SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS TEXT BY THE BEST FRENCH CRITICS ILLUSTRATED WITH PLATES IN PHOTOGRAVURE PRINTED IN TINT AND WITH DESIGNS IN FAC-SIMILE American Edition, edited by Edward,Strahan PARIS GOUPIL & G° 1883 A SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS VOLUME SECOND Pages. Ferdinand Heilbuth.. , . . . Cm. Yriarte . 193 Georges Vibert. . . . E. Montrosier . . . 209 Madeleine Lemaire. 225 Alpiionse de Neuville. , . . . Armand Silvestre. . 241 Eugene Lami. , . . . E. Montrosier . . . 257 Roger Jourdain. , . . . Armand Silvestre. . 273 Henri Baron. . E. Montrosier . . . 289 Eugene Isabey. . . . . Fourcaud . 305 Gustave Jacquet. . . . . Meurville . 321 Jules Jacquemart. 337 Charles Delort. 353 James Tissot. 3G9 LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES VOLUME SECOND Ferdinand Heilbuth Headpiece. . . . Excavations .193 Ornamental letter . In the Garden . 193 Fantasy . Souvenir of Rome . 200 Plate hors text . Morning . 201 Tailpiece .... Boating party .208 Georges Vibert Headpiece. ... A famous Case .209 Ornamental letter . The Spider’s web . 209 Fantasy . The Pigeons of the Harem . 216 Plate hors text . . Andante .217 Tailpiece .... Justice pursuing Crime . 224 Madeleine Lemaire Headpiece. . . . Woman reclining .225 Ornamental letter . Young Girl playing the guitar . 225 Fantasy . At the Theatre . 232 Plate hors text . . A sonata .233 Tailpiece.... Flowers .240 Alphonse de Neuville Headpiece. . . . Concert at the outposts .241 Ornamental letter . Staff officer .241 Fantasy. Prussian hussars routed . 248 Plate hors iext . . Officer of dragoons .249 Tailpiece .... Trumpeter of dragoons .256 Eugene Lami Headpiece. . . . Blessing of the poniards (Huguenots).257 Ornamental letter . Equestrian Louis XV. .257 Fantasy. The Sicilian or Love painter, to Moli6re .264 Plate hors text . . Henri IV and the Abbess of the convent of Montmartre . 265 Tailpiece .... A gala-day coach, London . 272 Roger Jourdain Headpiece. . . . Canadian Cance .273 Ornamental letter . At the waterside .273 Fantasy. Swans on the Thames river .280 Plate hors text . . Croquet .281 Tailpiece .... Boating (fan) . 288 LIST OF PHOTOGRAVURES Henri Baron Headpiece. . . . The Fishing party .289 Ornamental letter . The Invitation to dame .289 Fantasy. The first Tooth .296 Plate hors text. . The Kite fliers .297 Tailpiece .... Exit from a masked Ball .304 Eugene Isabey Headpiece. . . . Reception at the Chateau .305 Ornamental letter . Visiting the foster-mother .305 Fantasy. Interior .311 Plate hors text . . The Alchemist .312 Tailpiece .... Inquisition scene .320 Gustave Jacquet Headpiece. . . . The Halt .321 Ornamental letter . Indolence .321 Fantasy. Programme for Japonese festival .327 Plate hors text . . France glorious .328 Tailpiece .... At the Fountain .336 Jules Jacquemart Headpiece. . . . The old Port at Marseille .337 Ornamental letter . Portrait of J. Jacquemart, by himself.337 Fantasy. Flowers and Plantains .344 Plate hors text . . Route from Mentone to Monte-Carlo .345 Tailpiece.... Landscape .352 Charles Delort Headpiece. . . . The embankment of Manon Lescaut .353 Ornamental letter. Attendant epoch Louis XV .353 Fantasy. The great Clock at Rouen .360 Plate hors text . . The Ferry-Boat .361 Tailpiece .... The Reprimand .368 James Tissot Headpiece. . . . The Duel .- 369 Ornamental letter. Portrait .369 Fantasy. Strangers Visiting the Louvre .376 Plate hors text . . Excursion on the Ramparts .377 Tailpiece. . . . Breakfasting out of doors .384 FINIS OF THE SECOND VOLUME FERDINAND HEILBUTH Ferdinand Heilbuth is in the flower of his age ; he is just arrived at that moment when one looks over the vanished years, having the sense of the worth of time and of what he brings with him when one knows how to use him nobly, without being too anxious to proclaim their number. Life is still a fine thing for an artist in love with his art and having no longer any other pleasures than those which labor gives him. To the turmoil of youthful years have succeeded the assurance of maturity, experiences dearly bought, and a knowledge of life which has not begotten bitterness, because each effort has been crowned with success, and because every aim has reached the target. And then, the practical part of life has no longer any complications and needs no new 13 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS efforts Art alone is the subject of each hour’s planning; one nurses one’s _ lory ■ one is conscious of the position one has acquired, of a name justly held in honor; one thinks of the standard to be upheld, of the reputation founded, of what is owing to the public and to one’s self; and one quickly becomes an impartial and severe critic. I hardly know, among the painters of that generation—those pupils of Picot, Drolling, Delaroche, and Robert-Fleury,-those who have doubled the cape of their fifty years—an artist remaining so young as the artist called formerly (for Heilbuthhas a “ formerly”) the “ Painter of Cardinals. ” Has he himself appreciated his advantages in this kind, people are already remark¬ ing. 1 do not know. It is found at any rate, that accordingly as he advances in life he surrounds himself with you¬ nger fri¬ ends; that he seems to avoid more ca¬ re f u 1 1 y whatever m i g h t bring old age upon his mind, or his body, or his invention; that he weds his art-utopias more ardently than any one, those utopias which are new for each generation ; and that no one has been a better protector for the more or less rash innovators who contribute more or less truth to the theory and the practice of art. While some are proclaiming our decline, others are crying progress ; and between the two parties a man can be more liberal when his own horizons are open towards many points at once; he can face coolly all the experiments that are making, and can now and then derive from them a profitable hint, instead of denying everything as an infidel or adoring everything as an idolater. In the drama, in the art of poetry, in the plastic arts, and in science itself, wo to those who cannot understand the language spoken by the younger men ; who do not lend an ear to their lusty discourse, that they may strengthen themselves in FERDINAND HEILBUTH 195 the confused noises that arise; who do not discern which is the voice of error and which is the part of the better reason, the voice of the future and that of the effervescence and boiling of the sap. Action and reaction is the history of the entire world, the history of France above all; the reaction has pronounced in favor of those who, twenty years ago , proclaimed them sel¬ ves the future; and it is so loud that the hardy partisans of yesterday, in the midst of the clamors of the neophytes, seem to-day the backsliders. But a discerning spirit, an artist sensitive and curious towards all new form and expression, who from the first has placed the innovators in their true rank, neither too high nor too low, need retract nothing from his healthy criticism of other days. We should do justice to that peculiar sense which guides an artist in the path of truth. It may be boldly affirmed that Heilbuth, at no period of his career, whether in his execution or his conception, has committed himself to the intransigentes or the wild romanticists; but those who are familiar with the works of art with which he liked to surround himself as long as twenty years ago, will bear him witness, that wherever there was an example showing some new device to express light or the envelope of air, or life, or movement, or faithful interpretation of Nature, he has done more than 196 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS merely follow admiringly and become interested; he has proved his sympathy by deeds that are anything but platonic. The present day—what was the future for the men then under discussion—has come to his side, exactly in the degree of his approval. Let us follow the artist in the development of his career, let us see what were his meanderings, or rather his successive developments ; how he freed himself from the tra¬ dition, the habits, and the formulae of thinking and expressing incul¬ cated by his early edu¬ cation, or by the hazard of friendships, and the mixed world of the art-schools. In coming away from a professor you feel the weight of all sorts of oppression; you cannot yet explore a new road, you enter upon that which has been indicated to you; and, if you are well • ‘ endowed by Nature, - Nj ' ten years will pass and find you, in general, an artist by reflection, a new edition of a well-known volume, with some varies lectiones to prove that you have your individual tendencies. This decade, which passes for Heilbuth between 1852 and 1862, finds him oscillating between genre painting and historical painting, and, one after another, he sends to the Paris Exhibitions those canvases which earn him his earlier successes : “ Rubens introducing Brauwer to his wife, “ The Son of Titian,” “ Lucas Signorelli,” “ The Declaration,” “Tasso at the Court of berrara,” “ A Concert at a Cardinal’s,” “ Coronation of Friedrich von Hunten,” “ The Dancing Lesson,” “The Auto-da-fe,” and finally, “The Pawnbroker’s” of the Luxembourg Gallery. Such are the titles of his first works, almost all rendered popular by engravings; they FERDINAND HEILBUTH 197 made him, so early as 1861, already an artist known and measured, one who had no more official recompenses to wish for, not even that which a painter young to our country pro¬ poses to himself as the goal of his ambition. Two of these canvases (and 1 only mention those which come up in my memory) contained the Ileil- buth of to-day in his germ ; in “ The Auto-da-fe” and “Pawnbroker’s” was already revealed the taste for modern life, which seeks the poetry of every-day existence, and no longer goes down into the past. This was already a scheme of a career, a first manner, which, in any other man, might have formed a final pathway; one without any grand lustre, but, after all, appreciable and appreciated. Heilbuth would have gone on living in this line, below the rank of M r Comte, painter of the French Renascence, a praiseworthy artist greatly in vogue at that time; continuing, for better for worse, and more or less influentially, the tradition of a school which belittles historical pain¬ ting to the size of an easel-picture. It would be needful only to vary the subjects without bringing innovations into the style ; to buy new costumes, a few pieces of furniture, and some clever accessories; and to read, at last, the history and memoirs of the day of doublets, and rebecs, of skull-caps, and daggers, and vertugadins. But the artist was born active, vivacious, unquiet, and readily impressionable; once in a strange land, carried back to himself, in a comparative solitude where the evolution of his thoughts 198 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS W1 sion mioht take place, and away from the costumeshop which has spoiled- especially in Germany-a whole school of richly endowed painters, Heilbuth was about to yield himself up to the impression of what was before his eyes, thout forethought; and by the mere sincerity of this just and true impres- to create a style which he would make his own without contradiction, which he would stamp with his own seal, and in which he has had quite a little school of followers. He shut up for good the “Lives of the Painters” and the “ Chronicles of Charles IX,” “ Casti- glione’s Courtier ” and the “ Novelle ” of Bandello. He was about to seek for sub¬ jects, fora space of ten years, from matters of the open daylight, from what throbs in the sunshine within the frame of the superb horizons of the Roman Campagna, and within the stately monuments of modern Rome. Those who did not know, about 1855, the artist who now presents the lofty stature, with the square strong form, of a lands¬ knecht, whose gesture is firm and whose step is weighty, whose portrait has been painted in a masterly manner by Ricard,— who shows a wealth of vitality, who stamps his foot upon the ground and spends his £f>gg0tf*health without accounting for it—would represent to themselves with difficulty that Heilbuth, at that time, was balancing between a Gilbert and a Malfilatre, pale, thin, and sickly; tending to dream over the leaves of autumn, and looking fondly towards the Orient. He needed the sunshine of the South. He had lived at Rome; he returned thither. 1 1 is almost incredible that in that city, where, from the epoch of Pius II, Martin V and Eugene IV,—now five centuries,-—the artists have formed a thronging colony swept up from the four cardinal points, not a single one among them has had the idea of turning away his eyes from the Antique and the Renascence and the conventional myths, for the purpose of casting a glance at that every-day life of the pontifical court which unrolled before FERDINAND HEILBUTH his eyes—a liie picturesque and high-colored, representative in its forms and hues and lively contrasts, attractive in the highest degree from a psy¬ chologic point of view; a life, in fact, sufficiently various in its shapes to furnish an artist with food for his spirit of observation during a lifetime, by putting it together ingeniously with the various frames which enclose it and the backgrounds before which it passes. Leopold Robert and Schnetz had taken up the Roman Campagna; thirty years later, Heilbuth discovered the Vatican and became its authorized, and indeed its Laureate Painter. As if he had something truly prophetic in the choice he had decided upon, ten years after the day when he, for the first time in fact, painted such a subject as “ The Cardinals Meeting each other on Monte-Pincio,” all that world so full of color, so sonorous and lustrous, so strange in its shapes and types, and gestures, and accents, went back into the shadows of the Vatican, at the sight of the royal pro¬ cession of the House of Savoy climbing up the Quirinal Hill. The Temporal Power was at an end. In such wise that the fifty or sixty canvases composing the Roman work of Heilbuth, will have had the singular fortune, strictly speaking and independently of the charm which they may exert and their intrinsic merit, to be historic documents, of incontestable value for all who shall attempt in future times to reconstruct Pontifical Rome before the days of Rome the Capital . and United Italy. The greater number of the pictures of this period are celebrated. The critics of art found few happier anecdotic subjects for their pens. The men of letters were especially attracted; Taine saw in them something like a reflection of Stendahl; and, in truth, the painter unfolded through his whole career at Rome an incisive and ingenious wit, a fine observation, and lofty literary qualities. The success was so conspi¬ cuous, that the Vatican itself, which at first saw no more malice in the artistic work than in the literary work devoted to the same subject, would gladly have cried anathema, and have ranked the painter with the enemies gsli 200 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS of the Holy Seat. The word pamphleteer was pronounced before these subjects* before these delightful canvases where some feeble old cardinal may be seen dragging his tottering steps along, bent by old age, covered with his crimson cloak as he pre¬ sents his rearward view, and followed by a couple of servitors in braided liveries beneath the last rays of the sun sinking behind the aqueducts of the Roman cam- pagna, while the heavy chariot, garnished with orange-colored fiocchi , waits at the turn of the road for the prince of the church. Everything in these canvases seemed to hide a symbol; from the “Venial Sin,” which bespoke the credulous ignorance of the Roman peasant, to the “ Pro¬ menade of the Seminarists” and > ;v the “ Excavation at Rome.” After km* having painted the Temporal Power expiring, the artist was now held to be satirizing the FERDINAND HEILBUTH 203 would-be science of the Roman archaeologists in re-building cities which never existed. Need 1 say that the painter, all this while, neither recognized himself as scientist nor pamphleteer, as philosopher nor prophet, and went on looking at the scenes which he painted with all his might. The imagination of the onlookers did the rest; but it was none the less his glory to have aroused all these theories. Heilbuth might have been lingering yet in this treatment of the life of the Vatican. I know plenty of pic¬ ture-lovers, such as care more for the wit and intention in a picture than for the painting proper, who would fain have imprisoned him there for life. The picture-market, too—whose voice must ever be more or less attended to, and whose exactions must be submitted to, for it is the life-giver after all—still cla¬ mored after the Meetings on the Pincio, the Cardinals, and anec¬ dotes anologous to those which had especially made the reputation of the artist, and had extended his name throughout the vast cosmo¬ politan world which makes of Rome its sole centre. But the artist was one of those characters who allow no dictation, nor pathway, nor imperial mandate, to be imposed on them; and he was about to accomplish his third transformation. Ten more years, from 1872 to the present time, devoted to researches of quite a different character were to form his “ third manner,” a new style of subjects, in which he w'as to have a success which no one has contradicted. This, if not his final incarnation, is his last up to fhe present time. From 1870 to 1872, Heilbuth was living in England. The adventures of the London season, the extraordinarily fine landscapes, the beauty of English women, the elegant incidents of life in the open air, the garden- parties, the games of croquet and lawn-tennis, the boating parties on the SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS 204 Thames, the allurement of those river-sides with their splendid vegetation, whose powerful colors are maintained by the never-failing moisture; in all this there were elements for a new artistic career to any painter who, like him, was flexible and ever accessible to novelties. Teachable under the hints of Nature, and above all unusually sensitive to feminine elegance and the distinction of good tone in gesture, form and movement; converted in fine by the poetry of womanhood har¬ moniously environed with the tasteful scenery of English fields, Heilbuth, in two years, disco¬ vered there once more a style which permitted him to excel. The British aristocracy, recog¬ nizing its features in these inci¬ dents of its every-day life, gave him so warm a greeting that those who, heretofore, had desi¬ red of him the subjects of his Roman period, now demanded subjects taken from this new object of his thought and vision. “The Rest after Croquet,” in the collection of Sir Richard W allace, the episodes of boating- parties at Mayden-Head, where elegant figures are combined with charming landscape, were subjects which formed the pre¬ lude ol those he is now executing. His scenes on the shores of the Seine, on the banks at Neuilly, among the horizons of Bagatelle, or Bougival, and the terrace of Saint-Germain, were so many effects to which he only thought of applying, at a later day than his English sketches, the id ea he was following out, of constituting himself the Watteau of real life; and of FERDINAND HEILBUTH 205 representing, after transforming them as he needs must in his artistic brain, the thousand accidents of that delightful world which passes without pressing its foot to the every-day pathway. From this time living always in France, and become in the law a man of French nationality, as he had been a French¬ man at heart and by resi¬ dence for almost thirty years, notwithstanding his numerous excursions andhis sojourns atRome, he is regarded to-day as the painter of Parisian elegances. He had exe¬ cuted paintings in water- color among the first of those who were not solely and specially aqua¬ rellists; his first painting in this kind is of the year 1864; the date was written on it at Villerville, and it represents the coast. In this material he found a scale of fresh and velvety colors which oil-painting does not yield, and fell in love with the method. Thenceforth he strewed abroad, by handfuls, a thousand little subjects, the delightful accidents borrowed from Paris life, from the adventures of the villeggiatura in the environs, that inexhaustible source of pleasurable scenes. These things he has painted, now in water-color and now in oil; and among the latter the best-known are : “ The Frogpond, ” belonging to M. Edouard Andre, SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS ‘206 “ Fine Weather, ” — his last subject exhibited at the Paris Salon — “ Le Bachot,” “The Terrace of SainhGermain,” “Solitude,” etc., etc., and how may others, to which we need not care to attach a special name, but all of which reflect some corner of French scenery, of the grace and poetry of the coun¬ try surrounding Paris, with its character, its atmosphere, its envelope, its true system of colors, now rendered still more harmonious by the silvered vapors of the morning, now become more profound by the empurpled ^ \ tone of the autumnal suns which cause \ the spoils of the woodlands to fall in \ masses over the roads. Heilbuth took an active part in the foundation of the Society of French Aquarellists. The success of this reunion has been decided ; some have even thought it exaggerated, and for my own part I am not far from being of their opinion ; for ingenuity and freedom of hand are only very secondary qua¬ lities in art. And then, — excepting some sincere artists, who care little for the choice of method when the business is to render that which they have felt and that with which they wish to affect us the need to strike the public attention every hour and to surprise it at e\er\ new exhibition became the fixed idea of the greater number. I said at the beginning of this little essay that there is a share of truth in almost all the modern ideas a truth which it is our business to separate and to apply. FERDINAND HEILBUTH 207 It may be that the Aquarellists will only live the life of the roses; the aquarelles, maugre some gloomy prophecies, are immortal, when they deserve it, as I may summon in evidence those of Bonnington to be; I have them in my eye, and l do not speak of the permanence of materials. But it is indisputable, for any good judge, any dilettante, or art-critic, who does not allow himself to be dragged about by the nine day’s wonders of the exhibitions, that those painters who have remained faithful to the material of oil-painting, have gained something by the advance of the water-color method. The bright, crisp, piquant scale of color, so cheaply obtained —the lustre, the youthfulness, the liveliness of that ably-arranged nosegay which a quickly- brushed water-color constitutes, are beginning their mission of dragging out those who have allowed themselves to fall into the blackingpot; they are bringing them up to effects of a heal¬ thier nature, obtained at less expense, to color-harmonies invented in a scale lighter yet more vibrating. I dare not promise that circum¬ stances may not cause us to announce, in some few years from now, a new transformation in Heilbuth’s talent; however, the evolution, I his last time, may very well be the final one. He no longer undertakes to delineate an epoch, a period, a sect, whose aspects, however various they may be, are still numbered. His field of action hence¬ forth is that of life itself, life fertile, inexhaustible and ever new; life, 208 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS changing itself from hour to hour, so far as concerns its form and restless fashions, ambitious only of never attaching them- selves; life, whose aspects in the sunshine are never the same, any more than the cloud of yesterday is the same as the cloud of to-morrow. The artist has grasped the secret of truth; his toils are crowned with success • to his work he applies a deep passion; his existence is in the contemplation of his idea, and everything which does not belong to that idea is powerless to interest him. These are conditions which bespeak a fruitful future for an epoch of life when the laboring hand is certain, when it possesses the long-sought equilibrium ; and when it remains at the service of a teeming invention, of a true eye, and of an industry which never gets in its own way. CHARLES YRIARTE. GEORGES VIBERT Let me remind the reader that, on the i; tho february 1882, the Society of French Aquarellists opened its fourth annual Exhibition, in a gallery worthy of a Museum; and its President, M. Georges Vibert, received at the hands of the Minister of Fine Arts, the rosette of Officer of the Legion of Honor. That was the crowning moment of a notion conceived by one man, and now advanced to the importance of an institution. To-day water-color painting is a dominion in the domi¬ nion of art. It is pleasant to me, in the face of this successful fact, to carry back my eyes to the period of fifteen years ago, and see, over so great a distance—over fifteen years of such hard travelling! — the embryo from which was to grow the group of French water-color 14 210 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS painters. Indeed it is instructive, and at the same time amusing, to go back on our steps. There is room for so many things to happen between the points of departure and a point of arrival, whether we refer to the advance of a man or to the development of something due to his suggestion. I shall then, for the moment, proceed to make up a history, a history executed with costumes of fantasy, and in which, instead of politics, there shall be anecdotes — the whole composing a page that will have more than one right to be attractive. Heaven help me, I am quite aware that Art, though it takes up a deal of room in peo¬ ple’s thoughts at pre¬ sent, is a much slen¬ derer interest in the purview of certain master-minds; and that I am about to expose myself in a grotesque attitude in attributing, as I shall, a major importance to the acts and gestce of a handful of men, to the errantries of a round-table, and finally to the dear successes of an Academy. But there are never any grand effects without their petty causes, and it behooves me now to prove it. So then, in 1867 or 1868, five painters, drawn together by a common sympathy, inhabited a kind of oasis lost in the verdure ofMontmorency.lt was not a palace ; and it was rather more than a cottage. By its form, this refuge assimilated with the chalet; and by the materials of its con¬ struction it belonged among the citified houses. A kind of park stretched around the habitation, recognized by the nightingales, which commenced to tune their orchestra when evening arrived, and the moon began to roll up with the slowness of a theatrical curtain. From a great way off people could hear the gay sallies of repartee, and accents heated with enthusiasm ; and among the talk, that rosary of GEORGES VIBERT 21.1 laughter which young people, such as those here assembled, tell off without counting. Here were Georges Vibert, Louis Leloir, Worms, Berne-Bellecour, and the lamented Zamacois. Only five as they were, they already formed a party in the politics of painting, a group of the opposition like the Five in the French Legislative Body. They were not of modern views, these youths; quite to the contrary, it was from the customs of vanished ages that they asked for inspiration, making up for the lack of the emotions so long buried, by the savor of the picturesque inseparable from the primitive manners they reconstructed. And from this taste resulted the fact that their house very often had the aspect of a hall of fairyland, with the glitter, the spangles and the sheen of the dresses which were seen piled up on every side, with living models putting them on or relinquis¬ hing them; these theatric beings animated the studio, made processions down the steps leading to the garden, or were glimpsed and disap¬ peared in the turn of an alley. All the Italian pantomime pas¬ sed, repassed, in the persons of these Scaramouches, these Leanders, these Matamoros, Ihese Zerbinettas. The humps of felt sombreros were shado¬ wed with dancing feathers, and swords clattered like old iron upon shapely legs moulded in tightly-stretched hose. In another quarter, another tableau, another mandolin — scenes from the Spanish comedy, as humorous as a chapter of Le Sage; and episodes as piquant as a scenario of Goldoni’s. All the inhabitants of the phalanstery worked with fixed object , running 212 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS in pursuit of fame and of fortune, the latter of whom appeared deeply occupied in some other region, for up to that time no one had seen a wheel of her car. Notwithstanding her neglect, the circle showed their wits in perpetual illumination, and a laudable evenness of temper—except when they under¬ took the criticism of old masters or a discussion of the art—principle ; these battles beoan about the epoch of the soup, at dinner, and never finished | before the curfew-bell, — which rang therea¬ bout at a small hour of the morning. This life, borrowed from Rabelais’ Abbey of Thel^me, this existence of an Epicurian of the mind, threatened to last for ever,when the arrival of a foreign artist and the exhibition of his works in France put to risk the whole ceco- nomy. That is to say, For¬ tuny was revealed by the Messrs. Goupil. It is easy to imagine what a shaking of bones was produced among the Five by the Spanish painter. During the day-time, they would march off in a body to the collection of paintings, of aquarelles and of etchings pertaining to the young master. In the evening, all would bring together the day’s impressions. The analysis of qualities, the comparison of admirations, were the evening’s task of these young ruminants. More than all the rest, the aquarelles pricked the curiosity of the Montmorency colorists. Every member dreamed of them at night, and, in I le morning, leaped out of bed to discuss them, with debates endless GEORGES V1BERT 213 and inexhaustible, only broken by the silences of discouragement. Strange habits began to be observed in the club. Vibert would measure off the alleys of the garden and soliloquize; and everybody knows how much wit this artist can introduce in a soliloquy.Louis Leloirbecame a secret character,hiding himself to detect new combination and motivi. Worms feverishly picked the strings of a kind of mandolin which may have had the soul of music, but no longer had the body. Zamacois disembo¬ welled the technical books treating of art. Berne-Bellecour calculated the angle of a special and particular shot of his pistol — to be the prelude of a composition which was to make him fa¬ mous, under the title of “ The Cannon-shot.” n What suffered ;> from this unequal state of things was the profession of painting. The canvas “laid in,” remained in what print-collectors call a “ state. ” The hired models, pining in inaction, had no resource but to weed the gravel and water the flower-bands. Some unusual condition was evident in the atmosphere, threatening to burst in a thunder-clap when least expected. It was under the craniums that the storm was brewing! One evening, an evening that decided — -everything, water-color painting was once more the burden of conversation. The Five assailed this topic with the firmness of a decision fixed beyond recall. “ Let us experiment!” they cried in perfect union. 214 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS “ Once! Twice I” cried five voices. “ Three times ! Let us experiment in water-color !” Twelve hours later, the stokers of the railway beheld a procession formed of our camrades, who clambered into the same car. Once arrived at Paris, they entered the shop of a color-merchant. “ Little saucers ! ” was their cry, “ little saucers! — besides paper, brushes, colors, and all that is needful to paint in water-color.” Alas, the most needful thing in this art is the ability to execute if, and this the merchant resolutely declined to sell. The Five immediately went back. They were in anxious mood, they over¬ turned the foot-passengers who obstructed the pavement, they were fol¬ lowed by a stream of vociferations, and in this st\Ie they climbed again into the train which returned them to Montmorency at the end of half an hour. Their transit had been throught the whilpools! Impossible chimeras had been lormed in the brains of the new Jasons. Water-color painting, its glories and its success, had vacillated among their attacks and their ripostas. 1 hey made one think of Don Quichotte, the chevalier of a fair Dulcinea del Toboso. In a slate of fever, the Five placed themselves at table, without any appetite. They were impatient to see the cloth withdrawn, that they might plunge into the shadowy troubles of their labor. The salad w r as forgotten, the dessert was countermanded, and the coffee was drank without lifting the thumb from the cup-handle. While this was going on, Vibert rolled his eyes with dangerous expression, Leloir commenced a distracted cigarette, Worms plunged his chin into his fist, Berne-Bellecour, to give himself a calm condition, chanted a war-song, and Zamaco'is disappeared. He slunk away clandestinely to ask for inspiration from the “ pale satellite,” which was slowly rising, and whose pearly tones he could glimpse through the leafy branches trembling in the breeze. At length, the Five are installed round the table. A swinging lamp, reinforced with candles, sheds cataracts of light over the sheets of paper. A model, costumed as a dragoon of the First Empire, attitudi¬ nizes solemnly. The silence of a monastery, only- disturbed by the humming of the night-flies, covers this fantastic-looking conspiracy. As in a game of dominos, where the players hide with their hand the dice awar¬ ded to them by their treache¬ rous luck, our artists keep to themselves, en¬ deavoring to conceal both their inepti¬ tude , and the secrets which they propose to put to use. Everything is an obstacle in their path. The paper either blots or soaks the color, the paints run, and damnable stains introduce themselves. The Five never leave the saddle, but continue the pursuit in desperation, swallowing the oath which betray their various perils, and revealing their mistakes merely by the flourishes with their fists which are now and then thrown off into the Night ! The end of the sitting came with the dismay of defeat, when, one after other, the water-color apprentices showed their result around the circle. MK 216 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS Happily, Night, the consoler, was present, to shadow with her poppies their discouraged foreheads. V On the days following they placed themselves at table again following up the Dragoonwith an Incroyable, changing plates with a Dandy of the Regency, and dishing up Mignon as a dessert. The countenance of Fortuny see¬ med to be before them, making faces, like the raillery on the visage of Mephistopheles before the inexperienced Doctor Faustus. At the close of the season, Vibert sold se- GEORGES VIBERT 219 venteen water-colors to the Messrs. Goupil, for the pittance of two hundred and fifty francs. Such was the point of departure for the Society of French Aquarellists. 1 he Five, and those whom they have since attached to them, have invented nothing. They have tried, in all simplicity, to reanimate Water- Color Art, which for long years has fallen into discredit, in forgetfulness of the delightful works of Fra¬ gonard, of Jannay, of Moreau the younger, in the eighteenth century; of the pages of flo¬ wers and natural history exe¬ cuted by Redoute or Van Spaendonck, not to speak of the masterpieces of Bonning- ton and Gericault under the Empire and the Restoration. At a later period, Paul Delaroche , Deveria , T. Jo- hannot, Charlet, Eugene Delacroix, Meissonier, De¬ camps, Isabey, Eugene Lami, Baron, Daumier, have painted in water-colors. Yet the union of all these illus¬ trious names was unable to destroy the prejudice which condemned Aquarelle to banishment. The Jury of the Paris Salon swept off the most exquisite com¬ positions and magical bits of technic into the outside corridors of the Palace of Industry, — a place where the infrequentvisitors stared from above at the marble whiteness of the statuary arranged beneath the gallery, and at the omnipresent nudity of line and plaster walls. As Plato chased the poets out of his republic, so we have seen Gustave Moreau, that marvellous dreamer, pilloried in the ostracism of this modern Ghetto ! Now that I have sung the epic of Aquarelle according to each partici¬ pating warrior the place due to his courage, I may bid farewell to the Five, 220 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS taking no further care than for Vibert, who forms the object of this study, and w ho, I am bound to say at the risk of alarming his modesty, has been the grand motor of the Society of French Aquarellists. Just now I exhibited Vibert immersed in the difficulties of the commen¬ cement, working very hard and obtaining precarious results, but goaded by the desfre of vanquishing that invincible thing, Difficulty. He struggled, he nersevered. he broke himself in to the manipulation to which his hand and his thoughts have now accustomed themsel¬ ves, and in 1869, he was ready with two aquarelles for the exhibition. They were, “ Harlequin at the Lawyer’s,” and “The Clothes Merchant. ” In 1870, he sent “Gul¬ liver, strongly tied down and covered by the guns of the Lilliputiansand at the same time, thinking that the myrmidons of office were perhaps watching the awakening of Ihe lost artist, he sent two other water-colors, “The Serenade” and “Coffee-Shop.” The attempt was striking, and the novelty pleased. In those subjects which only comprised two personages, or at most three, Vibert showed a freedom of arrangement, an excessive fresh¬ ness of handling, and a command of the brush which were like himself, and like himself alone. Possibly Delecluze, the famous critic of early days, would have had to rewrite a sentence that has been often quoted : “It has been so entirely agreed that the water-color artist was to be a colorless being, to the very limits of insipidity, that if some audacious painter were to take it into his head to add gum to the water, to make the colors richer, he would be treated like a man who cheats at cards. ” We see what a public prejudice Vibert had to overcome in addition to his countless obstacles : a public prejudice while admitted no other re¬ sources but paints in pure water, and condemned any addition or modifica¬ tion which might correct the character of colors too neutral in themselves. It must be noted that up to the present time the greater number of GEORGES VIBERT 221 water-color painters have often shown a deficiency of vigor, relief and brilliant schemes of color. Over-brightness was never a famous fault of water-paints, and patrons, forgetting the freedoms which the eighteenth-century artists allowed themselves, interdict the employment of body-color. But little reck we of the road when the goal is reached. What are the secrets of the kitchen to us if the dinner succeeds? I believe the war declared on this subject to be puerile, and that it has no more right or reason than that which was opened against the painter who rediscovered the use of the palette-knife. Vibert, who dearly loves his art, in his warm desire to perfect it percei¬ ved quickly how inferior were the methods of execution prescribed to him by French tradition and all his efforts have been directed, if not to the total triumph over this inferiority of the vehicle, at least to overcoming it as far as possible. In the first place he betook himself to studying the manufacture &—— of the paper used by water-color j_—.—-- artists, and to noting systematically the difference between the sorts that are offered for this employ. This is of no slender importance, for frequently a water-color pain¬ ting fairly begun, and begun with the utmost promise, is found to run a risk, or even be lost, at the finishing minute, because the paper contained some defect — because it was too absorbent, perhaps, and the touches went on enlarging like a spot of oil. For with water-color the painter is forever in a state of alarm. You cannot retouch, or change, scrape out, or begin again, as you do in oil- color. You ought to make a drawing of your subject, whether a single figure or a crowded composition, and afterwards hit the exact force of color. Aquarelle admits no afterthoughts, to which oil-painting is so 222 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS accustomed. From the first touch you must work fast, accurately and .well. It is a kind of graceful impromptu, taken at a leap, and aiming at brio rather than at profundity, delinea¬ ting the usages and the tastes of a period without any pedantry or philo¬ sophy. The spectator should read your page at the first glance, as you read a book without seeking what is between the lines. After the paper, the paints, already much modernized and changed, became the object of Vibert’s scrutiny, and drew him, on to a whole train of scientific attainments, including the properties of divers accessory matters, such as gums J !> — a nd g] ues . To reach his ends he caused to be set up on his premises a regular laboratory, such as would be the joy of a Boussingault and the amazement of a Dumas. He should be seen in his demoniac brew-house, following up the search after some combina¬ tion , or the solution of some mixture. In this closet, the painter di¬ sappears and only the scien¬ tist enters. Bent over his furnaces, whe¬ re the glass flasks and retorts are grumbling, he pursues attentively the experiment in order. A long apron falls down to his feet, a velvet cap protects his head, and before his face is a transparent mask, which would preserve it in case of an explosion. On a shelf are vials, test tubes and bottles; within reach, mortars with their pestles; in the air a fringe of GEORGES VIBERT 223 plants hanging to dry. The friends of Vibert have given him the name of the Chemist. All these consideration may seem puerile, but to me they appear indispensable. This book now in hand, we are not writing it for to-day, we are writing it for to-morrow too, and all of us — friends who have gathered around to support a common idea, — we feel convinced that the results which so far have been a little subject to contradiction, will become truths for our grandchildren. We all believe that water-color painting is in the path of safety, and that it is recommencing with a set of never-published formulas. IfVibert had accomplished nothing but what I have just indicated, what a priceless service he would have ren¬ dered to those who are to come after him and after the artists he has collected to his standard ! Out of scat¬ tered strength, he has made the fasces : out of individualities he has made a corporation, that is to say a power. When Detaille, Eugene Lambert and Louis Leloir came to discuss with Vibert, in 1878, the possibility of forming themselves into a Society, and of giving water-color Art the position which was refused it by the yearly Salon, that was the germ. Any trifle might have caused an abortion; everything depended on the furrow where the germ was cast. In the opinion of each member of the present Society of French Aquarellists, the inauguration obtained is due to Vibert, who drew up the set of rules and had the tact to get them agreed to. Thanks to him, the difficulties inherent in every new creation were levelled, all disturbances of wounded self-esteem were avoided, and moreover, — what marked the profoundest ability—this society of young men was formed with the support of veterans, grown gray under their laurels. Vibert asked from such as Isabey, from Eugene Lami, from Henri Baron, their aid and the lustre of their renown. From the first 224 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS stroke, as was evident in 1879, at its opening exhibition, the Society was in a condition to march. I have shown at sufficient Ienght how water-color has been restored in this France of ours, so full of life. I have indicated the broad share taken by Vibert in this concurrence; and in making these statements 1 have sacrificed necessarily Vibert and his work to the work ofall. However, justice obliges me to say a few words, which will be the summing up of universal opinion about this painter. In one word, this is a bit of nature, as we justly define certain cha¬ racters; a bit of nature, complex enough to have become a favorite with the crowd. Vibert in the first place ploughed himself a furrow in which be meant to sow; it is a series of unexpected circumstances which have led him out of it, giving him, as in exchange for the accomplishment of his first efforts, a whole harvest of applause, notoriety, honors — not to speak of fortune. Who knows if he may not sometimes repentantly look back, from his present distance, towards the glory which used to appear dawning out of the purple horizons! EUGENE MONTROSIER M ME MADELEINE LEMAIRE Madame Madeleine Lemaire has chosen, for painting, what nature has most divinely finished : flowers and women. She commenced with woman¬ kind to come to flowers; she has returned from flowers to women, or rather she has made of these two marvels of grace the two poles of her art. Her development has followed a most uncom¬ mon course in the midst of circumstances less favorable than ordinary for the education of an artist. It was far from Paris that painting sought this mutinous and petted young girl, who then was thinking of nothing beyond frolicing in that Provence where, under a brilliant sky, bloom the finest roses. Her parents watched her growth, living efforescence of their heart, 22 G SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS without ambition or prejudice, only anxious to make her a prudent woman, lovely and good, worthy of the blood from which she sprung, and capable of honoring the name that later she would bear. Nothing is more unusual than, for a society woman to be an artist for the sad reason that everything dis¬ suades from continuous effort. The parents of M"» Lemaire could not there¬ fore imagine that their child would be one of these charming exceptions; but born almost in the country destiny willed that early she should become a finished Parisienne, expert in the most subtile conversations, who, annexing to her salon an atelier, has become distinguished among the modern painters of fantasie and the refined water-colorists. How this singularity was produced I will try to explain. I Sainte-Rossoline is a small town in the department of the Var, silently o-athered together under an oriental sky and bathed in shadows from the ■ichly wooded mountains. Its old houses, whose white walls and passing years have va- are surrounded by tuberoses, heliotropes, dets and orange-trees bloom, was to become M me Lemaire lidst this immemorial peace, ssed her childish years. • father, the head of an ancient vays honored proven^ale fa- ed the office of collector, justly •ying the reputation of an ble and well informed man, wise counsellor who gathered ither, at his home receptions, an agreeable and numerous company. M. Coll was serious without being stern : if not absorbed by matters pertaining to art at least he understood their charm. He was known as a relative of M. Belloc, who directed with honor at Paris the drawing school in the rue de l’Ecole-de-Medecine, and ol M me Herbelin, who, daughter of a general of the first Empire, had made for herself an enviable situation as a miniature painter. Often the M mc MADELEINE LEMAIRE 227 excellent man brought these two names into his talk and each time with evident pleasure. The little Madeleine, now approaching her tenth year, he saw at times trying to apply her pencil to paper and he would recommend her aunt’s example in fatherly raillery. Or it so happened that at this time M”° Herbelin made a visit at Sainte-Rossoline. Who then was in the clouds? The child. As long as the day lasted she did not tire of watching the miniaturist as she filled her travelling sketch book with delicate stu¬ dies, the while trying to imitate her. Certainly these childish scrawls were not wanting either in taste or in understanding. They surely deno¬ ted instincts that were not to be neglected. Why should not M. Coll confide his dau¬ ghter to M me Herbelin? Paris was a long way off but then the railways have as it were suppres- ^ sed the obstacle ofdistance. Soo¬ ner or later they must separate from Madeleine. The province is for certain educations wan¬ ting in resour¬ ces. The result was a few months later M lle Coll was at Paris, installed in her aunt’s home. It will be well to devote here a few lines to M me Herbelin without whose aid M nie Lemaire might not have discovered herself. Women of such merit, distinguished, cordial, modest, are in all times rare. At her debuts she attempted historical painting; but Delacroix, whom she consulted, discerning her real aptitudes, counselled her to devote herself 228 SOCIETY OF FRENCH AQUARELLISTS to miniature painting. Being able to draw with the point with precision, also being able to paint she quickly succeeded. M me de Mirbel and her pupils modeled their smallest portraits by stip¬ pling, M me Herbelin modeled hers, like Isabey, by clear planes, boldly touched. This renewed process pleased, and the artist used it to the profit of a real portraitist talent. A quantity of celebrated personages posed successively for her : Guizot, Rossini, Fleury and — the most flattering approbation yet — the old minia¬ turist Isabey. The jury of the Exhibition of 1853 expressed officially their regret that she could not be decorated with the Legion d’honneur; but in those far off days they did not decorate women. M me Her¬ belin wore her success easily, scarcely deigning to perceive it and redoubling her efforts. Evenings she received a choice society, her salon was justly noted as neutral and elegant, all that could he desired by those who wished to meet people of all shades of taste. The painters came in crowds and felt themselves at home; men of letters and musicians were cordially received and Parisians of distinguished manners were only required to be intelligent. The appearance of Madeleine Coll was like a flattering smile, an unex¬ pected attraction in these assemblies where nothing had seemed wanting. Talkative and lively, aiding her aunt in her duties as hostess, she went from group to group, questioning, ‘ responding, listening, retaining, pelted M m0 MADELEINE LEMAIRE 229 by