IDEALS OF LIFE IN FRANCE
OR
HOW THE GREAT PAINTERS PORTRAY
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE COPPER-PLATES MADE IN PARIS ESPECIALLY FOR THIS WORK BY GOUP1L & CO., FROM OIL-PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS
WITH ESSAYS ON ART IN FRANCE
By GEORGE WILLIAM SHELDON
AUTHOR OF “RECENT IDEALS OF AMERICAN ART," ETC.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D
APPLETON AND COMPANY
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES.
J. Beraud : Harlequin.
In many respects this beautiful woman may stand for the genius of modern French figure-painting. Not a hurried sketch, but a complete picture, in the technical sense, the work is the masterpiece of the artist, who has already received two medals and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. At the Salon of the Champ de Mars in 1890 hundreds of visitors gathered daily in front of this merry-andrew of the gentler sex, this gracious conjurer just ready to draw her divining wand.
H. Tenr^ : An Introduction
of a small dog to a large one, by a pretty woman. The artist is a pupil of Boulanger, J. Lefebvre, and Yon.
J. B. C. Corot : A Dance in the Woods at Sunset.
French women in the guise of nymphs. This picture was one of the attractions of the great display of Corots at the Centennial Exhibition of French Art in Paris, 1889. The sky is of surpassing loveliness and beauty. Corot died in 1875. His works become more costly every year. He has no successor, and he had no predecessor.
E. Villa : A Japanese Fancy.
A saucy young woman of Japan, her lighted pipe in her hand, amuses herself by blowing smoke into the face of a pet monkey, who affects to be much outraged thereby. Skillful drawing of the matting and other accessories. Honorable mention at the Salon.
P. Jazet : The Two Brothers
on a visit to their peasant parents. One of the brothers, in the uniform of a private in the seventh regi¬ ment of chasseurs— red trousers and light-blue jacket— is entertaining with some reminiscences of the camp his father, mother, sister, and younger brother, who has become a member of a religious order. From the Salon of 1889, and the private gallery of M. Grevin.
Jules Breton : Bringing Home the Washing.
Admirable type of the stalwart peasant- woman, whom the artist sees with the eyes ot the poet. The details of the landscape are subordinated to the effect of the figure. From the Salon of the Champs- Elysees, 1890. Medal of the third class, 1855 ; second class, 1857; first class, 1859; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1861; first-class medal, 1867; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1867; Medal of Honor, 1872; member of the Institute, 1886; Commander of the Legion of Honor, 1889.
J. L. Gerome : Woman with Tambourine.
An Egyptian dancing-girl. Medals, 1847, 1848; member of the Institute, 1865; Medal of Honor, 1874; Commander of the Legion of Honor, 1878.
Georges Clairin : On the Pier.
Watching the yachts. Costumes of the last century. The artist has received two medals and the Cross of the Legion of Honor.
Dagnan-Bouveret : In a French Church.
Bought by the Government for the Luxembourg Gallery. Every Sunday, at high mass, the bread ( Le Pam Beni) is distributed by an acolyte. The artist received the Medal of Honor at the Salon of 1889, and the Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition the same year. He is Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Mlle. Fornier : Portrait of the Artist,
who is just beginning her career. Her contributions to the Salon of 1889 were “Mary of Nazareth and “The Pirate’s Daughter.”
G. Haquettk : Going Fishing.
A woman aids them in pushing their boat into the water. Medal of the third class, 1880.
A. Morot : Portrait of Mile. Gerome,
youngest daughter of the celebrated artist, on a sorrel horse. From the Salon of the Champs-Elysees, 1890. Prize of Rome, 1873; third-class medal, 1876; second class, 1877; first class, 1879; Medal of Honor, 1880; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1883; Grand Prize, Universal Exposition, 1889.
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES.
A. Toulmouche : Fragrance.
From the Exhibition of the Cercle Volney, 1890. Medal of the third class, 1852; second class, 1861 ; Legion of Honor, 1870; medal of the third class, Universal Exposition, 1878; silver medal, Universal Exposition, 1889.
C. F. Daubigny : By the River.
One of the most celebrated of French landscape-painters. A peasant-woman, kneeling on the bank, is washing clothes; another starts for home, after performing the same service. Great beauty of the sky and of the reflections in the water. Daubigny died in 1878.
T. Lobrichon : Neighbors ,
young and friendly, under the auspices of the mother of the younger. Second-class medal, 1882. Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Carolus Duran : Portrait of the Painter's Daughter.
A true French type — elegant, gracious, distinguished, and one of the most admired canvases of the cele¬ brated artist. Medals in 1866, 1869, and 1870; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1872, and Officer of the same, 1878; medal of the second class at the Universal Exposition of 1878; Medal of Honor, 1879; Com¬ mander of the Legion of Honor, 1889.
M. Leloir : Fiigitive Huguenots,
after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685. Third-class medal, 1878.
J. Girardet : Madrigal.
A fashionable woman, in her boudoir, listening to the gossip of an abbe, while her maid dresses her hair. Recalls the first scene in Alexandre Dumas’s comedy “ Francillon.” Third-class medal, 1881.
C. Monginot : Soubrette, Louis XV —
intelligent and refined, astute and intriguing. She carries a silver tray, on which are glasses, a decanter, cups, and saucers, and may be supposed to be advancing toward a table on the stage. The scene is a chapter of manners of the epoch of that celebrated king. The artist, a pupil of Couture, received medals in 1864, 1869, and 1889.
Louis Japy : A May Morning.
Spring landscape in the Arcadian style, with shepherd and shepherdess seated under the blossoming trees near their flock. M. Japy is a pupil of M. Franfais, the friend and disciple of Corot. Medals in 1870, 1873, and 1889.
J. F. Millet : The Gleaners.
Perhaps the greatest work of the celebrated artist. In the summer of 1890 it was bequeathed to the Louvre by Madame Pommery. Its value is believed to be greater than that of the “ Angelus,” which was sold for more than one hundred thousand dollars. The atmosphere is suffused with sunlight. In its new home, surrounded by the chefs-d'ceuvre of the modern French school, its masterly tonality obscures the academic glories of most of its companions.
Jules Aviat : The Mirror.
This charming young girl, who pauses in her toilet to admire herself in an antique hand-mirror, may pass for a daughter of ancient Greece, or for a child of sunny France, a model deftly posed in the artist’s atelier. The classic fillet takes us back to Greece; the modern type of the face renews our allegiance to France. Let us compromise. Clearly in this picture M. Aviat enrolls himself under the banner 01 the Neo-Grec or Pompeiian school, originating in the Greek treatment of familiar subjects by Gerome, and well called classicism passing into genre. But with us it is less a question of schools than of enjoyment of a very graceful figure delightfully represented.
M. Roy : Distributing Food to the Poor of Paris
at one of the barracks. When the soldiers have finished their meals, at about 9.30 A. M. and 5.30 P. M, they give the soup that is left to anybody who applies for it. The custom prevails at all the barracks or casernes. During the siege of Paris in 1871 thousands of men, women, and children received assistance daily. The soldiers in the picture are dragoons. Medal of the third class, 1883.
G. Busson : The Cry of the Dogs.
French hunting-scene. The hounds are at last making short work of the stag, and among the riders who
Meu 1 " B 3 successful wom“- In ‘he Salon of 1890 the picture was known as Les Abois."
Medals, 1885, 1887, and 1889.
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES.
W. Bouguereau : Youth.
One of the best known of the artist’s popular pictures of child-life, and an excellent representative of the very young woman in French art. As a piece of literary sentiment, it is faultless. Prize of Rome, 1850; medals, 1855, 1857, 1867, 1878, and 1885 ; Commander of the Legion of Honor and member of the Institute.
Julien Dupre : The Hour for Milking.
A characteristic example of the most skillful of living French animal-painters. Pupil of Pils, H. Lehmann, and Langee. Medals, 1880, 1881, and 1889.
E. Duez : Coffee on the Terrace.
Summer scene in the garden of a suburban cottage. The father is smoking a cigar, while his young wife is drinking a cup of coffee. Her little boy, dressed in sailor costume, is talking to his grandmother, whose face is hidden by the hangings of the garden-chair ; while his little sister is amusing herself with sand, pail, and shovel. The subject is particularly adapted to an exposition of the grace of the human form in gesture and attitude. The artist received medals in 1874 and 1879, and is an Officer of the Legion of Honor.
L. Gagneau : Before the Storm.
A farmer’s wife stands on the bank of a river, and hails the boatman on the other side to come and carry
her across. Heavy black clouds are rolling up from the horizon. She wants to get home before the storm
bursts. She seems to have been digging potatoes. Her face is unusually refined, and her feet are very large. The artist is a pupil of Pils and of Lehmann.
Dagnan-Bouveret : An Accident.
A peasant-lad has cut his hand— very severely, it seems, from the quantity of blood on the floor, and from the facial expression of his mother and sister. His father, indeed, is quite overcome while the young surgeon dresses the wound, but the boy is calm and brave. The artist obtained the Medal of Honor at the Salon of 1879, and the Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition of the same year.
N. Diaz : A Fishing-Party in Turkish Costumes.
One of the works of the artist’s best period, extremely rich in color. Diaz has been dead about fourteen
years. His pictures are in great demand, and are often counterfeited. First-class medal, 1848.
Jules Breton : Last Flowers.
The favorite heroine of the great artist, whom he has often celebrated in verse under the name Jeanne, is cutting from their stalks the last chrysanthemums of the season. The snow has already fallen. The statuesque beauty of the young peasant is superb. Medals, 1855, 1857, 1859, 1867, 1872; member of the Institute, 1886; Commander of the Legion of Honor.
E. Buland : Interceding for her Brother.
The young man who has just entered the room does not seem to be very proud of himsell, and his sister has taken upon herself the office of mediator ; nor is the state of the mother’s mind a happy one. Honor¬ able mention, 1879; medals, 1885, 1887, and 1889.
C. Cres : Visit to the Mother Superior.
The young men are students in a French military academy, and, according to custom, at the end of the year the winner of the first prize formally presents it to the Mother Superior of the hospital, in the piesence of the Sisters and of his classmates, who have borne him in triumph thither. Honorable mention, 1888.
A. Leloir : The Fairies.
A scene in one of the well-known fairy tales of Perrault. The fairy’s message, as repeated by the old woman, pleases her pretty listener. Medals, 1839, 1841 ; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1870.
Firmin-Girard : A Well between Two Properties ,
and two neighbors near it, one on each side, admirably contrasted. Medals, 1863, 1874, and 1889.
G. Larrue : The Cradle. .
A young mother, her face in the shadow of the hangings of her bed, has just taken her baby out of its cradle and is nursing it. The artist is a pupil of the late M. Cabanel, and a native of Bordeaux. His studio is at Versailles, iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES.
Carolus Duran : A Parisienne of the Nineteenth Century.
One of several full-length oil-portraits which attracted great attention at the Salon of the Champ de Mars in 1890, and did much toward the success of this new enterprise. All the representative qualities of an elegant Parisienne of the present day appear in this canvas. Medals, 1866, 1869, 1870, 1878; Medal of Honor, 1879; Commander of the Legion of Honor, 1889.
J. Girardet : Persecution of Protestants , after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685.
Incident in the time of Louis XIV, after the repeal of the edict which guaranteed immunity to the Protest¬ ants— a repeal largely due to the agency of Madame de Maintenon, whom Professor DoUinger calls “ the most influential woman of French history.” Third-class medal, 1881.
G. Van den Bos : Charity ,
exemplified in the gift of a purse to a beggar-woman with two children, from a lady on horseback. The horse himself seems to be taking cognizance of the act. Honorable mention, 1889.
C. Chaplin : The Age of Gold.
A sprightly piece of character-painting, as well as a subject quite in the painter’s true line. This picture, hung in a corner, on the line, in one of the rooms of the Salon of the Champs- Elysees in 1890, constantly attracted the attention of visitors. It is a delicate study of pinks, creams, and flesh-tints. Medals, 1851, 1852, 1865, and Officer of the Legion of Honor.
E. Munier : In Times of Yore.
A mother of noble family teaching her daughter to pray from an old Latin prayer-book, handsomely bound. The girl is in white. Honorable mention, 1882.
A. Perret : Distribution of Prizes.
A scene at the end of the school year in a French village. The master of the school, in the presence of the priest and other local celebrities, seated on a platform outdoors, calls up the prize-winners one by one, and presents each with a book and wreath of artificial laurel-leaves. The pupil then descends the platform, bearing the book and the wreath, and proceeds to her mother, who crowns her with the wreath, and kisses her twice, once on each cheek. Medals, 1877, 1888, 1889.
P. E. Riant : Sisters —
walking in a park. One of them has entered a religious order; the other still belongs to the fashionable world. The contrast in their dispositions is as great as the contrast in their costumes, but it seems not to have disturbed their mutual affection. The artist is a pupil of Bonnat.
Julien Dupr£ : I11 the Meadow.
A pastoral scene in Prance, as conceived by her foremost living animal-painter. He uses a full brush, and sacrifices prettiness to beauty. Medals, 1880, 1881, and 1889.
H. Deyrolle : A Marriage in Brittany ,
by a pupil of Cabanel and Bouguereau, who has a studio on the coast of Brittany, and has made many studies of social life in that part of France. Medals, 1881, 1887, and 1889.
R. Collin : Youth.
An ideal figure by one of the most successful of French artists, who received the Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition of 1889, and one of whose pictures has been bought by the French Government for the Luxembourg Gallery. As a painter of flesh, he much surpasses his master, Cabanel.
G. Cain : A Marriage under the Directory ,
with the picturesque costumes of the epoch. The wedding-breakfast is to be eaten at a corner restaurant, the proprietor of which, napkin m hand, has gone out into the street to receive his guests. The groom carries the bridal bouquet, and the outside of the restaurant is festooned with garlands. Nowadays it is very common for a marnage-party in humble life to be driven through the Bois de Boulogne and thence
br„nzeeSneH , Vb Jr Wedd““fct » ™ilarly served in a restaurant. Honorable mention, ,88r; bronze medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889. The artist is a pupil of Cabanel and Detaille.
J. Girardet : A Party left.
o0fnthe°ftime dass “gsf" ^ C°StUmeS
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES.
L. Perrault : Return from the Fields.
A model of the south of France near the Italian border. Medals, 1864, 1876, 1889; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1887.
J. Beraud : At Monte Carlo.
Visitors at the gambling-table. Each face is an impressive study, and the picture as a whole conveys a serious lesson. So popular was this canvas at the Salon of the Champ de Mars in 1890 that it was difficult to see it because of the crowd around it. Medals, 1882, 1883, 1889; Officer of the Legion of Honor.
Firmin-Girard : Homes by the Sea,
on the Brittany coast; summer visitors at the thatched cottage of a fisherman, whose wife is mending the nets, and whose children are staring at the prosperous strangers. Other visitors on donkeys in the distance ; sunshine streaming against the old white-spotted wall and into the children’s faces. Medals. 1863, 1874, 1889.
Madame Vigee Le Brun : Marie Antoinette with a Rose.
One of the most admired portraits of the unfortunate queen. From the National Gallery at Versailles, where it was reproduced for this work by permission of the French Government. The artist was the per¬ sonal friend of the sitter, and one of the most celebrated portraitists of the eighteenth century.
Madame F. Fleur y : First Leaves.
Early spring in a garden, and in a woman’s heart. Honorable mention, 1880, 1889.
A. Brouillet : A Clinical Lecture —
at the Salpetriere Hospital, Paris, where Dr. Charcot is explaining to his pupils his treatment of one of the patients, who seems to have fainted, or to have been hypnotized. A surgeon supports her, and a nurse reaches out to assist him in laying her upon the bed. The students are older than with us, and each face is an interesting study. Honorable mention, 1881 ; medals, 1884, 1886.
A. Aublet : Among the Flowers ,
in the hall of a Paris mansion. The mistress stops a moment to inhale their fragrance. Honorable mention, 1879; medals, 1880, 1889.
E. Buland : The First Kiss,
just after marriage, outdoors in Brittany. The bride’s mother carries a floral diadem on a heart-shaped cushion. The subject is unusually naive in conception. Honorable mention, 1879; medals, 1885, 1887, 1889.
H. de Callias : After Dinner at the Baroness s.
While the hostess is serving the coffee, two of her guests seem to be neglected by the sterner sex. They do not appear to mind it. Honorable mention at the Salon.
A. Toulmouche : I11 the Spring-time.
A pretty woman holding a garland of roses to her breast. One of the last works of the lamented artist, who died in Paris in 1 890, and one of a group exhibited at the inaugural Salon of the Champ de Mars by the society of which Meissonier was the founder. Medals, 1852, 1859, 1861, 1878, 1889; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1870.
E. Carpentier : An Arrest in the Village.
Three soldiers are entering a peasant’s house to arrest him for some offense. The criminal stands firm in his sabots, and is about to defend himself with a chair ; but his mother entreats him not to resist. His dog is as bold as he, while his wife shrieks in terror. Honorable mention, 1885; medal, 1889.
J. Wagrez : The Decameron.
On the first day of “The Decameron” the queen tells her story. She says: “Valorous young women, as in the serene nights the stars are the ornament of the sky, and as in spring the flowers are the ornament of the green meadows, so witticisms are the ornament of cultivated manners and agreeable conversation.” The artist is a pupil of Pils and H. Lehmann, and a native of Paris. Medal, 1879. The young queen’s listeners seem pleased with her observations.
C. Fould : Fresh Eggs —
a dairy-maid returning to the house after a morning visit to the nests, fully satisfied with the condition of the egg which she holds up to the light.
TABLE OF CONTENTS,
WIT PI EXPLANATORY NOTES.
FULL-PAGE PHOTOGRAVURES.
Emile Ad an : Flowers for the Virgin—
carried to the church on the ist of May, in accordance with French custom, and placed near the statues of the Virgin. Medals, 1875, 1882, 1889.
P. Tavernier : The End of the Struggle.
The wild boar, surrounded at last, meets his fate, but not before wounding or killing some of his pursuers. The woman in the center of the picture calmly surveys the scene without leaving the saddle. The principal figures show the influence of Cabanel, the artist’s master. Honorable mention; medal, 1883.
C. Meissonier : Early Spring,
on the terrace of a chateau ; the Seine in the distance ; costumes of the last century ; blossoming trees and French gallantry. Medals, 1866, 1889; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1889.
Adolphe Piot : Roses —
a basketful of them, and an expressive, pretty face. This young artist has a promising career before him. A. Toulmouche : Telling For times
with cards, in a drawing-room, in front of a piece of old tapestry. Charming study 01 fashionable Parisian life. Medals, 1852, 1859, 1861, 1878, 1889; Officer of the Legion of Honor.
J. Scalbert : Rest
on the bank of a river after rowing in a pleasure-boat. The woman is toying with a blossoming branch, while the man with muscular arms gives expression to some of his ideas. The artist, a pupil of M. Pils, painted the “ Free Vaccination at the Mayor’s Office,” in Part XIV.
Jean Beraud : A Woman's Prison —
unfortunate creatures of all ages and diverse origins, who, having been arrested during the night, are about to be brought before a magistrate for sentence or discharge. Some seem heart-broken, others defiant, others very sleepy. Medals, 1882, 1883, 1 887, 1889.
A. Bauman : Halt of the Hunters
by a wayside thatched-roof cottage, which serves the purpose of an inn. A servant-girl, or perhaps the proprietor herself, has given one of the riders a glass of beer, while the man with the horn attends to the dogs, which, like the horses, are thoroughbreds. The artist is a native of Alsace.
A. Toulmouche : Consolation —
administered to a sentimental young woman by one of her sex. The situation does not seem serious. Capital example of the distinguished artist. Medals, 1852, 1859, 1861, 1878, 1889; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1870. Hung in the same group with “In the Springtime,” at the first Meissonier Salon.
A. Trupheme : Luncheon in a Common School, Paris.
Many of the children reside too far away to go home for luncheon (or, as it is called in France, break- fast). Hot soup is provided in a room set apart for the purpose, and other food is brought from home in baskets. One of the girls has dropped her cup of soup on the floor. Medals, 1884, 1888, 1889.
A. Aublet : At the Seaside.
Graceful women in ^ pretty costumes coming out of the surf at a summer watering-place on the coast of France. The artist’s eye is trained to see Nature in her pictorial effects. Honorable mention, 1879; medals, 1880, 1889.
Mme. Vigee Lebrun : Marie Antoinette and her Children.
From the gallery of the Palace of Versailles. The most celebrated work of the famous portrait-painter of the court of Louis XVI.
E. Debat-Pons an : The Plowman's Daughter,
gracefully driving the oxen while her father holds the plow. 1889-; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
Scene in the south of France. Medals, 1874,
P.
G.
Gerard : The Empress Eugdnie.
Painted in the days of her power, and hung in the gallery cessors. The face has a more regal expression than in the
at Versailles among the portraits of her prede¬ photographs from life.
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPO GRAVURES.
J. J. Henner : Madeleine. Excellent representation of the distinguished artist’s work. Prize of Rome, 1858, medal of third class, 1863; medals, 1865 and 1866; Legion of Honor, 1873; officer of same, 1878; medal of first class, 1878, at the Universal Exposition; member of the Institute, 1889. Hors Concours.
Mlle. Louise Abbema : Spring. One of four allegorical figures, representing the seasons of the year. Honorable mention at the Salon.
Albert Fouri£ : A Wedding Breakfast. At Yport, a watering-place on the Channel coast. Medals in 1884 and 1887. Hors Concours.
Victor Gilbert : The Floiver-Seller. On one of the boulevards of Paris, in front of a cafe , with tables on the sidewalk. Medal in 1880, and Hors Concours.
Louis Leloir : The Tambourine. Costume of an Eastern dancer. The artist is not now living. During his life¬ time he produced many admirable figure-pieces. His habit was not to exhibit at the Salon.
Lucien Doucet : A Tourist in the Glaciers. Scene in Switzerland. The artist won the Prize of Rome in 1880, and Salon medals in 1879 and 1887. He is Hors Concours.
R. Collin : In Japanese Costume. Faithfully reproduced. Sometimes known as “ Madame Chrysantheme. Medal of second class, 1873; Legion of Honor, 1884; Grand Prize, Universal Exposition, 1889. Hors Concours.
Henri Lerolle : The Communicants. Scene in a Catholic church. Medal of the third class, 1879, and of the first class, 1880; Legion of Honor, 1889. Hors Concours.
Jules Girard ET : Mile. Desclde , the Actress, in her Cellar, during the Siege of Paris, studying her roles. Medal, 1881.
T. Gide : Importunity . Scene in the eighteenth century. A troublesome visitor. Medals, 1861, 1865, 1866; Legion of Honor, 1866. Hors Concours.
A. Moreau : In the Park of a chateau. Landscape and figures. Medal, 1876. Hors Concours.
E. Ravel : A Windy Day in the streets of Paris.
E. Levy : The Family. Ideal figures. Prize of Rome, 1854. Medals, 1859, 1864, 1867, 1878; Legion of Honor, 1867. The painter has just died.
G. CoURTOiS : Ninon, shown at the annual exhibition of one of the clubs of Paris — the Cercle Volney — in the winter of 1889-1890, and perhaps intended to represent one of the characters in Alfred de Musset’s comedy, “A Quoi Revent les Jeunes Filles.” Medal of the third class, 1878, and of the second class, 1880; gold medal, Universal Exposition, 1889; Legion of Honor.
LlsON Breton : Reverie. Shown at the Exhibition of the Cercle Volney, in Paris, 1890.
A. Brouillet : The Wounded Peasant, carried into his house by two men, assisted by two women. His wife stands in the doorway, covering her face with her hands ; and her two children, at the foot of the steps, are interested spectators. A pot of flowers on the window-sill. Medal of the third class, 1884, and of the second class, 1886.
C. Delort : A Fault. The girls have been sent to their room, and their grandmother, or guardian, is coming after them. Medals, 1875 and 1882. Legion of Honor, 1889.
L. David : Mine. Rdcamier, the well-known painting in the Louvre — life-size. The celebrated beauty (1777— 1849), clothed in a white robe, is stretched on a couch of antique form, at the left of which is a large candela¬ brum in bronze. The picture, which is only a sketch, was bought for twelve hundred and thirty-six dollars at the sale of the studio-effects of David, April 17, 1826, and became a part of the collection of Charles X.
G. Cain : A Fish- A uction in Paris. Daily scene at the great market, the Halles, where sixty-five million pounds of fish are sold annually. The artist has received honorable mention at the Salon. Bronze medal, Uni¬ versal Exposition, 1889.
Dagnan-Bouveret : A Vaccination. Scene in a public building in Paris. Medals, 1878, 1880, and 1889; Medal of Honor, 1889.
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPO GRAVURES.
G. Saint-Pierre : At Home. From the Exhibition of the Cercle Volney. Medals, 1868, 1879; Legion of Honor.
L. Perrault : Innocence. Head of young girl. Medal, 1864; second-class medal, 1876; Legion of Honor, 1887; bronze medal, Universal Exposition, 1889.
R. Gilbert : A Bouquet at Cannes. Souvenir of the Riviera. Medal, 1886.
A. Perret : Tardy Avowals. Gallantry at threescore and ten. Medals, 1 877* 1888 > bronze medal, Universal Ex¬ position, 1889.
L. Doucet : A Portrait of a fashionable Parisienne, elegant and distinguished, as Doucet always sees her. Third- class medal, 1879; Prize of Rome, 1880; second-class medal, 1887; gold medal, 1889.
W. BoUGUEREAU : At the Foot of the Cliff. The artist paints three kinds of subjects: Madonnas, Venuses, and children. This picture is an excellent representative of the third kind. Prize of Rome, 1850; second-class medal, 1855; first class, 1857; member of the Institute; Medal of Honor, 1855; Commander of the Legion of Honor.
N. Diaz : Diana ( Huntress ). A French model, classically treated, by one of the leaders of the celebrated Fon¬ tainebleau school. First-class medal, 1848.
J. Geoffroy : A Deserter , brought back to his duties by an energetic woman-teacher. Geoffroy’s favorite subject is the woman-teacher and her young pupils of the schools. Medal of the third class, 1883; second class, 1886.
E. Debat— Ponson : A Country Trio. Peasant-lad, peasant-girl, and cow; simple tastes and pleasures, sunshine and the open air. Second-class medal, 1874; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1881 ; bronze medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
F. Flameng : “ I lodge with you'.' The cavalryman has presented to the woman a billet de logement, which notifies her that she is to take care of him. When the army is on the march, the soldiers are billeted upon the householders. Medal of second class, 1879; Prize of the Salon, 1879; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1885; Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
A. Loudet : First White Bread after the Siege of Paris. Incident of the Franco-German War, 1871. The city capitulated only when threatened by famine. Honorable mention at the Salon.
L. Caille : Before the Hearth. From the Salon of the Champs-Elysees, 1890.
G. Dubufe : Music and Dancing. Ballet-dancers and a sheet of music. Third-class medal, 1877; second class, l878 i g°D medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Hors Concours.
N. Goeneutte : Selling Fish at the Market. Scene at the Halles, Paris. Honorable mention, 1880; gold medal, Universal Exposition, 1889. Hors Concours.
F. SCHOMMER : A Charity-Sale in Russian Costume. Fashionable distraction in Paris. Prize of Rome, 1878; second-class medal, 1884; silver medal, Universal Exposition, 18S9. Hors Concours.
W. BoUGUEREAU . 1 he Elder Sister. Prize of Rome, 1850; second-class medal at the Universal Exposition, 1855 ;
first-class medal, 1857; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1859; third-class medal at the Universal Expo¬ sition, 1867; member of the Institute, 1876; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1876; Medal of Honor at the Universal Exposition, 1878 ; Medal of Honor at the Salon, 1885 ; Commander of the Legion of Honor, 1855 ; Hors Concours at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
J s Breton . I oung G11 Is going to join a Procession in Brittany, on a fete-day, probably the Fete-Dieu, or the day of the Pardon. This picture was the artist’s principal contribution to the Centennial Exhibition of rrench Art in Paris, 1889. Medal of the third class, 1855; second class, 1857; first class, 1859; Chevalier o the Legion of Honor, 1861 ; first-class medal, 1867; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1867; Medal of Honor, 1872; member of the Institute, 1886; Commander of the Legion of Honor, 1889.
Mme. Demont-Breton : The Bath. Peasant-mother and child.
landscape-painter, Jules Breton. Third-class medal, i83l;
The artist is the daughter of the distinguished second class, 1883; gold medal, 1889.
F.
Flameng : A Repose. Costumes of the last Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1885 I
century. Second-class medal, 1879; Prize of the Salon, 1879; Grand Prize, Universal Exposition, 1889.
L. Leloir : The Daisy Test. A cavalier watching a lady as she dead, did not exhibit at the Salon. viii
strips a daisy of its leaves.
Leloir, recently
TABLE OF CONTENTS WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPOGRAVURES.
J. F. Gueldry : The Lock. A party of canoeists waiting for the gates to open. Third-class medal, 1885; silver medal, Universal Exposition, 1889.
N. Chaillou : The Oyster-Seller , carrying a tray of opened oysters. The artist is a pupil of M. Hebert and M. Bonnat.
L. CAILLE : Departure for School. A child with luncheon-basket on her arm, kissing her grandmother, on whose lap is an open Bible. From the Salon of 1889. The artist is a pupil of M. Cogniet.
R. CoGGHE : At the Frontier. Custom-house officers searching for contraband goods. Honorable mention, 1887; medal of the third class, 1889.
H. Gervex : A Portrait , full-length, and of graceful pose. Medal of the second class, 1874; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1882; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1889. The artist sent six portraits to the Salon of the Champ de Mars, 1889, including one of himself. His most important contribution was a scene in the office of the Republiqne Franfais, with portraits of half a dozen editors of that journal, one of them M. Spuller, ex-Secretary of State.
G. ROCHEGROSSE : A Cock-Fight. French women and children treated as ancient Greeks. The law does not permit cock-fights, but bull-fights now take place twice a week in Paris, and are patronized by many
women. The head of one of the birds is protected by a metal cap. Medal of the third class, 1882;
second class, 1883; Prize of the Salon, 1883; bronze medal at Universal Exposition, 1889.
G. DE DramarD : Shrimp- Fishers off the coast ; one of them returning with a basketful on her shoulders, and the net wound around its two handles. The artist is a pupil of M. Bonnat.
J. J. Henner : Lisette. Much admired for the brilliancy of the eyes. Prize of Rome, 1858; medal of the third class, 1863; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1873; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1878; medal of the first class, 1878; member of the Institute, 1889.
A. P. Roll : Manda Lamdtrie , Farmer's Wife. Portrait of a French peasant- woman, who has just milked one of her cows; sunshine in the fields. From the Luxembourg Gallery. Third-class medal, 1875; first class, 1877; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1883; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1889.
G. CoURTOlS : Morning. From the Salon of the Champ de Mars, 1890. Third-class medal, 1878; second class,
1880; gold medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
F. Berne— Bellecour : A Dealer in Chickens, on a market-day, in a village near Paris. From the Salon of
the Champs-Elysees, 1890.
A. Marie : The Doctor , in his cabriolet, on a winter day, in the country, stopped by an anxious woman, who begs his professional services for some member of her household. Bronze medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
G. CoURTOlS : Lisette , character in Regnard’s “Legataire Universel”; intended for a panel in the foyer of the
Odeon Theatre, Paris.
J. J. ROUSSEAU : The Widow, sitting in an artist’s studio, before the portrait of her late husband. From the Salon of the Champ de Mars, 1890. Honorable mention, 1887; bronze medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
F. Blayn : Evening Meal, in Normandy. Honorable mention, 1879; third-class medal, 1886; bronze medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
E. Sain : The Young Mother. From the Salon of the Champ de Mars, 1890. Third-class medal, 1875; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1877; silver medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
Coessin de la Fosse : The Shrine of St. Guireck , at Ploumanach’, in Finisterre. The young women of the region, who desire a husband, or whose fiances are at sea, go to this shrine when the tide is low and fasten ribbons to the wooden statue of the saint. Third-class medal, 1873; bronze medal at the Universal Expo¬ sition, 1889.
H. Cain : Strolling Musicians, in the court of a house in old Paris. Honorable mention, 1882; bronze medal
at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
J. A. Muenier : On the Bridge. A pastoral. Pupil of Gerome, Dagnan-Bouveret, and Courtois. Third-class medal, 1877.
C. F. Daubigny : Watching the Cows , on the borders of the river Oise. This picture, often called “The Sand- Pit,” is one of the most beautiful of Daubigny’s landscapes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPOGRAVURES.
T VoiSIN : Recruits off Duty, taking a rest during the hours of drill in a public square in Paris. Some are dancing in the snow; others, making small purchases from the venders of fruit and cakes. Meantime two officers, at the right, are conversing with each other, and some rifles are stacked in front of them. The artist lives at Nancy, and is a painter of military subjects.
L Guos ' A Ride on Horseback, in the days when the lady sat behind the man and held on by his arms. The steed looks tired but resolute under his double load, and the riders are pleased with each other. Medals, 1867, 1876, 1889.
T Mayan : End of the Day in Provence. Two barefooted harvesters of the gentler sex, one supporting herself against the long handle of her rake, the other lying on a heap of hay : a midsummer scene in the fields of the south of France. The artist is a pupil of the celebrated Vollon.
C. Brun : Language of Flowers. Flirtation in the narrow street of an Oriental city. A swarthy Romeo, partly concealed by a stone pillar, against which he leans, has drawn the attention of a less dusky Juliet, who is about to enter her house with her maid-servant. The meaning of the flower seems to be mutually under¬ stood. Medal 1 868.
A. Marais : Return to the Stable. Evening scene in Normandy: cows driven home by a young woman who may claim the distinction of being the least handsome of her species. She is stolen from Nature, never¬ theless — sabots, white cap, and all.
J. E. Saintin : By the River. An honest, fresh-faced, rosy damsel, outdoors, in summer, musing. The picture is a portrait of a young American, and appeared in the Salon of 1890 under the title “Miss B. B.” Medals, 1866, 1870, and 1889; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1877.
A. Marais : A Corner of the Farm. Grandmother, mother, children, chickens, geese, pig, and cow, in a Nor¬ mandy hamlet. Medals, 1880, 1883, 1889.
L. Tauzin : View of Paris from the Terrace of Meudon , looking northeast, with the Eiffel Tower in the back¬ ground, and the viaduct of the Western Railway and the river Seine in the middle distance. More than a piece of scene-painting. Much of the charm resides in the changeful sky and the rapidly varying effects of atmosphere. Honorable mention at the Salon.
L. Beroud : At the Universal Exposition of 1889, in Paris; view in the magnificent Palace of Machinery. Hun¬ dreds of easy-chairs, with men in uniform to roll them, were used by visitors. This picture is a masterly piece of mechanical drawing. Honorable mention, 1882; medals, 1883, 1889. Pupil of Bonnat.
C. Bellanger : Alone, sitting on the sand of the sea-shore and gazing abstractedly into the breakers. A few lines
from Wordsworth are needed to describe the situation. Medal, 1875.
A. Robaudi : Miette arid Nord. An idyl of the southeastern coast of France. The artist is a native of Nice, and a pupil of Gerome.
Mlle. Waiil : Summer Flowers — a whole armful of them, and others in the hat and hair. Picturesque French peasantry, “ fin de siecle,” by a bright young pupil of Lefebvre.
F. H. Lucas : An Evening Celebration, outdoors, on the bank of a river. While the servant is setting the table
for supper one of the three interesting maidens plays the violin. Twilight steals over the landscape.
Medals, 1884, 1887, 1889.
G. Melingue : 7 he Grasshopper and the Ant, the village gossip calling upon the busy housewife. She is
summer clad in the midst of winter. Scene from La Fontaine’s well-known fable. Honorable mention, 1877, 1889.
L. E. Cheve : flail of Battles at Versailles. One of the most beautiful of the magnificent galleries in the palace at Versailles. The large oil-paintings on the walls are battle-scenes. The polished floor shines, and is slippery, too. The artist’s studio is at Versailles.
J. H. Gambart : Under the Porch of St. Germain l Auxerrois, the beautiful church near the Louvre, whose bell sounded the signal for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. A group of unfortunates waiting to ask alms. Honorable mention at the Salon.
A. AgACHE : Vanity. A curious presentation of the subject, at the Meissonier Salon of 1890. The man is crowned with laurel-leaves, and the woman guards her shield and sword ; but what either has to be vain of does not appear, unless it is the bodice of the latter, which resembles those worn by the dancing-girls of Java.
L. Duplan : Filial Piety. A young woman placing a wreath of immortelles on the simple wooden cross that marks her father's grave. Her dress is that worn on the day of her first communion. Behind her stand her widowed mother and younger brother.
J. A. Muenier : Prosperous Days. A family party supping in the country. The original of this picture is a beautiful piece of tone-painting. Its sentiment is exquisite. Medal, 1887.
A. Debaene : Equal to the Situation. A stalwart fish-woman in one of the markets of Lille. Her apron is as white as her arms are powerful.
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPOGRAVURES.
J. Scalbert : Free Vaccination at the Mayor's Office near the Pantheon. In order that the inoculating fluid may be fresh, the calf itself is brought to the back door.
G. Haquette : Benediction of the Sea and for the Shipwrecked. A Catholic ceremony performed on stated
occasions in seaport cities. The worshipers are the relatives of seamen. The priest sprinkles holy water
upon the waves, and behind him are upheld the crucifix and a lighted candle. Medal, 1880.
E. Carpentier : Turnips thrown into a pool to be washed, and taken out with pitchforks by the farmer s wife and
son. Honorable mention, 1885; medal, 1889.
P. Baudouin : During the Siege of Paris, 1871. Incident of the Franco-German War, when the city was invested by the enemy’s guns, and the people were starving. Tickets for food have been distributed by the Govern¬ ment, and are being presented for redemption. Medals, 1882, 1886, 1889.
Madame Pillint : Holy Thursday in Brittany. It is the custom in Catholic churches to kiss the crucifix on that day. The women in the picture are approaching the altar-rail on their knees. The artist is a pupil of Courbet.
P. Gavarni : The Artist Detaille at the Horse-Show — mounted on a superb white stallion, who is leaping the bars in the presence of the elite of Paris. Excellent portrait of the distinguished military painter. Medal, 1874.
F. PECRUS : Matinee Galante. An afternoon reception in fashionable Parisian society of the last century. The
artist resides at Limoges, the seat of the celebrated porcelain manufactory ; and the influence of some of its decorative designs is seen in his work.
A. Cornet : Wedding-Party in the Suburbs of Paris taking a walk after the ceremony, preceded by an impro¬ vised band. The most elegant male member of the rural procession is the army-officer behind the groom. Several of the couples are conspicuous flirts. Children and merriment abound.
E. Picard : Evening Rest in a hamlet of France; peasants gossiping. Medals, 1887, 1889.
G. LOPISGISCH : Mother Bocquet's Farm in Normandy ; a curious old tower arises in the midst of the low, thatched
roofs. The industrious owner appears in the right foreground with a heavy burden on her back. Honor¬ able mention, 1883, 1889.
A. Moreau : On the Cliff. Pleasure-party of peasants overlooking a French town. Medals, 1876, 1889.
F. Humbert : Lotas XIII and Mile, de Hautefort. In order to checkmate Richelieu, the queen causes a pretty
young woman, Mile, de Hautefort, to be brought to the church where Louis XIII is worshiping. As soon as the king sees her he sends to her the cushion on which he is kneeling. Medals, 1866, 1867, 1869, 1878; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, 1878 ; Officer of the Legion of Honor, 1885.
A. ZwiLLER : A Marriage- Par ty in Alsace. Music from an aged fiddler, and wine from a barrel; general merriment, to be followed by dancing. Honorable mention at the Salon.
A. AuBLET : A Fite of Flowers, called in France the “ Fete-Dieu ” ; a bevy of maidens gathering roses. Honor¬ able mention, 1879; medals, 1880, 1889.
J. Haag : A Fete-Day in Normandy — a birthday celebration, perhaps, though there is little beyond the bouquets of flowers to indicate an unusual incident in the short and simple annals of the poor. A cat is being fed by one of the children ; the dog awaits his mistress’s pleasure. The painter is a pupil of the late Edouard Frere, and a member of the artist-colony in the charming village of Ecouen, half an hour’s ride from Paris.
G. Cain : The New Servant-Girl — her first appearance in the house of her present mistress, who interrogates her
seriously, while the husband mirthfully inspects her from his comfortable arm-chair. Honorable mention, 1881; medal at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
E. Frere : Brother and Sister By the late master of the Ecouen School. The girl’s cap, cape, and face are prematurely old; and the boy has the innocence of a young St. John. Frere’s pictures have long been popular in England and America.
C. Delort : At the Horse-Shozv. An annual celebration in the Palace of Industry, Champs-Elysees. Medals, 1875; 1882; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1889. After a sketch in water-colors.
Madame de Beaufond : The Orphan , musing, in her weeds, over some flowers which she is picking to pieces.
J. Scherrer : “ And I, too, was the idol of the people During the French Revolution Duval d’Espremenil, a distinguished public officer, was assassinated by the mob and carried to the Palais Royal. To his friend Petion, the Mayor of Paris, who had come to see him, the dying man said, “ And I, too, Petion, was the idol of the people.” His terrified wife bends over him weeping. Medals, 1881, 1887, and 1889. Pupil of Cabanel.
xi
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPOGRAVURES.
T Geoffroy • The Famished— eating the scraps left by the soldiers at the barracks during the siege of Paris.
Some contrast between these miserable sufferers and Collins’s society-woman. The hungry man looks angrily at the girl and her little brother, who timidly approach the large wooden tub. Medals, 1883, 1886.
A. Marais : Water for the Cows — the farmer’s daughter drawing it by bucketfuls from an old well in the barn- yard. Medals, 1880, 1883, 1889.
Rosset Granger : Getting ready. Hanging pictures in the salon of a cottage by the sea.
R. Collin : Ready for the Ball , in a white dress, with bows of pink ribbon ; holding a fan of white ostrich- feathers. A broad band of gold encircles the left wrist. Well-modeled arms, and a French face; great delicacy and refinement in expression, costume, and treatment. Medal, 1873; Cross of the Legion of Honor, 1884; Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition, 1889.
A. Guillou : Arrival of the Procession. Scene on a religious fete-day in Brittany : a large party of white- robed women, with banners, are being rowed across a bay or river on their way to church. These proces¬ sions are called Pardons; and M. Jules Breton has fully described them in his autobiography, “The Life of an Artist.” Medals, 1877, 1881, 1889.
D. Lubin : A Judicial Inquiry. A peasant is about to give his testimony before the magistrates, who are investi¬
gating a crime. The faces of the police-officers and of the other spectators indicate that a crisis has been reached. The witness wipes the perspiration from his brow. Honorable mention, 1882.
E. Carpentier : During the Reign of Terror. A party of suspected persons preparing to defend themselves
against their persecutors, one of whom appears above the wall. Incident of the French Revolution. Honor¬ able mention, 1885; medal, 18S9.
R. Goubie : A Morning Encounter on horseback ; the ladies shake hands and the men doff their hats. Goubie’s admirably-drawn horses are well known in this country. Medals, 1874, 1889.
G. Rochegrosse : Nebuchadnezzar' s Degradation. While the monarch is wallowing in the filth, a woman holds his crown, and the Angel of Justice appears as avenger. One of the most striking pictorial scenes from Biblical history since the days of Gustave Dore. Medals, 1882, 1883, 1889; Prize of the Salon, 1883.
Julien Le Blant : The Grandfather, sitting on a rustic bench in a garden by the river, listening to his grand¬ daughter, who reads from a book. Medals, 1878, 1880, 1885, 1889.
E. Pinch art : The Child's Slumber — watched by two interested women in a Normandy farm-house. The sabots, the wash-tub, and the milk-pail speak of poverty and hard work, to which the child also is born. The artist is a pupil of Gerome. Honorable mention, 1883; medal, 1884.
Hugo SaLMSON : At the Barrier — three flaxen-haired children, in charge of their elder sister. The picture was bought by the Government for the Luxembourg Gallery. It is an idyl of peasant child-life in Brittany.
L. Delaci-iaux : Visit to the Fiancee. Five maidens of Auvergne, bearing bouquets of wild-flowers, have come to congratulate a newly-engaged young woman, who rises with some embarrassment to receive them in the kitchen. Her rustic lover gallantly keeps his seat, listening to the fair orator who makes the congratulatory speech. The artist is a pupil of Duez.
G. Bourgain : The Model. A party of French artists, camping out in the woods, have encountered They at once proceed to make sketches of the leader, who poses for them picturesquely.
E. Detaille : The Soldier's Dream, the celebrated painting, now in the Luxembourg Gallery, which obtained for the artist the Medal of Honor at the Salon of 1888, and the Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition of 1S89, and which seems to have brought his fame to its culminating point. Detaille is a pupil of Meissonier a native of Paris, and an officer of the Legion of Honor.
Jean Beraud : The Doctress passing her examination for the Degree of Doctress of Laws. With perfect assurance
yT8^OWTnsRne r-B V ^ JrUd,geS’T 0ne °f rwhom seems not insensible to her physical charms. Medals, 1882, 1883, 1889; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
gypsies.
P. Abram : St. Peter's Fountain, Brittany. Peasants worshiping at a shrine on the sea-coast, such shrines in Brittany. The artists studio is in Finistere.
There are many
Edouard A characteristic example of the great artist, who was the forerunner of
Sic- wsita-rtt.'fiSisr “ -
N' GaW8S£ in the Streets. Parisians say that their carnival
.SScT 7 "0t riVa‘ th3t °f Nke- HOn°rable menti°n’
L. Chialiva : The Shepherdess— her sheep crowding around her, waiting to be fed of Italy, has long lesided at Ecouen, near Paris.
L. Chialiva : Feeding the Fowls. Scene in the door-yard ot a far, ticularly sweet and gracious type.
cottage.
1880;
The artist, though a native The little woman is of a par-
Julien Dupre' : The White Cow. One of the recent additions to the L painter of France. Medals, 1880, 1881, 1889.
■uxembourg Gallery, by the leading animal-
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPOGRAVURES.
D. F. de V uillefroy : Spaniards of Aragon going to the Fair , with horses, asses, bullocks, and sheep. A
picturesque party. Medals, 1870, 1875, 1889; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor.
N. PlERREY : In the Convent , one of the Sisters, seated behind an iron grating, the small door of which is open, waits to receive from the priest the consecrated wafer.
Jacques Wagrez : Proclaiming the Edict , in Venice, in the fifteenth century. One of the auditors is more inter¬ ested in a damsel. The costumes are historic. Medal, 1879.
E. Detaille : Grand Staircase of the Paris Opera-House. Visit of the Lord-Mayor of London. The original
hangs in the Luxembourg Gallery. Officer of the Legion of Honor; Medal of Honor, 1888; Grand Prize at the Universal Exposition of 1889.
P. Brunet-Houard : A Traveling Show. A noonday rest on the way. The mountebank lies stretched out on
the grass. Even his dogs are tired. His son’s attention is diverted by one of the bears. His daughter
keeps guard.
Mme. DemoNT-Breton : The Messiah. Sacred history as interpreted by the daughter of Jules Breton. Medals, 1881, 1883, 1889.
V. Gilbert : In the Market — starting for home after some purchases. Medals, 1880, 1889.
V. Gilbert : Midday — hour of departure from the shops, in order to get breakfast. Buying fruit in the street. Medals, 1880, 1889.
T. Deyrolle : Going to Market. A group of French peasants. Medals, 1887, 1889.
A. Brouillet : The Hospital in the French Theatre , Paris, 1870. Wounded soldiers in the corridor, attended
by volunteer nurses. Medals, 1884, 1886.
Jules Breton : The Pardon. Procession of Brittany peasants on a religious fete-day. Medals, 1855, 1857, 1859, 1861, 1867, 1872; Commander of the Legion of Honor; Member of the Institute.
A. Moreau : Autumn in the Fields — a hospitable fire. Medals, 1876, 1889.
Mme. Vigee Lebrun : Marie Antoinette in Gala Costume, about the year 1789, in an apartment of the Palace of Versailles.
Charles Hue : Awaiting an Interview. The tired old man is made sport of by the young woman, who is held back in her investigations by her much-amused chaperon. Honorable mention at the Salon.
A. Aublet : Around a Score. A fashionable sextet in a Paris house. Medals, 1879, 1880, 1889.
J. P. Laurens : The Oath of Steel. Louis XVI on a visit to the Hotel de Ville, Paris. As he leaves his carriage, his gentlemen-escort stand in double line and cross their swords for him to pass beneath them, swearing allegiance in the famous “Oath of Steel.” Medals, 1869, 1872, 1877! Officer of the Legion of Honor.
C. M. Rols : Confidence — apparently misplaced, to judge by the expression of the old beau.
F. Cormon : The Orientals. The Sultan wishes an old vizier to get married. The girl of the harem whom he
selects dislikes him. Her companions play all sorts of pranks. The artist uses the incident to present various national types of feminine beauty. Medal of Honor, 1887; Grand Prize at the Universal Exposi¬ tion, 1889; Officer of the Legion of Honor.
A. Lynch : Edmond and Madeleine — wherein this clever artist illustrates the grace of woman during a confession and acknowledgment of love.
E. LEMENOREL : Prayer for the Absent. A widow and her two daughters — the latter in their first communion dresses — kneeling before a shrine.
C. Moreau : The Grandchild' s Drum. A diversion for grandparents on the grandfather’s birthday, xiii
TABLE OF CONTENTS, WITH EXPLANATORY NOTES.
TYPO GRAVURES.
E. Azambre : Chamber Music. Exquisite piece of character-painting in a low key of color. The concord of the
different tones is itself a harmony. The young artist is a pupil of Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury.
A. Lynch : File Waterfall. Nature serves merely as a background to bring out this interesting Parisienne.
L. Leloir : A Pastoral Idyl. Two young women, daintily draped and posed, one playing a pipe like that of Pan.
Edouard Ravel : In the Sledge . Skating has its charms, but nothing could be more comfortable than this luxurious ice-sledge, which allows ample opportunities for social recreation.
A. Masson : A Retrospect— {xom a rock “in the land of the Druids” — to follow the French title — although the scenery is scarcely characteristic.
Jules Garnier : The Glorification of Work. The artist means to convey something more than merely the bright side of labor, and something less than its apotheosis. His picture is an idyl of toil.
P. E. Mangeant : Prayer — in a Catholic church in Paris; all ages and conditions of men and women.
F, Schommer : Entering the Dining-Room. A moment awaited in the “grand world,” as elsewhere.
Jules Girardet : President Grtivys Dream. A political jeu d' esprit. The sedate ex-head of the French Re¬ public presiding in the Chamber of Deputies, his thoughts with the ballet-girls of the opera, while Gambetta makes a furious speech from the tribune. Medal, 1 88 1.
J. J. Henner • Madeleine.
Woman in French Art
I PROPOSE to illustrate
the present social life of France, a country which has given pleasure and profit to a multitude of Americans, and which almost everybody would like to visit. I propose to show, by pictures and by narrative (occasionally heightening the effect through contrast, by introducing glimpses of earlier times), how the French painter has reproduced
French society ; and as, in our modern civilization, woman is the center and the inspiration of society, I have chosen as a title Woman in French Art. We shall see her outdoors and at home; in the
shop and on the farm; in the Salon and in the
church ; in the convent, the school, and the
boudoir ; in the street, the garden, the park, and the fields ; walking, driving, and riding ; dining, supping, and sleeping ; as milkmaid, flower-seller, house-servant, shepherdess, harvester, and queen of fashion; as friend, sister, bride, wife, and mother;
Mlle. Abbey
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
receiving charity and giving charity ; in poverty and in prison ; partaking of the sacraments, and persecuted tor her religion ; toiling, loving, dreaming, suffer¬ ing, resting. The artists of France shall tell the story with their pencils — men who see what the historians never see, and what they could not recite if they did see. Among these artists shall be the most illustrious in the world ; and, at the same time, with all the modesty that befits such a collaboration, I shall venture to record some impressions of French art and life, received by an American during a residence of many months in France.
Victor Gilbert : The Flower- Seller.
i . Of Prizes for Artists
The first of these impressions concerns itself with the expediency of awarding prizes to artists. The most recent and conspicuous opponent of the practice is the well-known impressionist painter, M. Raffaelli, who goes so far as to say that,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
5
thanks to the thousand encouragements which are heaped upon young artists, the artistic spirit has disappeared, to make place for a sort of administrative spirit, and a spirit of subordination in the presence of those who dispense these rewards , and that Bouguereau and Jules Lefebvre, who are so influential in the manage¬ ment of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, are to-day the chiefs of bureau of a veritable administration. The French child, he declares, receives his first medal at five years of age for making a tree or a house : his mother gives him a piece of chocolate, to reward him for having been so clever. At ten years, he wins prizes for drawing. At fourteen, if living in the country, he enters the art-school of the nearest city, and, after gaining four or five medals and a purse of money,
departs for the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where, in order to have his pro¬
vincial pension continued, he enters into every competition — as if in art one had not enough to do to compete with one’s self ! Then, he works hard, and recom¬ penses rain down upon him — medals for facial expression, medals for perspective,
medals for anatomy, medals for sketches in oils, and so on. One pupil at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts recently received not less than seventeen medals or mentions. A few months later M. RafFaelli met him in Switzerland, “a little professor of drawing in a school for young ladies.” The most doleful consequence of all this, according to the same authority, is the publicity given to the awards, even the smallest of which are at once mentioned in the newspapers, both of Paris and of the provinces. Henceforth the young prize-winner, intoxicated by his premature glory, will be incapable of turning aside into some path of life more in accordance with his abilities. Moreover, these medals of the Ecole des Beaux- Arts set the fashion for other awards — a little subsidy, for instance, of twenty dollars, which can not help him much, and which, as he has been compelled to ask for it, lowers his self-respect. Then he puts himself in training for the Prize of Rome, and obtains it only at the price of all sorts of concessions and abdica¬ tions ; for recompenses which are good enough to stimulate children are apt to put full-grown men in bondage, and to make them mean-spirited. It the pupil succeeds in winning the Prize of Rome, he exiles himself in Italy for four years with the proceeds, and, on his return, gets eight hundred dollars a year for three years. If he does not obtain the Prize of Rome, he devotes himself to painting pictures for the Salon, “his eyes fixed on that beautiful maxim of Cabanel, ‘Art is a career and a livelihood.’” He will become a courtier at the thrones of the reigning sovereigns of the Salon; he will gain medals, he will win the Cross of the Legion of Honor, then the rosette, and, last of all, will become a candidate
6
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
for membership in the Institute. There are, perhaps, a hundred recompenses of various sorts that he can strive for, but they are not enough to live on. He finds himself the victim of physical and moral misery. “ How many painters in Paris,” asks M. Raffaelli, “ do you think make a living out of art ? Eight or ten members of the Institute, eight or ten who contribute to the Salon and the other expositions, four or five ‘ independants ’ who sell their pictures in their
studios, twenty-five artists at the moment in fashion, and a few portraitists — perhaps a hundred painters among ten thousand — these are all who can make a living.” Nor does the obtaining of a medal at the Salon help an artist much in selling his canvases. The truth is, that the art- dealers and the serious ama¬ teurs do not care for these recompenses — they buy ac¬ cording to their tastes. It would be easy to mention artists who have never been recompensed, and whose pict¬ ures sell well ; while others who have been decorated, who are members of the jury of admission, who are hors concours, find themselves re¬ duced, in order not to die of hunger, to ask a situa¬ tion of three hundred dollars a year as teachers of draw¬ ing in the common schools. Lucid, doucet : a Touris, in tin Gkuim. “Imagine the state of mind
of these prize-men, with cry at t eir heels ! fhe majority of the very jury that awards these prizes is
E .VILLA
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
7
composed of artists highly recom¬ pensed and extremely poor. Then, artists generally are unjust to one another. It was not long ago that M. Bouguereau said, “ If Millet was alive now, and was offering his pict¬ ures to the Salon , I should still refuse him, as I used to do.” A clear¬ sighted critic and an amateur of taste
R. Collin : In Japanese Costume.
would do much better on a jury, in M. Raffaelli’s judgment, than the average painter. It was to M. Proust and the critics that the public owed the marvelous centennial exhibition of French art at the Paris Exposition of 1889, against the opposition of M. Bouguereau and his friends, who did not wish it.
Thus far M. Raffaelli. But the picture has another side.
The inauguration of the monument to the painter Paul Baudry, in the cemetery of Phre Lachaise, was a most interesting event of the Paris art-season of 1890. The day was superb, although the month was February: the sun shone from a cloudless sky, and the grass was green. Around the grave of the illustrious artist, who will be known to posterity through his magnificent frescoes on the ceiling of the grand foyer of the Opera-House of the French capital, were gathered the most distinguished of his contemporaries in the world of art and literature. Very conspicuous were Meissonier, Bouguereau, and Gerome, standing side by side, in the curious regalia of members of the Institute; and
PAUL JAZET
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
9
among the addresses delivered, the most impressive was that of M. Bouguereau, who, standing bareheaded at the foot of the monument, beneath Mercie’s com¬ manding bronze figure of Glory crowning the head of the painter, reminded his hearers that Baudry, a young peasant of the southwest of France, came to Paris poor, to study art ; that by his resolution and perseverance he obtained the Prize of Rome, which enabled him to spend five years amid the artistic treasures of Italy, where, by his impassioned study of the old masters and the classic writers, he prepared himself for the most beautiful career of which an artist could dream. In the communion of the grand souls of antiquity, said the speaker,
J. Girardet : Mile. Desclde, the Actress, in her Cellar, during the Siege of Paris.
his intelligence found a new splendor, without sacrificing any of the personal instincts with which Heaven had endowed him : it was thus that the diamond loses none of its intrinsic qualities under the instrument which cuts it and polishes it. “A legend recounts that it is permitted to the spirits who visit our earth to descend only upon cradles and upon tombs. Soul of Paul Baudry, if thou dost hover near us, visit then this tomb which pious hands have erected. Say
I mportunily.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
1 1
to thy afflicted brother that thou art pleased with his grateful efforts. Say to thy widow, when she shall come to kneel here, that it only remains to her to dry her tears. Say to thy children, ‘ Grow in the love of the good, cherish your mother, and honor your country.’ Say to the artists who walk with eyes fixed on the earth : ‘ Higher than the material is the thought ; above the reality is the ideal ; beyond the tomb, for those who have contributed to the glory of their country, is immortality.’” This eloquent peroration was warmly applauded, in the presence of Baudry’s widow and his two children. It was as a prize-man of the Ecole des Beaux- Arts that Paul Baudry had been presented by the orator. Even more explicit was M. Gustave Larroumet, Director of the Fine Arts: “If the artistic action of the state,” he said, “ its instruction, its continual effort to aid artists with its initiative or its support, has need to be justified, the career of Paul Baudry would furnish us with arguments singularly powerful. Pupil of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, pensioner of the Academy of France at Rome, Member of the Institute, decorator of the Opera, the originality of his nature developed
A. Moreau : In the Park.
12
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
itself freely in the successive stages of a career which our artistic institutions guided without constraint, and in which he could exercise all his talent without
exclusive theories or noisy revolt.” Was it of M. RafFael- li’s violent prot¬ estations, published scarcely three weeks before, that M. Bouguereau and M. Larroumet were thinking when pre¬ paring their dis¬ courses for that occasion ? As I listened to the ap¬ plause of the audi¬ ence, and watched the array of sympa¬ thetic faces, and re¬ called the triumphs of the poor peasant, who succeeded in obtaining the ob¬ ject of the French painter’s greatest ambition, a mem- edouard ravel : a windy Day. bership in the In¬
stitute of France,
it seemed to me that even M. Raffaelli himself might have been impressed by the tribute paid by Baudry’s fame to the art institutions of his country.
So deep was the feeling in Paris at this time that even M. Francisque Sarcey, whose chief claim to distinction rests upon his dramatic criticisms, hastened to the support of the conservatives. “How I regret,” he said, “not having been able to go to the inauguration of the monument erected by his friends to the memory of Paul Baudry ! I was kept at home by one of those provoking
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
13
ailments that make one stay near the fire. Four years ago 1 followed Paul Baudry to the grave ; I would have given much to be present at his apotheosis, but I have read the papers which published the discourses, and with what pleasure I have seen Larroumet defend that thesis which is dear to me, and which so many times I have sustained in the polemics of journalism, that the School of Rome — that is to say, the instruction given to the winners of the Prize of Rome — like all other schools of art and letters, if it does not bestow originality upon those who have not received it from Nature, does not prevent those to whom this marvelous
E. Levy : The Family.
gift has been given from using it in every direction.” The whole life of Baudry, he declared, was a deposition against those who affected to believe that the instruction given to the winners of the Prize of Rome suppressed their individuality. Baudry’s recently published letters to his friends showed plainly and irrefutably how, little by little, under a strong discipline, his talent developed itself; how he labored to comprehend the Italian masters, and even to copy them, to render himself familiar with their processes, and to disengage slowly, from long and patient studies, his own originality. It was silly to maintain that one is born original, unless one meant simply that originality is a gift of Nature. But those
G. Courtois : Ninon
GEORGES CLAIR
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
15
who possess it were not, on that account, original at the start. They became original. The truth was, that one always begins by imitating somebody. Lamartine began by imitating Parny. Victor Hugo and Balzac were in full possession of themselves only in their later works. Paul Baudry studied at the ficole des Beaux-Arts under masters whom he respected even after he had surpassed them ; and he was already famous when he went to Rome a second time to copy the frescoes of Raphael and of Michael Angelo, and to appropriate
Leon Breton : Reverie.
the processes of these great masters. He feared neither to alter nor to destroy his originality. He extended it and strengthened it. There were false originalities as well as true ones. The false originality was usually a curious knack, due to the personal temperament, and, when new, able to cause amusement for a day. For there was nothing that passes so quickly as a new manner, when one has only a manner. What would be said, in twenty years from now, of painters who, not knowing how to draw, content themselves with throwing on a canvas some luminous spots? “The reputation of Paul Baudry,” said M. Sarcey, in conclusion, “ will only gain with time, because, to an incontestable
«*Mp&
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
17
native originality, he joined strong study under a se¬ vere discipline; be¬ cause he traversed many methods be¬ fore adopting his own ; because he formed himself in those grand schools which guide origi¬ nality without con¬ straining it.”
But M. Raffaelli is not the only pro¬ tester against the present system of awards in art. The earnestness of the official defense of this system at the inauguration of the Baudry monument, and the prompt¬ ness of conservative but unofficial crit¬ ics, like Francisque
Sarcey, to enter the lists, indicate the presence of no ordinary revolt. There is a schism in the Salon itself. We shall have now two annual Salons instead of one ; and the occasion, if not the principal cause of this schism, is the large number of medals decreed at the Universal Exposition of 1889. A ques¬ tion arose whether or not the recipients of these medals should enjoy the same privileges at the annual Salon as are enjoyed by those artists to whom the Salon itself decrees medals, chief among which is the privilege of having one’s picture accepted at the Salon without the usual examination by the jury of admission. The leader of the old Salon is M. Bouguereau, who objected
l8 WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
to the proposal that the Exposition medals should have the value of the Salon medals. His influence has long been paramount in the matter of awarding the medals at the Salon. He is a professor at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and at another well-known art-school; and it is his pupils, more Or less recent, who are said to constitute a majority of the voters at the Salon , by whom the medals are awarded. But the Exposition medals were accorded by a jury named by the state; and if the recipients of them were allowed to rank with the recipients of the Salon medals, M. Bouguereau and his friends would no longer preserve their preponderance. Accordingly, they resisted against the strong insistence of M. Meissonier, who was a member of the Exposition jury, and who, finding himself likely to be outvoted, seceded with his friends — such distinguished artists as Puvis de Chavannes, Dagnan-Bouveret, Carolus-Duran, Roll, Cazin, Duez, and Waltner — and formed a new Salon, under the name of the National Society of the Fine Arts. The old Salon is managed, as heretofore, by the Society of French Artists. The first step taken by the managers of the new society was to pass a formal resolution abolishing all medals of every description. It is pertinent to add that M. Raffaelli has publicly announced his intention of attaching him¬ self to the new society. The strength, however, of the revolt which he leads is
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
T9
G. Cain : A Fish-Auction in Pans.
shown still further by the fact that some of the winners of the Prize of Rome, now studying in the Italian capital, are themselves in rebellion ; and M. Larroumet,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
21
G. Saint-Pierre : At Home.
in his capacity of Director of the Fine Arts, has been compelled to go to Italy and make an investigation. The Academy of France at Rome, where the artists
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
23
who have obtained in Paris the Prize of Rome are obliged to enroll themselves as students, was founded more than two hundred years ago, in the days of Louis XIV ; and among the regu¬ lations then es¬ tablished was one which required the pupils to repeat
R. Gilbert : A Bouquet at Cannes.
their prayers aloud
before going to bed ; another, which enjoined the duty of saying grace before meals; and a third, which fixed the hours of leaving and entering the institution. While these regulations have fallen into desuetude, they indicate sufficiently the spirit of the founders. The Director of the Academy is the eminent painter M. Hebert, now seventy-five years old, a strict disciplinarian, whose sympathies, it is said, are inspired by the traditions of half a century ago, he himself having won the Prize of Rome in 1839. His pupils complain — to quote the words of one of them — that, on arriving at Rome, their enthusiasm is drenched with cold water ; that they are treated like good little school-boys ; that, although many of them have already exhibited at the Salon , they are required to make drawings of eyes, noses, mouths, and ears, without opportunity to express their personality ; that they repeat the work which for ten or twelve years they have been doing in the art-schools of Paris. It would be better, they say, to leave them masters of their time and of their impulses of the present decade of the nineteenth century. But, before departing for Rome, they receive, practically, the following instructions : “ Go, my children, to the Italian capital. It is, to be sure, an insipid city, where you will find interesting remains of an art no longer practiced. Try to forget, as much as possible, that you are living in the year 1890. Become penetrated with the spirit of your director.”
M. Larroumet has listened carefully to the recital of these various complaints, and has sent his official report to the Institute of France. It is impossible to
A, TOULMOUCHE.
ti
hhHK
f§|
mmsm&Sm
» :;■ :i|»: S S;
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
25
predict what this august body will do with it. Probably nothing. The dissatis¬ fied students of the Academy of France at Rome represent simply the old and
useful struggle be¬ tween the conserva¬ tives and the pro¬ gressives, the acade¬ micians and the re¬ formers, the men of yesterday and the men of to-day. Neither party gets all it wants ; but modern history is the record of the triumph of the agitators, although this triumph always comes slowly, and the administrators of it are often the conservatives them¬ selves. Such a ca¬ reer as that of Paul Baudry is not likely to cause the Insti¬ tute of France to speak slightingly of the Prize of Rome, nor is such an an¬ nual exhibition as
that of the “Independent Artists,” in the Pavilion of the city of Paris in i8go, adapted by saneness, beauty, or success, to revolutionize the methods by which France has become the most artistic nation in the world.
L. Doucet : A Portrait.
11. Of Art and Cuisine
Among the minor exhibitions, or “little salons ,” which each year in Paris
W. Bouguereau ■ At the Foot of the Cliff.
'iJsm
C.K DAUBIGNY,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
27
precede the opening of the annual Salon in the Champs-Elysees, none is more in¬ teresting than that of the So¬ ciety of Wo¬ men Artists.
Landscapes, genres-, figure- pieces, and great historical subjects are treated not less than portraits and flowers ; and the elite of society visit the exposition.
The women artists display much esprit de corps , and in 1890 they pro¬ tested vigor¬ ously against the manage¬ ment of the Salon , which had refused more than a hundred of their pictures “ for want of space.” In¬ deed, they threatened to overturn the
management by the votes which they could give and procure. If it be said that
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
29
their success is one of esteem rather than of profit, the same is true, in one sense, of the great body of men who paint : it is easier to obtain praise than to sell pictures. Certainly, their works do not reflect the influence of their masters in a greater degree than do those of the sterner sex ; and there was nothing in the subjects chosen or in the manner of treating them which indicated to the average visitor that the exhibition of 1890 was produced by women and not by men. Among the conspicuous absentees was Madame Madeleine Lemaire, a collection of
E. Debat-Ponsan : A Country Trio.
whose charming water-colors was hung at the same time in the Goupil Gallery of the Rue Chaptal, and afterward sent to New York. It was perhaps ungracious for a visitor at the annual exhibition of the Society of Women Artists to call to mind the fact that a member of the Municipal Council of Paris, M. Lavy by name, had recently arisen in his seat at the Hotel de Ville and publicly declared that the instruction in the art of cooking, which for several years had been given to the girls of the common schools, was not sufficiently serious or extensive. Never theless, the leading journals of the city had devoted long articles to the subject,
.1°
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
approving with emphasis the steps taken by the municipal councilor. One signal exception was noted, that of the Esprit de la Femme , a fortnightly publication founded, directed, and edited by Madame Rene Marcil, who places at the head of her columns, beneath the title-line ol her journal, the following quotation : “ In France, in America, everywhere, it is no longer such and such a woman who fights the great fight of Right and Liberty, it is the spirit of woman herself.” In an article called “The Kitchen of the Angels” she treats with much ridicule the
F. Flameng : “/ lodge with you''
idea of teaching girls in the common schools the art of cooking. Woman demands her rights, she says ; the answer is, let her become the angel of the cooking-stove for the benefit of the digestive organs of the poor husband ; let her train herself to be the physician of the contemporaneous gastritis, the advocate of the rights of the jaws. “O women, you, who are queens, you ask for your rights; you, who so surpass the chiefs of the best offices of the French capital, you supplicate for equality ; you, who have wings, you desire honors, professions, earthly functions.
CAROLUS DURAN
, '^///V/// <"/ //if ^hi/i/f/J \Jv//iy//'/fi
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART 31
Do not use your wings as the bad spirits advise you. In our days the profession
A. LOUDET : First White Bread after the Siege of Paris,. 1871.
of angel is no longer tenable, and that of spirit is valuable no more; and it is
mmm
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
33
truly well that aerial vocations are rare. If you have the unhappiness to possess wings, hide them. I know well that wings are not unusual in kitchens, but they are wings ol woodcock ; and then, I am afraid of angels who do cooking. 1 have seen them sometimes, and I have trembled for the mutton too much roasted and for the choco¬
late cream. Angels have fatal distrac¬ tions, and aspire generally to other flames than those of the cooking-stoves.
Since we have in¬ voked in vain our rights, let us now celebrate the elo¬ quence of roast turkey, and the virtues of beef h la mode" — and so on, through nearly three columns of tireless satire.
Among the ad¬ vocates of the other side of the question was the Temps — ablest of the even¬ ing journals of Paris — which, in a long editorial arti-
D G. Dubufe : Music and Dancing.
cle, proceeded to
remind the founder of the Esprit de la Femme that somebody did the cooking for her, and that, unless she was rich enough to employ a chef and scullions, and to take thus her revenge on the tyranny of the stronger sex, it was safe to wager that this somebody was a woman. To instruct school-girls in the art of mending stockings, hemming napkins, cutting shirts and dresses, cooking cutlets, and mak-
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
35
ing tarts, was doubtless less glorious than useful, and would be despised in the fashionable boarding-schools, whose pupils for the most part expected to keep house with the aid of many servants. Still, in any situation, it was not hurtful to have some notion of how to do what one ordered to be done ; and, as for
most of the pu¬ pils in the com¬ mon schools, they certainly would have oth¬ er duties than to manage a retinue of do¬ mestics. It was excellent to leave school with certificates of advancement in the orna¬ mental arts ; but how for¬ midable was the number of young women who desired an opportunity to teach music or drawing, and who dreamed of obtaining such an opportunity as one dreams
F. Schommer : A Charity-Sale in Russian Costume.
of gaining a
prize in a lottery ! “ The competition is murderous, because the supply is with¬
out limits, and the demand is very limited.” Marriage yet remained the best vocation of woman, but how often a young man, living on a small salary, hesi¬ tates to unite himself for life with a person who, however attractive, intelligent,
36
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
W. Bouguekeau : The Elder Sister.
and instructed, trousseau when
can not cook two eggs, nor take a stitch in the linen of her it begins to show signs of wear; and who, if sentiment should
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
37
Jules Breton : Young Girls going to join the Procession.
Thus, while the annual exhibition of the Society of Women Artists was open¬ ing its doors to the public, the public was occupied less with the pictures and statues which patiently awaited buyers than with the proposition of a municipal law-maker to render more serious in the common schools the instruction given to girls in the modest arts of the cuisine. The reader looked in vain for long and able essays on the annual exhibition of the Society of Women Artists. In their absence, his attention was held by long and able articles on the well-worn subject of housekeeping. The municipal law-maker who had opened the discussion was
happen to fly out of the window, might find herself in a home which the hus¬ band quits without regret, and enters without haste, if, indeed, he does not tarry on the way, dissipating a part of his pay, while the wife and children are forced to content themselves with bad food, and not enough of it to satisfy their hunger ! In a very large number of households the wife is compelled to be her own servant ; in many others, where she is able to hire a servant, it is needful to give this person some instruction, for the intelligence-offices are full of cooks who can not cook.
Mme. Demont-Brkton : The Bath.
Photogravure
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
39
praised for his courage. “At last,” said one writer, “I have heard a man who dares to speak and who knows what to say, and this proposition of his is worth more than anything that has been said or done these ten years in the City Hall.
_ _ _ Women have very few sincere, courageous,
and disinterested friends. They find every¬ where men ready to flatter them and to say foolishnesses about them ; but they take no pains to meet men disposed to give them judicious and perhaps disagreeable counsels. Some of them will consider highly imperti¬ nent the ideas of M. Lavy, who pretends to
teach girls the art of cooking in the schools. But those who have reason will comprehend that this man is right, and that he wishes the happi¬ ness of their chil¬ dren. Doubtless it is very agreeable that a young lady knows how to exe¬ cute a sonata of Mozart, and to make pictures on fans ; but it is needful for her, when she enters upon housekeep¬ ing, to understand how to get on with her youngsters, with
F. Flameng : A Repose.
her cooking-stove,
and with her linen. It is necessary, in a word, to suppress the grotesque pruderies which surround, with a useless rampart, love, marriage, and maternity. If marriage, in consequence of the execrable and stupid education of girls, did not expose young men to overwhelming expenses, they would hesitate much less to take a
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
4i
wife. Even rich young men, who, as a rule, know better than poor ones the exact value of money, would not make a despairing grimace when somebody suggests that they marry a young woman, coquettish and without experience, who would enjoy spending without counting the contents of a new purse, and who would cost them double or triple the revenue of her dowry ; and these calculations make them prudent. Marriage being a social contract, the man who desires har¬ mony between his heart and his reason is wise. The problem, though difficult and
J. F. GuelDRY : The Lock.
delicate, is not impossible of solution. But at school the young woman learns to be pedantic ; and society makes her frivolous and vain. M. Lavy endeavors to equip her solidly and practically for existence, without robbing her of grace, elegance, or charm. If she doubts it, I advise her to go to the Louvre and see Murillo’s celebrated picture ‘The Cuisine of the Angels,’ in which a starving monk, St. Diego, prays on his knees to heaven for food. Immediately the angels descend and prepare a feast for him. They light the fire in the stove, clean up
^MNgg;. >
JULES AVIAT
), APPLETON 5: C9 UaWYORK,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
43
the cooking-utensils, scour the kettles, and make a meal so exquisite that your mouth waters at the picture of it. Alas ! the St. Diegos of modern marriage lift in vain their suppliant hands. Woman, the only angel who deigns still to fly in the skepticism of our worn-out heavens, does not know how to cook. She does not even know how to superintend cooking.” And all this from a repre¬ sentative of the politest nation in the world !
At about the same time that this writer was pessimistically bewailing the fri¬ volity and general uselessness of the modern woman, an incident occurred under his eyes which, though amus¬ ing, would seem to detract somewhat from the force of his argument. A well- known woman in Paris is Madame Marie Huot, secre¬ tary of the Popular League against Vivisection. At two o’clock in the afternoon of a beautiful spring day of i8go she delivered before six hundred students of the Latin Quarter, in the theatre of the Paradis-Latin, an ad¬ dress on the subject dearest to her heart. Having in previous years attacked the practices of the celebrated surgeons Claude-Bernard and Pasteur, she promised to devote her attention this year to Dr. Brown-Sequard. She regretted that she could not “cry from the Eiffel Tower that the animals are our brothers ” — a sentiment that was violently interrupted by her auditors ; so violently, in fact, that an aged man in the audience undertook to defend her by declaring that the students were no longer “ French chevaliers ; but he was only hissed for his pains. Madame Huot then lamented that she had been arrested by the police for distributing on the Boulevards some printed protests
L. Caili.e : Departure for School.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
45
against the bull-fights which took place in Paris during the preceding summer for the delectation oi the visitors to the Universal Exposition ; but the tumult was redoubled. When she an¬ nounced that her society had founded places of ref¬ uge for lost cats and dogs, the students replied by imi¬ tating the cries of those beasts. She reminded them that she had recently made public some examples of very unwise surgical treat¬ ment of sick persons in the hospitals ; but, before her sentence was finished, a medical student arose in his seat and shouted that one of his professors had de¬ clared that there are three principal kinds of fools : first, the Salvation Army ; second, the candidates for the Chamber of Deputies ; and, third, the Anti- Vivi¬ section League. After some carrots and onions had been thrown on the stage, and the collection-bags had been passed by certain young ladies of the League, Ma¬ dame Huot resumed: “You know my famous horse, which I bought for three
II. Gervex : A Portrait.
dollars, and which I have
put out to board with a priest in the country at four dollars a month. A gentle¬ man-farmer, hearing of my goodness toward this animal, offered me two thousand
lock-Fight.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
47
dollars, and wished to make me his heir. He even desired to marry me ; but I refused. A student of twenty-five years, for the same reason, has offered me twenty thousand dollars and his heart. I refused him, too. As for my priest, he has done me a great pleasure — he has sent me the portrait of my horse.” The confusion in the audience became worse and worse, and one of the students swung around his head a stuffed rabbit fastened to the end of a string, while others rained beans, rice, and pigs of spiced bread upon the anti-vivisectionists. When Madame Huot finally reached the principal subject of her lecture — namely, Dr. Brown-Sequard’s recent discovery of
the source of perpetual youth — her language was so ex¬ travagant that the disorder compelled her to conclude in great haste. The next day one of the newspapers described the event under the heading “A Conference on Vivisection.”
hi. Of the New Salon
A hundred artists, under the leadership of M. Meis- sonier, have seceded from the old Salon in the Champs- Elysees and organized a new Salon in the Champ de Mars. The occasion, if not the cause, of the schism was a dispute as to the real value of the prizes awarded at the
G. DE Dramard : Shrimp-Fishers. 1
Universal Exposition of 1889. To the leading French critics no principle of art is involved in the controversy. There has been simply a personal quarrel, and it makes no difference who wins at last. M. George Lafenestre, for example, writing in the Feme des Deux Mondes,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
49
finds only a family discussion, which does not interest the public, except as it increases the number ol pictures to tire the eyes, the limbs, and the patience. Were there only one fourth of these works on exhibition, it would be possible to take a more serious and true idea of the movement of contemporaneous art. The schism does not give us a school fighting against a school, a flag against a flag. On the two sides is the same lack of discipline, the same confusion, the
same pell-mell of tenden¬ cies, of practices, and of theories. There is no trait common but that of talent. Not all the bright young men are with Meissonier ; nor are all the submissive young men with Bougue- reau. “ It is truly aston¬ ishing that the dean of the traditional school, the rigorous, inflexible, infalli¬ ble draughtsman, the pa¬ tient, reflective, erudite composer, M. Meissonier, is, by force of circum¬ stances, at the head of this mixed company of grand artists and daubers, of innovators and laggards, of virtuosos and ignorants, of aristocrats and gamins.” What we see is less a
A. P. Roll : Manda Lamitne, Farmer's Wife. ... .
strife of principles than a
rivalry of persons ; less a schism between the schools than a disagreement between the artists.
In a similar spirit M. Paul Mantz makes light of the event as not of a kind “ violently to passionate souls.” It serves well enough as a peg on which to hang conversation, and as a means of piquing the curiosity of readers of the newspa¬ pers, whose editors, by necessity or in pursuance of their ideal, are habituated
0. C0URTn:s : Morning.
aHcinci Narcnr
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
5i
to discover from time to time a new Rembrandt, a sea-serpent, or a runaway musician ; but it does not interest the question of art. In other days, when there were yet doctrines, when battles were fought in the name of principles, when the French school was determined to find out whether the old Academy would for¬ ever close the doors of the Louvre to Delacroix, to Decamps, to Barye, to 1 heodore Rousseau, to Millet, to all the hopes of an art free and new, the question was as to one’s right to live, and revolts and anger were legitimate in the presence of despotism ; but to-day all the standards are of the same color, and this color,
F. Berne-Bellecour . A Dealer in Chickens.
composed of broken tones, is one of indifference. Strife is no longer possible. The Academy has ceased to be a church. Between those who believe themselves to be the representatives of tradition and those who seek something new there is not a pretext of disagreement. “ The schism, which some people consider as alarming, does not affect a single vital principle.”
Unlike M. George Lafenestre, he sees nothing but prosperity for the new Salon ; nothing but adversity for its rival. Since the opening of the former, in the Champ de Mars, the old Salon has become a temple of melancholies. It must change its methods if it wishes to live. It has received le coup du
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
53
lapin. Henceforth it is proved that one twenty-five hundred paintings, among which there are scarcely a few hundred that deserve to be studied, the rest being not works of art, but commercial or naive products, the reunion of which constitutes an indigestible whole. “ The future be¬ longs to the exhibitions restrained and se¬ lected. The system of complaisance has had its day. Doubtless, we must have some charity for painters without talent ; but they need not cause their unfortunate contemporaries to die of ennui and fatigue. Already many of the retainers of the old Salon are saluting the rising sun. The group of dissidents has won.”
On the other hand, the distinguished artist, M. Gerome, who remains loyal to the old flag, is using all his influence to
heal the breach. To him the schism is a
mournful, even a deplorable, event. He
earnestly hopes that a reconciliation will soon restore to the fold such men as Meissonier, Carolus-Duran, Dagnan-Bouveret, Gervex, Roll, Boldini, Cazin, and Beraud. He looks upon the departure of these painters as many loyal Northerners once looked upon the withdrawal of the Southern States from the Federal Union. He has sorrow, but no bitterness of spirit. His
supreme wish is the restoration of the union.
Here, then, are the three principal re¬ ceptions accorded to the schism : First, indifference — one Salon is as good as the other, and neither is excellent ; second, enthusiasm for the new Salon , contempt
can not make an exhibition with
G. Courtois : Tiselte.
DAG NAN BOUA
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
57
fresh from learning to give “ the note of modernity ” to their paintings, enlisted under its banners; but it had no Meissonier, or, in other words, no Palace of the Fine Arts. For no artist in France has as much influence as Meissonier with the political authorities; and his activity alone was sufficient to secure from the Government the use of that magnificent building and assistance in furnishing it. The National Academy had its fine Venetian edifice at Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, New York; but the Society of American Artists was compelled to rent a hall. At one time it was feared that the new Salon would have to content itself with a similar fate ; that some art-dealer’s gallery would be its head-
for the old ; third, a desire for reunion on the old basis — “ the Constitution as it was before the war.”
To one who examines the resources of the new Salon , a conviction comes that it is likely to stay. It has a local habitation as well as a name. Its head¬ quarters is the magnificent Palace of the Fine Arts, a legacy from the Universal Exposition. When the Society of American Artists seceded from the National Academy, its aims were not dissimilar to those of the new Salon : it wished to protest against a ring, against an odious majority, and to air some ideas of its own on the proper method of conducting exhibitions. Many bright young men,
Coessin de la Fosse : The Shrine of St. Guireck.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
59
quarters. Had such been the case, we should not now see two Salons ; the old Salon would have retained its prestige, and the new venture would be simply one of the several independent exhibitions that Paris harbors every season. Visitors to the Universal Exposition of 1889 will remember the spacious galleries, with lofty ceilings, devoted to the Centennial Exhibition of French Art. These are the quarters of the new Salon , and, whenever more room is needed, other galleries in
the same building can be brought into service. This year there are about twelve hundred paintings ; next year the number may be increased to thirty-four hundred — that of the old Salon. A conspicuous innovation is the Salle de Conversation, a place of rest and retreat, its walls decorated with fine tapestries in frames of plush, and its ceiling covered with immense paintings, executed for the purpose by M. Galland and M. Albert Besnard. The spirit of Japanese art appears in the
J. A. Muenier : On the Bridge.
vfAue ; ' ‘ _
Watching the
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
tributions are placed on the line, or immediately above it, and can be seen equally well, particularly as some space is left between the frames.
The schism will greatly increase the number of artists and of pictures, because there is now twice as much space for the annual exhibition as there was last year. It will destroy an exacting and intolerable monopoly, and, by so doing, will per¬ form a useful public service. It will open to recognition and reward the efforts of able and independent painters who could not bend the knee to the god of the Academy. It will make the old Salon itself an innovator. Already the same old
J. Voirin : Recruits off Duty.
deep frieze, which the late Philippe Burty might have selected, and the whole effect, as well as that of the galleries of paintings themselves, does great credit to the decorative genius of M. Guillaume Dubufe, to whom was intrusted the business of preparing the walls and hanging the pictures.
Three other innovations should be noticed : the number of works contributed by each artist is not limited, while at the old Salon the limit is two ; and these works are hung in groups, giving a more or less comprehensive idea of each artist’s style and capacities. Moreover, there is no “ skying ” of canvases — all the con-
:■ ■
tfl
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
63
Salon , which never before decreed the Medal of Honor to a landscape-painter, has this year passed by the figure-painters and given the coveted award to M. Francais, the protegd and friend of Corot, the one living landscapist who to-day best rep¬ resents his spirit. How far away we are from the year 1874, when the Salon , notwithstanding the earnest appeal of his friends, and the desire of most that was representative in French art, refused to vote the Medal of Honor to Corot ; and when, in order to give him some deserved recognition, a special medal was designed
- - - — by his admirers, and presented to
him in place of that which had been withheld ! The schism, in a word, puts the old Salon on its good behavior, makes it more generous, less exclusive, less ty¬ rannical. The people profit when
T. Mayan : End of the Day in Provence.
the monopolies fall. So long as. the French Government assigns the Palace of the Fine Arts to the new Salon , the new Salon will not cease to exist; and so long as the pictures are hung in groups, and on one or two lines only, the Palace of the Fine Arts will be attractive to artists. As the national authorities have already given to the old Salon the use of the Palace de l’Industrie, in the Champs- Elysees, for thirty-five years, there seems no reason why it should be less friendly to the new Salon. The precedent is established, and the Palace of the Fine Arts, in the Champ de Mars, promises to be for many years the headquarters of the
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
65
new Salon. But will the new Salon continue to despise medals, to refuse them to its exhibitors, and to omit from its annual catalogue the mention of the awards already received by such men as Carolus-Duran, Dagnan-Bouveret, Beraud, and Roll ? I think not. Frenchmen, said the great Napoleon, like medals.
A. Marais : Return to the Stable.
iv. Of Jules Breton, Millet, and Corot
In the summer of 1890 the distinguished artist Jules Breton more than one example of whose genius appears in this portfolio — published in Paris a volume of autobiography, under the title La Vie d'un Artiste , with this touching dedica¬ tion : “To Madame Virginie Demont-Breton, my daughter. Dear Virginie : I dedicate to you this book, of which the first chapters were written especially for you. Yielding to the advice of my friends, I have decided to give it to the public. But it belongs first of all to you, and I owe to you the homage of it. You are my purest pride and my best joy. In occupying myself so little with you in the course of this work, I feel that I sacrifice pages where I would hav e
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
67
spread out my dearest tenderness. But I must needs respect the scruples of your modesty. Accept, then this dedication, dear child ; may these souvenirs meet with the indulgence which your filial piety has already exercised in reading them ! Your father, Jules Breton.”
The daughter whose virtues elicited this tribute is herself a painter of widely recognized talent, having received a gold medal at the Universal Exposition of
A. Marais : A Corner of the Farm.
1889 and several previous awards at the annual Sa/ons. She is represented in Woman in French Art by her most successful work, entitled “The Bath.” The interest of her father’s book lies for us, at present, in certain observations on some of his fellow-artists, notably on his foremost rivals, Millet and Corot. ft he old masters who impress him the most are Phidias, as seen in the divine marbles ” of the British Museum; and Michael Angelo, as seen in the vaulted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Though he has visited the British Museum but
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
69
once, the works of Phidias move him to tears. In the grand collection of the Louvre he has three special favorites : the “ Saint Anne,” by Leonardo, the “ Disciples of Emmaiis,” by Rembrandt, and the “ Apollo Amorous of Daphne,” by Poussin. It is never without a respectful emotion that he crosses the sill of this museum, which he knows almost by heart, and which each visit makes a field
L. Beroud : At the Universal Exposition.
of new observations. One day he is most touched by the simple fervors of the Gothics ; another day by the pomps of the Renaissance ; but there are some works which tower sovereign above every fluctuation of spirit or sentiment, and these he has made his supreme constellation in the heaven of the ideal. He believes that art never produced anything more touching than the head of the ££ Saint Anne ” of Leonardo. No painter has united more mysterious profundity
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
7i
with more precision in form ; it is the dream of ideal sweetness expressed with ideal energy ; nothing is due to chance, everything is intended; and each de¬ tail is sacrificed to the ex¬ pression of the whole in a half-tint more resplendent than natural light, trem¬ bling and radiating with the radiation of the soul, exhaling a gleam super¬ natural and divine. “ O transfiguration of matter !
I love this Leonardo with all my fervors of artist ! ”
As for the “ Apollo ” of Poussin, with its deep sky of soft and brilliant blue where float clouds of pearly gray, art has invented little since. How intense, lumi¬ nous, amorous is the en¬ semble ! “ In this picture
the contours and the col¬ ors, at times sublime and familiar, are so naturally cadenced, so deliciously harmonized, that the eye, deceived by the charm, be¬ lieves that it sees a sort of palpitation, 1 might almost say a divine respiration.
This palpitation, this respi¬ ration, this higher life, produced by the perfect
equilibrium of the parts A. kobaudi : mat, w Non.
:
CAROLUS DURAN,
//m
feel, at each return to Courrieres, the immense voluptuousness of the grand calm of the fields. Then come back to me the thousand problems discussed at Paris among comrades ; they appear in their isolation before my reason. I try to solve them.”
One of these problems was Jean Francois Millet, who exhibited for the first time at the Salon of 1853, his contribution being a picture of some peasants in the fields to whom other peasants were bringing food. To Breton, Millet was an
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART 73
vibrating in a just ensemble , is it not the infallible sign of the veritable cbef- d' oeuvres ? ” With all the attractions of Paris, however, it is not good to live there uninterruptedly. The artist gets an exchange of ideas, but not their com¬ plete absorption. Thoughts, to be fruitful, need concentration ; compression increases their force a hundred-fold. “The boulevard develops a faculty brilliant but superficial, which we call esprit ; but the ambition of the artist ought to go further. Esprit is dangerous in art. Departed from the Parisian whirlpool I
F. H. Lucas : An Evening Celebration.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
75
astonishment. “He gave me a singular impression; this painting, cooked, so to speak, by the sun, austere and earthy, rendered mysteriously the stupefying heat which burns the furrows in the dog-days ” ; while its callous personages, in silhouettes, simplified like those of Egyptian art, had a solemnity blind and wild. To Millet’s enemies the work was the glorification of stupidity. Was it sublime, or was it frightful ? The public waited, as always, for the word of order of the
L. E. Chevk : Ball oj Battles at Versailles.
art-critics. Certainly, it was scarcely charming; but it was not received with the hilarity with which some of his later efforts were greeted. “ This sense of implacable rusticity is not at all that of our peasants of the north, but can be found at times among those of the Beauce.”
Thus much of Millet’s first public effort. Thirty-seven years afterward, how does the splendor of his illustrious name impress his mighty rival? “Millet,” continues Jules Breton, “has since painted many works of a higher art, where he obtains character and sentiment even by ugliness. Little by little he has added an element which he lacked at first— profundity of atmosphere. With a fur-
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
77
sublime, has made of a sheep-pasture under the light of the moon, which has just begun to rise, mysterious as the eternal problem which it awakens, a little canvas vital and pure as Phidias, illimitable as Rembrandt. But halt there, imi¬ tators ! Because Millet has created masterpieces while interpreting man depressed by misery even to the collapse of his being, you have not the right to deny the
rowed field where rests a plow, and where some slender thistles bristle up, with two or three tones and a composition maladroit and woolly, he can stir the fine depths of the soul and chant the infinite. This genius, solitary and at times
A. Agache : Vanity.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
79
them. Beauty will remain always the loftiest end of art. Is he, then, so ugly this man holding a hoe, who excites sympathy, by I know not what of the mys¬ terious and the venerable ? Many of Millet’s drawings prove that his rugged and austere ideal did not disdain the tender expression of an art more serene. I once discussed this question with an artist whom I met bj chance at the disti i bution of the prizes of the Universal Exhibition of 1867. We spoke of the m-
grand, the divine Beauty. The disgracious creatures of Millet touch us pro¬ foundly because he has profoundly loved them, and has exalted them even to the loftier regions where vibrates his inspiration of grand artist ; they preserve the authority of that inspiration. But vulgar ugliness has nothing in common with
J. A. Muenier : Prosperous Days.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
But, after all, the “disgracious creatures” of the master of Barbizon did not give him his reputation, which would not have been greater had he painted the most gracious creatures in the world. The charm of the Angelus lies neither in its figures nor in its story, but in its atmospheric effects— in the tender grace of the day that is dying, in the sweetness of the tonality, in the beauty of the color.
But when Jules Breton speaks of Corot, he is as enthusiastic as a proselyte and as laudatory as a young disciple. He makes no attempt to analyze that
tolerance of certain art-critics who were unwilling that each artist should deliver himself to the impulse of his own originality, or who, judging always after a single mode of comparison, wished to bring back everything to their preferred type, as if the field of Nature was not infinite, like Art, its interpreter. ‘Where¬ fore,’ said this artist to me, ‘ have painters not the right to choose — one of them the rude potato, another the bind-weed twining in the wheat ? ’ He added other developments of the subject better than I could do. This artist was J. F. Millet.”
J. Scalbert : Free Vaccination at the Mayor’s Office, near the Pantheon.
of the Sea and for the Ship-wrecked.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
fortifications, Breton remarked to Corot that one of the latter s “values seemed a little pale. Corot took off his black hat and, comparing it with the correspond¬ ing value in nature, said, “ See if I make it too pale”; but, when Breton objected that it was not the hat that he was painting, Corot replied, “He is right, the
little fellow!” (“// a raison, le petit!”).
About the year i860 Corot paid a visit to Breton, at Courrieres, not far from Calais. “I went to meet him,” says Breton; “we walked across the woods and fields, and all the time we had an infantine jubilation. A nothing, a bud just opened, the tender shoot of a plant, was sufficient to exalt his lyrism, and what
artist’s genius. It is clear that he loves the man, and can be “ moved to tears ” over the painter. “The Corots, the incomparable Corots!” he exclaims, “so re¬ splendent with the ideal which they carry into the sky, so true that the spectator feels as if he were contemplating them from a window opened on Nature her¬ self.” In Corot’s studio one day the two artists were examining a new picture on the easel. “Look at that sky, my little rascal” (“ Pegardez, ce del , mon petit scelirat ”), said Corot, “how it is lighted by itself! You see nothing but it.” Another day, while painting together in the country, and making a study of some
E. Carpentier : Turnips.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
85
lyrism ! ” At dinner, knowing Corot’s taste for tender and succulent mutton cooked to the turn, lor spring chicken well basted, and for strong coffee, his host had provided these dishes, and in addition, from the bottom of the cellar, an old bottle of romanee conti. In the midst of the scintillations of his adorable humor, a serious solicitude contracted his lips. “ He had noticed that my wife, who for nine months had nursed our Virginie, showed signs of great fatigue, and he in-
Madame Pjllini : Holy Thursday in Brittany.
sisted that she should wean the infant without delay. Turning toward me with a severe expression, which was very unusual with him, he inquired, ‘ You don t see it yourself?’ No one of our family had perceived it. My wife followed his advice, and the proof that Father Corot was right is, that she fell seriously ill for some months, and that I believed that I should lose her. God knows what I
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
87
owe to this grand artist for his charitable counsel ! ” In fact, the grand artist was almost universally known as good Father Corot ( bon pbre Corot) ; and, indeed, (t who was more paternal than this painter ol genius, never married, who, at first sight, had the air of a good farmer, with his large trousers and his ample vest buttoned up to the chin ? What good-nature ! What brightness and what subtlety in his tender look ! How clear and serene his brow ! What love, what charity in this mouth, always mobile or slightly brought back on itself, the corners lightly
F. Pecrus : Matinie Galante.
drooping ; for he had none of that commonplace benevolence which keeps many people’s mouths constantly turned up ! ”
With all his modesty, however, Corot knew perfectly well his value as an artist, and, in Breton’s opinion, would have witnessed without astonishment and with perfect calm his triumph at the Paris Centennial Exposition of 1889. A magnificent triumph that was, indeed ; although to me, who had just come from the glorious collection of Corots gathered by the American Art Association in the autumn of the same year, on the occasion of the Barye celebration, it seemed
i.. Cornet : Wedding- Party in the Suburbs of Pc
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
that it was rather in New York than in Paris that this artist would have found his true apotheosis. Not that he would have expected such a triumph — “ oh, no ! he had been too long despised to have any faith in public justice ! ”
But would he have been surprised to listen to this song from the lips of his friend — a song the like of which, for melody and for authority, has never yet been sung in honor of a landscape-painter : “ Corot, the grand initi^for of the poetry of the impalpable air and of the infinite heavens ! the most personal of our modern school, even though we can discover his origins in Claude Lorraine
E. Picard : Evening Rest.
and especially in Poussin. He is the most pure, the most tender, the most en¬ chanting, the most immaterial, the most alive, and, in his grand unity uniform in appearance only — one of the most varied of our contemporaneous painters. Each of his landscapes is a hymn of serene chastity where, nevertheless, everything lives, plays, loves, and palpitates. His dream has expressed in a natural whole the terrestrial realities and the ideal of Olympus and of Eden, preserving a candid unaffectedness even in the subtile refinements of taste. Genius made of
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
91
dawn and of spring ! Smile eternal which old age could not chill ! Child, by the freshness of his enthusiastic vibrations ; thinker, by the sureness of a profound science! We speak of the divine Mozart; we can also say ‘the divine Corot,’ for he was the Mozart of painting. And all this in an adorable good-nature of country proprietor ! Paris may be proud of having given him birth. O France, who hast produced such artists, glory to thee ! ”
May Jules Breton himself, one of these days, find a friend to sing his own praises as well ! But it needs a poet-painter to do this, and there are so few poet-painters !
A. Moreau : On the Cliff.
v. Of the most Influential Woman of French History
In his latest volume of Historical Studies the distinguished Munich professor, Dr. Dollinger, has undertaken to prove that the most influential woman of French history was the brilliant and much-maligned Madame de Maintenon. The nu¬ merous misrepresentations of her history he attributes to three sources : first, to the book which La Beaumelle gave to the public a hundred and fifty years ago, and
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
93
in which some of Madame de Maintenon’s letters were forged, others mutilated, and others subjected to interpolations. It was not until the year 1866 that the falseness of this treatise was ascertained. Its influence still exists, and the slanders themselves are quoted as facts by authorities as eminent as Dr. Ranke and the Due de Noailles. Even the exposure of the frauds by Levallee’s publication of Madame de Maintenon’s original letters has been declared to be itself a fraud, on the ground that the letters themselves were not the originals. But the actual existence of the manuscript in the hands of the Due de Mouchy can not be denied ; and, if there are certain discrepancies in Levallee’s publication, these are simply in
A. Zwiller : A Marriage -Party in Alsace.
the shape of unimportant dates added by the editor in the interests of perspicacity. The next source of the misrepresentation of Madame de Maintenon is the biog¬ rapher Saint-Simon, who knew little of his subject personally. His detestation of the priesthood, and his devotion to the hierarchical system of the court, made displeasing to him a woman who was both a devotee and a parvenue . In such circumstances impartial justice could scarcely be expected. Saint-Simon, moreover, had the reputation of being a particularly good hater. A third cause (to continue the narration of the distinguished professor) was the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte, sister-in-law of Madame de Maintenon and wife of the kings brother. She was
JULES GIRARD ET
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
95
very unhappy at the court of Louis XIV, and it suited her to blame Madame de Maintenon for it. When writing to her friends in Germany she freely called her a fury and a murderess. She accused her of a series of the most abominable crimes. By the side of direct accusation she placed the foulest insinuations ; and the marvel is that, with these three powerful witnesses against her, there should have been left of Madame de Maintenon’s reputation anything but the shreds. “ Scarcely another individual of her sex,” says Dr. Dollinger, “ either in life or death, has been so misrepresented or so unmercifully dealt with as she.” He finds, therefore, special
J. Haag : A Feie-Day in Normandy.
pleasure in bringing into notice points in her life “ which have hitherto been neglected,” and in “amending, by a more impartial distribution of lights and shades, the misshapen image of her which is so frequently presented.” For the allegations of the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte he finds an easy refutation in the letters of Madame de Maintenon herself j and, unlike the historians Ranke and Von Noorden, is convinced that she was actually married to Louis XIV a few months after the death of his queen, the ceremony having taken place at night.
t9***0 ?
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
97
The letters of the Bishop of Chartres, which exhort her not to refuse to the king his rights as her husband, leave no room for doubt ; although the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte herself never knew that Madame de Maintenon was her sis- ter-in-law, so success¬ fully had the secret been kept. The con¬ fessors of Madame de Maintenon, together with several bishops, and the Pope himself, counseled her to ac¬ cept, for the good of France and the salva¬ tion of the king, a situation which seri¬ ously compromised her reputation. The cere¬ mony itself was per¬ formed by dispensa¬ tion from Rome.
But what most in¬ terests us at present is the reasons put forth to sustain the claim that Madame de Maintenon was the most influential woman in French history. Dollinger’s position seems to be this : The most influential man in French his¬ tory was Louis XIV ; the person who most influenced him was Madame de Maintenon ; she was, therefore, the most influential woman in French history. He then proceeds to draw her portrait. No woman in French history, he says, has been more loved and admired, and none more hated ; but the hatred has been invariably produced by envy. The letters which she wrote are worthy of being compared with those of Madame de Sevigne, and are, therefore, among the best in French literature. They are clear, terse, and refined, and, when relating to business, are simple, brief, and to the point. Her style has masculine strength
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
99
and lucidity, and feminine warmth and depth. She had a passionate desire of making herself beloved. When about to leave the convent where she had been
at school, she expressed her wish to die rather than to be separated from one of the nuns who had been her favorite teacher. She made much of self-examination, and her conscience was un¬ usually sensitive. She was skilled in the art of social tact, and knew how to adapt herself to the disposi¬ tions and opinions of others. The companion, friend, and wife of the haughtiest of kings, she never had an im¬ patient word with him dur¬ ing forty years. She won and retained his admiration for her counsel, and his un¬ ceasing delight in her com¬ panionship. She told him the truth about things, and she made for him a per¬ fect home. “Over all his affections and over all his thoughts,” says the Princess Elizabeth Charlotte, “she was mistress.” When sixty- three years of age she received Louis regularly in her apartments three times a day, and his most important political business was done in her presence and with her advice. Few measures were decided without an appeal to her judgment; and, when a cabinet minister made a proposal, the king had a habit ol turning to her with the question, “What does your wisdom think of this?” or, “How does this idea strike votre solidue ?" She even accompanied him during a cam-
Madame de Be
IRAI
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
ioi
paign. Meanwhile her conscience was practically in the keeping of her religious advisers, who, as a rule, seemed to have been devoted to the welfare of France, and who had all sorts of consolation ready for her when Louis declined to take her advice in matters of moment. If she counseled peace, her confessors told her that war was for the interests of the Catholic religion ; if she lamented that her efforts to gather around the king the most high-minded statesmen were fruitless, or if she remonstrated against the unnecessary expense of new public buildings, she was reminded that, after all, nothing could be more honorable or
J. Geoffroy : The Famished.
desirable for a woman than to be the loved wife of the greatest sovereign of the age — the new Louis IX, the chosen soldier of the Church. If she repined at the fact that she was not publicly acknowledged as his wife, that she was not recognized as his queen, and that on many occasions her relations with him were a source of scandal, the Bishop of Chartres would indite an epistle in which he assured her that it was God’s will that her marriage should not be announced. If she tired of her duties in bringing up the young princes and princesses, and knew until ten o’clock at night what the king would ask of her the next
never
^ _
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
i°3
day ; it at times her strongest wish was tor death ; it the long hours of standing when receiving the royal guests were an almost unbearable weariness to the flesh ; if her nervous attacks increased in number and in force as the years wore on — her confessors comforted her with the assur¬ ance that her devo¬ tion was the means by which she would be able to influence the king for good, and that if she in¬ vented novel social pastimes for a mon¬ arch who, as she says in one of her let¬ ters, desired only to amuse himself and to forget everything, she was a true and faithful daughter of the Church. So she continued her ardu¬ ous and conscien¬ tious task of main¬ taining harmony among the many members of the royal household, of accom¬ panying Louis in his frequent wanderings from Versailles to Marly, from Marly to the Trianon, from the Trianon to Fontainebleau, increasing her ill-health by inhabiting unwholesome apartments ; of teaching the peasant-children their cate¬ chism ; of caring for the sick ; of presenting petitions from impoverished nobles who had been deprived of their estates for the benefit of the royal treasury ; and of daily self-sacrifice. She obtained money for others, but had so little for her¬ self that, on his death-bed, Louis asked: “What will become of her? She has absolutely nothing ! ” And all the while she was the subject of coarse witti-
Rosset Granger : Getting Ready.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
i°5
cisms in the daily press and of cruel slanders in private conversation. “ Madame de Maintenon,” says Dr. Dollinger, “ had been taught to regard obedience as the
highest virtue of the spiritual life, and every work, however small and insignifi - cant in itself, as meritorious and holy, if performed in the spirit of submission.
Godet des Marais was the priest whom she chose for her director. She her¬ self said that without him she would not be able to exist. He was to her the
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
personification of her conscience ; he shared the burden of responsibility in a posi¬ tion full of difficulties and temptations, and pointed out to her exactly what she should do or leave un¬
done, and how, in this or that situation, she should conduct herself. So long, she declared, as she had acted upon her own choice, she had been continually afraid of doing now too little, and now too much, or of not doing the right thing at all. But at last,
E. Carpentier : During the Reign of Terror.
in obeying her director, she had found peace. She sent him, month by month, a report of the state of her soul, of her temptations, and her spiritual joys and sorrows. She ought, Godet writes to her, to be, at court, the light of the world and the salt of the earth; she must be the stay and comfort of the Church. It was her mission to reform the world. In his anxiety to console and encourage her, he touches the borders of flattery, and every now and then oversteps them in the emphatic recognition of her virtues. She herself deprecatingly represents to him that his praises foster her self-love. Thereupon he assures her that she has entirely
overcome and laid aside pride and vanity, and re¬ iterates that it is under his direction that she has ar¬ rived at what she is. “We are reminded of Praxiteles, who, in the image before which he knelt, worshiped the work of his own hands.”
It seems indisputable, therefore, that Madame de Maintenon’s influence over Louis XIV was very great, but no one can read her letters without being struck by the fact that she herself did not believe in the greatness of this influence. In many of them the burden
R. Goubie : A Morning Encounter.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
log
of her cry is that her life was useless, that the king did not follow her counsels, and that death was desirable. The more confidential the communications made by her to others, the more defined and conspicuous is this vein of her complaint. Much as the historians may dilate upon her power over the monarch, her own writings show how little, in her estimation, it was ; and, were her confessors to be put in the witness-box, their story would resemble hers, and not Dr. Dollinger’s. With them this much-talked-of influence was rather a desire than an accomplish-
Julien Le Blant : The Grandfather.
ment ; they sought, through it, to increase the dignity and power of the Church, and their wish was father to their thought. The spirit of their advice to her always was : Make yourself useful to the king ; consult his tastes; provide pastimes for him ; educate his children ; promote harmony in his household ; become indis¬ pensable to him ; flatter his pride, in order to get control over his mind ; be docile, in order that you may reign ; stoop to conquer. That Madame de Main- tenon conscientiously and steadfastly obeyed their instructions there can not be the shadow of a doubt. She considered herself as a servant of the Deity in
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
1 1 1
promoting the interests of his Church. But the professor’s argument that she was the most influential woman of French history because of the boundless in¬ fluence which she exerted over the greatest of the sovereigns of France does not seem to be supported by the facts. Even the distinguished historian himself makes no effort to conceal the arrogant disposition of Louis. For him (he says) to reign signified to command. He felt himself a ruler both over minds and bodies, and the source of all honor. He was not so much the father of his country as the master of it. In him the national power and greatness were concentrated and embodied. The wars which he waged became to him religious wars, because by virtue of his office he was the foremost defender of the Catholic religion and Church. He affirmed that his own aggrandizement was his most agree¬ able occupation, because it was the aggrandizement of France, and be¬ cause the aggrandizement of France was the aggrandizement of the Church.
Pride was the most prominent feature of this man. He fancied that he had raised himself so high by the power of his own will, and that he had educated his ministers himself. It was his plans which had prepared victory for the army, and his wisdom and gold which had secured the triumphs of di¬ plomacy ; and, by flattery and homage, the clergy and the nobility strove to outdo every other class in carrying this intoxicating self-confidence beyond the limits of sobriety. “ Almost every one, says his minister, Torrey, “was an object of suspicion to him; to every one he was ready to impute impure motives.” He candidly admired himself, the wisdom of his administration, the magnificent results of his actions. It was a principle with him that each individual and corporate body was bound to obey his orders with¬ out question. He believed in absolute, unlimited monarchy not by any means as being one form of government among others equally legitimate, but as the only form agreeable to the will of God. When, in a time of profound peace, and in defiance of the law of nations, he suddenly fell upon the Duke of Loriaine and
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART 113
took possession of his country, he commanded that the prisoners, men who had only done their duty, should be sent to the galleys. On the remonstrance of his minister Lionne, he merely reiterated the order.
It is in these words that the learned professor himself describes the arrogance of Louis XIV . Is it possible that over such a monarch the influence of any
G. Bourgain : The Model.
woman could have been so great as to entitle her to be called the most influ¬ ential woman of French history ?
Perhaps the most striking of the plates in this portfolio of Woman in French Art is the one entitled “ Marie Antoinette and her Children.” The greatest event in modern history was the French Revolution, of which Marie Antoinette was, it not the cause, at least the occasion, and in which she figured as an illustrious heroine. Considering the influence of that mighty and unparalleled crisis, and the intimate relations thereto of the queen of Louis XVI, is it extravagant to assign to Marie Antoinette the rank of the most influential woman in French history ?
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
U5
committee of aldermen or of the Legislature than with ladies. He preferred to execute orders for jails or court-houses, the plans for which were submitted to the inspection of men ; he declined to make designs for town-houses or villas,
vi. Of a Figure-Painter who seldom painted Women
The American architect Richardson once remarked that he had given up his practice of designing private residences, and that thenceforth he would confine his efforts to public edifices only. It was less irksome, he said, to deal with a
Jean Bf.raud : The Doctress.
jjgXatd&gg *
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
117
because the criticisms and the demands of the ladies who were to occupy these structures had a tendency to exasperate him. His feelings, no doubt, were un¬ reasonable, but they existed nevertheless } though he had been able to overcome them sufficiently to give to the world the most original and beautiful designs for
Edouard Manet : Woman with Parasol.
private residences that America has seen. Meissonier was equally sensitive. To many persons he seemed haughty and arrogant. One day, in response to an invi¬ tation to meet Napoleon III at Fontainebleau, he was compelled to wait in an anteroom while a messenger from one of the embassies, who had arrived later
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
1 19
brusqueness,” observed another,
7 7 L. ChiAliva : The Shepherdess.
“ was such as to alienate from
him much devotion. The artists thought him surly.” On one occasion he con¬ tracted to paint the portrait of a well-known American woman. When the work was finished, the sitter was dissatisfied. Some words were exchanged, and the pict¬ ure was stored by her in the cellar of her house — according to one account ; in the furnace, according to another. Among the subjects which Meissonier chose to rep¬ resent him at the Centennial Exhibition of French Art in Paris in 1889, only one —
very small and comparatively uninteresting — contained the figure of a woman. He pre¬ ferred to paint Napoleon I. Meissonier was the son of a shopkeeper of Lyons, who dealt chiefly in foreign fruits. His father expected and desired him to follow the same vocation, and, when the lad insisted upon studying art, allowed him fif¬ teen francs a month. The first dealers to whom he submitted his designs refused them. For the canvases that he succeeded in selling he re¬ ceived five francs a square yard. Fifty years afterward the small canvas known as
L. Chialiva : Feeding the Fowls.
than he, was ushered into the imperial presence. His irritation was so great that he left the palace without seeing the emperor. The biographical notices printed in Paris after his death did not fail to make much of this trait in his character. “ This little man, with the patriarchal beard,” said one of them,
“ made many enemies. He was easily angered, and very dogmatic. In the studios, where he was recognized as a master equal to Ingres and Delacroix, he was not loved.” “ His
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
12 1
“1814” was sold for eight hundred and fifty thousand francs, the largest sum ever obtained for a modern painting.
Criticism is a thing so easy in a world where nothing is perfect, that one need not be surprised at certain things said, even in Paris, of Meissonier’s work. While it was generally admitted that he was the chief glory of the French school, its most illustrious representative, the man whom France always loved to present to foreigners and to the world, the praise that followed him was not unmixed with disparagement. I do not speak of the English critic who lamented “ his charac-
D. F. de Vuillefroy : Spaniards of Aragon going to the Fair.
teristic defects of coldness, want of spontaneity, and narrowness of view,” together with “ the harshness and hotness of his color,” but of leading French critics. “He treats his subjects,” says M. Paul Mantz, “with an episodic familiarity and with¬ out emotion.” Well, in his three most celebrated paintings, representing respectively the rise, the triumph, and the fall of Napoleon, one sees signs of very considerable emotion. I was standing by the artist’s side one day, in his studio, watching him as he put the finishing touches to the large water-color replica of the famous “ 1807,” now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York. Around me were
•wfSHSJ
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
123
Jacques Wagrez : Proclaiming the Edict.
]flcqvEsi\Vft&R.EZ^ is
scores of new sketches and studies made at his country-seat in Poissy, near Paris, all of them used in producing the replica. The subject, it will be remembered,
E#S
C.MEISSONIER,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
127
represents Napoleon at the height of his success, reviewing his soldiers as they gallop by, and listening unmoved to their cheers as they wave their flashing sabers. What was there to be said in the presence of such a masterpiece ? I ventured simply to observe, but in tones of warmest admiration, “ It is the glory of Na¬ poleon.” “Yes,” replied the painter, with enthusiasm, “that is it — the glory of Napoleon.” It seemed to me that there never was a picture painted with more rational emotion. And the same is true of the whole series that depict the career
• V. Gilbert : In the Market.
of the great soldier. It was to these pictures that Meissonier gave his ripest genius, and the subject that they depicted was the one nearest his heart.
It has been said of Meissonier that he was too much of an archaeologist ; that he preferred to dress his figures in the costumes of other times ; but even M. Mantz is forced to admit that these figures were studied after Nature : “ He found among his friends and in his family models of an indefatigable complai¬ sance, and he drew them with all their life. No other modern painter knew as well as he the details of the construction of the human form, the fold which cloth makes on the body in repose or in movement, the expression of the gesturing
V. Gilbert : Midday.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
129
hand.” It is no disparagement to urge that these figures do not show to the same degree as those of the old Dutch masters “the envelope and the mystery of chiaroscuro they excel in other qualities; and, if sometimes “his piercing eye made distant details appear as if they were only two steps from his palette,” or, as another objector expresses it, if his great acuteness of vision caused him to place certain distant objects outside of their true plane; if a hand stretched out on the arm of a chair had a disconcerting exaggeration of relief — the wonder is
T. Deyrolle : Going- (o Market.
small : he was betrayed by the very excellence of his intention to draw everything as well as it could be drawn.
Meissonier did not die before receiving all the official honors that France can bestow upon a painter : he was Member of the Institute and Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. At each of the three Universal Expositions of 1855, 1867, and 1878, he obtained the Medal of Honor, and with it a higher rank in the Legion of Honor, until, on the occasion of the Universal Exposition of 1889, he received the supreme decoration of the Grand Cross. He was the only artist in France
A. Brouillet : The Hospital in the French Theatre.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
131
to whom this decoration had been awarded, and he took no pains to conceal his pride when wearing it. In the Luxembourg Gallery he is represented by the well-known picture of Napoleon III at the battle of Solferino. He lived like a prince in the magnificent palace that he had built for himself on the Boulevard Malesherbes, near the Madeleine. His summer house at Poissy — one hour north by rail — was scarcely less luxurious, but his friends knew that his passion for con¬ structing palatial edifices kept him poor ; and that in the latest years of his life, when his pictures were obtaining prices higher than those of any other living artist, his indefatigable industry — so extraordinary for an octogenarian — was not sufficient to keep him from pecuniary embarrassments. To his lasting fame be it
Jules Breton : The Pardon.
said, that in these adverse circumstances he never once sold a work that he felt he could have improved, and he religiously retained for preservation in the Louvre after his death the two oil-paintings, “The Attack” and “The Etcher,” together with the series of sketches made for the “ 1807,” works which at any moment could have been sold for immense sums. The contents of his studio at the time of his death were estimated by an expert to be worth four hundred thousand dollars, but it is not believed that he has left to his heirs a fortune at all large.
Like most successful professional men, Meissonier desired to shine also in a sphere outside of his profession. This sphere with him was politics; and, during the War of 1870, he formally asked of Gambetta the prefecture of Metz. The statesman did not accede to the request, but gave him his friendship instead, and
Mme. Vigee Lebrun : Marie Antoinette in Gala Costume.
used to regard him as a valuable ally in procuring the passage of various mu¬ nicipal measures. He served one term as Mayor of Poissy ; but his undoubted administrative gifts were most clearly revealed in the management ot what was known as the “ Meissonier Salon," in opposition to the long-established Salon of the Champs-Elysees, of which Bouguereau was the leading spirit. When it became necessary, for the preservation ot the new society, to obtain a permanent head-
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART IJ3
many were the conferences held by these distinguished Frenchmen on subjects con¬ nected with civic administration. From that time forward Meissonier’s influence in politics, particularly at the City Hall, was not inconsiderable, and his friends
Charles Hue : Awaiting an Interview.
'
quarters in the Palace of the Fine Arts at tire Champ dc Mars, it was Meissonier’s
influence with the municipal authorities at the City Hall that secured the prize. “ If,” said a well-known Parisian to me, “ the new Salon is compelled to use some art-dealer’s gallery for the exhibition of its pictures, the new Salon will not live a year.” It was Meissonier’s influence with the politicians that sustained the organ¬ ization into which he had breathed the breath of life.
No artist who visited the commodious and beautiful apartments reserved for the “ Meissonier Salon,” in the Palace of the Fine Arts, could have failed to be pleased, if he was repre¬ sented there.
With the partisans of the various schools of art this master had no sympa¬ thy. When the battle of the Romanticists and the Classicists was being fought, his voice was not heard.
He simply continued to study with infinite care, and to paint with infinite pa¬ tience, the clothed human form. Later on, in the marvelous series that illustrates the Napoleonic legend, he introduced the landscape also — with finest effect, perhaps, in the celebrated “ 1814,” where even the clouds sympathize with the sorrow of the mighty soldier in his disastrous retreat from Moscow. When he wished to depict the effect of a battery of artillery proceeding over a field of snow, he obtained permission from the authorities to send a battery of artillery across the snow-clad fields of Poissy. When he wished to show on canvas the regiments of cuirassiers defiling before Napoleon in “1807,” he made arrangements to have a regiment of cuirassiers charge across a field of wheat, he himself on horseback watching them with eagerness, and afterward sketching the grain that had been trampled by the
Laurens : The Oath of Ste
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART ,37
horses’ hoofs. He despised the Impressionists. He wished to build his fame on the good old foundations of the masters ; and we may say of him, with Delacroix,
that, of all the artists of the age, he is the surest to endure. The last time that I saw him was at the unveiling of the monument to his friend Paul Baudry, in
A , TOU LMOU CHE,
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
139
Pere-la-Chaise. The expression of his face was as if he considered Death an impertinence.
VII.
Of the Relatioti of American to French
Painting
The almost universal criticism on the American pictures exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1889 was that they did not indicate the existence of an American School of Painting. “ Impor¬ tant though these pictures were,” said a writer in the Revue des Deux Monde s, “ and more in number than those of any other foreign nation, it was in the American gallery above all that the spectator would consider himself in the French gallery.
The brilliant portraits of Mr.
Sargent, where he shows himself to be the rival of his master M. Carolus-Duran ; the ‘ Spanish Quatuor ’ of Mr. Dannat, of an execution so ardent and so vigor¬ ous ; the ‘ Pilots ’ of Mr. Mel chers ; the ‘ Twilight ’ and the ‘ Wave ’ of Mr. Alexander Harrison, a landscapist truly hardy and origi¬ nal ; the ‘ Benedicite ’ of Mr.
Gay ; a certain number of works by Messrs. Knight, Chase, Vail,
Davis, Bridgman, Boggs, Mac- Ewen, and Mosler — remind one almost always of some renowned French master, and differ but little in subject or in manner.”
_ A. Lynch : Edmond and Madeleine.
The United States, continued
the critic, might in time come to have an art of its own ; and in the work of such able illustrators as Abbey, Reinhart, and Low one could see already signs
for the Absc
*»«*> <*m -
v
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
of promise. Nor would it be in accordance with the ordinary laws of artistic evolution, if there did not issue from this brilliant virtuoiite a movement of special art when this ability should have been transplanted in American soil. But such a result just now was declared to be only a hope and an aspi¬ ration. “Up to the present moment the young Americans are so French that we can scarcely distinguish them from ourselves.” And similar views have been expressed by a hun¬ dred other writers.
An authoritative French critic, M. Maxime du Camp, has said that, properly speak¬ ing, there is not even a French School of Painting ; that, in France, the disengagement of the peculiarities of each pro¬ fessional painter seems to be the object of art. It is also to be remarked that all the American painters mentioned by the contributor to the Jfe- vue dei Deux Mondes are those who are called in Paris the “ Paris Americans,” to the ex¬ clusion of the “ American
A. Lynch : The Waterfall.
Americans,” whose works were
exhibited in a separate room at the Exposition of 1889; the “American Ameri¬ cans,” in the language of the Parisians, being those who do not live in France. If these Paris- Americans remind one almost always of some renowned French artists who are their masters, the same is true of young Parisians themselves, who are still in their years of tutelage.
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART I45
Now, the French School has very marked limitations, and the first and frankest to admit their existence are French critics themselves. I do not speak of what a great English critic once called “the smoothness and overfinish of texture of our Gallic neighbors ” — an observation which has little force to-day. The difficul¬ ties lie deeper. Nor do I refer to that absence of “a tender love for reality ” which Charles Blanc lamented, and which he said that Decamps was the first French painter of note in three centuries to exhibit : “ Before him none of our masters
Edouard Ravel : In the Sledge.
seemed to have suspected the existence of the country, the true country. Poussin and Claude had painted only imaginary regions, sublime and worthy of a hero or of a consul — Si canimus sylvas, sylvae
sint consule dignas,
said our painters. With his 1 Chiens Savants’ Decamps entered a region occupied until then by goddesses in tunics, heroes in casques, generals in uniforms.” But Decamps, born at the beginning of the century, belongs to the past. It is of contemporaneous French art that I am now speaking — the art of the present generation. And this art is actuated by the tenderest love for reality.
' 111
F. Schommer : Entering the Dining-Room.
weakening itself by its overabundance ; and that landscape-painting, the most flourishing of all, is entirely absorbed in details, and has lost the secret of the grand harmonies. Sculpture alone is in a healthful condition. To regenerate the modern school would be a hopeless task, because it would involve a change in
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART I49
From hundreds of examples of authoritative French criticism of French paint¬ ing let us take three, which appeared almost in succession, in the descriptions of three Salons in the columns of a leading French review. In the first we are told that “ the painting of style ” is getting worse and worse ; that genre painting is
«**»>
WOMAN IN FRENCH ART
sl:‘: .
grand battles of the
are now
schools
mere scrimmages of adventurers who saber one another at hazard, having no flag, no chief, no beliefs, no re¬ spect, no tactics, and thinking only of the booty. In the third, we are informed that the annual Salons are notable chiefly for absence of style, poverty of con¬ ception, and carelessness for what is great and what is beautiful.
Upon what grounds, then, are Americans to justify what an English critic has correctly called “their absolute predilection for French art”? Upon these grounds : The essential quality of French genius in painting is clearness of pic¬ torial vision. It sees things pictorially, and it sees them clearly. And the essen¬ tial quality of French instruction in painting is devotion to drawing. In no other country in the world do this clearness of pictorial vision and this devotion to drawing exist to the same extent as in France.
Jules GlRARDET : President Grfyy's Dream.
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