
 and skilful pencil by an artist of taste and knowledge. 
 
 Among the other military sketches of the year, I 
 must pass with mere mention “ Reception of Prefect 
 Valentin by General Uhrich,” by M. Poilleux Saint-Ange ; 
 “ George, Prince of Wales, reviewing the Grenadier 
 Guards,” by M. Armand Dumarescq; “There they are!” 
 a conscientious bit of work with some merit by M. 
 Peaumetz ; and finally “They are at Home,” by M. Philip- 
 poteaux ; a very faint reminder indeed, of the same artist’s 
 fine canvasses at the Louvre and the Luxembourg— 
 “Bonaparte at Rivoli,” and “ Louis XV.,” two works which 
 may rank among the very best in the department of mili¬ 
 tary and historical art. 
 
 GUSTAVE GCETSCHY. 
 
, • C u. 
 
 
 . ... .•' % -• ■■ ■- ^ .^■■ 
 
 :»/^-..\;.';.r' r ■ v v--' ■ 
 
 _. ^ ’''xei < uV .. • 
 
 .‘Vx ' ., vV '''■’■^5^' 
 
 :,V >4 
 
 ■; ■ - ■ VJT' > 
 
 • ' ;V' - 5 r ^ ’ 
 
 
 ,-: '7f;#wXv ;<*» .. .•:'^' ••.“>• ,. /•*’ i, 
 
 '; •cv**’- ■'. * '• '• ^-• V*- . -• 
 
 ■■i'’■■>-^■’’^ ' .'■■: ■/ -, ' ■■• . . .V. 
 
 I'^v .•:--r>-' " • 
 
 r "“.A S ' ■ ' ■ -• '-*-f- •■'.'*?. 
 
 -■-r'^'.V''-’’-; ' ■• sV'- ;-•' '■- ' ^ 
 
 ■>.:'■■*»'■• . ■ ' ■ .i'-'x-. ri-',, ■ '. ', ■ -■ 
 
 - - . .- • ■ ’ I -X'' ■ ' ■■ - N ,■ ' 
 
 '■• • '.o- 
 
 • I ' • j. 
 
 / . ■ .. 
 
 « 
 
 o':' - ■ . .'^ i-:.^ --'«.« '■ 
 
 ■ ;, >'. X • = r-.-k.'.. ' • . 
 
 rW,. 
 
 iv.? v - 
 
 
 
 -. -. :=p.s. 4 m 
 
 . Y * .- ■• 4 . • • I . 
 
 ■ ■ <■ 
 
 
 
 X ■/• ; 
 
 « :;iA« 
 
 <• •;'>.* 
 
 Jl- . . - A. 
 
 ' •ii-'*'* ^ /-ji 
 
 ‘S' •-■ 
 
 ' . * ♦ ^ * 5 . 
 
 ■ I ':^i - 
 
 -•' --^•-"...'•*?‘;* 'X i .1 
 
 U-'M/ 
 
 ' V y.^ 
 
 K'< 
 
 :--W' 
 
 
 1^' 
 
 -f 
 
 •7 % 
 
 rV'.;' 
 
 
.''')^5>=l^J''<is. .*', ' -f‘'v'rt.'*^ S'- 
 
 * '•'i,''' > ' * ...t. '• •!••>.^'.■■'•4. 
 
 ^ A.-*,'- c' ■ . ■• •■' ■ . •,; ■■ 
 
 •.' ?• + ' .'i'‘.ii3- -j V,-' . ■; ‘ 
 
 "T^Vv--* 
 ^.''.Wa ; ;,. 4 'v''.» 
 
 V." fiiy~.- 
 -' r'v- ■' 'f . '-.' 
 
 r- 
 
 ’^i'^'*'’’ ".''''■‘ri'-'' ■>■''^^ •■.■.■< 
 
 v .V ' ir';-?-:,:-' 
 
 /’s.-ji'V• ■■• 
 
 ‘fv^;.V.-.Ji^^.; '. 
 
 (^ <*-,S- J*-! 'V\. '’i*‘ ■' 
 
 ■ //' 
 
 tt>>:-:V:^'-:;;. ■'V 
 
 -V '■ 
 
 '•'" ■■ ■'’• 
 
 - .•.:>■ 
 
 5 --, ; ^ 
 
 ^'-.'ii; ' '■ ■ ■', k. 
 
 
GETTY CENTER LIBRARY 
 
 3 3125 00736 3001