Vellum edition BOUSSOD, VALADON & C° PARIS & NEW YORK SALON OF 1895 With text in English, translated by HENRY EH CON Vellum Edition. — Text and engravings on Vellum Paper. Holland Edition. — Limited to 100 copies. — Text and engravings on Holland Paper, each copy numbered : from 1 to 100. SALON OF 1895 With text in French. Vellum Edition. — Text and engravings on Vellum Paper. Holland Edition. — Text and engravings on Holland Paper, each copy numbered. L. BENEDITE Director of the Luxembourg Gallery GOUPIL’S PARIS SALON OF 1895 One Hundred Plates—Photogravures and Etchings ONE WATER COLOR FAC-SIMILE BY GOUPIL & C° With text in English, translated by HENRY BACON BOUSSOD, VALADON & C° PARIS & NEW YORK THE SALON PAINTING or six years now the two Exhibitions, the offspring alike of the old official Salon, have been successfully working under the watchful eyes of those prophets who foretold the overthrow of one, or the failure of the other. The division is now final; and it must be said that the public seems quite used to it, for it bestows its favor equally, and with great liberality, on the new and on the old Institution. In fact, the public, indifferent to the squabbles of schools and disputes as to principles, has thought only of the advantages it derives from this rivalry, without attempting to weigh the exact degree of THE SALON OF i8g5 merit attributable to the two Exhibitions. It is very evident that, were it only from the point of view of the gallery it occupies, the efforts made by the Society in the Champ de Mars from the first year of its existence have been an admirable stimulant for the authorities at the Palais de l'lndustrie; they have since taken their revenge, but they had too soon forgotten the good advice given them by the Com¬ mittee of the Beaux-Arts at the time of their last general Salon in 1880, and at the National Exhibition of 1 883 . It is but just to say, that the first idea of a more tempting and comfortable arrangement of our Paris picture shows was due to the State, as also the admirable plan of the triennial Salon of i 883 , with its simple classification of the paintings, the large gilt tickets showing the name of the artist over each collection of works by the same hand, the luxurious reading- room, and the sculpture artistically displayed in the splendid setting of the tapestried hall. Nothing of all this—not even the “sympa¬ thetic grouping" which artists at that time laughed at, though it is in fact the only possible classification in a museum or an exhibition intended to have any meaning—has failed to leave a mark, or at least a vague reminiscence in one of these galleries, where the works of an artist are, as much as possible, hung together, instead of being scattered, as of old, among all the rooms. To be sure it was the State's initiative, and it will always be said that the State is inca¬ pable. A fresh element of competition and public interest is supplied by the official admission of various minor works of art, such works, that is to say, as rarely used to be seen, and only when it was possible surreptitiously to override one of the old solemn rules, laid down at the beginning of the Catalogue as though it were the fagade of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. The more liberal decision of the Societe des Beaux-Arts coincided very happily with a marked revival of “ Arts and Crafts." It was immediately after 1889, and the beauty of our glass and pottery, our textile and metal works was notorious. Hence, from the first season, this section of “ objets d'art" had a genuine rP 9 E. HEBERT fapi/riqhr E fftfierr. THE SLEEPING CHRIST. SALON DE 189b M ME DEMONT -BRETON PAINTING 3 success, which has never shown any diminution. It may be well to remind the reader that, here again, the State was the first to put in a word on the subject; for, at the very time when the Marquis de Chennevieres—then president of the Union Centrale, and Director of the Beaux-Arts—was preparing at the Luxembourg, of which he still was the curator, a display of tapestry, vases and goldsmith’s work, M. I.afenestre, afterwards the Commissary General of the Exhibi¬ tions, was advocating in 1874, in his report on the Exhibition of the Union Centrale, the creation of such a Salon of Arts and Crafts. Since then it has been everybody's idea ; and indeed, it hardly seems to .have any longer a raison d’etre , now that it exists in fact at the Champ de Mars, and even at the Champs-Elysees, where this inno¬ vation, introduced last year, is this year definitely sanctioned. It is quite certain that if competition is the soul of commerce, it is also the soul of the arts ; and this axiom is demonstrable, not only in France, but in London, Berlin and Munich, where the public are able to award the palm with a choice of two Exhibitions, if not more. The two rival art-shows henceforth need only walk side by side, each making intelligent efforts to extend and defend at all points the realm of Art; either by hailing everything boldly and originally new, which can show us the beautiful under a fresh aspect, or by encouraging the strong work which embodies the old traditional spirit, without succumbing to the vagaries of the day. And yet a certain uneasiness seems to prevail among some artists who are not fully satisfied with the present state of things, and would fain return to the past, or who dream of some new scheme for the future. Some are annoyed by the secessions, which do not classify artists strictly according to their affinities, which continue to spread, in consequence of the neglect by the State of minor exhibi¬ tions, even in foreign countries, and which the artists think a danger to the highest interests of Art. Others are troubled as to the financial side of the question, and others again are vexed by a tendency they 4 THE SALON OF 189 5 discern in the new exhibition to lapse into the practices of the old one. Each has his little grievance or his little regret. The sup¬ pression of the buildings in the Champ de Mars and the Champs- Elysees, on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition of 1900, had still further increased these anxieties, for the absorption of these Art- palaces at one time seemed imminent, and both Societies would have had to look out for suitable premises. Such an event seemed big with results. On this point, however, excitement is allayed, since a recent decision of the Commissary-General of Art Exhibitions, has promised that the two galleries shall be left open to the last moment. But anxiety is not altogether relieved ; remedies are to be sought, and as may be supposed, a desire for the restoration of the Exhibitions to State control is being aired in many quarters, as the only 1 # if\ > J. BRETON PRINCETEAU PAINTING 5 prevention of such a crisis in their history. It is probable—if not certain—that the State will turn a deaf ear, and that it has no mind to resume the onus of an affair so full of difficulties which it would be unable to solve. The real remedy lies in the artists’hands. The truth about this anticipated crisis is that the Exhibitions—one as much as the other—tend to lose their interest by the increasing mediocrity of the examples sent in, and this is the result of excessive overproduction in art. _ “Too much art by half!” wrote our col¬ league, M. Arsene Alexandre, in a witty article ; and it is unfortunate¬ ly only too true, there is too much art in everything. The old vulgar prejudice which banned the artist of the family and ignored him in society is simply inverted. It is quite the correct thing, in the highest and most fashionable circles, as well as in the commercial world, to practice an art ; there is not a concierge who does not dream of a mansion for his son, with a studio, in the Boulevard Ber- thier or Rue Ampere. In this respect the Ecole des Beaux-Arts has stolen a march on the Ecole Polytechnique. In the novels and dramas of the day, the young painter or sculptor has taken the place of the engineer or the attache. And if it were only the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, we might comfort ourselves with the reflection that so many of the people in the country who are dying of hunger, at any rate know how to draw the line of a nose or the intricacies of an ear. There might be some employment for them in the anthropometrical offices in the provinces. But there is no need, in these days , to have studied art to be dubbed an artist. It comes “by nature” and without an effort. The real peril of exhibitions, the swarming microbe of art, is the amateur. Of the 10,000 or i 5 ,ooo objects of every kind displayed at the two Paris Exhibitions, how many are the xvork of professional hands? Of i,800 pictures admitted at the Champs-Elysees, or 1,200 at the Champ de Mars, only count how many there are painted for a freak as it were, by intelligent and dexterous idlers, singing as they follow in the furrow ploughed by others, and generally the snobs or 6 THE SALON OF 1893 histrions of art, encouraged by the weak simplicity of reat artists. Everybody paints more or less, models more or less, and since decorative art has been adopted as younger brother, everybody is more or less a potter, or an iron-worker, or dabbles in glass-painting and cabinet work. Nothing so pathetic has been seen in the finest periods of Antiquity or the Renaissance. The century may die five years hence with Nero’s parting cry. The responsibility for all this muddle lies in the artists themselves. They have encouraged this invasion of useless bread-eaters, by placing art within their reach. They have lowered the level of art, have debased it to the frivolous skill of dilettanti , to easy tricks of craft, to the record of superficial impressions which seize only the surface of things, all so effectually that no long apprenticeship is needed to acquire the technique, and no effort required to enter into their aesthetic formulas. Formerly, to paint a picture—even a bad picture, one of those detestable little genre pictures which marked the period of the Second Empire—it was at least necessary to find a subject, to think out a composition, to study accuracy of form; for the public addressed insisted on understanding, and wanted clearness and emphasis. This certainly was not the art of the idealist, nor of the symbolist, nor was it modern art, or art pure and simple. It was perhaps as dull as ditch- water, but at any rate it demanded professional training, as much as carpentry or wheel-work, street sweeping or watering, and the ama¬ teur who failed to master the technique kept his place, content to paint in his own way, the only way indeed which he can understand and which is adapted to his powers. But now! Good heavens, painting is not such an elaborate matter. It is as easy as writing books, and we know how many clever men we have in that line, who have nothing to do but to shift adjectives. We have, it is true, rediscovered the genius of the French language which had been so cruelly and disloyally misapprehended by a mob of simpletons or dunces whose statues may be seen on our fountains, If h . -tf* PAINTING or, who are exhibited any Tuesday, in the Chamber of Horrors at the Comedie-Frangaise. It is no less true that art too has at last been started on the right road, after wandering astray so long in the path of those fools or imbeciles—should they be blamed or pitied ?— whom the State has housed at a great cost between the place du Carrousel and Saint- GermainTAuxerrois. It matters not; we long to cry like Alexandre—of the Eclair newspaper— “ Where are the modest dwellings of our fa¬ thers ? ’’ What is fine in all this is the part played— not by criticism, there is hardly any true criticism left, and whatever sur¬ vives, the world has agreed to kill off—but by the public, the Great Public, the world at large, in short, the great soul, anonymous and wise, which dictates the laws of taste, governs the world, and cherishes the sweet delusion of a modern Athens. But the Public looks very happy after all. It has leave to excite itself, to pronounce judgment, to exalt names and adjudge prizes ; and then, it now has a second varnishing day. This, with the horse-show, makes three high days before the Grand Prix, delightful opportunities for pretty women to appear in new THE SALON OF 189 5 dresses, hatted and draped in the testhetic style of the day. In fact, we ourselves go on those days for nothing else. Of old the worthy public came mostly on Sundays, looked at the pictures, and did not always understand them. They were like an old stock-jobber I once knew who said, while studying a surgical treatise : “ I don't always understand it, but I learn something.” The pub¬ lic did not understand Puvis de Chavannes, Gustave Moreau, Claude Monet, but it learned something all the same. To promote its education the more far-seeing artists would carefully insert in the catalogue, between quotation marks, little sentimental anecdotes, which at public sales might be seen cut out and pasted on the backs of the pictures. We have changed all this now. Our public under¬ stands everything with half a word, is ecstatic before Whistler whom it reconciles with Burne-Jones, and talks big of Boeklin. Puvis, Mo¬ reau, Monet are so old-world already. They are ancestors! You need only follow, on the varnishing day, the motley crowd wearing hair as pathetically flat as Ophelia’s, romantic neck-ties like Byron and Chateaubriand, poetical waistcoats like Alfred de Vigny, philoso¬ phical trinkets like Stendhal, and the Baudelairean hues of Liberty- stuffs, and then say if this is not a truly aesthetic mob. You need only listen to hear how erudite it is, how sagacious and refined. They are all (esthetes of course, and at least half of them are among the exhibitors. What a pity that there should be no prizes for the public! A traveling scholarship should really be founded for the Asylum for the Blind. Though there still is an element of uncertainty in the successive annual exhibitions, it arises only from this cause : the stagnant block of amateurs to whom art is no more than an amusement or display of vanity, and of craftsmen who take it up as a career in which, more than in any other, they imagine that fortune favors the bold. The remedy is thus easily found : get rid of the mediocrities, and bring a great many masterpieces to be hung. The way would be for each Society clearly to understand its duty and adhere to it ROCHEGROSSE . PAINTING 9 strictly, so that there should be no rivalry between them but that of talent—the really indispensable rivalry in our school, and which is no doubt the chief source of its activity, fertility and strength, in spite of the general disruption of opinions, and conditions so eminently unfavorable to raising the standard of art. One of these Societies will have to make no great effort. Constituted at it is on selective principles, like a sort of closed Academy, an artistic club rather than a Salon in the democratic sense of the word, it is practically open only to the artists it invites, and its vital interest must always reside rather in the quality than in the number of its members. With the assembly of young and earnest talent which it has absorbed, surround¬ ing a nucleus formed of masters whose leaning- is towards the artistic expression of contemporaneous thought, it cannot fail to increase its attractions and its influence by a severer spirit of selection, by thrusting aside all the imitators and vulgarizers, however clever, who, by their commonplace reiteration of the characteristic notes of the real masters, sometimes disgust us at last with the masters themselves. With regard to the other, its position is more difficult, for having accepted from the State the task of organizing an annual exhibition, it has come into an inheritance involving certain obligations and a serious responsibility. Whatever selection may be exercised now or in the future in repressing the invading tide of works sent in for exhibition, it must not forget that it is an essentially democratic in¬ stitution and not a private society, bound to open its doors as wide as possible to give unknown talent a chance of asserting itself publicly. Narrower exclusiveness might, no doubt, result in a higher average of work, but might risk the sacrifice, for which the juries of the old Institute were so much blamed, of individualities as yet unappreciated. It may be said without fear of contradiction in these days, that though on the walls of the Palais de l'lndustrie we too often find heart-breaking attempts which are the despair of our eyes, and whose very existence we should be thankful to ignore, we may, on the 3 10 THE SALON OF 1895 other hand, enjoy the conviction that we have never to regret the exclusion of a masterpiece, in bud or in fruit, among the crowd of the rejected. Still, may there not be, on this side, another alternative possible, outside, or perhaps subsidiary to, the great spring exhibitions ? Might there not be some advantage in the multiplication of small picture- shows, where a limited number of works would preserve, more emphatically than amid the swarm and turmoil of these great annual fairs, their value, meaning and charm? It would be easy for artists thus to unite, as affinity or sympathy might dictate, in limited and purposeful groups, allowing them to come before a less exhausted and more studious public, with greater method and fuller expression. Might we not also return to the old plan of shows of pictures not immediately new, to which artists of real merit could send an unlimited number of their best works ? Besides the great decennial exhibitions under the protection of the State, which bring together a representative collection of the artistic work of France and of foreign countries, without distinction of influences, tendencies, groups or society, would there not be room for those shows at closer inter¬ vals? These were too hastily given up by the State, in response to the appeals alas ! and recriminations of the artists themselves, who fancied they saw in them a danger to the independence they had so recently extorted rather than conquered. We still remember those triennial exhibitions of which the first—which was also the last—in 1 883 , gave very satisfactory results in spite of difficulties of every kind, of the general hostility of French artists—who had to be coaxed over one by one—and of an unlucky choice of time for it. The lessons learnt by it have proved valuable since, as a guide to various improvements now adopted in the arrangement of Art Exhibitions. Artists might perhaps fear lest, in the hands of the State, the more frequent recurrence of these eclectic exhibitions should create a competition dangerous to their infant society; and lest the success CHARTIER ROUFFET PAINTING 1 1 of the triennial Salon should prove detrimental to that of the annual Salons. But, under their own direction, such picture-shows, every three or five years, to which, if it be desirable not to impoverish the Salons, no works should be admitted that had not been previously exhibited, organized with taste, method and care in the selection, could only be useful to the highest interests of art and at the same time consolidate the Society. There are several ways of seeing a Salon. There is no question here, I need not say, of that which consists in not looking at the pictures, in going merely to gossip and talk nonsense, to meet friends or to be seen there. This, no doubt, is the commonest. I am speaking of those who come in good faith to see what is exhibited, to learn something from it, or at least to find some enjoyment, in short, to study the Salon in their own little way as if they were called upon, like our great precursor Diderot, to give information by letter to some petty foreign potentate, a lover of the arts, but not a lover of traveling. One of the most usual methods, because it affords greater personal satisfaction and is within the scope of every intelligence, is that of going round the Salon as a dilettante, a selfish amateur, with an eye to a little private collection. Such a visitor pauses only in front of works which appeal to his own taste, which flatter his prejudices, which do not irritate his habits or which arouse his dulled percep¬ tions. His point of view may be summed up in the words : “ Which pictures should I like to buy?” This is his criterion. Though not in absolute conformity with the processes of the historical method, this eminently exclusive plan is not devoid of conspicuous advantages. It is the source of very genuine pleasure, for it allows us to follow the development of our own individuality through that of others who have taken the trouble to think and work for us. It is, after all, the only method perhaps in which we arc absolutely sincere. It is, THE SALON OF i 8 g 5 too certainly, that which we always adopt, face to face with our¬ selves, incognito, when no one hears us and we have not to fear the irony of our fellow-creatures—who undoubtedly proceed in the same way. On the same principle, at a restaurant, there are good folks CHOCARNE-MOREAU _ who, if they have neighbors at table, call loudly for lobster a la Chilperic or larks’tongues glacees a la Pompadour , while, if there is no one to echo their words, they modestly ask for stewed mutton and fried potatoes. As to the greenhorn who admires nothing that does not bear a well-known name, let him pass ; it saves him the trouble of choos¬ ing. His antithesis is the man in search of masterpieces, the discoverer of great men; who aims at discernment, and predicts the artist of the future. This visitor takes himself very seriously ; he has a mission, lays down the law to his friends , and makes many UT1GNY PAINTING 13 recruits to the force of volunteer critics. He affects intense con¬ tempt for anything that is not new, or at any rate does not seem new to him, and is of course antagonistic to established repu¬ tations. The most commonplace method of studying a Salon, but, on the whole the best, is to look at all the works. It needs time and patience, a little courage and a great deal of good feeling ; you must not seek to set up for a professed essayist and must honestly look for interest or instruction if not for pleasure in second-rate works as well as in the best. To those who know how to look, every work is a lesson in its way, and we are sometimes surprised at the talent or quality to be discovered in some works which leave us indifferent at first sight, because they are worked out by an old-fashioned formula to which we have been too long accustomed. Will time, which shakes everything into place as it rolls, and modifies all our opinions, prove us to be right? How many works we admire in the relics of past ages which are interesting as giving exactly the note and the color of their time, but which, for that very reason, must have seemed insipid and wearisome to the enlightened contemporary. Even the very worst attempts may provide a lesson. If we place ourselves at the point of view of the general evolution of ideas—and beyond the rare aesthetic pleasures to be derived from the Salons this is the most real advantage to be gained from these exhibitions—mediocre works are more full of suggestiveness than the choicest pieces. 1 hese are less representative of the currents of the hour; they show more generalization, are more closely related to the past, more readily apprehended by the future. Others will be handed down to posterity in naked mediocrity ; they will have lost on the road a multitude of ephemeral factors, of covert meanings which we understand at a glance, of expressions to which we alone, here and now, have the key. But see how instructive they are. In the feebleness of their constitution they can live only by clothing themselves in transitory ideas which they preserve, combine and >4 THE SALON OF i 89 5 mingle, distorting and exaggerating them; their heavy handling and extravagant mannerisms emphasize certain tendencies of mind or peculiarities of workmanship which we fail to see so clearly in the work of a master. They “go the whole hog” and shout aloud what we had only murmured low or indistinctly heard. Hence, to those who can see and hear, the works of the inept are a valuable aid to the comprehension of those of men of talent, to put us on our guard against what there may be, even in them, that lends itself to abuse, to help us to see more deeply into their thought and above all into that of the present generation. Before even going to the picture galleries, you have only to open the catalogue and read through the titles which inform you as to the subjects, that is to say the motives of the works, do a little sum in grouping and addition, and you will at once be able to guess, from a number of more or less well-known names, which way the winds of art are this time blowing. So we will begin by opening the catalogue exactly as a stranger might who wished to form some idea of the Salon from a distance, or rather as if we wanted to write about a past exhibition, and to recall a vision of its contents. The first fact of which we are aware, is the indulgence of a jury which has allowed such an excess over the regulation number of exhibits, as raises it from eighteen hundred to nineteen hundred and sixty. There are therefore, this year, one hundred and sixty paintings which the committee could not bear to deprive us of seeing. Let us now read the titles and abandon ourselves to the rapture of statistics; we shall find a number of subjects not absolutely startling by their unexpectedness : “ Interior of a Studio,” “In the Kitchen,” “A Curiosity Shop.” “A Model at rest,”—excuses for which not even a new name has been found, for the study of still-life or of a naked woman on a sofa ; not to mention the “ Studies ” innumerable by some modest or less imagin¬ ative beginners, and the eatables honestly proclaimed: “A Ham, “Pate de Foie gras,” “Poached eggs," “Bread and Jam, “After LAISSEMENT DE CORDOVA PAINTING 1 5 the Chase,” “ Roast Chestnuts,” “Cheese,” “Peaches and Grapes,” etc., which we are bequeathing to posterity to comfort them in case of a siege, though they must not too hastily infer that our contemporaries are voracious eaters. There are “Old Books,” too, which must not be taken as indicating any pronounced taste for study, as well as “Dahlias,” “ Chrysanthemums , ” “Climbing roses ," “Spring Flowers,” “Autumn Flowers”and “ Flowers of theYear,” which fill quite as much space in the catalogue, and whence it may be concluded with greater probability, that we love and grow flowers better than of yore. Then we find all the subjects of chromo¬ lithographs and draw¬ ing room songs , an inheritance from the past : “ Temptation,” “Teasing,” “Reproof,” “Confidences,” “Day Dreams,” “Illu¬ sions,” “The Bridal Bouquet,” “My fair Neighbor,” “ Primavera,” “Convalescent,” “So chilly!” “Crossing the Ford,” and all the good old subjects that charmed our fathers, and that used to be repeated on chimney-boards, snuff-boxes and musical boxes. We shall next meet with a considerable number of portraits — about four hundred—and though it might seem that there can be but one way of rendering the human face from the point of view of likeness, we shall presently see how much the taste of the day has A MOROT _ ArtrmU */"M r £ i6 THE SALON OF 1895 influenced even this class of work and stamped it with the impress of the time. As to the remaining subjects they are such as have given the imagination of the artists full play, and which aim at expressing contemporary aspirations to the apprehension of the future. These are what we must more especially study. In examining those subjects which are more or less directly influenced by ephemeral moods, or which aspire to perpetuate the stamp of thought characteristic of our generation, one plain fact is conspicuous, the daily increasing number of religious subjects. This year it may be said they are about one in ten. Some are merely available pretexts for painting the ceremonies of the Catholic religion, whose pomp and splendor have often supplied our artists with happy inspiration. Thus we find a number of such names as : “ At Church," “ During Service," “ The Day of the Dead," “ After Vespers," “A Good Friday," “First Communion," “ Benedicite," “Palm Sunday," and the like. This is religious genre, that is to say a choice of subjects in which the imagination of the artist does not, properly speaking, create the scene, and does not try to depict the mystical emotion which only stirs him through objects observed and borrowed from outside life. Sometimes, and this frequently happens, the subject is in itself religious; that is to say a representation of the various episodes in the life of Christ, or the figurative image of the symbols of Christianity. The iconography of the gospel narrative is as minutely analyzed in works exhibited in the Salon as it was in the series of water-color paintings by M. James Tissot exhibited last year at the Champ de Mars. We shall see the “Virgin and Infant Jesus,” “The Holy Child asleep,” “The Flight into Egypt,” (by Hebert, Brunet and Uhl), “Jesus among the Doctors” (Rouault), “Jesus by the Lake of Tiberias” (Destrem), “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman" (Dambeza), “The Holy women at the foot of the Cross” (Munkacsy), “Christ in the Tomb (Boue), “Christ on the Cross” (Mrs. Cecilia Wentworth), “Calvary” (Lau- gee), etc., etc. L. PERRAUIiT PAINTING The beautiful parables of “The Miraculous Draught of Fishes” and of “The Prodigal Son,” which have so often inspired the greatest artists, are still in favor with painters , and the saints of the calendar are honored in their more or less embroidered legends with an impartiality that has sought out even the most neglect¬ ed of the three hundred and sixty five members of that sacred body which includes even less unknown names than the French Academy. We are not, of course, referring to Saint Theresa, Saint Veronica, Saint Francis of Assisi or Saint An¬ thony of Padua, who are well-known visitors to the Salon; not even to Saint Julian the Hospitaler who is to be seen here every year since Flaubert made us acquainted with him ; but to Saint Austrebertha or Saint Nothburga, and Saint Rosa of Lima who are, it must be owned, less familiar to us. Some artists prefer more abstract inspirations, such as M. Besson's “Christ the Consoler,” “The Eternal Crucified,” by M. Truchet, M»E WENTWORTH _ CAri* THE SALON OF 1895 18 “The Advent of Christianity," by M. Matisse, “ Immortality in Death," by M. Benner, “Limbo” by M. L. Glaize, and “Science leads to God,” by Madame L. Thornam. I should not direct the reader's attention more particularly to this last picture, but that we must, in passing it, laud the admirable intentions of a painter who has endeavored to reconcile M. Berthelot to M. Brunetiere, and arrive at a conclusion which may harmonize Science and Faith. We shall also see that Science and Faith, which seem to connote the antipodes of thought in the intellectual life of our time, are to be found in the same antagonism in the field held by the plastic arts. It is not for the first time that we see them to-day in conflict, and history affords perennial witness to their alternatives of triumph and discomfiture. For Science and Faith, in art read Realism and Idealism, the two streams of observation and imagination in constant rivalry or conten¬ tion, which govern art by turns, in accordance with the laws of progress and reaction which govern history. In the realm of literature, which is closer to life since it is a more direct utterance of feeling, sceptical minds or the most tranquil consciences have been looking on for several years at the curious spectacle which has marked the temporary supremacy of one of these great and eternal adversaries. It has been possible to watch the development of what is called “the spirit of the age”—that spirit of the younger generation whcih has found so many well-intentioned seniors fancying that they understand it, and striving to direct it. This study of the contemporary soul is an absorbing passion. Certainly never at any time has there been so much interest mani¬ fested in the analysis of the contemporary soul. The fact is that if we are all aesthetic, we are at the same time all psychologists. We desire to know the wherefore of all our acts and thoughts. We shall soon cease to act excepting for the sake of the subsequent analysis. We are all puppets pulling each his own string. The shade of Socrates BAIL PAINTING '9 may be glad, for we know ourselves so well that we must certainly be realizing the ideal of which he dreamed. There is no babe more petted, no chrysalis more tenderly observed by the prophets of the new era, than the soul of youth. Everyone in turn sets up as the guide of this soul, which is so open to good counsel and so prompt to confess. Not long since, the competing directors wereM. de Vogue and M. Lavisse. To-day it is M. Brunetiere who disputes the office with M. Berthelot. Between whiles M. Zola tried proselytizing for his little chapel of ease, as a sort of sub-director. For this Soul of Youth, which we are so anxiously hatching out, is torn by two opposite aspirations—like Hercules; it doubts between Science and Faith. In his last encyclical, M. Brunetiere assures us that Science is bankrupt, that she has failed to fulfill what it would seem she had promised. We now can only be “saved by Faith," to quote the old text. So Faith is again triumphant! We had all become a little more devout with Barbey d’Aurevilly, a little more Catholic with Verlaine, evangelical with Tolstoi, seraphic with Zola, Chaldean with the Sar Peladan and his magi; M. Huysmans has now convinced the last of the unrepentant. We are all penitent, submissive, fervent and thankful; nothing so touching has been seen in France since the return of the Bourbons. How could art possibly escape these prevalent causes when the same current of reaction led to a protest, rather late perhaps in making itself heard, against the various formulas of realism or naturalism which had so long held sway with Courbet, Manet, the impressionists, Bastien-Lepage, and the “open-air” school? The exaggeration of these methods by a swarm of sectarian or narrow minds, who affected contempt of all selection, had degraded paint¬ ing to literal transcription, to the mere document, to groveling platitude, while at the same time an excessive desire for bright and diffused daylight was rapidly conducing to a chalky and anaemic tone. 20 THE SALON OF 18 9 5 A craving for romanticism was ere long felt. There was a desire to rise to a higher conventionality, to break free from the narrow and commonplace documentary record, to cheer the eye by more powerful coloring; to infuse into art a greater breadth of expression of modern life, no longer in its external aspects, not in the letter, but in the spirit, in the complexity of its ideas, in the diversity of its aspirations and dreams. While the watchword of the realists, the impressionists, and the rest, was Nature, that of the new-comers —the neo-romanticists—was the Old Masters. For it was truly a revived romanticism which animated all the leaders of this movement, call it poetical, symbolist, what you will. And among the Old Masters a choice was at once made. They turned not, as might be supposed, to the well-balanced, manly spirits in the full glory of their strength and beauty, who, in the happy days of the Renaissance, revived the golden age of antique splendor. It was to their predecessors that the new men turned, to the preraphaelites, at once more simple and more subtle, who in like manner felt within them the stir of so much that was new; and whose evident timidity and ingenuous mannerisms, with the delicious awkwardness of their shyness or inexperience, and the somewhat florid symbolism of their deeply suggestive allegories, lend them a strangeness, a pungent charm, and an unexpected asperity of flavor. This devotion to the Old Masters is a new phenomenon in our days, forgoing to the Louvre was quite out of fashion. The pleasure boats of Asnieres and Argenteuil, the tea-gardens of Chatou and La Grenouillere had undermined the popularity of the illustrious occupants of the Salon Carre and the Salle des Sept Metres. For a long time selected subjects and elaborate compositions were much mocked at. “Gallery painting!” was the verdict pronounced with some contempt. Nowadays “Gallery painting” is in vogue, and with the natural exaggeration of violent reaction, the true goal may perhaps be outrun. At any rate it is touching to see such homage paid by a youthful generation, naturally inclined to dispense with all BERNIER ZUBER PAINTING counsel. Unfortunately they have not always gone direct to Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli and Mantegna for guidance and inspi¬ ration. It is more often at second hand and through the strong individuality of a contemporary interpreter or leader that the young WATELIN _ Com* a/. MnuAum* artists of to-day have received the word of the Old Masters. It follows that they have found in it more “preciousness” and super¬ subtlety than ingenuousness and simplicity. The sceptre of this intellectual dominion was long wielded by one of the noblest vision¬ aries of our time : M. Puvis de Chavannes. The taste for strong color, for elaboration of conception, and yet more of execution, trans¬ ferred this pre-eminence to another seer, as near the first by his apprehension of myths and invention of symbols, as he is far removed from him in his expression by concrete images. The mysteriousness which shrouds the greater part of M. Gustave Moreau’s work, carefully hidden from his most ardent admirers and followers, the extreme reserve of this line artist, the fervency of his teaching at THE SALON OF i 8 9 5 the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, have had a powerful effect on the imagi¬ nation of the young; his studio is become a burning focus of idealism whither come many young painters, his neighbors, to warm them¬ selves. Last year, even, at the Salon, his disciples could be counted, and this year they have found new recruits. This contingent, rein¬ forced by the large and increasing group of the younger Scotch school, which must be presently discussed separately, contributes to give a decidedly romantic tone to this year's Salon. The mere choice of subjects reveals the poetical side of their tendencies. Some¬ times they have recourse to the old pagan thought, rehabilitated by a more intimate comprehension of the myths; or, more often, they draw from the everlastingly picturesque and expressive fount, so human and so tragical, of the Old and New Testaments. Here are M. Beron- neau’s “ Muse," M. Bussy's u Pastoral,” M. Paul Renaudot's “ Echo," M. Jean's “Nymph of the Spring,” or M. Desvallieres’ “Adam and Eve,” “The Prodigal Son’' by M. Vigoureux and M. Maxence, who have chosen the same subject, M. Duval's “Adoration of the Shepherds,” M. Gueniot’s “Saint John the Baptist," “Christ and the Doctors" by M. Rouault, M. Besson's “Christ the Consoler," M. Dupont’s “Saint Sebastian," and “ Between Vice and Virtue,” by M. Ridel, who has treated a more generalized theme by taking an abstract conception of Christian morality. Among this group of artists one of the most individual and already advanced is M. Desvallieres, who after studying under De¬ launay, has gone over to Gustave Moreau, though preserving a strong reminiscence of his former master. In his picture Adam holds Eve tenderly clasped to his side; she is crowned with periwinkles in her fair hair, beautiful blue butterflies flutter about their feet, while the Tempter twines his folds round the limbs of the woman, who holds the fatal apple. The figures are painted in a glowing bronzed tone; they lean against a violet-tinted tree-trunk, standing out against a lurid, effulgent sky. The color is rich and full; and yet he, the greatest lover of color of the whole group, has PAINTING 23 neglected the gorgeous blues, the intense violets, the sounding reds of Gustave Moreau, for mournful harmonies in bitumen and Prussian blue. But, as in his “Archers,” there is an exaggerated feeling for character, a seeking for strong effects, a somewhat harsh accentua¬ tion of the drawing, rather too much art and intellectual refined dilettantism. M. Desvallieres is obviously at his tentative stage; his dignified and haughty talent will, we feell convinced, acquire more ease with time and through contact with nature. Let us hope that he may not at the same time lose too much of the extravagance, or even of the faults of his youth. One of the chief perils of Art is this dilettantism ; the pleasure, that is to say, of shining by fastidiousness, by execution or by effect. An artist must preserve a wholesome dread of this dandyism in art which leads to imitation and mannerism. M. Gustave Moreau's pupils are all very young artists who will certainly become modified, but even now it is possible to point out where their tendency to a somewhat superficial idealism leads them astray. Their first defect is that, instead of imbibing the spirit of the great masters, they are content to imitate the peculiarities which, being natural to them, sometimes add to their charm, but which, after all, are accidents of their talent. If all the grand Italians of the fifteenth century could speak to them in audible tones, they would give these young men a warning that might astonish them. They would remind M. Gueniot, M. Vigoureux, and M. Maxence that the great struggle in their time had been to get free from the masters, that is to say from the conventional tradition of those who had preceded them, and to attach themselves with perfect and uncompromising faith to the teaching of nature. Their other weak point is their facile dexterity; of some it might almost be called the mechanism of artifice. They have poached in the Salon Carre and the Italian gallery ; some have wandered afield and across the Channel, and they have borrowed Leonardo’s pointed rocks—which he, their master, had already borrowed—and the blue 2 4 THE SALON OF iSq5 tones of his distance; from Rembrandt his russet shadows; from Mantegna his elongated limbs; some, like M. Ridel, have remembered Rossetti's Giorgione-like harmonies. All their women have sea-green eyes like Burne-Jones’ sirens, or Watts’ enigmatical heads. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, as well as the master of this little sect, has suggested the corals and algte, the glistening, subtly refined hues of the submarine flora and fauna. With all these elements they have achieved a highly artistic palette, set, however, in the melancholy, tawny key which reminds us less of the painting of the old masters whom they boast of following, than of the work of Gaillard, Makart, and the German school. This is the old “ Rembrandt glaze, ” the old “mellow tone” of which our fathers were so fond, and which they procured by putting saffron or liquorice into their var- nish. Of these clever executants we must mention in the first rank M. Rouault and M. Besson as gifted with a very exquisite eye and promising to be highly intelligent artists. It would be hard to say too intelligent; still, their cleverness and their intelligence are what they have most to fear. The influence of Gustave Moreau's studio is so strong that it has infected several neighboring studios, wdiere mysticism is usually regarded with suspicion. It is so in the case of M. Jules Lefebvre's disciples. They, this year, swell the phalanx of youthful idealists. We note such exhibitors as M. Thierot (“ The Rock and the Tide,”) who is a direct follower of Gustave Moreau, and of M. Henri Levy whose pupil he is, which comes to the same thing —as M. Penon (“A Nymph"), who reminds us of M. Lagarde—and as M. Truchet, whose “ Eternal Crucified,” erect above the towers of Notre-Dame to dominate over Paris by night, asleep, or astir only for pleasure and orgies, is a grand mystical conception ; and side by side with these M. Bondoux makes us pause in front of his Saint \ eronica holding up the handkerchief with which she has just wiped the Lord’s face of anguish, to the gaze of a crowd amazed by the evidence of the miracle. And what strikes us in this.picture M MR VALLET POSING FOR HER PORTRAIT iALON DE 1895 PAINTING 25 is the reminiscence, by no means common, of a master who has very recently impressed us deeply, and has certainly contributed by his work to the reaction that seeks subjects for art in the great Christian Tragedy, M. James Tissot. This painter, however, does not seem to have formed many disciples. This is because his style comes rather under the inspiration of history than that of vision and legend. The science of archaeological reconstruction, the ethnogra¬ phical intuition, and the spirit of psychological analysis which characterize his last serious work, concentrated as it is, and conceived with unusual fixity of purpose and perseverance, are elements not easily reconciled with the vague, mystical, hazy sentiment of our younger painters. Again, in a place quite apart from the other young idealists of M. I.efebvre's studio, we must set M. Paul Buffet. His later pic¬ tures will not have been forgotten, more particularly that in the Salon of 1894 which won him a traveling scholarship. It was called “ Le Defile de la Hache,” a subject taken from Flaubert, one of the writers who are greatly responsible for the present romantic movement, to which he has contributed many subjects by refreshing a flagging imagination with an abundance of particularly rich and rehabilitated images. M. Buffet has this year quitted the realm of history to lose himself more completely in the region of abstract and general ideas. “ Solitudo refugium is one of the grandest ideas that have ever haunted the fancy of the noblest poets. The contrast between the infinite splendor of nature and our own misery and smallness, the spectacle of that uninterested beauty which is constantly renewed in its calm power and serenity, outside our sorrow, our squalor, our weakness, and all our wretched humanity of a day, is an essentially modern idea ; for it is our century that has measured the infinite smallness of the human atom in the midst of the cosmic immensity which the narrow ideas of past ages regarded as a mere setting for man as the hub and end of creation. And nature, loved as a mother full of tenderness and solicitude, or regarded as a 26 THE SALON OF i8g5 haughty and indifferent beauty, but yet consoling, has been sung by Lamartine, Alfred de Vigny, Leconte de Lisle, indeed, it may be said by every great poet of our time, for they have seen that Solitude is the eternal refuge of man, safe even from the spoiling of man himself. This admirable subject might well indeed strike the mind of such a serious and thoughtful painter as M. Buffet, sufficiently equipped with technical means of expression to venture into the realm of general and abstract ideas without fear or risk of losing himself, like many of his younger brethren, in the vague inconclusiveness and dalliance of half-mastery. In a natural amphitheatre, formed by shelving rocks in the midst of a thick and verdurous forest, a man is seen kneeling at the foot of a statue of Solitude of whom he implores shelter from the turmoil of towns and the tempest of passion. A very fine figure is this of the man, overwhelmed and broken down; PAINTING 27 and the landscape is fine too, calm and restful, well fitted to give forgetfulness and peace of mind—the heart of the forest, with stiong, fresh verdure, shutting out the horizon, and forming a wall impene¬ trable to human noises. But the figure of Solitude is cold, arid, and hard; it symbolizes neither haughty indifference, nor consoling tenderness, nor, certainly, the force and serenity and ever renascent youth of surrounding nature full of vitality, which are what bestow calm and oblivion. It is the austere solitude of La Trappe, with its abnegations, its maceration, its death-in-life, which this tall, bony spectie in mourning embodies, while it seems to condemn repentance to silence and for¬ getfulness as a part of forgiveness. M. Buffet would perhaps have done better not to give up so soon the more concrete and practical inspirations of history or legend. He might have reserved till the fuller maturity of his talent and powers the task of expressing the fine subject that evidently haunted him. Nor are M. Jules Lefebvre's pupils the only young painters who have rushed, after M. Gustave Moreau s, into the tide of idealism, symbolism and mysticism. We find, keeping step with these, numer¬ ous disciples of masters, who are themselves fairly realistic, like MM. Bonnat and J.-P. Laurens, whose most chimerical flights have never failed to borrow their wings from healthy, sturdy, tangible nature. Such, for instance, especially are M. Etcheverry, whose “Entombment”, and “Saint Michael guarding the Dead" closely resemble the school of Delaunay; and M. Lelong with “The Fraudu¬ lent, in Dante’s Inferno”, a subject full of vivid reality and morality too—a sort of Temptation of Saint Anthony, bristling with winged lizards, salamanders, and serpents erect and smoking, set in a vol¬ canic and sulphurous scene after the recipe of the studio of G. Moreau, and devouring the wretched Panamistes of the Middle Ages, who underwent a style of treatment very different from that dealt out to the illustrious and deathless dying-man at Bournemouth. M. J.-P. Laurens’ pupils are joining the phalanx of idealists in THE SALON OF i S 9 5 crowds. And yet he is here in person to give them the key-note with his huge decoration for the Hotel de Ville at Toulouse—the most imposing composition at the Salon. Like a faithful son of the town, the master has chosen a glorious episode of the cruel crusade against the Albigenses, which, for fifty years, aroused such bitter animosity in the worthy fehbres and excellent cigaliers. It was the close of the invasion of barbarians from the North, who, under the pretext of quelling heresy, came forth to pillage the treasures accumulated in the beautiful lands of the South, where exceptional culture flourished amid the incessant shocks and ferocious warfare of the early ages of French history. The fair and joyous city of Toulouse, one of the most brilliant centers of art and literature in France—to which she has long since ceased to regret her annexation —has never failed to do honor, through her admirable artists, to the glorious past that is dear to her. M. J.-P. Laurens, who has so often, and so successfully had recourse to the annals of Languedoc, has intentionally chosen a period which shows the revival, after the painful humiliation of defeat, of that noble race whose persevering energy had slumbered for a while to the murmurous songs of the Courts of Love. We see the last of the barbarous contest, when the chief city of Languedoc, aroused by the disasters of the land, showed unparalleled vigor in resisting the invader Simon de Montfort who perished under the walls while his son was compelled to raise the siege and treat with Raymond VII. In M. J.-P. Laurens’ noble, though somewhat severe composition, at first sight a little harsh in color, but full of interest, dignity, movement and life, we see in the center of a wide landscape, shut in by the jagged chain of the blue Pyrenees, a corner of the city-rampart with its pointed turrets which a crowd, animated by a fever of patriotic excitement, is hastily forti¬ fying against the assaults of Simon de Montfort and his brother Guy. In the sky, to the left, is seen the symbolical figure of a lion, emblem¬ atic of the unquelled force of the people of Languedoc, while two allegorical figures, bearing the banners of Toulouse and blowing PAINTING 29 trumpets, sound the awakening and the triumph of the capital of the South. Following M. J.-P. Laurens, the first to be named among his disciples is his own son, though he announces himself as M. Cormon’s pupil; and in fact the best compliment that can be paid him is to say that he is not like his father. His subject, taken from the antique, “ Pasiphae”, is modernized by the curious and beautiful landscape— a serpentine avenue of thick leafy trees, their crowns tinged by sunset, in the mystery and first shiver of evening; it communicates very sympathetically the agitation felt by the daughter of Apollo on seeing emerging, from the turn of the silent grove, the white Bull for which, by the power of Venus, she has been seized with sudden and fervent love. We may also mention M. Surand, who has painted a sort of romantic figure in a variegated dress, which he calls “Solitude”, in a wooded nook pierced by sunbeams; M. Mondineu, whose “Prodi¬ gal son ” shows him affiliated to the school of Moreau’s Studio; M. Charrier, who shows us the “Betrothal” of two young people of the highest society in Florence some centuries ago; the scene is laid in a landscape which is pleasing though a little bare and colorless, and the figures are an intelligent reminiscence of the old Florentine Quattrocentisti. But of alf M. J.-P. Laurens’ disciples the one who does most credit to his master—though he has long since escaped from his teaching—and at the same time to the Salon this year, is M. Henri Martin, who has now, for no small number of years, represented at the Champs-Elysees the idealist movement in its loftiest expression. If we are prepared to accept his method of handling by repeated close and minute touches, which in his former works, on a small scale, was rather fatiguing to the eye, but which in this vast decorative piece, intended to be seen from a distance, contributes by its vividness to harmony and richness of effect, we must admit that his frieze for the Hotel de Ville is one of the most original and delightful examples of decoration which has been pro- 3 o THE SALON OF 189 5 duced for a long time, for the adornment of the unhappy structure which will bear witness in future ages, to the incoherency of the Art of our day. It is for one of the sides of a room with arcades round it, the subjects being the symbolical representation of Painting and Sculpture, Literature and Music—I should say the Four Arts, but to the Paris student the word in its modern sense evokes memories which the Municipality, notwithstanding its kindly feeling for stu¬ dents, does not intend to perpetuate for succeeding generations. The picture here exhibited represents Painting and Literature, each embodied in a seated figure; in one of them we at once recognize the features of M. H. Martin’s master, seated in one of the spandrels, and the other is a poet reading a manuscript, between the two arches to the right. The whole scene of the composition spreads in front of a screen of pine-trees and orange-trees, where the setting sun casts flecks of crimson light on the rugged tree-trunks, on the deeply striated bark, and on the beautiful pale gold fruit, against a deep twilight sky of soft violet and exquisitely tender rosy hues; and youthful Muses, robed in light draperies bathed in light, are bringing inspiration to the two artists in a concord of harmony, flowers and kisses. It would be impossible to give to such a vision greater sweetness and charm, power and brilliancy, freshness and originality. “Inspi¬ ration", which is exhibited with this fine decorative work, is a much modified replica of a subject formerly exhibited and intended for the town of Toulouse, of which the painter is a son of distinguished promise. It represents a poet, Dante or Petrarch, or more probably one of the early troubadours with whom we have been familiar since 18g3, wandering through one of the beautiful pine forests which M. Henri Martin has restored to favor, and which even M. Detaille has consecrated. Henceforth the Commissioners ofWoods and Forests in France will not be compelled to prosecute the painters of Franchart and Barbizon for having followed the example of their predecessors of fifty years since, and exterminated the pine-saplings as prohibited P. GROLLERON PAINTING 3i stock—which was hardly excusable from a humanitarian point of view on the eve of an epidemic of influenza. Henceforth every self- respecting artist, to whom the admiration of his contemporaries may have granted a spot of earth on the face of our planet, will feel himself bound to keep up a little pine-wood, at once for hygienic and for decorative purposes. This evidently marks a date in the history of art. However that may be, our Troubadour, who seems lost in reflections of a less complicated esthetic character, is taking a walk in this delightful grove, where the even¬ ing sunshine lights up the base of the bronze fir-trunks and the dia¬ phanous draperies of three Muses who fly after him urging his acceptance of some flowers and a lyre. It is not to be won¬ dered at that Music should have supplied inspiration to painting in a variety of instances. To say nothing of the fact that the Theatre has been one of the most important founts where the imagination of artists has found rejuvenescence—for that, alas ! is a fact not alone of to-day—it is very natural that certain grandiose subjects, which have struck the imagination of musicians, should also present them¬ selves in a more concrete form to the mind of painters, with the added charm which they will have derived from their former musical 32 THE SALON OF 189 5 medium. Gounod before now inspired Cabanel; Wagner, Berlioz and Brahms have inspired M. Fantin-Latour. Each painter found the composer who has most affinity with him. It seems indeed that M. Fantin-Latour has himself formed a school, though the small group of his followers in this path remind us of him rather by their choice of subjects than by their treatment. Such for instance is M. Bussiere, who, in “ Wotan's Farewell ” endeavors to revive that romantic theme from Wagner with a certain added modern aspect, by careful management of scene and light; and in “Helen”, the heroine of Berlioz' Opera. i\I. Toilet, again, in the “ Mort d'Arthur ” who treats this subject from the old legend of the Round Table with the characteristics of the old German Lieder; and M. Metivet in “None but the Brave deserve the Fair”, a composition inspired by the extremely classical music of Le Jeune et beau Dunois , where we see a knight wearing a winged helmet, carrying off on the crupper of his swift steed, a young woman who has not had time to put her clothes on. And yet again M. Wagrez, who shows us the “ Apparition of Brynhilde to Sigmund,” a remarkably cold looking Walkyrie. The army of idealist painters is not even yet complete in all its groups, at the Champs - Elysees. The past, ideal abstractions— whether allegorical or decorative, the vast domain of Fable and His¬ tory, which has always been cultivated with peculiar predilection by all the masters of the French school, has not ceased to be occupied by a strong majority of those artists who desire to preserve, as one of their highest claims to honor , the traditions of national genius. M. Hebert in the “Sleeping Christ” repeats the tone of his somewhat mystic musical charm, and his rather mannered but distinguished flesh-painting. M. Henner, besides an admirable portrait of a lady in mourning, displays once more to our astonished eyes, under the pretext of a Biblical theme—“ The wife of Ephraim the Levite ”— all the enchantment of his pagan dream of plastic beauty and Corre- giesque grace. BRIDCMA PAINTING 33 M. Gerome shows us “Truth falling into the Well,” which it was foolish of her to wish to leave, followed by her broken mirror which men hastened to throw after her ; the chances now are many that she never may come to the top again . Shall we find consolation with M. Dantan, who assures us that “Time flies quickly ?” It must be owned that the lovers who watch that tall and CLAIRIN — Wanuvis'Of te iatSu haggard Wandering Jew go by, seem to have no wish to detain him. M. Albert Maignan with the far-fetched ingenuity of an acute and cultivated mind has treated in an allegory, which has no very emphatic character, an eminently modern subject : “The Green Muse.'” This Green Muse of M. Maignan's has, alas! nothing in common with Andre Theuriet’s Green Fay, the wholesome, life- giving, fertilizing Spirit of the Woods. This Muse is Absinthe, the insinuating, feline, green-eyed Muse, with the pervading fascination of a siren, born of the vapor from a bottle that lies in fragments at the poet’s feet, while he vainly tries to resist her insistant sug¬ gestions. The opal glass stands filled on his table; he has opened his window to the chill wintry dawn in a gloomy Paris sky, making 34 THE SALON OF 1895 a final but ineffectual effort to evade the hypnotizing invitation of the treacherous glass, and drive away the tenacious Green Muse with wicked, smiling eyes, whose little hands grasp his conquered head. “Fortune flies 11s!” is likewise a perfectly modern allegory, at least in this presentment. The scene is the portico of the Bourse with its heavy columns, where, through the absorbed groups of busy or mania-stricken men, Fortune, the only divinity whose altars have not been overturned, whose worship has never flagged, whose votaries have never become fewer or less ardent, is passing across the steps on her symbolical wheel, under the despairing gaze of an “outsider” who recognizes her too late and cannot stop the capricious goddess on her way. M. Adrien Demont is wont to carry us back to the heroic times of antique legend, starting from the contemplation of a landscape which calls up in his mind some obscure and distant memories to be worked out and embodied by his brush. The strange titanic under¬ mining of some wild coast by the ocean waves has suggested to him the idea of this weird fantastic scene where, in the flaming purple of Phlegethon, the hapless daughters of Danaus expiate their crime in perpetually renewed torment. The same inductive process has led Madame Demont to concentrate the spirit of the ancient forests of Gaul in the aboriginal and ecstatic figure of a girl who has just culled “The Sacred Mistletoe” with her golden sickle. We have already had an opportunity of pausing for special study before the most important decorative works in the Salon ; those of M. J.-P. Laurens, and of his pupil, M. Henri Martin. These are, too, the most brilliant examples. This class of work is not, however, neglected ; for everything is decorated nowadays : town-halls, schools, markets, the humblest public buildings. The only question is—How? The accepted style for Mairies, “the blue blouse school” as it has been called, patronized by municipal councils, is perpetuated in the Crowning of Village Maidens, or Distributions of Prizes, where crowds of persons are brought together in a purposeless manner INVMVa LOUSTAUNAU PAINTING 35 under a colorless sky. In this colorless style—an attempt to follow in the path of M. Puvis de Chavannes, who pursues it with an unique use of rare, learned and thoughtful harmonies of tone which his imitators have tried to adopt as a rule and so degenerated into insipidity and perverseness—M. Bonis, another son of Toulouse, and of M. J.-P. Laurens’ school, has succeeded, in preserving a pleasant decorative effect in his work “Physical Exercise,” especially on the righthand side, where we have a well chosen landscape. But why could he not avoid the rather grotesque impression produced by the long array of naked runners who seem to become dispropor¬ tionately large as they come nearer to the eye, while the foremost is strangely cut across by the opening of the door. In the same light key M. de Richemont has composed an elegant decorative panel “ Saint Notburga” under the pale golden light of sunset over reaped corn; this is composed with much distinction and refinement. For a long time History supplied French painters with abund¬ ant materials for idealist inspiration. All the feelings which have their rise in the contemplation of the past, the mirage by which we see facts and figures enormously exaggerated or magnified through the accumulated mist of years, the vague regret for vanished things, the factor of ignorance or uncertainty—all this prestige of legend and dream have for a long time fed and stimulated the imagination of our artists. But in the tendencies of the idealist movement which is now going forward, history plays but a very small part, not to say absolutely no part at all. As we have seen, it is legend more strictly speaking, or religious mythology that has exclusively supplied them with subjects. Must we conclude that history is too strict for the vague and ill-defined dreams of our younger contemporaries, that the past hardly interests them any more, that they are given over to the mystical aspirations of the present time, to the dark enigma of the days to come, to the elaboration of that New Epoch which we 36 THE SALON OF i8q5 are promised on all sides and the birth of the coming era when, a period of new development of the human race is to be begun ? Be this as it may, it is a positive fact that historical paintings appear in perceptibly diminishing numbers every year at the Salon. As representing anything relating to a past somewhat remote, where imagination and fancy have a leading part in the reconstruction of departed ages, we find no more than a few retrospective anecdotes, a few thankless resuscitations, required by local demand, of histo¬ rical figures which, thanks to their special character, have been so fortunate as to escape the indifference of our contemporaries. Thus Joan of Arc, whom a revival of worship has restored as a living symbol of patriotism, is, every year, the object of some homage. But there is nothing, at least among the paintings, which invites us to dwell on it more particularly for its artistic merits. The only periods of the past which seem to have any real attraction for the mind of artists are those, very near together, of the Revolution and of the Empire. The reasons for this attraction are manifold ; the more special are the influence of certain notori¬ ously successful plays, and the vast mass of literature consisting of memoirs of those times published within the last few years : the papers of Captain Coignet, Marbot's Memoirs, those of General Thiebault and many more ; more generally it may be ascribed to the interest excited in our minds by the epoch which definitely closed the old world, to inaugurate the era of which our age, our political history, our moral development have been the normal outcome. This interest, which had proclaimed itself in all the phenomena of daily life, in the ephemeral caprice of fashion which has shown a sudden revulsion—superficial and inconsequent no doubt—to the Napoleonic worship, could not fail to be reflected in the expressive art of painting. Last year, just when the Napoleon mania was “the latest thing," to use the cant of fashion itself, the figure of the hero of Austerlitz, which M. Sardou had lately shown us on the stage in a setting of domestic scenery, was at the (UNET DE MUNKACSY PAINTING 37 same time set before us by various artists in some intimate details ' of his life. This year it is Bonaparte rather than Napoleon who comes before us. M. Rosen, indeed, a Polish painter, in a curious picture subtly and seriously worked out, shows us, in a snow-clad landscape, “ Napo¬ leon leaving the troops at Smorgonia (Lithua¬ nia) December 5 ,1812 and M. Rouffet, in a sort of mystical enigma which reminds us, on a smaller scale, of M. Detaille’s “Dream,” paints “The Standard and the Star ” to call up a memory of the great Imperial figure. M. Boutigny, in the “ Revolt at Pavia,” where he represents the priesthood coming to implore pardon for the town from the Commander in Chief; M. Castres “ At the Hospice of Saint Ber¬ nard; ” the late Armand Dumaresq, under the famous Pyramids, and M. Orange in the shadow of the same monuments, to which he has once more done honor, face to face with that old world of ancient Egypt which rises before us in his picture, all show us the various aspects of Bonaparte as a warrior, as a peacemaker and as a man of learning, with a zeal and a completeness worthy of the Salons of the early years of the century. Next to him his Generals, some of them 10 38 THE SALON OF i8 9 5 strange enough it must be owned, have supplied our curious artists with interesting or quaint incidents of their life. Here is General Macard, whom Ad. Chaperon paints “dressed en bete” after the des¬ cription by General Marbot, that is to say, with the upper part of his body clothed only in its natural fell, swearing like a pagan and rushing on wildly to cut and thrust the foe, alarmed by so singular an apparition; here, again, is Marshal Lannes, whom M. Dawant places amid strangely contrasting warlike uniforms and mystical robes, seated in the florid architecture of the convent of Saint-Polten, surrounded by pretty white nuns, desperately frightened, who hastily bring out all their little wealth of coaxing ways and dainty morsels to secure the protection of these booted men who have made the world tremble. Again with M. Chartier we follow “ Murat—Iena 1806," charging at the head of his green dragoons. A few other artists take us further back in the revolutionary period : M. Benoit-Levy “The Trial of Beauchamps;" M. Spriet “The Death of Chalier;” M. Gardette “The Death of Marceau, " or come down to the time of the mad reaction of the terreur blanche in 181 5 like M. de Cordova in “ General Gilly hiding at Anduze. ” Contemporary events do not seem to afford many subjects for historical painting. We are too near to them to understand them, and their superficial effects are not calculated to rouse enthusiasm. At most do we find some military subjects which are fascinating at any rate, through the charm of the uniforms, whether they still be chosen, after the example of de Neuville and Detaille, from the glorious and consoling episodes of the distressful period of 1870, or restricted to scenes of military life in the strictest sense, as the “ Sappers of the Engineer Corps constructing a bridge,” by M. Arus; or manoeuvring exercise, such as “A Company of the Vanguard" by M. Petit-Gerard; or, again, the picturesque incidents of camp life if E. DETAILLE ! - m n ijj r 1 > 1*11 I s ■ * I T. R H THE PRINCE OF WALES AND DUKE OF CONNAUGHT PAINTING 39 as represented by M. Loustaunau in his “Watering cavalry horses." It is in portraits that posterity must seek the record of our time. And indeed they are the most faithful and the most trustworthy. On that side, at any rate, our successors will have no difficulties, and it may safely be affirmed that all the illustrious persons of contemporary France, and even of foreign lands, are more completely represented at the Salon than are those of a past date in the Ne¬ cropolis at Versailles. From “ The President of the French Republic ’’ —at full length and front face, with the ribbon of the Legion of Honor under his white waistcoat—which worthily continues the series of official portraits by M. Bonnat, to the portrait of “Made¬ moiselle Yvette Guilbert " by Bellery-Desfontaines, all our distinguish¬ ed contemporaries march past, so to speak, in the Spring Review. Side by side with M. Felix Faure we have some foreign princes ; at the head of the procession is the Queen of Portugal in a riding habit on her chestnut horse, by M. Salgado , next come “H.R.H the Prince of Wales, and H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught" by M. De- taille. The new President of the Society of French Artists has inaugurated his high functions by one of the most remarkable efforts of his manly, serious and sincere talent. The Prince of Wales and his brother the Duke of Connaught, in general’s uniform, are riding towards us, side by side, on the fringe of a pine wood whose branches half hide the sky, while the rugged trunks are flaked with bright rosy light from the setting sun to the left. The former, on a chestnut horse, points out to his brother, on a black horse, a spot lying to their right. They are inspecting the manoeuvres of the Highlanders, who stand deployed, in the plain, and enliven that corner of the picture with the motley red and yellow of their picturesque costume. The political world is further represented by the sympathetic, refined and benign face of “ M. Georges Leygues,” by M. Trupheme, and of his family, “Madame Leygues,” by Madame Mazet, and his 40 THE SALON OF 18 9 5 daughter by Madame Boyer-Breton. A little way off, by an unexpect¬ ed and whimsical collocation, we come upon the grotesquely lean face of “ M. Henri Rochefort," by M. Belleroche; then “ M. Clovis Hugues,” by M. Pierre Dupuis in familiar juxtaposition with “ Cardi¬ nal Richard,” by M.' Aubert. Then follow a certain number ot more or less distinguished persons, constituting the leaders of what is termed Le Tout-Paris. We may mention at the head of the list “The Right Honourable Arthur Wellesley Peel, late Speaker of the House of Commons,” by Mr. Lockhart; “ M. Ambroise Thomas," a capital portrait freely and truthfully painted, by M. Baschet, who also exhibits the portraits of a young couple of fashion, set in a pleas¬ ing interior. “ M. Armand Rousset," by M. Doucet, “General Jean- ningros,” by M. Fontaine, “M. Frangois Coppee, ’ seated at his writing table, by M. Edouard Fournier, and the clever performers in Pour la Couronne: “ M. Fenoux” and “Mademoiselle Wanda de Boncza,” by M. Van den Bos ; they are also represented by M. Lesur in the costume of their respective parts. M. Chabas has grouped, against an out-of-door background, the poets who frequent the house of the celebrated publisher M. Lemerre. M. Paul Leroy gives artistic finish to this gentleman's house by his charming and elegant por¬ trait of his daughter Mademoiselle Lemerre as the modern Muse. Criticism has a representative in “ M. Jules Lemaitre, ' by M. Jean Veber, and art in “ M. Jules Breton” and “M. Bouguereau,” who have not chosen to trust any brush but their own to perpetuate their features, as requested by the Gallery at Antwerp in rivalry with the Louvre and the Uffizzi. “Madame Demont-Breton,” palette in hand and the little red ribbon bright on her bodice, is shown in Monsieur Salgado’s picture as about to mount the ladder at the top of which the red rosette, no doubt, awaits her. The Theatre is further represented by “ Madame Worms-Baretta,” by M. Cayron,“ Mademoiselle Delna,” by M. Lucien Berthault, “M. Paul Mounet,” by M. Beroud, while “ Ma¬ demoiselle Yvette Guilbert,” already mentioned, closes the procession. But by the side of all these well known persons which we point STRUY3 GRATEYROLLE PAINTING 4' out while we seek their prototypes in the galleries, all these celebrities which the cunning artists choose with careful intent to attract the attention of the crowd, while their flattered sitters have not disdained this form of popularity, how many nameless portraits arrest us by the striking merit of the painter! Has M. Bonnat ever found so much supple and feminine grace as in his delightful portrait of “Madame la Comtesse de L. M.? ’ Has M. Henner ever shown deeper poetic feeling or knowledge of modeling in light and shade than in this profile of a lady in mourning ? Or M. Jules Lefebvre greater distinction than in the figure of “ Madame la Baronne M. G.r" M. Lucien Doucet has never shown more bewildering dexterity than in the “Portrait of a lady” half reclining on an easy chair, amid the luxury of glistening satin and carved furniture. The two men's heads by M. Ainie Morot are capital portraits, thoroughly well painted, and intelligently studied as to the expression of the faces. M. Benjamin-Constant has applied his marvelous gifts of handling and color with great success to a study of a female head. What is to be said of M. Paul Dubois, whose portraits of “ Ma¬ dame L. A.' and of “ M. le Baron de C. L. T.” are simple, natural and living ; the painter, despite his marvelous skill, has the art of losing himself in his sitter, and these pictures are ideal examples of their kind; what of M. Cormon, always easy and sincere; of M. Raphael Collin, exquisite for grace and natural poetry in his “Young girl,” standing in a white dress against the background of a spring garden, and his young woman “At the window?” And still we must not forget to note, amid an avalanche of canvases devoted to the worship of our personal vanity, the excellent pieces signed by MM. Humbert, Hippolyte Berteaux, P. Thomas, A. Brouil- let, Maxence, Sabatte, and others. In the time-honored classification of pictorial inspiration one division has long enjoyed the favor of the general public, and does 42 THE SALON OF 18 9 5 not yet seem to be losing it ; it is that for which the accepted name is Genre , an exceedingly wide and very vague term, embracing almost everything that could not be included under historical painting, portraiture and landscape. The word, it is true, was applied by LECOMTE-DU-NOUY _ n* mJ.y f J preference to pictures of trivial subjects—domestic or anecdotic, in which the subject, that is to say the literary element, whether witty or sentimental, moral or mischievous, predominated over all else, where art, in short, was subservient to purpose. Although it has made the fortune of chromo-lithography and enriched the makers of reproductions, it is not well to be too exclusively scornful of this minor art for the million. It is, to be sure, to what is called high art, what the burlesque or the comic-opera is to the serious drama, what a ballad or a song is to great music. It is not calculated to satisfy all the aesthetic needs of a generation ; and the reign of Louis-Philippe, which saw the vaudevilles of Scribe and the pictures of M. Delaroche and Horace Vernet thriving under the symbolical shelter of the royal umbrella, sought some compensation in Delacroix, De- THE PET M UE F. CHARDERON PAINTING 43 camps, and certain landscape painters whose pictures could well dis¬ pense with any elaborately long descriptive paragraph in the catalogue. It is well, nevertheless, to remember that in this class of work the French school, more especially, has displayed a considerable amount of talent, of subtle observation, of originality and spirit, nay, and which is still rarer, of tact, taste and discretion in the underlying thought which makes such pictures of certain periods very valuable, not merely as more or less direct presentments of the life of the time, but also for their own sake, and their high merit as paintings. This tradition has been followed in a more or less homely manner, according to the humor of the artists and of the public whom they addressed. Genre sometimes derives its interest from the subject itself, and sometimes from the setting and the costume. This is why, since Meissonier, who raised it to a particularly high level, all genre painting has been tricked out in historical costumes of the time of Louis XIII, or of Louis XV, for which that master had shown so great a predilection. One of our artists, who has for long distinguished himself in this somewhat narrow field of retrospective art, is M. Roybet, whose lancers, jesters, and troopers, without much action or passion, but soberly and skillfully painted with the intelligence of a conscientious artist in love with his work, were, and still are, sought after for the collections of discerning amateurs. After being for a long time absent from our Exhibitions, this painter comes back to us, having greatly enlarged the scale of his compositions, with increased and rejuvenescent knowledge and courage. He has shown us for a few years past, amid scenes of powerful, manly flavor and telling black¬ guardism, M. Vigneron and M. Pretet, the chief organizers of the Salon, given up to joys anything rather than official, dressed in heavy and handsome costumes, as drunken troopers in the society of bold hussies with buxom charms. We had a right to look, this year, for a continuation of this hierarchical series, showing the chiefs of the Champ de Mars in analogous situations. M. Roybet has 44 THE SALON OF i8g5 deceived our expectation, and has quitted taverns and junketings to edify us by the contemplation of domestic virtue ; a young and dashing cavalier sits on the corner of a table thrumming a mandoline, while two children very prettily dressed, are dancing a pavan under their mother's rather absent-minded gaze. It is, of course, quite needless to praise the artist's incomparable dexterity; he has no rivals but M. Carolus-Duran or M. Benjamin-Constant in dazzling us with splendid stuffs, luxurious rooms, and all the splendor of things inanimate. It might even be said that, this year, the learned painter has found on his palette some choicer tones than usual, in the reminiscence of certain masters whose names occur to us in spite of ourselves as we look at this composition, “A Saraband. " But the disproportion between the size of these pictures and the importance of the subject, still farther diminishes the small amount of living human interest which we are prepared to find in them, and notwithstanding our admiration for the painter's consummate ability, we can only feel a sort of amazement before such marvels of accomplishment and execution. We derive the same impression, though the subject is modern, from M. Joseph Bail's “ Soap bubbles;" this gentleman, a pupil of M. Vollon's, has become a painter of rare power and surprising facility of execution. One of the periods which is at present more in vogue for genre painting in its retrospective disguises, would seem to be that of the last years of the Revolution, the childish and profligate masquerading of a society exhausted and worn out by the vicissitudes of the great and sanguinary tragedy, and just then pausing to take breath while awaiting the yoke for which it was ready. Not that any such phi¬ losophical considerations have presided over the birth of M. Cain's subject “ News ofVictory, 1797;" the news is placarded on the corner of a house dressed with flags and garlands, where worthy citizens in their best clothes are stopping to comment on it ; or of M. J. Gi- rardet's “Christening Party,” where the godfather and godmother, in Directoire costume, are flinging the traditional sugared almonds to the gleeful street boys ; or of M. Laissement's picture, “ The latest PAINTING 45 news.” The “ Fishwomen,” by M. Kaemmerer, squabbling in their short skirts tucked up in Opera-Comique style, tell us by their title to what famous piece this particular Directoire taste in genre painting owes its success, and the same costume flourishes equally on the Bou¬ levards on Shrove Tuesday and at Mid-Lent. Genre has its obvious and traditional jests, and just as children are never tired of hearing stories, though they have long since known them by heart, so the public do not weary of the good, hereditary jokes which perpetually attach to a certain type of personage and to certain professions or corporations. In art the ecclesiastical world has not yet ceased to afford inspiration of this kind to a small group of painters, such as M. Vibert, M. Chevillard, M. Brispot, M. Frappa, etc. , who obtain unfailing and repeated success by the treatment of the little innocent gossip of the sacristy, or facetiously emphasi¬ zing the small traditional peccadilloes of the secular and regular clergy : greediness, flirtations, petty vanities, all the minor breaches of the sacred rule of the Ten Commandments. The purple is no more respected than the priest’s gown of moreen. Thus M. Brispot, in “The Dose,” bids us look on at the cruel sufferings of an unhappy Cardinal, expiating the sins of the stomach at the aspect of a prepa¬ ration which he seems to contemplate with less satisfaction than those which proceed from his kitchen ; while M. Chevillard in “ Going to dinner at the Chateau,” shows us a worthy priest hastening with discretion, his gown tucked up, and his well polished shoes placed at a careful distance from the puddles, towards the savory fumes his fancy can detect through the thick walls of the manor house. Thus we come to every variety of genre, from the archaeological genre represented by M. Rochegrosse in a brilliant little picture, “ Chirp and Chatter,” where some young Greek girls are flitting about the Gynecasum enclosed by a gilt grating, in Oriental costumes as imported by the Oriental department of M. Boucicaut’s shop, down to more modern subjects which will be the joy of the pho¬ tographers. The sentimental chord is struck by M. Cres in “Back to the military school; ” the fantastic note by M. Toudouze in " An Autumn Song;” the gay one by M. Chocarne-Moreau in “ Flirtation and Play,” which shows us a chasseur who has posted himself on guard, in the gardens of the Luxembourg, in front of a smart little nurse, while two small children have discovered the unexpected uses to which a shako may be put. More various keys are struck in the work of Madame Vallet, “How shall 1 stand?" of Mademoiselle Charderon “The pet”; of Mr. Knight, “ May" ; of Mr. Bacon, “ My fair neighbor" ; of M. Lio¬ nel Royer, “Sweet Sunshine," which looks like an arrangement of portraits in full daylight; of M. Henry Perrault, “A Beggar Maid;" of M. Lynch, “Fragrance,” an elegant decorative panel where a young woman goes past, dreamily filling her uplifted skirt with flowers; of M. Alexis Vollon, “Treasure trove"—the figure of Pierrot of which he is so particularly fond. Then, besides genre painting in the strictest sense, there is a class of painting which used to be confounded with it, and which for some time has been making great strides ; it is what used to be included sometimes under the heading of paintings of interiors. We owe to it, this year, a little masterpiece by M. Vollon, “The Interior of the Church of Saint Prix," and two canvases from a young painter, M. Lomont who often remembers very happily the artists of the Dutch school, “A Lied" and “ The Letter." But this class of picture is very notably increased and would more justly deserve to be called the painting of modern life, or, at any rate, of life. If we divide artistic inspiration in accordance with the two chief springs whither it constantly returns for renewal, while history, allegory, religious painting, all the past, ideal abstractions, in short the whole domain of fancy and of memory seem to represent the fount of imagination, that of observation answers to every-day life, concrete and tangible, to the study of man and of nature, whether regarded CHEVILLIARD GOING TO DINNER AT THE CHATEAU. SALON DE 1895 PAINTING 47 separately, or in their mutual relations—that is to say portrait painting, landscape, with or without figures, and the representation of the various acts of human beings in their real and existent setting. But this classification, apparently so rational, has so often been upset by facts ! While the painters of history or of abstract ideas con¬ stantly have recourse to science and observation to vivify their restorations or their fancies by more recent impressions of the external scene, the painters of subjects of observation have made use of the images of life, and spectacles of nature to express the tendencies, aspirations and needs of poetry, and every kind of moral or phi¬ losophical sentiment which is derived from the world of fancy. And indeed, what endeavor can be more logical than the wish to enter as entirely as possible into the life of an epoch, and the attempt to express its spirit not through the impersonal images inherited from former times, but both in the spirit and the letter, in its own proper image, under the precise forms which distinguish it from what came betore and from what will come after. This striv¬ ing for modern expression has been one of the constant efforts of this century. In remoter times, though some such attempts were made towards the end of the eighteenth century, under the influence of Diderot, they were wrecked by an affectation of democratic sen¬ timentality : Greuze’s painting is not superior in significancy to Di¬ derot s or Sedaine s dramas. If we want to see something analogous to our modern feeling for poetry, we must look for it in the serious and elaborately thought out treatment of antique Fable given to us by Poussin, and the smiling but melancholy airiness of Watteau's ‘■Intermezzo’ . Or, it we seek the exact expression of real life among the people, we hardly find it at all outside the Dutch masters, but in two great and remarkable exceptions ; the brothers Lenain in the seventeenth century, and Chardin in the eighteenth, who unveil to us the plebeian or homely life of their time, in its exact contemporary setting. Among the Dutch themselves this purpose hardly went beyond the expression of superficial, and, so to speak, animal life, 4 8 THE SALON OF 1895 beautiful only with the beauty of living things in light and movement. The noisy joys of the tavern, the bustle of inn-yards, drunken or gro¬ tesque village festivals, studies of municipal or professional assem¬ blies in official grouping, glittering interiors where peaceful house¬ wives are busy —this formed their whole horizon, for it constituted the whole life — a trustful, narrow and quiet life—of this little world of artists, lost in a nation ot merchants and city folk. The grand figure of Rembrandt alone rises above this whol¬ ly objective range of vision, by his supe¬ rior and profoundly human ideal, by an anticipatory compre¬ hension of modern feelings of pity, of common humanity, of tenderness to¬ wards the lowly, and the Biblical and Evangelical atmosphere that pervades his work. This mobile, relative and circumstantial element it is which, according to Baudelaire, accompanies the eternal and invariable element of Beauty, and is, to use his expression, “ its envelope amusing, inciting and digestive—without which the other element would be indigestible, inappreciable, and not adapted to human nature;” this element is the spirit essentially of the period, the deviation of vision that is peculiar to it, the tendency in ideas which gives rise to its manners, its prejudices, its fashions, its cranks, PAINTING 49 its absurdities and its charm, its individuality, its touch of originality, its local color in the great motley of the ages. Literature has been better able to seize this subtle perception of actual life than art ; its means of expression answer more directly to the shaping of thought. And it has always been in advance of Art ; it has guided it in this path, and has often unsealed its eyes. In fact Art has, as it were, a life of its own in history through the cen¬ turies, a separate existence which is the result of its hereditary character, of a traditional vision handed down from age to age, by the routine of education, by admiration of past works, and affiliation to masters independently of time and of geographical and political boundaries. As a consequence all the schools of Europe compose among themselves a vast family in which differences are seen rather in faint shades than in strong characteristics ; and the productions of the most dissimilar races and remotest times are all derived from the same ideas, and from aesthetic canons that are everywhere much alike. With the deep-seated changes in modern thought that have been brought about by the great political and social cataclysms, Art has felt the necessity for entering more completely into the interests and the ideas of the time ; and it may be said that, since the beginning of the century, the greatest artists have been struggling to throw off the despotism of that persistent vision of the past, to recover their purity of eyesight, and create an art which should be the faithful, literal, and an emphatic expression of their own time. Was not this Gericault’s ambition, and Delacroix', Courbet’s, Millet’s, Manet’s, Degas’, and the rest of the impressionist group? Little by little, with the help of literature, and at the prompting of the landscape painters, who have always been the pioneers of Art, modern ideas have filtered into painting which has striven to adapt itself to rendering them under a suitable aspect. Every day the anecdote painting of genre, properly so called , became mixed more and more with subjects of mere observation, and realistic scenes of common life without any literary 13 5 o THE SALON OF 18 9 5 pretext, any dramatic or episodical subject. And very soon, as soon as it was capable of expressing the external aspect of modern life, the moral agitations which disturbed our century tried to make a place for themselves in art. Positive conceptions, which express modern life in the letter only, aimed at acquiring a more definitive meaning, answering to the aspirations, hopes and Utopian sentiments of the time. In this way painting of a kind that relies on observation has often undertaken to give expression to contemporary thought, to the detriment of subjects which seem to be more directly referable to the imagination. Thus certain essentially modern conceptions have been grafted on to the old inspirations which formerly were sufficient nourishment for the artistic imagination—conceptions which are the outcome of the far- reaching modifications that have arisen in the aspect, as well as in the essence, of the life of the time. In this way universal suffrage has conquered its title to art. Following the fusion of classes and the increasing prominence of the popular element, painting, in imitation of literature—to which it had afforded so many and such new openings for criticism— began to study the physiognomy of the people in all its various aspects. Before this a few artists, generally those who were by their origin allied to the working class, had amused themselves by depict¬ ing the world of humble folk, of patient laborers, of vagabonds and tatterdemalions, in studies of “bohemians”, of “ petty traders", of “Paris cries", from Callot to Duplessis-Berteaux. But they had scar¬ cely seen beyond their picturesque oddity and traits of drollery. Labor was regarded only as the humble servant of riches. It was left to our century, when the whole social order is based on this great law on which every dream of progress and justice rests, to illustrate and glorify it. This state of feeling, honored regularly every ten years in its great demonstrations, could not fail to find an echo in art. ■■■■■■■ PAINTING 5 I For some time now, in the wake of Millet who sanctified field labor, we have seen artists taking up with ardor and intelligence a serious study of every sphere of industry, from the vast associated enterprise that works in a new type of landscape of iron, coal and smoke, to the swarming hives of individual industries. The working of metal has in it wherewith to satisfy the marked liking of our contemporaries for elaborate studies of artificial light, the rich effects of intense vitality toiling among unexpected surroundings, under strong and antagonistic illumination. Menzel, MM. Rixens, Bourgonnier, Cormon, Stanhope-Forbes and many others who have painted forge and furnace, this year have another competitor, M. Charbonnier; while the stormy incidents attending the discussion of the great “labor question" have found interpreters in M. de Munkacsy, “ Before the Strike"; M. Bertrand Perrony, “ The Smiths’ Strike”; M. Grison, “The Ironworkers’ Strike”, who have all attempted to render the excitement of these fierce scenes where the actors are conscious of a newly-found power. But as a rule the humbler crafts, where man has not the powerful co-operation of machinery, are those which have most frequently and most vividly struck the imagination of painters. “The Curiosity- mender,” by M. Firrnin ; “The Umbrella mender,” by M. Menta belong to no trade union, have no hierarchy. Some artists, like M. Bouglise in “ Dressmakers,” or M. Breaute in “ Up all night,” have chosen to express their sympathy with the weary work of humble needle-women who struggle against fatigue and sleep through the silence of the night till the hour when the lamp pales in the presence of the melancholy dawn. Others show us the busy life of “Ironers” (M. Caraud), of spinners as in “The Spinning-Wheel” (M. Kre- der), of weavers, as in “Women weaving linen” (M. Leprat); we see in “Hemp,” by M. Constantin Le Roux, one of the humble crafts which borrow from the open air and the swarming life amid which they are carried on a certain picturesqueness in spite of their lowliness and poverty. Here is “The Costermonger,” by M. de Schry- THE SALON OF i 89 5 vet', “ In the Faubourg Saint-Denis," by M. Adler, —the costermongers’ market set out along the street ; “Old clothes sellers," by M. Tanoux,—the poorest of the poor trades which are carried on at the market gates. One of the features of the spirit of our time is that pity for the poor and outcast, which took its rise formerly in the love of con^ trast and antithesis in the romantic school. Whether from a real need for justice, or from close contact with misfortune, which seems more terrible in the midst of a civilization which aims above all things at material comfort, misery, suffering, poverty and wretchedness are the aspects of society which the greatest writers have studied with extreme care, tenderness and emo¬ tion ; and not in France FAU'.uifeRE _ .*«« «& alone, but yet more in other countries. These feelings have not failed to find an echo in art, and we have ample evidence of it in both the Exhibitions, in the very considerable number of subjects taken from refuges, hospitals and asylums. These are the scenes which used so happily to employ the brush of M. Brouillet. His picture of “ Doctor Charcot giving a lesson at the Salpetriere ” will not be forgotten as one of his most powerful compositions. He is not less successful in “ Vaccination for Croup,'’ in which we see the illustrious discoverers of the remedy grouped round a poor little girl suffering from the scourge which mothers hitherto have hardly dared to speak of—men to whom henceforth mothers will be eternally grateful. A love of children has inspired M. Robert - Fleury in his “Maternity,” and has led M. Laurent-Desrousseaux to the “Maternity Hospital," and M. Lo- brichon to the “Children’s Hospital” to note the weighing of the poor little creatures, either destitute or abandoned by their parents, who are carefully kept alive for the fate of unknown misery which awaits most of them. We shall see these children again, a little older, assembled in a workroom, “With the Sisters,” by M. Boquet, or with M. Nicolet as “Orphans, Amsterdam,” sewing in their neat little uniform in the bright light of a large workroom. This is an almost cheerful scene; at any rate it is in a pleasing key, for the sense of destitution is toned down by the ingenuous charm of youth. All the rest are squalid places whither we are taken by M. Descelles, “Winding wool in the Workhouse at Saint Die”; by M. Dierckx, “The smoking-room, Antwerp Workhouse” ; and by M. Cederstrom, “ Night refuge at Stockholm," where we find destitute wretches gathered round the stove, brought together to the same ignominy by misery and vice. However, though the French, since Tassaert, have never ceased their minute study of scenes of wretchedness, to such a point indeed that the painters of poverty and misery form a special group, we find certain foreigners who have given us perhaps the keenest and most terrible pain. This year M. Geoffroy, who formerly had distinguished himself in this line, has been content with emotions of a calmer type, showing us “A drawing class” in a primary school, a commission from the State ; and we have M. Trony’s “ Poor Folks,” a serious 54 THE SALON OF 1895 piece of work, unspoiled by any commonplace sentimentality; M. Leydet's “Meal time at the gate of barracks;" a poor wretch who hesitates to throw himself into the river, “Too old," by M. Antin; M. Perrault’s neat “Little beggar-maid;" and M. Ve- ber's picturesque squalor of cripples and wooden legs, “ Perennial Avarice," rushing and tumbling, as in a picture by old Breughel, to snatch at a purse that has been lost. But among all this painful or ridiculous poverty is a foreigner, M. Struys of Antwerp, who produces the deepest and most human impression with his “ Visiting the Sick." The scene is a humble interior, a workman's home; a dying man, shrunk and wrinkled by sickness, doubled up in the bed that is now too large for him, is visited by an old priest who sits facing him in an attitude so simple, compassionate and devout as to defy description. On one side a young woman hushing a child to sleep, and on the other her husband, standing, listen with respect and resignation to the sick man’s moans and the priest's words of consolation. We shall, somewhat later, at the Champ de Mars, have to consider more closely the place that foreigners are taking by our side. But here with M. Struys we must not omit to mention Mr. Brangwyn, an Englishman born at Bruges, who is in some degree the chief, or at least the most conspicuous member of a young Scottish school of highly romantic tendencies, which for some few years has taken an important and distinguished place in various English, French and foreign Exhibitions. “ A trade on the beach " on some Eastern shore, and “ The miraculous draught of fishes,'’ though they have not the rather coarse splendor or the fine romantic atmosphere of his early picture of “ Buccaneers,” are nevertheless—and especially the first —the work of an intelligent and attractive colorist. Also by the side of our own marine painters who interpret so feelingly the pathetic dramas of a mariner's life—for instance M. Tattegrain, “The Whiting Fishery"; M. Rudaut, “The great grave—The Iceland Sea;’’ Madame Demont-Breton, “ Stella Maris"; M. Brunet, GELIBERT ■J TAVERN IKR PAINTING 55 “ Widows of the Shipwrecked ; ” M. Adan and others, we must set the name of M. Sorolla y Bastida, “ Fishermen returning,” a Spanish painter who seems eager tho raise the artistic standard of his country. His art indeed is directly derived from the French school, and we find in it as yet no particular national flavor, but how full of the feeling and of the atmosphere of the sea is the paint¬ ing in which he shows us, in the softened evening light, a pictu¬ resque group of oxen hauling in at low tide a fisherman’s bark with its sail spread. Landscape painters generally close the procession in our review of the Salons, though in fact they long since set themselves the task of always keeping in the van of art. Side by side with portrait paint¬ ing, landscape perhaps constitutes the most important part of contemporary art. We need neither wonder nor complain of this : we can only regret that besides the masters who head the march, like M. Jules Breton, “The last Gleanings;” M. Harpignies, “The Banks of the Sevre Nantaise,” and “ An old Oak; ” M. Pointelin with two fine sober and powerful landscape in the Jura, “Fonds de Brezin” and “A mountain tarn;" M. Bernier, “A Farm in Brittany;” M. Zuber “ Cattle resting in the shade,” we have room only for the names of those who paint the plain, the sea, or the mountain, for mountain scenery has at last found interpreters who understand it : MM. Le Liepvre, Lecomte, Hareux Noirot, Quost, and Petitjean, who keep the glory of the French school of landscape at so high a level. To these must be added the constellation of Orientalists, such as M. Gerome, “In the Mosque of Kaid Bey, Cairo;” M. Paul Leroy with his fine and luminous picture of “ A wandering tribe M. Taupin, “The Muezzin;” M. Bompard, “On the Terrace, Sidi Okba; " M. Pinel; M. Marius Perret with two charming and refined pictures, “Douar of the Oualed Naiel” and “Senegalese Sharp¬ shooters”; M. Clairin, “Women of the Oualed Naiel going to the Bath;” M. Lecomte-du-Nouy, “The End of the Fast;” Mr. Bridg- 56 THE SALON OF iS 9 5 man, “A Spring Evening, Algiers;” and many more, whose names, for lack of space, we are unable to mention here. Animals also have their own painters ; the lordly ruminants, who have inspired many great artists, may congratulate themselves on finding the best traditions carried on by MM. Barillot, de Vuillefroy, Watelin, “Cows at Monthieres,” Princeteau, “Going Home,” and others ; while dogs, in their idle life as objects of luxury, or in the heat of the chase, find their usual painters; M. Herrmann-Leon, “ Henri Ill and his dogs;” M. Gelibert, “ Blackcock;” M. Taver¬ nier, “ Uncoupling the Hounds,” etc. SCULPTURE It is an understood thing that the exclusive mission of sculpture is the consecration of all our glories, or the lofty embodiment or certain grand ideas. Hence the inspiration of this art, which is of all arts the most concrete, since it does not consist of mere appear¬ ances, is more exclusively derived from abstract ideas. Though the laws of aesthetics as applied to sculpture, or our traditional habits, have hitherto led us to circumscribe within this rather narrow horizon the limits of its domain, it must be confessed that facts are daily contradicting these theories. Indeed the same phenomena are noticeable here as in painting. Sculpture has in the same way—though somewhat later—felt the rebound of the deep changes that have modified life. Like paint- ing, sculpture has desired to break free from the narrow canons of classic teaching, from the despotism of the traditional point of view, and to share in the intense life about us, to respond to the ideas, the anxieties, the aspirations and dreams of our time, to take a personal part in the propaganda of the great ideas that distinguish this cen¬ tury. It has aimed at giving up its function as a dispenser of honor, an organizer of apotheoses, at descending from the chill and solemn heights of Olympus to come closer to man, to think, feel, suffer— in short, to dwell with him and follow him in his new phases as often as he is renewed. Hence, side by side with the old classical tradition which still supplies that craving for pure beauty, for the rhythm and the ma¬ gnificence of line, which persistently exists in the Latin races, side by side with the national tradition to which so many masterpieces had done honor, and which asserts its vitality in this year’s Salon 58 THE SALON OF iSg 5 where it is to be found in fresh masterpieces, we may see, day by day, the advance of that expressive naturalism, both literary and pic¬ turesque, which is constantly gaining ground. It is at the Champ de Mars that we shall find the most striking examples of this new tendency. The Salon of the Champs-Elysees, to which the most celebrated masters of our glorious school remain faithful, preserves a general effect as a whole which has not been greatly modified. The “motives" which of old almost exclusively formed the stock-in-trade of sculpture—commemorative statues, busts or full length figures, mythology or allegory—still remain the excuse, more or less faithfully followed out, for studies of the nude, for harmonious combinations of attitude, and learned arrangements of drapery ; this year we have the usual array of Dianas, Phcebes, Latonas, Bacchantes, Satyrs, Sapphos, Andromedas, Cleopatras, Eves, Susannahs, etc. ; simple conceptions which our best artists find sufficient as a name for figures, devoid no doubt of literary or philosophical pretensions, but artistic in a way that affects us by its own merits without any compromising assistance from supplementary suggestions. “The Awakening of Earth," a colossal statue by M. Boucher, the vague and bewildered melancholy of the first hour of creation ; M. Charpentier's charming marble figure “Illusion;" M. Dago- net's capital study called “ Eve; " M. Lombard's “Diana;" “The Poet and the Muse,” by M. Thabard, are remarkable works of this class of conceptions. If we seek for some token of the influence of the day, we shall hardly discern them excepting in a mass of realistic every-day studies, subjects from nature devoid of all interest but a craving for dull and servile imitation, and marked by oddity, some wit and much ugliness. And in spite of a consolatory minority of fine works which avail to keep up the dignity and glory of our school, it is this which gives to the sculpture galleries of the Salons a hor¬ rible aspect, as of an assembly of epileptic, idiotic, comatose ^f P. DUBOIS SALON DE 1895. SCULPTURE 59 or ferocious persons escaped from the hospitals or the Police Courts. As in painting, we do not fail to see here the element of vulgar sentimentality, or jocular intention, a lumbering equipment borrowed from painting, and more detestable here even than in its first state. This is genre sculpture , dear to the amateur who practises it, to the makers of imitation bronzes and zinc castings who sell it, and to the wider public, who, alas! buy it. There are the “ Daydreams," “ Teazing," “Fun," “Spring-time,” “Sulky,” “Merry,” “Forlorn,” “A good story,” what not, which crown the mantel¬ shelves of the East and West, where they will pervert the taste of suc¬ ceeding generations. We shall be excused if we drop the subject. One of the studies of life which has had unexpected development in the sculpture of our day is the repre¬ sentation of animals. Restricted as it was almost exclusively to the study of those which are insepa¬ rable from man, especially of the horse and dog which added to the “pomps of circumstance,” or of a few wild beasts, regard¬ ed as symbolical and treated with some trace still of heraldic conventionality, this class of works took a fresh bent under the in¬ fluence of Barye, who recreated it, so to speak ; and since then the study of the wild or domesticated species, with which we share, with or against our will, the uses of our planet, has led contemporary MAN I ERE - Buhnacn- tA& THE SALON OF i8g5 60 sculptors to attempt some insight into nature; they represent, as it were, the landscape painters, in sculpture. “A Family of Lions," by M. Isidore Bonheur; “Monkeys and a Leopard,” by M. Carvin ; ' l A White Bear,” by M. Valton ; dogs of every kind—Danish, harriers, mastiffs, setters, Gordon-setters and the rest (by MM. Stanislas Larni, Peyrol, Masselin, Lienard, Dantan, etc.) stags, fawns, squir¬ rels , wild turkeys, cocks, hawks, down to the charming little “Love-birds” by M. Gardet, and the bronze batrachians and reptiles by Mr. Bartlett, all the animal creation, furred or feathered, sheeny or scaly, are to be found scattered about the central nave of the Palais de l'lndustrie, and the new Palais du Museum, where one of the pediments is decorated by M. Fremiet with a dramatic group, such as he excels in, embodying the weakness of man in the presence of the fearful strength of the monsters of the wild who, like “An Orang-Outang strangling a native of Borneo,” forget only too easily the family ties which connect them with man. The necessity for adapting costume to the exigences of the case in glorifying contemporary heroes, or commemorating recent histo¬ rical events, long since compelled the sculptor to abandon the time-honored formulas for an apotheosis, and to try to regenerate its ordinary accessories. So long as military triumphs are concerned, the uniform, by its traditional significance, has eluded the initial difficulty. This is, no doubt, the reason of the popularity of the patriotic genre, developed yet more by the feelings of national piety manifested ever since the disaster of 1870 by the victim¬ ized cities. This is one of the grand ideas which supply our artists with their most frequent and, very often, their happiest inspirations. One of these monuments, intended to immortalize the gratitude of France to her elder little sister Republic, has gained from the jury of the artists the medal of honor : “ Switzerland consoling Stras¬ bourg, ” by M. Bartholdi, an important group in marble. To a similar inspiration we owe “The Drummer of Arcole,” by M. Amy; SCULPTURE “For the Standard," M. Bareau ; “The Marseillaise," by M. Cadoux; “Pity by M. Chatrousse ; “A Monument placed at Sedan to the memory of those killed in battle," by M. Croisy ; and a monument of the same kind for Limoges,byM.Thabard; “The Town of Saint-Quentin pro¬ tecting France against Spain, 1557," by M. Theunissen ; “The Return, 1793," by M. Pa¬ ris, and others. It is this patriotic emotion that has popularized the worship of the saintly, unique, impas¬ sioned personality of Jeanne d’Arc, which is its very incar¬ nation, and which, even after Fremiet and after Chapu, has again inspired two great works. One is the group in plaster of the national monument by M. Mercie, to be erected at Domremy ; as beseems the memories of the spot where she was born , the saintly heroine is represented in her Bernard _ n, T„.aiu. costume as a shepherdess of Lorraine, standing in an in¬ spired attitude before a grand and noble figure of exhausted France whom she is to lead, at the cost of her own life, to restored glory. It is a composition of lofty purpose and style, tender and touching as the sentiment of devotion we have vowed to the Maid. The second monument to Joan of Arc is the equestrian figure in 16 62 THE SALON OF i 89 5 bronze by M. Paul Dubois, intended for the city of Rheims—which is to have a duplicate—but happily purchased by the Government. Though it should have caused no surprise, since the first scheme of this statue has already been seen, the group long and fondly consi¬ dered by the sculptor strikes us at this day more than ever. The warrior maid of twenty sits a wiry charger that seems to neigh and step out boldly; she is erect in her stirrups, her slight figure cased is armor made to fit her, her hair cut short under the helmet with the vizor up; she raises her eyes to Heaven with a look of faith, her sword uplifted with a gesture that seems to emphasize her silent prayer. It is, no doubt, an analogous feeling which has guided the hand of M. Falguiere to a good end in his youthful and elegant figure of La Rochejaquelein,” the royalist hero of La Vendee, standing with his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, his eye bright, and full of daring and loyalty to the cause he had espoused. Monumental statuary is resuming in our day the conspicuous place it held in the golden days of its history. In spite of the scepticism of the contemporary world , devotion to the dead, by a singular anomaly, is the worship which seems not merely the best preserved, but even resuscitated. Art could not fail to find it the source of many inspirations. We owe a vast number of fine, pathetic and ingenious monuments to the greatest artists. This year M. Ver- let, who had previously done good work of this kind, comes to the front with an example of great skill and really high art. This is the monument to Monseigneur Sebaux, kneeling in his long episcopal robes, his hands folded, the face ugly but most expressive, in a sett¬ ing of natural simplicity and grandeur. In military uniforms and sacerdotal vestments, accessories of a more or less decorative kind, artists find elements that can be adapted to picturesque treatment. The difficulty is greater when illustrious civilians, artists, and poets have to be commemorated, and more especially the political personages, of whom, after our five and twenty SWITZERLAND COMFORTING STRASBURG SCULPTURE 63 years of democratic government, every large country town can boast. Whether artists have become familiarized with these difficulties, or our eyes are by this time accustomed to endure in bronze or marble the forms they so indulgently tolerate in real life, sculptors seem now to produce these memorials of civilian display in the production of celebrities a very considerable amount of ingenuity, facility and sculpturesque feeling. This at any rate is the impression we felt when we saw the monument of Madier de Montjau, the fiery depute of the Drome, by M. Charpentier. Under the influences from without, more especially of her elder sister painting, sculpture has also aspired to present an image of life as it is, or to dress in new forms such generalized ideas as might seem more essentially modern. Millet's “ Peasants,” who had already supplied a large number of painters with models, have done the same service to sculptors when they wished to do honor to field labor or the crafts of the workshop. This class of sculp¬ ture has long given us some highly artistic work. Though in this year’s Salon we have no epoch-making examples, we may men¬ tion , besides the usual bevy of women reaping and washing, M. Hugues’ “Potter,” M. Clausade’s “Sand fisher,” M. Lafont’s “ Maternity,” etc. A detail of the craft in which artists seem now to take great interest is the choice of material. Colored or tinted marbles, new metals, combinations of various materials are all commanding attention more and more in sculptors' studios. M. Gerome this year disappoints our curiosity ; M. Barrau, on the other hand, satisfies it almost too audaciously in his “ Susannah,” a marble statue very carefully wrought, but in which color too strongly emphasizes the nudity. M. Ferrary has executed his swift “Diana” in white metal; so has M. Hannaux some busts ; M. Gardet, as usual, has utilized the color¬ ing of a greenish onyx very cleverly to represent his love-birds. And finally, in this class of work, among the small pieces of sculpture, we must include one of the most charming things in the Salon. 64 THE SALON OF 189 5 This is the little group of “ Salammbo with Matho," in bronze and ivory, in which M. Theodore Riviere, an artist and a poet, has made such intelligent use of the two materials, without triviality or small¬ ness, as to produce a little masterpiece, full of human life and pas¬ sion. We may congratulate ourselves that, thanks to the disinterest¬ edness of the artist, our public collections may acquire this really exquisite little work. We must add a word in honor of the section of medal-work : only the name of M. Roty is missing. The beautiful set, in a frame, by M. Chaplin^ is sold to the State ; and the fine examples sent by M. Daniel-Dupuis, M. Patey, MM. Bottee, Vernon, Mou- chon, Tasset, Lechevrel, Henri Dubois and others cannot fail to give it distinction. FREMIET _ Man/ and* Apes {BarnesJ SOCIETE NATIONALE DES BEAUX-ARTS PAINTING he impression produced by the aspect of Art as we make our way through the two Salons can in no way be better summed up and epitomized than by the symbolical method, which is here quite appropriate. So we return to our little parable ; we shall certainly find none more moral or more popular in these days than that of the “Prodigal Son.'’ As in M. James Tissot’s curious work, he is a very modern Prodigal Son, whose life of vicissitude is publicly related by himself in two acts of 17 66 THE SALON OF 1895 which the scene is laid one to the south east of the Eiffel Tower, and the other to the West of the Obelisk. Contrary to the logic and order of things, we have previously seen the final act, the return of the sinner and the feast of fatted calf. We have found the Wanderer haggard and exhausted, wearing the features of a pupil of the late M. Cabanel, a diligent student who once bore off the prize for historical painting, and who is here very penitent for all the larks we shall elsewhere find him impu¬ dently proclaiming. Solitude has made him thoughtful and sad ; he is under a cloud, or at least a fog. No more dandyism or cosmopolitan airs, no more racing or mid-Lent processions. Robed in sack-cloth he has shut himself up in the middle of the great church opposite Saint-GermainTAuxerrois, where he never ceases to burn tapers in front of the sacred images of the Blest whom he venerated in his childhood, whom he has latterly neglected, and whose ecstasy is displayed against rich backgrounds of gold, or in a mysterious landscape of blue mountains with pointed rocks where the windings of great rivers are lost in the evening gloom. Alone in the spiritual world of invisible truth, in the abyss of dreams and the glory of the ideal, we have followed him past all the Stations of his calvary, in a warm twilight of bitumen and Prus¬ sian blue. In this devout attitude he awaited absolution for his sins, hoped for regeneration and trusted he might deserve the fatted calf by forgetting the golden calf, and proclaiming definitely the triumphs of the Faith. If we now go back to the first act of the tragedy, the scene here has changed. This Prodigal Son has thrown over his parents and gone off to enjoy himself. He is sowing his wild oats and rushes headlong into all the pleasure, folly and intoxication of life and material existence. Conscience still goads him sometimes, but only at long intervals. He very rarely indulges in introspection, troubles himself ROLL LHERMITTE PAINTING 67 about the mysteries of the “beyond” or seeks to solve the great riddle of the unknown. We occasionally see him sadly dreaming as he wanders at sunset near humble villages, on river banks ; entering for a while into the deep, mysterious poetry of souls ; experiencing a mild evangelic glow as he gazes at M. de Uhde’s psalmody, or a more worldly ardor as he looks at M. Dubufe's breviary ; more rarely he is roused to the charms of magic and the occult sciences, to an ethereal reaction and high flights of rapture in the splendid visions where M. Puvis de Chavannes shines ; he even comes in a supreme hour of sincere emotion and spiritual hopefulness, to bow before M. Bartholome's “Monument to the Dead.” But these are mere accidents, transient revulsions of conscience, brief moments of contrition, like memories of our first Commu¬ nion which rise with gusts of youthfulness in the midst of a life of breathless hurry. As a rule, when he stops to think, his doc¬ trines are positivist, not to say materialist. But on the whole he is reckless ; the past does not interest him, and if he sometimes speaks of the future it is to utter a few socialist or even anarchist epigrams, such as are quite in good taste in the most modern circles, and because he associated with certain agitators of the mining districts who preach the crusade of the “ good time coming.” He may be pictured in fancy as great at lawn-tennis ; like an Oxford or Cambridge man, healthy, full of high spirits rather than fun, with a passion for athletic sports, racing, boating and cycling; a great traveler, loving fresh air and sunshine which mount to his brain a little. He is fond of trampling over difficulties, of break¬ neck rides, and tight-rope bridges ; he would like to break the record of every form of eccentricity. He haunts foreign circles and adores exotic beauty. Our Prodigal, like M. Tissot’s w r as lost for a time among the mousmes of Japan. But he is chiefly devoted to the fair strangers from the north with their fixed piercing gaze, and eyes like the Pole-star, and the delightful American girls, a little 68 THE SALON OF 189 5 wrong-headed, who were not swaddled from their birth in our old- world prejudices. With this cosmopolitan mob he leads a rather barbarian and highly refined life, a constant festival made up of gossip, of flirtations, of picnics and five o'clock teas, an interna¬ tional carnival gett¬ ing its fancy dress from Liberty's and watching Lo'ie Fuller’s serpentine dance in the changeful play of colored lights. Bless me ! ‘‘The joys of life,’’ painted as a commis¬ sion for the Municipal¬ ity by M. Roll! naked women in the open air, in the woods, amid the heady fragrance of summer flowers, while gentlemen dressed in black are fiddling madly the most modern music. Let us get away from symbols and parables and be content to state in less sibylline language that, though idealist tendencies are blooming with unexpected rejuvenescence at the Champs-Ely- sees, methods more or less directly derived from the realist or naturalist schools seem to have the upper hand in the opposition establishment. MESDAG GUIGNARD PAINTING 69 Dreams, in fact, are not very numerous in the Champ de Mars. It must, however, be confessed that if they are not conspicuous for numbers they are noticeable for quality. Setting aside certain pre¬ cious and vague conceptions, certain sickly and eccentric imagina¬ tions, we are sure of finding here the deepest and most impressive thinkers, the charmers whose magic is the rarest, the most subtle and refined. At the head of this small column of thinkers and poets who might easily all be named—M. Cazin, M. Dagnan-Bouveret, M. Car- riere, M. Aman-Jean, M. A. Renan and M. Lagarde,—always young, and always vigorous in his imperturbable serentiy and splendid fertility of fancy, marches the Master whose glory sheds some of its light on the destinies of the Society of which he is Presi¬ dent. It was not without some ill-concealed depression, in spite of the joyful emotion caused by so touching and so spontaneous a tribute, that M. Puvis de Chavannes appeared at the meeting in honor of his seventieth birthday. Many of the great painter’s admirers would have preferred that some other occasion should have been chosen for this high festival, than the day which marked him as an old man and seemed to date the culmination of his career. M. Puvis de Chavannes bid his manly soul remember it as a warning, feeling that henceforth his task is more difficult, since he must never be content to fall short of the glorious past so nobly canonized. That is why, this year, in his vast new work for the Boston Library, against the stern and solemn simplicity of the scene combining the infinite blue of the sea and of the sky, the Muses of inspi¬ ration rise in soaring flight, loftier and calmer, more serene and harmonious than ever, bearing witness once more to the inexhaust¬ ible and stalwart vitality of his genius—the “ Genius bearing light and learning,” which they laud amid their white flight up¬ wards. Another fount of beauty, of intense and human poetry, is the 18 THE SALON OF 1895 7 ° sincerely emotional work of M. J.-C. Cazin. He has indeed accus¬ tomed us to look every year for the exquisiteness of his delicate pa¬ lette, the charm of his subtle melancholy dreaminess, infinitely sweet in the sunk purple of evenings as they grow cool, or the pure moonlight of passion and perfume-laden night. Still, it is long since we have had from this artist a piece of work so expressive and sympathetic as this beautiful frame of ten paintings, of which several are quite masterly. M. Cazin, like the great Dutch painters, who were the first to discern the homely beauty of their native country, does not require exceptional incidents, romantic landscapes, grand and wild scenery to impress our soul and touch it deeply. He, like them, seeks out the humblest, poorest, and most forlorn subjects ; a poor “ Fisherman's hut,” on the brink of the sea, amid the starveling vegetation of the salt sands. “Cottage Gardens,” “ Rain,” a soaked sandy road along which a peasant tramps between two fields of rye in a slanting downpour ; a corner of a quarry strewn with white pebbles, and a windlass worked like a windmill; finally, “The High Road,” in perspective, receding straight from the spectator between two lines of pollard trees, in the sad evening light, with a solitary foot passenger—a scene we cannot help com¬ paring with the “Avenue at Middelharnis” a masterpiece by Hobbema in the National Gallery. And it is not too much to say that the comparison is to the advantage of the living master. In fact, though the great Haarlem painter had succeeded in interesting us by his magic effects of light and feeling of vitality, and attracting us to the commonplace scene of an ordinary road, going off into the distance in the very middle of the picture, between the thin tufted lines of gnarled and meagre elms; edging square-cut ditches and formal market-gardens, our contemplation of the landscape does not arouse in every soul the feelings that lie dormant, and that are suddenly alert under the contact of certain things. His master, Ruysdael, indeed, did feel that analogy between nature and man whence springs an eternal fount of emotion, sensation and exult- "V LAGARDE STEVENS PAINTING ancy. Rembrandt, again, by his ardent and generous spirit, trans¬ figured all the nature about him by the radiance of his tenderness and pity, his beneficent genius of light and love. This subjective poetry is M. Cazin’s too. His simple and direct art is free from mystical obscurity, but the generalizing power of his imagination, which magnifies things, as we see them in a mirage, has a singularly eloquent power of persuasive tenderness that fills us, as we stand COURTE'NS _Sa,-dgy,. before all these scenes of misery, with serious and. genuine emotions of the deepest humanity. One of the chief idealists of the French School, M. Dagnan- Bouveret, seems not to have made up his mind to exhibit till the last moment ; his name is not even down in the catalogue. We may regret the absence of any important work by this painter ; at the same time , beside his ingenious allegory of “ Love ruling the World,” he delights us with a lovely little picture of “ Washerwomen on the banks of a stream,” in Brittany, in a cool and delightful half- light full of transparent green. Among the black and white, too, we THE SALON OF 1895 find a fine chalk drawing, the study for his poignant and painful Christ in last year’s Salon. M. Carriere, on the other hand, comes before us this year with one of his most important works, both as regards size and as regards interest as a work of art. In him the poet and the painter are inti¬ mately united. The painter wilfully shuts himself up, with courage or obstinacy as you choose to call it, in an atmosphere of warm twilight, in which distinct outline is lost, a vagueness full of charm for those fastidious minds who resent too much insistency. In the clear-obscure of this monochrome of light and darkness, he frankly casts away all feminine coquettishness of color, and is satisfied with grave and reticent harmonies of tone. And yet, in this subdued and vaporous atmosphere , he has the gift of making his figures live by a simple bold method of modeling, with the sure hand of a sculptor. As a poet, he was wont to be especially attracted by the smiling grace of little children, and the melancholy tenderness of mothers. This year he has attempted a loftier and more modern theme : he has studied the life of the people, and above all of the element which has assumed so large a place in contemporary life and which is still a subject of psychological study to literature and art: namely the mob. The mob—a huge creature, changeful, stormy and uneasy, with a single soul of its own not made up of a number of distinct and individual souls. It is this single and highly sensitive soul that M. Carriere has tried to embody in his “ Popular Theatre, ’ in the mysterious dim light which intentionally conceals the per¬ sonal, individual side of the units composing it ; the soul of the crowd, following with perfect unison of movement and passion a drama which we cannot see, but may guess by their attitudes and gestures. M. Aman-Jean is another idealist of delicate insight, who, by means of learned and subdued harmonies, enables us to read the inner world of the soul. This year, besides such extremely dis¬ tinguished and poetical work as “The little Prince," in which he - - --—- PAINTING 73 once more charms us by his languid scheme of color, he also shows a very happy development of his talent in the direction of clear light and crisp drawing by the use of purer tones and by a wholesomer and more manly apprehension. His “Young Girl with a Peacock,” in her pale yellow dress , in the soft melancholy scene of an anti¬ quated pleasance, the clipped hedges standing out against a silvery evening sky, is a fresh and lovely vision, perfect in its adaptation to decorative purposes. But his portraits of a Russian officer “ Colonel de K. and of Mademoiselle M.-J.-L. in pink and black, are so firm and definitive in tone and modeling that they ought to be for this artist the starting point of a new and more manly phase and con¬ spicuous progress. 19 74 THE SALON OF 189 5 The same world of souls is analyzed by M. Ary Renan with an originality based on hereditary qualities. He has before now exhibited portraits in which the studied harmonies of color have spoken the language of a soul. But by nature he revels in the interpretation of myths, or the creation of ingenious symbolism. His “ Phalaena ” is a strange piece of work of somewhat sickly grace, in which browns are delicately and soberly contrasted with blues, the work of a highly refined and percipient eye, and a cul¬ tivated purposeful mind. Can there be a more melancholy image of our hapless life than this of a beautiful young woman with her pain-stricken face, persistently bruising her brown butterfly s wings against the windows of a room, while through the drawn curt¬ ains she gets a glimpse of a whole unknown world outside, im¬ mense and marvelous, eternally desirable and eternally forbidden. The staff-corps of the little idealist phalanx is completed by a new recruit, M. Pierre Lagarde. Friendship for a time kept him at the Champs-Elysees, his affinities have now called him to the Champ de Mars, where he walks in the wake of M. Puvis de Chavannes. There is nothing offensive in this high affiliation for the characteristics that are dear to us are to be found again here, without exaggeration or servility, modified but not deformed by individual character. Both in his “Moses,’ whose frail cradle glides down the silent waters of the river which reflects under the star-lit night the shadowy forms of the huge Sphinxes; and in “ The Woodcutter and Death,' “Rain, “Snow, “The Spring at Sainte Claire,” enchanted landscapes by which he renders that deep slumbering life of ancient forests, M. Lagarde shows himself as a poet nobly inspired. The realistic formula, the current of observation, which un¬ derlies almost all the artistic inspiration of this Exhibition, is dis¬ played this season in works of unusual importance. These are the DANNAT PAINTING -5 vast decorative pictures by M. Roll, M. Lhermitte, and M. Friant, No doubt, as we turn from contemplating the grand ideal vision of M. Puvis de Chavannes, we are startled and a little uncomfortable on beholding these more or less enormous enlargements of familiar and very concrete realities, displaying on a wall, with illusory exactitude, our commonplace every-day life. We even wonder what interest they will have for our posterity when time shall have modified the externals of life. Will not their appearance of too active vitality contrast strangely with what will then be their archaic effect, their anachronism ? What we are accustomed to look for in decoration is that it should symbolize the special purpose of the building it is intended for, suggest the memories allied with it, characterize the nature of the acts to be performed there. It would seem that this branch of art, more than any other, should restrict itself within the limits of the imaginary, and the expression of great ideas by simple and sympathetic treatment. M. Roll, it must be owned, has not been indifferent to these considerations, and has once more endeavored to solve the very difficult problem of how to reconcile elements taken from modern life with the ordinary practice of allegory. Courbet and Manet had already made some well-known attempts to introduce the nude into scenes of contemporary life. If we except certain very domestic subjects, which serve as a perennial excuse for painters who do not care to revert to the old mythological tales, it must be owned that, notwithstanding the style of dress which the mania for cy¬ cling and the Moulin Rouge have tried to introduce, undress has not yet gone beyond a certain point ; the Prefect of Police, who is not in the habit of going to garden parties a la Giorgione or Titian, has not yet granted ladies permission to go out walking with absolutely nothing on, arm in arm with their husbands in black coats. It is, however, this very suggestive, and, it would seem, very modern aspect of affairs which these painters wished to set before us. Basing their theory on the works of their 76 THE SALON OF 189 5 predecessors of the Renaissance, in which nude figures mingle so successfully and naturally with the gorgeous dress of the grandees, they reflected that to those painters, too, life was modern, and that what was accepted in their day ought to be no less so in ours. It may perhaps be objected that the democratic and rather absurd cut of our masculine costume lends itself less readily to associa¬ tion with nude forms, to which indeed we ascribe a sentiment of apotheosis. As regards M. Roll, it is but fair to say that he has made the contrast less glaring than his illustrious predecessors, and betrays less pugnacious determination. Indeed, he has shown great care and tact in half concealing behind flowering shrubs the three mu¬ sicians who are fiddling with the vigor of Tziganes. “ The Joys of Life"—women, flowers, and music—this is the subject of this picture, intended to decorate the Hotel de Ville. It might be treated in many ways, for everybody has his own notion of the joys of life. There may be some more austere and loftier, which might no less naturally have found an exponent in a municipal build¬ ing. M. Roll has not troubled himself about that; all he asked was to paint a great work, and he did not stop to think whether, in a hall for civil marriages, it would tend to the edification of the future couples. Under a summer sky, in a forest clearing overgrown with flowering shrubs, naked women are strewn among the verdure and the roses. They are gathering garlands or lying at full length in the foreground, while to the left, in the distance, under the diffused light of a summer afternoon, a procession dances on to the sound of the music of three musicians in evening dress, playing with intense conviction, and quite undisturbed by the heavy scent of the flowers and the orgy of voluptuous figures. To the right, where the grove is thicker, groups of lovers are wandering, half-clothed and in fond embrace. M. Roll has kept the whole of this great composition in a low subdued key of color, like tapestry, which will rejoice the eyes of our ediles. STENGELIN PAINTING 77 The Hotel de Ville at Nancy, as a provincial mairie, has a less “fin de siecle” presentment of the joys of life. Its ideal is more rustic; there are flowers indeed in M. Friant’s “Happy Days,” but they are wild flowers; if there is music it is the chirp of grasshoppers and the hum of bees ; there are women, but they are mothers, wives and sisters. M. Friant's two pictures form the two panels of a diptych ; in both the backgrounds is the same Lorraine landscape of fertile plains lying between woods rising high on the right and hills which break the horizon. He has intentionally worked them out as separate and carefully composed pictures, the action taking place in the foreground, close to us as it were. What will be the effect, when they are in their place, of these scenes of real life which seem almost to mingle with our own ? Experience will show. In the panel to the left a woman with bared arms, her figure neatly laced in her bodice, is placing a wreath of wild flowers on the head of a happy little girl, while two tall maidens pass smiling across the waving floor of sunlit flowery meadow. These are the happy days of childhood and girlhood, simple indeed, and doubtless more innocent than those of M. Roll’s bacchantes. In the picture to the right, representing the happiness of maturity and old age, an aged grandmother standing, in profile, seems to be looking at the smiling group in the other panel ; while at her left a young woman sits watching with pride a little boy sleeping on her knees, and on the slope a laborer, half reclining, and a big boy at his side, are enjoying the deep peace of the country dur¬ ing the solemn noon-day rest, under the strong glad sunshine, with the honeyed scent of wild flowers and the noisy glee of the children. Though M. Lhermitte’s huge composition “ Les Halles” (the Paris market) is also realistic in its motive, it is not too sub¬ servient to groveling exactitude of observation. We have not here a series of independent notes and separate bits of genre, a row of 20 78 THE SALON OF i8 9 5 more or less interesting tradespeople and toilers, trying to attract us by their individual business. This great composition, in which we see the bright Paris scene culminating picturesquely in the mass of Saint-Eustache , beyond a struggling crowd of market women seated among their heaps of vege¬ tables , of porters loaded with baskets of gasping fish, of trucks unloading, of baskets being filled, is a well-planned whole, giving us the fine and com¬ forting spectacle of life at its intensest, the active power of a great, rich, and toiling city, a sort of huge organism with enor- mous needs and an insatia¬ ble appetite ; from the decorative point of view its vivid realism will be forgiven for the sake of its general interest. This painting, at once so full and with such unity of purpose, is no commonplace effort ; it is the deeply sincere and thoughtful work of a con¬ scientious artist, who long since proved his quality, but who has never, perhaps, shown more clearly than in this complete and difficult work, the best qualities of his painting. While the idealists have found sundry active and believing apostles at the Champs - Elysees , who have scattered broadcast the sacred word, the realists have, at the Champ de Mars, a RICHON - BRUNET VERSTRAETP. PAINTING 79 singularly bold and energetic champion who steps forth into the fray with a valor and audacity which have somewhat disconcerted their adversaries. M. Charles Cottet’s beginnings are recent enough not yet to be forgotten ; nay, his story has a certain touch of ironical justice. It was in fact to a little chapel not very far from the Boulevards, where an ultra-symbolical priesthood worship day by day, that M. Cottet carried the first fruits of his rebellious brush. He after¬ wards exhibited at the Champ de Mars some fine and breezy sea-pieces, one of which, enthusiastically purchased by the govern¬ ment, was forthwith hung in the Luxembourg. Last year his procession of tall figures in white, under a broad light, won him a traveling scholarship, and this year, after having sent to the Exhibition of Painters in the East some Egyptian studies of a strong and original kind, he appears at the Salon with a series of ten pictures included under the general title of “The seaboard." They are in fact various pages of a long poem of art devoted to the stern Breton coast which has always proved so seductive to painters with its various and even contradictory aspects. We must pass lightly over the five sea-studies. They are beyond doubt delicate and intelligent “impressions," some of them sug¬ gestive of Whistler, but adding nothing to the artist's fame. But the five other paintings : “Burial," “Mourning," “Toil,” and the two “ Taverns, are of far higher significance and import¬ ance. This is not indeed young ladies’ work—it is not adapted to please timid eyes and the stay-at-home spirits who tremble at adventures and are satisfied with what they have hitherto been allowed to see. But, in the exaggerated drawing, the violent coloring, the heavy technique, the painter shows a healthy, true and fearless power of seeing, a generous hatred of conventionality and repeti¬ tions, and a sort of after-taste of the stalwart virile masters who 8o THE SALON OF i8g5 have chosen to look at the stirring drama of life with an unsophisti¬ cated or independent eye, a reminiscence of Courbet, Daumier and Delacroix. This it not indeed the mystical Brittany of melancholy pardons where M. Dagnan-Bouveret groups dreamy maidens round a village crucifix, side by side with their white-headed grandparents. M. Cot- tet has looked at Brittany with the pitiless scrutiny of Guy de Mau¬ passant when studying the vices of the Normandy peasant. His two “Taverns,” where the ruddy light falls harshly on the purple faces of the drinkers, and the stupid countenances of village girls waiting for their turn to dance; his fishermen going forth to “ Toil,” tramping along the beach in the dull silent night ; his three young wives, wrapped in black cloaks, gazing, speechless and tragical, on the impressive distance of open sea; his women in black dresses, kneeling in prayer round a shrouded coffin, and holding tapers, whose dying gleam lends fantastic relief to their features—are not these the daily aspects of such miserable and narrow lives, where pleasure means cheerless drunkenness, and toil has no respite ; where sor¬ row is simple and pathetic, and the scenery is full of rugged, wild, and tragic poetry ? Quite different, evidently is the poetry of Eastern nations. Their distress and loneliness are wrapped in drapery, and transfigured by the African sun. Such is the fiery landscape in which M. Dinet shows us the desperate wanderings of a poor Arab woman carrying a child, harassed, exhausted, and forlorn, like Hagar and Ishmael, in the horrors of a desert without water, among those volcanic rocks with greenish streaks, tinged by ochre and iron, as hot and scorching as rubies, which assume, under the torrid rays of the sun, a really fearful splendor. Such again are these horrible Arab hovels of adobe in the streets of Bou-Saada, their scaly surface tinted with soft and tender reflections under the transient beauty and freshness of morn¬ ing or of twil ight. The mysterious and agitating attraction of these races, the in- ■i~SSr HAWKINS I N E PORTRAIT OF M“ E SEVERINE SEV SALON DE 1895 DE MONTZAIGLE comparable charm of that sky, have bewitched many of our artists. We have seen some already at the Champs-Elysees, and here, by the side of M. Dinet, we have M. Girardet, with some finely colored views in Morocco in the sunset light; M. Chudant, who has repre¬ sented with much subtlety certain strange and soft effects of night, “A winter evening at Algiers, the green hour;” Mr. Potter, “Sunset HAGBORG — StocAAalms f •Jaruuuy ttysJ at Bou-Saada; ” and finally a new recruit likely to add fresh lustre to the school of Orientalists, M. Besnard. This is the second season that we have seen M. Besnard exhibit Algerian subjects. It would indeed have been a pity if this artist had never been led, either by his own free will, or by some of the chances of life, to these lands of light of which he seems born to render the most unexpected and exaggerated aspects. His love of violent or delicate contrasts, of conflicting lights, of unexpected sub- THE SALON OF i8g5 jects, his taste for everything original, fantastic or new, his daring dexterity of hand and balance, could find no more wonderful subject to practise on than this world of glittering phantasmagoria which seems to defy the ingenuity of the palette. M. Besnard has really shewn himself in quite a new guise, and in one of the happiest phases of his talent, with his delightful pictures of “Algiers at sunset," his head of a young Arab wo¬ man, her hair dressed with geraniums, so dazzling in color and so capital in texture, and, above all, his “Horse Fair," full of stir and life, under a cool morning sky with the elegant shapes of the fine intelligent beasts whose grace M. Besnard has understood so well. Genre pictures are not very numerous here ; and to judge from those there are in general, we have not much to regret. Scarcely can we mention any, in the province of fancy and caprice, but the pleasing studies by M. Aublet, “Climbing Roses," “Tea Roses,” “White Chrysanthemum;" “Autumn," and the like; “Hope," by M. Rosset-Granger. sheltering under the folds of the rose the light which guides her through the rocky path of life ; “ A Garden Party,” by M. Adrien Moreau, a faint echo of the Empire subjects which abound at the Champs-Elysees ; some gentleman of the times of Louis XIII “Sleighing," by M. Firmin-Girard ; M. Frappa’s ever recurring jests, “A mad story," “A high day," “A hole in the stocking;” M. Picard’s “Anxious Moments," of which the huge size does not at all add to the interest of the picture. Then we have “ The Death Ride,” by M. Beauquesne, who represents mili¬ tary painting, while M. Couturier, in a picture full of feeling called “ Abandoned," shows us a terrible incident in a sailor’s life. Of pictures of a more religious tendency we must particularly mention a little group of water-colors, by M. Dubufe, illustrating the “ Life of the Virgin," a series of elegant and delicate drawings sumpt¬ uously brought out by MM. Boussod, Valadon et C° ; and his PAINTING 83 triptych “ Ave Maria," in the dazzling whiteness of a Capri land¬ scape, which seems the end and crown of the former work. M. Weerts, who also exhibits a series of refined and clever por¬ traits, has a symbolical picture of lofty feeling “ Pour VHumanite, pour la Palrie," in which he has grouped the two great sacrifices of Christ’s death for mankind and the soldier’s death, while de¬ fending the standard. M. Stengelin sends “The Morning Star." The number of subjects of “observation" here is considerable : portraits, interiors, and landscapes ; and to tell the truth, when we know our Salon and can no longer be attracted by the more assert¬ ive works, there is no telling what a quantity of capital little pictures are to be found smothered in the crowd and lost in the tumult. Among the portraits, here as at the Champs-Elysees, the persons represented find themselves in odd juxtaposition. The portrait of “Monseigneur le due d’Orleans,” for instance, by M. Mathey, and that of “Madame Severine," by Mr. Hawkins. Political per¬ sonages, however, here occupy less space. The masterly painter and engraver M. Marcellin Desboutin—whose promotion to the Cross of the Legion of Honor, so long deserved and waited for, is a matter of congratulation—is here with a living portrait of M. Puvis de Chavannes, in the solemn robes of his mornings “at home," that is to say the dressing-gown that drapes him so majestically. M. Blanche exhibits some clever portraits, showing reminiscences of Manet and of Gainsborough ; M. Lerolle a capital portrait of an old lady ; M. Lucien Simon has several scenes of highly poetic feeling, and a freely and finely treated portrait. Nor must we over¬ look the names of MM. Jeanniot, Prouve, Dinet, Rixens and others. A rather curious circumstance in connection with this exhibition, which has been noted from the beginning, is the formation, in strong contrast with its declaration of independence and professed belief in individuality, of quite distinct groups round the more con- 8 4 THE SALON OF i8g5 spicuous figures of the seceders. M. Puvis de Chavannes’ influence has proved more or less direct and general. Round M. Cazin we may point out a certain number of intelligent and refined landscape painters : MM. Billotte, Cabrit, Costeau, Lecamus, and perhaps even M. I will. As followers of MM. Dagnan-Bouveret and Friant, hesi¬ tating between more or less realist or idealist tendencies, we have already seen M. Louis Picard and M. Muenier with a number of good examples, in which, as for instance in “ Orphans,” the painting is more solid. M. Carriere brings to mind M. Tournes, who is freeing himself each year as he advances, M. A. Berton, and M. Cal- lot, who indeed has some affinity with M. Roll. M. Cottet finds an echo in M. Richon-Brunet and M. David-Nillet. Among the sincerest and boldest of landscape painters we find M. Victor Binet, whose conscientious and trustworthy art finds all its poetry in truth of observation and honest methods. M. Barau who has resuscitated in the light ; M. Darnoye, whose ten small canvases are of all his works, perhaps, the most successful. Then there are some brilliant impressionists, such as M. Sisley, one of the founders of this group of painters; MM. Boudin, Lebourg, and Lepere ; and the Provence painters, MM. Montenard, Dauphin, Moutte, Lahaye, etc. Of the students of interiors, M. Lobre is distinguished by excep¬ tional qualities of accurate vision, delicate and poetical. For some years he has adopted as general head-quarters, the old “ Palace of Versailles,” crowded with august memories which live again in his interiors or grand fagades, painted in grey weather or at sunset. The studies by MM. A. Boulard, Griveau, Delachaux, Laporte and others form a very interesting series of glowing and attractive pictures. In this swift review we have seen that portion of this exhibition which we owe to our own nation. We now must turn to the foreign BARRAU DOM QUIXOTE PAINTING 85 element, which is of importance from the number and quality of the works exhibited. From the beginning of the secession it has been a standing joke to emphasize ironically the designation National Fine Art Society, since then, as now, about one third was composed of foreign members. The jest was easy but the criticism scarcely jus¬ tified; for it was a very narrow spirit of professional jealousy and complete misapprehension of their moral and material interests that made a few artists take umbrage at this foreign incursion. If we look seriously into the cause of this state of things, we understand that it has in fact arisen from the wide radiance shed far and near by contemporary French art. This tide from foreign schools, the young¬ est of them born in our midst, the elder returning to refresh their souls, is the highest homage that can be paid to our masters and our teaching, and will remain a fact that counts as a great feature in the history of art, the immense attraction of French art in the present day. It is to art that we owe, after all our disasters and sorrows, the first resuscitation of our country’s pride ; to art we owe so far our most glorious revenge. From the merest mercenary point of view the immense concourse and rivalry, here in Paris, year by year, of all the nations of the earth, continues to make our Capital the most important centre of artistic traffic, notwithstanding the com¬ petition of some energetic rivals. It is a pity, from the point of view of teaching, that the Salons have never had courage enough to repeat an attempt made by the State in iS81 to class foreign painters by themselves. They are afraid of discussion and animadversion. But it would have saved the trouble which the public are bound to take for themselves of grasp¬ ing the works of various foreign schools whose development interests their curious study. d he British school has long been that which has kept most aloof from French influence. In spite of the common parentage of the two races, the deep ditch of the Channel has almost persistently divided the artistic products of the two countries. Thus it was nearly forty 22 86 THE SALON OF 189 5 years before the preraphaelite school was known in Paris, outside a very small circle ; though it was seen here in its splendid and really original beginnings at the exhibition of 1 855. Sir Edward Burne-Jones, who for the last three years has been tempted by the sympathy of some French critics to exhibit in our Salons, was dis¬ covered , so to speak , two years ago, and suddenly became the object of unmea¬ sured enthusiasm, too uncri¬ tical to last, which gave way soon after to a reaction common enough here, and the most unjust abuse. In point of fact, nowithstanding the importance and style of his contributions, Sir E. Burne-Jones is little under¬ stood by us. He has not revealed himself to us as the expressive colorist, the poet stirred and affected by beautiful or tragical legends; he has sent symbolical pic¬ tures, in which Italian rerni- DE SAINT-MARCEAUX _ UuA, niscences have started and displeased us, and where we at once trace the academic quality. In spite of dryness in the drawing and coldness of tone, “Love among the ruins, shows great dignity of style and rare loftiness of conception. As to his portrait of a young lady, intentionally pitched in a very simple and conventional key, is must be confessed that it is a work as intense as it is reticent. By the side of this late representative of a glorious school, now PAINTING 87 dying out, two small schools have arisen which have closer conti¬ nental affinities. One of these, the Cornish school, formed under the influence of Fred Walker, and under the impulse of a very French tendency to seek the open air and a free atmosphere, includes a number of artists who have not specially distinguished themselves in their exhibits here this year. The other is the young Scottish School, which has developed very rapidly and of which we have seen several representatives at the Champs-Elysees. Its special characteristics are a return to stronger coloring, which gives it an affinity with the French romantic painters of i83o, and the strong stamp impressed on it by the subtle harmonies of the American painter, Whistler. From that point of view MM. Guthrie and Lavery, of the Glasgow group, may be regarded as akin to MM. Whist¬ ler, Alexander, Johnston, etc. Those who appreciate harmonies of delicately contrasted tones, where grey predominates, will find art¬ istic pleasure in the works of these various painters. Mr. Alexander, in particular, only needs a little more simplicity, and to free himself from the whirling skirts of Miss Loi'e Fuller. Mr. Harrison, whom we like to regard as one of ourselves, is still the fascinating wizard who, year after year, initiates us into the mysterious charm of the sea, rendering its very throb and life. Mr. Dannat comes with fresh originality from his studies of Spanish types which have again furnished him with some very happy subjects: “ Soly Sombra'' and “ Madrilena.” Mrs. Mac Monnies does credit to her husband’s well-known fame by some ingenious and graceful allegorical decorative work. Next to the Americans, the Scandinavians are the most acclima¬ tized of our artist visitors. Their school is to some extent the child of ours, it must be owned that they are amply grateful and extremely proud of it. And may not we, too, be proud of having formed under our teaching or influence, artists so worthy of the name as M. Thau- low, who distinguishes himself, as usual, by very remarkable contri¬ butions, frank, healthy and sturdy, and yet full of fine and manly 88 THE SALON OF i 89 5 poetry; M. Edelfeldt, whose figures and landscapes alike are full of feeling, “ Sorrow," ‘‘Hoar Frost," “The First Snow-fall”; M. Hag- borg : “Stockholm;" M. Kroyer, the young leader of the Danish school, and M. Zorn. The Dutch and Belgians , under the fostering influence of a splendid past, are developing highly prosperous local schools. The Dutch are represented by M. Israels, now growing old, and by M. Mesdag. The Belgians, who are more numerous, appear under very various aspects. The idealist element, in a land so deeply stirred by every modern question, is represented in sculpture by an artist to whom we shall presently recur, M. Constantin Meunier; and by a curious painter, powerful but unequal, M. Leon Frederic— “Nature, a triptych ’—who has taken up the old primitive allegories of the Italians of the fifteenth century, bringing to them a singular dryness, a strange mixture of naturalism and conventionality, and finding in them symbolical suggestions of a perfectly different char¬ acter, as may well be imagined from those formerly derived from them by the English preraphaelites. Their landscape painters form a strong and splendid cohort, with M. Baertsoen one of their most gifted artists : “A snowy morning in Flanders,' “ A church-porch,” and various silent nooks in a “Dead City; M. Courtens, “Sea-dogs,’ and others; MM. Claus, Coppens, and Verstraete, “A coming Storm," M. Stevens, still quite himself, “The New Baby, ’ and M. Linden, “An Amateur Model,” represent genre and fancy with their usual skill. The Germans are represented among us by the most advanced artists of various tendencies. The old German school, which still enjoys an excessive reputation in its own country, long since ceased to send us its works, and indeed they could not fail to appear singu¬ larly old-fashioned. But the younger artists, who readily acknowl- edged our influence, never fail to show in our exibhitions. M. Lie- bermann, who may be regarded as their head, sends this year “A Dutch Fisherman" crossing the sandhills at Zandw'ort, Holland, some- PAINTING what sad in tone and showing very plainly the influence of M. Is¬ raels. M. von Uhde, preserves his feeling for solemn and religious emotion in his “Procession to the Grave,” a rather heavy piece of work perhaps; M. Kuehl is brilliant and delicate in his “Beer¬ house : Lubeck.” M. Max Klinger introduces a quite new element of idealist art, intending to rebel, as it would seem, against the movement, not yet recognized it is true, of reaction in art against the new formula imported from France, which has proved valuable in bringing German imaginations back to nature. M. Max Klinger is a remarkable engraver, though his drawing is often heavy and clumsy, and a very curious sculptor. He has an open and intelligent mind, and a strong and rich imagination, which needs cultivating with an eye to nature. The merits of his “ Judgment of Paris,” his “ Calvar)', and his “ Cassandra ” are spoilt by outrageous bad taste. The nations of the South are not strongly represented here. Spain, from which, in the Champs-Elysees, we hailed the dawn of a new artist of talent, is seen only in M. Rusinol and M. Laureano Barrau’s “Don Quixote.” When we think of the little Republic of Helvetia in connection with art, it is apt to be with a touch of disdain. We gladly recognize its noble moral qualities , we have not the slightest hesitation in acknowledging its high civic virtues, but we refuse to admit that it has any artistic gifts. This reputation, it must be admitted, was unfortunately justified by the astounding performances of a certain number of so-called landscape painters who, strange to say, still enjoy the admiration of the populace in their own country. But it must now be confessed that Switzerland has lately pro¬ duced some well qualified painters. We cannot speak of Arnold Boecklin of Bale, who does not exhibit in Paris, where he is indeed almost unknown ; the Germans claim him as their own, and he is a man of powerful and original character, exuberant and unequal, and of Teutonic imagination. < 53 go THE SALON OF 189 5 French Switzerland, on the other hand, has shown us some exquisite landscape painters, such as M. Baud-Bovy, who has rein¬ stated the pictorial element of mountain scenery, damaged by Calame ; and M. Burnand, who has excelled in depicting the aspect of the southern rejious of France, is no less happy in important historical subjects. His “Escape of Charles the Bold,” this year, is perhaps the only historical picture in the Champ de Mars ; and though heavy in parts, it possesses grand tragic feeling in the wild ride across a country which emphasizes the moral atmosphere of the scene. Made¬ moiselle Breslau, with some figures most charmingly handled, and M. Stengelin, with some attractive landscapes, close this little list. E. BURNAND SCULPTURE If distinct tendencies are to be discerned in the two rival Salons, it is in the department of sculpture that they are most convincingly manifest. At the Champs-Elysees, notwithstanding the intrusion of literary and picturesque ideas and the hesitancy of artists blown by every wind of outward influence, the dominant inspiration is still the Latin tradition ; but at the Champ de Mars, with the exception of a few works lost in the crowd, the aspect generally is quite different, we are in the presence of another art, as it were. Here we find an inspiration at once naturalistic and mystical, based on memories of original French art, of the Flemish and Burgundian traditions, which bequeathed to us, before the Italian incursion, marvels of which the value is better understood every day. It is the Christian, human tradition of the north in opposition to the pagan, anthropomorphic tradition of the south. The most convincing apostle of this new creed is M. Rodin, who no doubt derived the rudiments of his faith from the Flemish land where he was early invited to work, and whose sculpture retains a very living sense of the national past. The same exuberant spirit of naturalism and mysticism is also to be traced in the painting and the literature of this storm-tossed little land. Writers like M. Huysmans and M. C. Lemonnier are bound to have such brethren in art as MM. Rops , Frederic, Constantin Meunier and the rest. M. Meunier, in his little reliefs and statuettes, and sometimes in more important works, seems to have solved the problem of modern life in sculpture. He has carried his art into industrial life as well as into that of the fields, with a touch which the present position of THE SALON OF i8g5 92 social questions makes somewhat sterner, but with the austere syn¬ thetical apprehension, and the generalized types by which Millet ennobled and restored our comprehension of the primitive being, the peasant who was previously regarded merely as a fiction of the stage or of romance. For a few days M. Rodin was able to exhibit one of his Burgesses of Calais, who, however, soon went to join the remainder of the mo¬ nument lately unveiled. It is one of his works which has been most discussed ; in it he has definitely abandoned the limitations of the classic tradition. The rest of his exhibit, restricted by the great public works to which he is devoting himself, consist of two small marbles wrought with exquisite care ; a head of a young woman, standing out as it were from the matrix, a block of rough marble, and a medallion portrait in high relief of M. Octave Mirbeau. His fervent disciple, M. Desbois, sends us this year only some curious metal work, exhibited in the glass cases for small objects ; and there too, we find M. Vallgren, a member of the same company. But we find great compensation in one of the largest and most eloquent mo¬ numental works which we have yet seen. We allude, as will at once be understood to M. Bartholome’s “ Monument to the Dead. ” For some years now, bit by bit, we have admired the details of this great work, their severe execution and poetical feeling. But only the imposing spectacle of the monument as a whole could convey the deep impression produced by this powerful and exceptional work of art, so loftily inspired, so human, and so consoling. This grand composition falls into two divisions. In the first, which constitutes the upper portion of the monument, two figures, a man and a woman seen from behind, are advancing with calm and sorrowful action towards the symbolical door which opens on an¬ nihilation. Kneeling groups on both sides seem to mourn for them or to prepare to follow them, as may be surmised from the farewell kiss sent after them by a young girl, on the right of what appears to be the outer world. In the lower division of the work, in the shadow SCULPTURE 9? of a square recess, a group of a man and wife, with their child across their knees, lie in the sleep of death, while a youthful ideal figure, the Spirit of life and light, extends her arms over them with a pro¬ mise of resurrection. Just to glance at the objections which might possibly be raised to the scheme of this work, that we may afterwards have the pleasure of praising it without reserve, it must be owned that the connection of these two scenes is not immediately obvious. In the numerous reports and criticisms published after the opening of the Salon, much confusion may be discerned. Some critics regarded the upper portion as the preliminary scene, others found it in the lower half. The fact is that they are perfectly independent, though connected by a common ideal: above we see death, below the resur¬ rection to light. This noble and stately composition, so full of spiritual feeling, is treated with a choice of typical forms modeled with great learning and fine emotion, with intense respect for nature, and an exquisite sense of beauty and harmony of line. We feel a happy reminiscence of the funereal figures of the middle ages, rejuvenated by a per¬ fectly modern love of nature and life. It is an added glory of quite new splendor to our school of sculpture. There remains no other works of any great importance to be noticed. Excepting : “Duty,” by M. de Saint-Marceaux, to grace the tomb of M. Tirard ; “Colbert,” by M. Aube, and a few less important figures, we find nothing noteworthy, but works on a small scale which have indeed merits of their own. Thus M. Dampt, less happy than usual in his figure in wood and ivory, charms us once more by his pleas¬ ing studies of children; M. Peter, with some witty, intelligent and life-like little groups of animals—monkeys, Japanese bears, hares, rats, etc., some marble statuettes of lions, and above all his grace¬ ful, supple Arab horse, holds a leading place as a sculptor of ani¬ mals. Madame Cazin has rested from more serious labors, and 94 THE SALON OF i S 9 5 exhibits in this line two admirable studies of cattle. M. Fix Masseau sends some busts in marble and metal, boldly modeled with a sound sense of the sculptor's art, and promises to be a good artist when he has shed the eccentricities of his somewhat old-fashioned sphinxes. There is an annexe to the sculpture near the drawings, where we find the collected works in bronze and pottery of M. Jean Carries’s so early dead, and so much lamented. This display which, however, is not entirely new, as most of the works we find here have been exhibited before, is nevertheless attractive and instructive in its en¬ tirety, and revives our regrets at the decease of this fine and admirable craftsman. Here, as at the Champs-Elysees, want of space prohibits our dwell¬ ing on the engravings. It would nevertheless be interesting to con¬ sider the advance of some revived arts, such as wood engraving, by such artists as MM. Lepere and H. Riviere, and lithography by M. Lunois. But we must not entirely pass over one section which forms one of the great attractions at the Champ de Mars ; that, namely, of applied Art or Objets d'Art. We spoke, at the beginning of these notes, of the place taken by this exhibition in the revival of the decorative arts. These applied arts, minor arts as it is now the fashion to call the younger brethren of what used to be termed High Art, continue to find a field for unflagging activity in the Exhibition which includes them. The arts of minute decoration produce real marvels of work¬ manship, the President of the section, M. Cazin, sets the example, and shows himself to be a master potter indeed, with a case of superb earthenware. We can fancy we see in the glass cases of the Galerie d Apollon the exquisite translucent enamels, cloisonnes with gold or overlaid on opaque grounds, by which M. Thesmar is endeavoring to revive the tarnished prestige of our factory of Sevres ; there, too, will be a place for M. Galle’s engraved glass, an essentially modern art, but splendid and poetical, and the fine painted enamels by MM. Grandhomme and Gamier, treasures from which the Luxem¬ bourg, to the satisfaction of the public, is authorized to purchase largely. We admire, too, the metal-work by M. Charpentier and M. Desbois, the iridescent glazed ware by M. Desmant, the glass- work by Mr. Tiffany and M. Leveille, and M. Vallgren’s ornamental pieces in bronze. But what is really interesting in all this, is to see that decorators thoroughly understand the way in which they should go. They have learnt that shop-window work is a sort of blind- alley; that when once they have, so to speak, saturated their cus¬ tomers, of course but few, they will have to put out their fires and throw away their tools, or else to ruin themselves, unless they de¬ grade their art to the level of commonplace industry and cheap production. But they have discerned that their aim must be not to transfer ideas proper to painting or sculpture to objects of prac¬ tical utility, which are generally deformed and useless as a result ; but to turn to account, in daily life, on the objects which surround us, in a sober and simple spirit, neither modifying nor distorting them, the natural capabilities of the materials composing them. In pottery, especially, which has made splendid progress within these ten years, monumental work has been boldly attempted. MM. De- laherche, Dalpayrat, Lesbros, Dammouse, and Bigot, shew us, besides objects of utility which are wholly admirable, attempts in this direc¬ tion which cannot fail to lead to triumphant success at the Exhibition of 1900. 1 he art of staining window glass also, cleverly revived in France by M. Carot and M. Gaudin, and in America by Mr. Tiffany and Mi. John Lafarge who has come before the Paris public for the fit st time with a series of water-colors of a journey to Japan and the Hawaii or Tahiti Islands—is making constant progress, which has made it one of the most interesting manifestations of modern ait. Thus we may be convinced, in spite of the opinions of croakers or of purblind critics, that our century too has a style of its own, 96 THE SALON OF 18 q 5 and that a little education, habit, method and presence of mind alone are needed to make our decorators worthy to compare with the most famous artists of the kind in the past. Leonce BENEDITE. P. S. — We have to make good an oversight in omitting to mention some works which escaped notice in the body of these notes : “ David," by Miss Gardner; “ Shepherds," by M. Grateyrolle ; 11 Hors de combat ," by M. Grolleron ; “ The test,." by M. Makowsky, among the paintings. “The Truant,” by M. Bernard, and “Between the Arcs," by M. Maniere ; all exhibited at the Champs-Elysdes, and most, if not all of which, are reproduced in this volume. LIST OF AWARDS PAINTING “ M6daille d'honneur.” M. E. Hebert. Second Medals. MM. J. Sorolla y Bastida, L.-G. Ra- vanne, P. Lecomte, L. Simonnet, E.-J. Laurent, A. Boye, R.-L. Chretien, A.-H. Tanoux, D. Saubes, A.-C. Wallet, M. Carl Rosa, E. Claude. Third Medals. M. H. Bonis, M lle E. Sonrel, MM. H.- D. Etcheverry, L.-A. Bouche, J.-A. Ma- rioton, E. Troncy, G.-E.-E. Nicolet, Miss M. Smith, MM. E.-L. Chayi.lery, A. Prevot-Valeri, V. Leydet, H. Biva, E. Lo- mont, P.-J. Dierickx, M Ile G. Achille Fould, MM. J. Adler, P.-A. Marsac, M'»cs v. Dubourg, M.-G. Duhem, MM. N.- M. Lund, W.-L. Picknell, W.-E. Loc¬ khart, T.-C. Gotch, E. Cremieux, R. Le- long, E. Maxence, P. Chabas, P. Liot, J.-C. Pape, G. Charpentier-Bosio, A. Granchi-Taylor. SCUL “Medaille d’honneur" M. F.-A. Bartholdi. First Medals. M. H.-D. Gauquie. Medal work : M. F. Vernon. Second Medals. MM. P. Loiseau-Rousseau, E. Dagonet, G. -M.-V. Bareau, A. Moncel, L.-A. Ri- viere-Theodore. Medal work : M. F.-A. Heller. Third Medals. MM. E. Legrand, F. Hamar, J.-J. Pen- daries, J.-B. Belloc, P. Chevre, C.-J. “ Mentions Honorables." MM. Rouault-Chandavoine,C. Duchene, C. Varquez, M.-N. Belaesky, C.-L. Mou¬ lin, M lle M.-L. Chanchefoin, MM.M.-J.-H. Thierot, G. Grosso, M"° C. Dufau, MM. T. Hunt, T.-R. de Dreger, J.-E. Pages, J.-C.-C. Taupin, A.-N. Martin, A. Decamps. E. Bouzin, M Uo N. Schmitt, MM. M. Le¬ vis, J.-F. Mary, M. Jeannin, F. Eisenhut, S.-S. Thomas, L.-A. Letourneau, E. Mar¬ che, A. F’abres, A.-G. Voisard-Margerie, F. Kirchbach, M"° A. Delassai.le, MM. L. Loeb, M. Pille, M'»° L. Muntz, M»° G. Vuillaume, MM.E. Peixotto, G.Mathieu, M. Mangin, C. Wilhemson, M ,l,e Consuelo- Fould, M. J.-A. Grun, M n,e P. Delacroix- Garnier, MM. G. Meyer, J.-M. Duval, G. Bridgmann, M. Dainville, L.-A. Truchet, S.-S. Barbudo, P.-A. Steck, J. Marx, M 111 cs Garnot-Beaupere , A. Sturdevant, MM. W. Norton, A. de Gesne, M ,n0 P. Dubron, MM. H. Dabadie, H. Mouren, M llc C. Corneloup. TURE Desvergnes, L.-R. Bardelle, P. Melin, R. DE Gontaut-Biron, C.-L.-E. Virion, L. Leclaire, J.-M.-J. Magrou. Medal work : M. C.-P.-G.-A. Pillet. “ Mentions Honorables.” MM. C.-J. Barnhorn, L.-A. Bayeux, A. Besqueut, M. Bianchi, M. Blay y Fabrega, R.-E. Brooks, F. Caro, L. Cauer, F. Cif- fariello, M. Debut, E. Derre, F. Duve- neck, K. Hammar, H. Elmqvist, C. Lau¬ rent, E.-L. Lhoest, M"'« F. Marc, M lle C. Monginot, MM. P. Perrotte, Rey- nes y Gurgui, M. de Tarnowsky, M lle P. Testard, MM. M. Vallet, M.-H. Wadere. LIST OF AWARDS ARCHITECTURE Second Medals. MM. E. PONTREMOLI, A.-C. TlSSANDIER, L. -C.-M. Varcollier, C.-M.-F. Josso, P.-A. Dumenil, E. Boue, in collaboration with M. G. Heraud. Third Medals. MM. L. Farge, G. Tronchet, J.-C.-M. Berger, F.-E.-L. Boutron, in collabora¬ tion with M. X.-F. Schcellkopf, T. Le- clerc, E.-E. Esnault-Pelleterie. ENGRAVING AN “ Medaille d’Honneur.” M. G. Baude. First Medals. MM. A. Gilbert (lithography) . J. Pa- tricot (line engraving). Second Medals. MM. C. Faivre (etching) ; A. Mignon (line engraving) ; L. Desbrosses (etching); T. de Mare (line engraving). Third Medals. MM. G.-T. Caillaux (lithography) ; P.-V. Avril i etching) ; E. Grosbie (wood en¬ graving);^. -E. Honer (lithography) ; F.-E. SUB-SECTION OF (in connection Wl Third Medals. MM. R. Lalique, F.-J. Joindy, L. Ma- JORELLE. “Mentions honorables.” MM. G. Embry, A. Rose, F. Debon, “ Mentions Honorables. ” MM. J. Durand, C.-F. Newes, F. Debat, H. Guedy, P.-P. Simon, J.-F. Bourdilliat, P.-L.-A. Charbonnier, F.-J.-E. Bertrand, P.-H.-C. Labouret, H. Ancian, C.-A. Le- trosne, C.-J. Bernard, A. Proy, S. Fa- guer, L.-J.-B. Bentz , L.-M.-M. Trin- quesse, M.-V. Terra, J.-G.-A. Hebrard, E.-E. Arnaud, E.-E. Delabarre. D LITHOGRAPHY Jeannin (etching); E. Duplessis, E. Juil- lerat (lithography); A. Boilot (etching/ ; H. Wolf ( wood engraving) ; A.-C. Benard (lithography). “ Mentions Honorables. ” M llc L. Tournadre, MM. H.-L.-M. Le- seigneur, J.-A. Corabceuf, E. Doby (line engraving) ; L. Besque, G. Profit, J.-E. Guisinier, L. Desbuissons, A.-E. Hotin (etching); C.-G. Maylander, E. Montet, E.-L. de Ruaz, G. Aubert, E.-G. Joubard (wood engraving ) ; A.-J.-M. Broquelet, J.Soubrier, F.-E.-M. Bouisset, L. Perrou- don, A. Rcedel ( lithography). DECORATIVE ART rn THE 4 SECTIONS) E.-C. Coupri, F. Brou, P.-J.-L. Gruel, M ,ue A.-K. de Frumerie, MM. A.-M. Jor- rand, M.-G. Guerchet, H. Coulier, T.-H. Laumonnerie. LIST OF WORKS OF ART PURCHASED BY THE STATE PAINTING M Adler (J.). Anethan (M 11b A. d’) . Barau (E.). Barili.ot (L.). Baschet (M.). Baud-Bovy (A.). . . . Besnard (P.-A.j. • • Besson (J.-G.). Blanche (J.-E.i. . . . Boye (A.). Brangnvyn (F.-G.) . . Breaute (A.). Brispot (II.). Carl-Rosa (M.). . . . Chevalier (E.-J.). . . Chretien (R.-L.) . . . Chudant (J.-A.). . . . Claude (E.). Cottet (Ch.). Couturier (L.). . . . Cres (Ch.). Cullen (M.). Dameron (E.-C.) . . . Decote (G.). Desvallieres (G.-O.) . Dinet (A.-E.). Dubourg (M mc V.) . . Duhem (\l m e M.-G.) . Dupain (E.-L.) .... Fouace (G.-R.) .... Geoffroy (J.). Gervais (P.i. Girardot (L.-A.) . . . Guinier (H.-J.) .... Gumery |A.-E.). . . . IIareux ( E.-V.)... Hermenjat (J.-A.) . . I will (M.-J.). Lafon (F.). Laugee (G.). Laurent-Desrousseaux A.-L.). Lebourg (A.). Le Liepvre (M.i . . . Lerolle (H.). Lobre (M.). Lucas (F.-H.). Maincent (G.). In the Faubourg Saint-Denis ; morning. Ruth gleaning. View taken from Chdlons-sur-Vesle. Embarking cattle. Portrait of M. Ambroise Thomas. The close of day. Port of Algiers (twilightI. Christ the Consoler. Girl with a straw hat. Blind. A trade on the beach. Watching. At the barber’s. Last autumn rays. In the port of La Rochelle. The best wine. April (Franche- Comte). Funeral of Pierre le Venerable. A Funeral. Lost. Back to the military school. Summer. Antibes and Nice. Portrait of M. S. . Man's Head. “ L'air etaii embrase. ' A basket of flowers. The Sisters’ walk. 7 he Centenary of the Polytechnic school. Fruit; still-life. A drawing class. Maria de Padilla. Tangier. Autumn. On the ice. The banks of la Romanche. “ Le fumeur de Kif.'' A grey night. Constantinople in the fourth century. Gleaners. Weighing lime in the Children’s Hospital Herblay ; winter. The Ala rch sun. Portrait. The palace of Versailles. “ L apercevance.” The Seine frozen over. — Chatou i8g5. I oo WORKS OF ART PURCHASED BY THE STATE Marsac (P.-A.i. An autumn day in Provence. Melchers (G.i..4 Mother. Monginot (Ch. i. Peaches ; still-life. Moteley (G.-J.. The Orne at Clery. Noirot(E.i. Le Puy (Haute-Loire). Nozal (A.i .. The golden dune. Petitjean (E.j . 1 he port of La Rochelle. Pille (Ch.-E.j. Strategists. Pointelin (A.-E.i. A valley at Bre^in. Pranishnxkoff (J.-P. i . . . . Retreating after the attack. Quost (E.). A meadow at Courcelles-sous-Jouarre. Ravanne (L.-G. Low tide at Grandcamp. Richon-Brunet. By the sea. Romani (M lle J i. Primavera. Rossert (P.-A. The last autumn days. Rosset-Granger (E.i . . . . Hope. Sabatte (G.-G.-F.i. The painter s grandmother. Saint-Germier (J i.“ Le garditn des scelles; " Venice. Sain tin (H. j. After the storm. Sautai (P.-E.j. Saint Geoffrey at the Grande Chartreuse. oorolla y Batisda |,l.) . . . The fishermen's return Taupin (J-C.-C.). The Mue^in. Tournes (E.). First Communion. Valadon (J.-E.). Peace and Liberty. WATER-COLORS AND MINIATURES MM. Guignard (G.i. . M ,Ie Hammann (A. i. , M nie Richard (H.i . . Calm, water-color. Autumn fruit, water-color. A church in Poitou , miniature. SCULPTURE MM. Baili.y (C.-F.j. Bareau (G.-M.-V.) . . . . Barrau (Th.-E.-V.,. . . . Campagne (D.i. Charpentier (P-.M.i . . Chevre (P.). Dagonet (Ei. Escoula (J.). Ferrary (M.). Forestier (A.-C.. Fremiet (E.i. Gardet (G.j. Germain (J-B i. Guilbert (E.-C.-D.i. . . . Laurent-Daragon (Ch.i. . Lemarquier (P.-C.-A.i . . Masseau (Fix). Peter (V.). Riviere-Theodore (L.-A.). Ternois (J.i. Varenne (H.-F.). Verlet (R.-C.). Vernhes (H.-E.i. Virion (C.-L.-E.i. Duphot. marble statue. For the flag, plaster group. Suzanne, marble statue. Wreckage . marble statue. Illusion , marble statue. The awakening of Flora , plaster statue. Eve, marble statue. Satyr playing on the flute , marble statue. Phcebe, pewter statue. Thouret, plaster model. Orangs-Outangs and a Borneo native, plaster mi Love birds, Brazilian onyx. Henri Basinage, plaster model. Sappho , marble statue. General Eugene Cavaignac, marble bust. A Lifou man’s head, bronze bust. Fragment, marble. An Arab and his horse, marble group. Salammbo and Matho, bronze group. Fromentin. marble bust. Christ m His tomb (fifteenth century), marble. Mgr Sebau.v, marble statue. A young Brittany woman , wax bust. Hen and snake, plaster group. WORKS OF ART PURCHASED BY THE STATE MEDALS AND ENGRAVED GEMS MM. Chaplain (J.-C.). Medals. Gaulard (E.-F.). The rape of Dejanira, sard cameo. Hildebrand (B.). Esmeralda, carnelian cameo. Lemaire (G.). The Death of Narcissus, onyx cameo. OBJECTS OF ART MM. Desbois (J.). Jewel tray, pewter. Grandhomme (P.) et Gar- nier (A.). Leda, after Moreau, enamel. Morren (G.) . Inkstand, green bronze. ARCHITECTURE MM. Guedy (H.). The Danse of Death, copy of a mural painting. Laffillee (H.-L.). Mural painting of the fifteenth century. TABLE OF CONTENTS The Salon of 1895. Painting. — — Sculpture . Societe nationale des Beaux-Arts. Painting. — — — Sculpture. List of Awards, Salon of 1895. List of Works of Art purchased by the State from the Salon of i8q5 and from the Societe nationale des Beaux-Arts. r»gf. 1 37 65 9 1 97 99 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAINTING Aublet. Bacon (H.). Bail (J.). Barrau. Beauquesne . Bernier (C.) .... Bonnat 1 L .1 . Bouguereau (W.). Boutigny (E.). . . . Breslau (M 11 ®,. . Breton (J.). Bridgman (F.-A.). . Brispot. Brunet (J.). Burnand . Cain (G.). Charderon (M 1!e F.) Chartier. Chevillard .... Chocarne-Moreau . Clairin. Cordova (de). . . Courtens. Cres (C.). .... Damoye. Dannat. Dawant (A.) . . . . Demont-Breton Detaille (E.). Doucet (L.). . . . Dubufe (G.). Edelfeldt. Ernst (R.). Page. 82* 24* 18* 84 3o* 20 38 6 4 32 46 36 90 26* 42 10 46* 12 33 44 65 74 34 38* 3i 73 74* 32 * P*8*- Firmin-Girard.~6* Frappa.-- 2 - Friant.g 2 Gardner (Miss E.).16 Gelibert (J.).54 Geoffroy (J.). 2 6 Gerome. 4 Girardet (J.). 2 6 Grateyrolle.40* Grolleron (P.).3 0 Guignard.68* Hagborg.8, Hawkins.80 Hebert (E.). 2 Herrmann-Leon.3j Kaemmerer.42* Knight (R.). Frontispiece Lagarde. jo Laissement. 14 Laurens (J.-P.i. 2 8 Laurent-Desrousseaux. 56 Lecomte-du-Nouy.42 Lhermitte.66* Linden.86* Loir (L.). 5 o Loustaunau.34* Lynch.22 Mac-Monnies (Mrs.).84* Makowsky (C.).28* Mathey.68 Mesdag.68 Montzaigle (de).80* Moreau (A.).90* table of contents io3 Page. Morot (A.). 1 5 Munkacsy (M. de). 36 * Noirot. i Orange (M.). 12* Perrault (H.). 7 Perrault (L.). 16* Picard.44* Princeteau. 4* Richon-Brunet.. ... 78 Rochegrosse. 8 Roll.66 Rosset-Granger.90 Rouffet (J.). 10* Roybet (F.). 8* Royer (L.).48 Page. Sain.86 Stengelin.76 Stetten (C. von).78 Stevens. 70* Struys (A.).40 Tavernier.54* Toudouze (E.).22* Vallet (M me ).24 Verstraete.78* Vollon (Al.).18 Watelin..21 Weerts.88 Wentworth (Mrs.). 17 Zuber.20* SCULPTURE Bartholdi.62 Bariholome.q6 Bernard.61 Dubois (P.). 58 Falguiere.52 Fremiet. . . . . 64 Maniere.5q Saint-Marceaux (de).86