rrr-
 
 EXHIBITION 
 
 AT THE 
 
 FRENCH GALLERY, 
 
 120, PALL MALL, LONDON, S.W., 
 
 OF 
 
 SELECTED WORKS 
 
 BY 
 
 fu.' 
 
 JOSEPH ISRAELS z^':?// ^ ^ / 
 
 MATTHEW MARIS // y -^^^ 
 
 HENRI HARPIGNIES ^^^'* 
 
 LEON LHERMITTE 
 
 1909.
 
 The French Galleries, 
 
 120, PALL MALL, LONDON, S.W. 
 
 131, PRINCES STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 3, EAST FORTIETH STREET, NEW YORK. 
 
 99, NOTRE-DAME STREET W., MONTREAL. 
 
 124, YONGE STREET, TORONTO. 
 
 123, SPARKES STREET, OTTAWA. 
 
 WALLIS & SON.
 
 library 
 
 List of the Pictures 
 
 EXHIBITED AT THE 
 
 FRENCH GALLERY, LONDON, 
 
 1909. 
 
 MATTHEW MARIS. 
 
 1 Children Resting 
 
 2 Montmartre U/- Jiarrcft. 
 
 3 The Christening 
 
 4 Boy with a Hoop 'S/^twXf/'^!^ 
 
 5 The Enchanted Castle 
 
 6 The Prince and Princess 
 
 7 Enfant Couch^e /-fz/.V^rt /T^s/m^ 
 
 8 The Young Cook /^Z"", (^^loi. 
 
 9 The Enchanted Wood Cr> .//^//^''f 
 
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 10 The Lady of Shalott Unhcrr rT?4Ti^c^l . 
 
 11 On the Beach 
 
 12 The Enchanted Castle 
 
 13 Lady with Goats 
 
 14 Butterflies /y- /^^rrr^- ff^O^^^/'- 
 
 15 The Girl at the Well /7^<C/^;/- /^/^ ^'^ 
 
 16 A Cottage Scene 
 
 17 Portrait of the Artist 
 
 JOSEPH ISRAELS. 
 
 18 The Drowned Fisherman 
 
 19 A Sand Barge 
 
 20 Grief 
 
 21 Homewards 
 
 22 Honored Old Age 
 
 23 Making Pancakes 
 
 24 Sailing the Toy Boat 
 
 25 Grace before Meat 
 
 26 The Burial 
 
 27 A Dutch Fisher Girl 
 
 28 Faggot Gatherers 
 
 29 Sheltering from the Storm 
 
 qq41?,l
 
 HENRI HARPIGNIES. 
 
 30 View in the Campagna 
 
 31 View in the Campagna 
 
 32 Cottages near Barbizon 
 
 33 Bois de Gierellen 
 
 34 The Edge of the Wood 
 
 35 A View on the Oise 
 
 36 Bords de la Loire 
 
 37 Effet du Soir 
 
 38 Lisle de Sable, Loire 
 
 39 Les Laveuses 
 
 40 A Village Church 
 
 41 The Rising Moon 
 
 42 Sunset on the Banks of the Ain 
 
 43 Environs de Nevers 
 
 LEON LHERMITTE. 
 
 44 Women Washing 
 
 45 Laveuses k Chelle 
 
 46 A Farm at Mont St. Pere 
 
 47 The Reapers 
 
 48 Changing Pastures 
 
 49 A Village Street 
 
 50 The Calvary 
 
 51 Mid-day Rest 
 
 52 The Gleaners: Evening 
 
 53 Harvesting 
 
 54 La Nourrice 
 
 55 Near Mont St. Pere 
 
 56 A Quiet Pool 
 
 57 Harvest Time; Pas de Calais 
 
 58 Lacemakers 
 
 59 The Anglers 
 
 60 Gleaners near the Farm 
 
 61 End of the Day
 
 MATTHEW MARIS. 
 
 By FREDERICK WEDMORE. 
 
 THE weight of seventy years rests now on MATTHEW 
 MARIS. Long an exile from the Holland that is the 
 country of his birth — the Hague was the place — it has 
 seemed good to him to spend his later life — and, I 
 suspect, more than his later life — in a relative isolation ; his 
 days following one another in their uneventful course, in a 
 reputable but now prosaic suburb of our London ; his actual 
 steps passing but seldom beyond the boundaries of a parish, 
 but his imagination apt to set forth upon what voyages, to 
 what remote, mysterious lands ! 
 
 Of Matthew Maris's private fortunes it is fitting that I 
 say no more. Enough must be this bare and summary 
 indication of the limitations he has imposed upon his ways. 
 They are in keeping with the character of his art ; and from 
 something of the art itself — even in its quite early manifesta- 
 tions — it is possible they might have been prophesied. His 
 devotion to the outward things, of life and landscape, and to 
 recognised facts, can never have been great. He was born, 
 surely, to be a seer of visions — reality ever less precious to 
 him than his enchanted dream. 
 
 But a departure from reality has not seldom, as I conceive 
 it, been the adroit resource of painters, and more particularly 
 of painters who cannot draw ; for the realisation of something 
 they have fancied or contrived has about it little of the 
 responsibility that attaches to the impressive conveyance of 
 fact. In Matthew Maris s case, however, no lack of craftsman- 
 ship, of technique, either forced or facilitated the artist's entry
 
 into a world as to the pourtrayal of which it is difficult to 
 establish any standard of judgment. 
 
 Maris's earlier work, when he was less concerned than in 
 his later to efface by Art so many traces of the means that 
 Art had used, proclaims him a draughtsman lacking in no 
 quality of delicacy or expressiveness. It proclaims him too 
 — although his later work fully as well does that ~ a colourist 
 refined and subtle, where not the least illustrious of his com- 
 patriots and contemporaries would seem to have been unaware 
 that colour permeates the world, and is not applied to it in 
 patches. Yes, Matthew Maris is, in nearly all the most 
 characteristic of his canvasses, a colourist subdued and tender, 
 dainty and changeful — as one who might have seen, and 
 watched and pondered, say, the play of water or of mist 
 upon the least positive of gem stones ; making less positive, 
 yet more dreamy, more evanescent, and more partial — the 
 tints of turquoise, almandine, and opal. It is in part by 
 schemes of colour so conceived and pursued that a castle by 
 Matthew Maris is an " enchanted " castle, and not a castle 
 solid, substantial, in an English shire. And so a definition 
 held firmly in his own mind all the time no doubt, but in 
 his mind alone — either never set down with fullness on the 
 canvas, or, if set down, then effaced with prompt pudeiir 
 and an instinctive return to reticence — -permits a quality of 
 Romance that is not only in his themes, to be diffused over 
 his labours. Not Life, but memory, imagination, fancy —or 
 Life at most seen remotely and with many a change — that is 
 the source, technique apart, of the gentle fascination of Maris. 
 
 And yet some very impressive pictures of the earlier 
 days are near to Life, and derive from it directly their first 
 inspiration, though the temperament of the painter brings some- 
 thing that must affect the whole, before the work is done. In 
 the head of himself, wrought by the artist in the early Sixties
 
 — 1860 indeed — what a firm modelling of the mask ! How 
 tender, yet how certain, the pourtrayal of the action of the 
 figure in that narrow interior with its girl-child inhabitant, 
 called " The Young Cook " ! A yet more marked reality, of 
 customary refinement, but of uncustomary sturdiness as far as 
 Matthew Maris is concerned belongs to " Boy with a Hoop," 
 with its tones, soberly opulent, of umber and of greenish gold. 
 That, of course, is of long ago. Gay and young, but in a land 
 not ours, and in days we do not know, are hero and heroine 
 of '■ Prince and Princess." Dramatic in its own way, and with 
 a touch of Tennysonian wizardry, is " The Lady of Shalott," 
 which, for all its imagination, or shall I say because of its 
 imagination's vigour, has a reality much greater than that of 
 " Lady with Goats ' — and is with itself more at one. 
 
 Yet, for my own part, if I could conceive it were permitted 
 to me to make a choice of one picture out of the seventeen in 
 which, in this astonishing show, the works of Maris come to 
 us, not "single spies" — as is their wont — but a "battalion," I 
 think that my election would light upon one piece of the 
 Seventies of 1872, that is. That would be " Montmartre, ' 
 which is not invention chiefly which is record chiefly, but 
 record in which the artist intervenes and dominates. The 
 Montmartre of those days : the long stretch of the hill-side, 
 capped by windmills : all the land solidly modelled, but 
 Montmartre arrayed by Maris in dull reds and greyish 
 browns the brown of Autumn and its leafage scattered 
 and scanty. It is a piece in which fact and reverie, firmness 
 and mystery, find themselves so happily together. 
 
 FREDERICK WEDMORE.
 
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 3 The Christening, 
 
 by Matthew Maris.
 
 4 Boy with a Hoop, 
 
 by Matthew Maris.
 
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 7 Enfant Couchee, 
 
 by Matthew Maris.
 
 8 The Young Cook, 
 
 by Matthew Maris. 
 
 (hes? columns to an cxi-eptioTiallr int*rp>tii\4 
 exhibition at the Kifnch iJallerr. Psll Mall, 
 of 61 pifturcs bv four t^t^rnii miistT.'- : 
 Matthew -Many. Joseph Israeli. HenTi Har- 
 , pignios. iui'l Leon I'HcTniit.t^. .\ niri»t ■ 
 . interpstin;.' coramcm<>raliv<» votiimi? in c<-.nr..?<;-B 
 I tion th«icxith h alwjt to be publishe^i. It^ 
 will cont^iin reproductions. 20 in photo^rs- 
 yixto. tho lemaii.der in half-tone, of all thf: 
 works ouj view. b?<.idw< reoorde of the four 
 waiis as hung. Maii* has durini.! his spv*nt,T 
 years of lifo poruiitlcJ to learo his halld^ aufl 
 average of oiilj' aljout one picture or im- * 
 portant dra'^ing a year. Thus no iiiconsidor- 
 able prop<jrtion of hifi output is repre«;nt<.'d 
 : in the present volume, sonio of the \\ork» 
 doubtleps for the first time. lnfovmativ« 
 j little essays on the four paint/?!* are eou- 
 I tiibute<l rcspeetiveiy by Mr. Frederick Weti- 
 j more, Mr. lA'wip Hind, Mr. P. G. Konody. 
 j and Mr. E. F. Strange. 
 
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 10 The Lady of Shalott, 
 
 by Matthew Maris.
 
 16 A Cottage Scene, by Matthew Maris. 
 
 11 On the Beach, by Matthew Maris.
 
 
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 14 Butterflies, 
 
 by Matthew Maris.
 
 15 The Girl at the Well, 
 
 by Matthew Maris.
 
 17 Portrait of the Artist, 
 
 by Matthew Maris. 
 
 In the possession of Mr. C. M. Van Gogh
 
 JOSEPH ISRAELS. 
 
 By P. G. KONODY. 
 
 THE story goes that Chardin, on being questioned by an 
 inquisitive about the colours which he used in the 
 painting of his pictures, rephed : " One does not paint 
 with colours — one paints with feeling. " Still, Chardin was a 
 painter keenly appreciative of the direct appeal made by the 
 exquisite use of pigment. The deep truth that underlies the 
 Frenchman's epigrammatic remark would have struck more 
 decisively had it been uttered by Joseph Israels, the octo- 
 genarian master to whom Holland largely owes the regeneration 
 of her art on the lines of her great national tradition. For if ever 
 there was painter whose work betrays contempt of material, or 
 at least oblivion of material, in his complete absorption in the 
 psychology and true inwardness of his subjects, it surely is 
 Joseph Israels ! 
 
 There is an apparent contradiction in the assertion that a 
 painter who pays so little attention to the beauty of technique 
 for its own sake, that is to say to surface quaHty, should have 
 revived the tradition of a national art that excelled above all in 
 preciousness of pigment and in the unequalled skill with which 
 its masters — the "small masters " of Holland — knew how to 
 render the textures and qualities proper to different substances. 
 And, indeed, Israels's conception of life and of the representation 
 of life in terms of art is based on Rembrandt's spirituality and 
 profound human sympathy rather than on the " small masters' 
 materialistic delight in the exquisite imitation of beautiful 
 objects. He has no eye for detail ; and in spite of his early
 
 academic training under Kruseman, Pieneman, and David s 
 pupil Picot, and Delaroche, the finished work of his maturity 
 betrays no sub-structure of precise drawing and academic 
 construction. Swaggerer "style" of brushwork and richness 
 of pigment have no attraction for him. His brush-strokes 
 betray no deliberate intention, have no definite function, no 
 method. In themselves they are irregular, vague, hesitating - 
 unimportant means towards the attainment of a very definite 
 and deeply significant end, upon which the artist's entire 
 attention is concentrated. Hence the wonderful unity of his 
 effects and the emotional intensity of his appeal, which seem 
 to be obtained by mysteriously elusive magic. This contempt 
 for artistic caligraphy is strikingly confirmed by the careless 
 sprawling signature which Israels attaches to his picture. And, 
 surely, the greatness of a poem does not depend upon the 
 neatness of the handwriting ! If Israels prefers rough-hewn 
 flint to symmetrically-pressed bricks, this choice of material 
 does not impair the solidity of his walls. 
 
 Thus, superficially, Israels's practice will be found to 
 depart widely from that of the seventeenth century Dutchmen. 
 In reality he is the true heir of their tradition, of which the 
 method of expression is the least significant element. What is 
 of real import is the truth of personal observation, the 
 sense of personal experience which is almost inevitably lost 
 in the reconstruction of a dead past, the organic unity of the 
 scene represented, the general harmony of colour, and the 
 correct tone relation of the component parts, which the old 
 Dutch masters knew how to retain in spite of the minute 
 attention bestowed upon details. In these points lies the true 
 tradition, and not in the mechanical imitation of the superficial 
 qualities, to which the painters of a declining school cling in 
 their desperate effort to stem the tide of decay. There is more 
 of the essentials of the Greek tradition in the fundamental
 
 conception of Rodin's " Impressionist " sculpture than in all 
 the lifeless pseudo-classicism of a Canova, which consisted 
 in the imitation of mere externals. The true upholder of 
 national tradition in art is the man who extracts the funda- 
 mental principles of that art and expresses them in the 
 language of his own time. And this is precisely what Israels 
 has achieved in a country where the exemplars of a great 
 past had been unintelhgently imitated, until the representation of 
 contemporary life had degenerated into the unconvincing and 
 unreal costume picture ; which in its turn was ousted by the 
 universal academic formula, that swayed the official art of 
 Europe in the middle of the last century. 
 
 Pictorial unity and profound human sympathy are the 
 very essence of Israels's art. He " paints with feeling " not 
 with colours. His sympathy with the simple joys, and more 
 with the quiet sorrows, of the humble fishing folk and 
 peasantry whose life is a perpetual struggle with the forces 
 of Nature, made him discover the pictorial possibilities of the 
 emotional statement of subjects that lack the intrinsic elements 
 of "beauty " as taught by his academic masters. His eyes 
 were opened more than half a century ago, when a visit to 
 the fishing village of Zandvoort, necessitated by his health, 
 revealed to him the less obvious, but far more touching and 
 significant beauty of the patriarchal simpUcity and God- 
 fearing life of these humble folk. It was first in the choice of 
 his subjects, and more gradually in the adoption of a 
 technique suitable for the expression of the emotion aroused 
 in him by the observation of humble life, that he loosened 
 himself from the academic fetters of his early training. With 
 growing experience he advanced from comparative tightness 
 to freedom, from freedom to that looseness of touch which 
 in its rejection of precise statement defies analysis and 
 arrives at a haunting suggestion of all that is spiritually
 
 significant and detached, as it were, from matter of which 
 
 pigment is the symbol. Thus his neglect of artistic caligraphy, 
 
 far from detracting from the merit of his work, enhances its 
 
 value by concentrating the beholder's attention upon the 
 
 emotions from which the artist drew his inspiration. In this 
 
 evolution of technique, as well as in several other respects, 
 
 there is a distinct parallel between the art of Joseph Israels 
 
 and that of Rembrandt. 
 
 Another equally obvious comparison suggests itself between 
 
 Israels and Millet. Both had studied under Delaroche ; and 
 
 the workers in the fields at Barbizon had done for Millet's 
 
 future development what the fishing-folk at Zandvoort were 
 
 to do for Israels. But whereas Millet, in depicting the 
 
 struggle of man with the inexorable forces of Nature, 
 
 emphasised with epic and almost tragic power the hopelessness 
 
 of this struggle, Israels, even in an atmosphere of sadness, 
 
 strikes the more optimistic note of hope, or at least of 
 
 resignation. In his most touching renderings of poverty and 
 
 lonely old age he does not suggest despair or hopelessness, but 
 
 at the most submissiveness to the decrees of fate in a spirit of 
 
 true Christian humility. For Israels has retained in his 
 
 venerable age something of childlike freshness and optimism, 
 
 an outlook upon life which accounts for his sympathy with the 
 
 innocent pleasures of childhood. Israels's paintings of children 
 
 sailing a toy-boat, or employed in similar harmless occupations, 
 
 are not the work of a man who from the lofty standpoint of 
 
 his life's experience looks indulgently upon the doings of the 
 
 youngsters, but rather of one who partakes whole-heartedly 
 
 of these childish delights. 
 
 P. G. KONODY. 
 
 Joseph Israels was born on Januar.v 27th, 1827, 
 at Groningen, Holland.
 
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 21 Homewards, by Joseph Israels. 
 
 19 A Sand Barge, by Joseph Israels.
 
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 22 Honored Old Age, 
 
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 28 Faggot Gatherers, 
 
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 J
 
 HENRI HARPIGNIES. 
 
 By C. LEWIS HIND. 
 
 THE gift of Harpignies to the world is peace. Through 
 him we are reminded of the beauty of Nature in 
 tranquillity. Lucidity and placidity are the characteristics 
 of his landscapes. They evoke serenity, repose, reflection. 
 He never disturbs ; he never excites ; he never affrights ; he 
 never arouses disputation. How could one argue about the 
 landscapes of Harpignies ? We rest in them and are thankful. 
 His statements of the beauty he has found in the world, a 
 beauty informed by classical dignity and often touched by 
 tender melancholy are as non-contentious as Grays 'Elegy.' 
 This is surely the right attitude of a landscape painter 
 towards his art. At any rate it is Harpignies attitude. He 
 wanders into a solitude of still water and vast trees, green 
 swards and little hills ; he tracks the ways of light leisurely 
 and lovingly, and he paints the effect upon his soul of some 
 moment surcharged with beauty. Now it is the Mediterranean, 
 blue and unruffled, seen from a fragrant garden : now the 
 melancholy Campagna in an hour of golden light with dark 
 trees silhouetted against an uneventful sky ; now a sunset on 
 the banks of the Ain, a reticent sunset of course, the fierce 
 red glow nearly shrouded by a vast tree : now a rising moon, 
 and now a " Bords de la Loire,' faint blue water, faint 
 yellow sand, and a flight of homing birds. Man plays small 
 part in his landscapes. Sometimes he will introduce a figure, 
 perhaps two, but he is usually content to present a soHtude, 
 a simple pastoral bathed in the clear Harpignies' light, a
 
 presentment of trees, fields and water, seen through a 
 temperament which has kept its vision unimpaired through 
 all the confusion of the schools, and the experiments in 
 painting that have disturbed the art world during his long 
 life. He has remained detached like one of his own trees. 
 
 Harpignies has been resolutely himself. You may trace in 
 his work something of the sensitiveness of Corot and the sanity 
 of Rousseau, but of the busy briUiance of the Impressionists 
 there is no hint. He has never attempted to rival Nature, to pit 
 the palette against the sun : his aim has always been to 
 interpret, not to represent. He really belongs to a former day, 
 to a quieter age, when the big line and the large treatment 
 appealed to the brooding souls of the Barbizon painters. He 
 stands aloof from the modern feverish desire to draw attention by 
 eccentricity and fantastic ways of representing bizarre themes. 
 He has been resolutely himself, in the clarity and sharpness 
 of his colour, in the sobriety of his method, and in the 
 sweet reasonableness of his subjects. Without haste, without 
 rest, might have been his motto. 
 
 But all this would not suffice to give Henri Harpignies 
 the position he holds to-day. Other men have his clearness 
 of colour, the simplicity, never bald never empty, of his 
 expression, so learned yet so easy of comprehension ; and 
 all the world of landscape painters has used his subjects. 
 
 Why then do we feel when looking at his pictures that here 
 is a Master whose works can hang, without reproach, beside 
 the Masters of landscape of the past. It is because he is a 
 great designer. His pictures, from the largest of his oil 
 paintings to the smallest of his water-colours, have always 
 the sense of rhythm of an imposing building where the 
 detail and the decoration assist but never intrude upon the noble 
 lines of the structure. He sees Nature as a pattern, and you 
 feel that the pattern was designed from the beginning, and
 
 that no swift thought or sudden beauty springing up while 
 the work was in progress, was allowed to interfere with 
 the amphtude of the original idea. It is curious to compare 
 his water-colours with those of Mr. Sargent's — so vivid, 
 so modern, so amazing in their suggestion of movement — 
 a moment of the day, of this day, arrested. Harpignies' 
 water-colours are the moment eternal. They belong to all 
 time, to Nature which was before man, and which may 
 continue long after man has ceased his activities. 
 
 And it was curious and strange to stand before Harpignies' 
 two contributions to the Salon of 1909, and to reflect that 
 he, still living and working at the age of ninety, was born 
 but two years after Daubigny, and but five years after 
 Millet ; that he knew Corot, and that he, like so many others, 
 was, at a critical time of his fortunes aided by Corot's 
 generosity. Harpignies told M. Moreau-Nelaton that the 
 first large cheque he received was from Pere Corot for two 
 water-colours. The amount, 1,000 francs, seems small now, 
 but it was much more than Harpignies expected, which was 
 the way of Corot of the many charities and the unnumbered 
 kindnesses. 
 
 To have been born in 1819, and to be still painting in 
 1909 what a record ! Think of the mass of stored beauty 
 such a hfe leaves to the world, of the pleasure it gives to 
 mankind. All the great masters of landscape find somewhere 
 their devoted followers and appreciators. Ruysdael brought 
 "refreshment to the very soul" of Sir Robert Peel; some 
 of us experience a quiet joy beyond words in those sunny, 
 ageless, changeless passages of landscape in the backgrounds 
 of the Flemish Primitives ; others in the infinite distances of 
 Claude and the golden visions of Turner ; others oh ! the 
 consolations awaiting those who need them in landscape art 
 are multitudinous.
 
 And Harpignies, the classicist, with a freshness that seems 
 always to be looking at Nature with the eyes of youth, has 
 his great following, who are infinitely consoled by the 
 grave beauty, poise and balance of his pictures, by his 
 big line and simple pattern, by his trees which seem to 
 have grown year by year, and by the light that shines in 
 his skies and echoes in his still waters. The placid joy 
 that he has found in Nature passes on to us. His gift to 
 the world is peace. 
 
 C. LEWIS HIND. 
 
 Henri Harpignies was born in 1819, 
 at Valenciennes, France.
 
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 34 The Edge of the Wood, 
 
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 39 Les Laveuses, by Henri Harpignies. 
 
 40 A Village Church, by Henri Harpignies.
 
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 The Rising Moon, 
 
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 LEON LHERMITTE. 
 
 By EDWARD F. STRANGE. 
 
 IT is not easy always to state with precision the quahties on 
 which the reputation of a painter rests. Pure eccentricity, 
 sedulous and subtle advertisement, the ephemeral favour 
 of fashion or of society, some daring experiment in 
 technique, mere rarity — each plays its part from time to 
 time ; and yet none of these counts towards substantial 
 greatness. But, in the case of Leon Lhermitte, the issue is 
 free from all such confusions. He is just an artist : one who 
 has the gift of seeing the beauties of Nature, and of interpreting 
 them to his fellow-men in terms easily to be understood. 
 
 This great gift of interpretation will always gain for him 
 a welcome among Northern folk who love the fresh air, and 
 the mild Hghts and shadows of a teinpered climate. For 
 us, it is good to have pictures of the counti-yside not bleak 
 and cold and desolate, but kindly and gracious, respondent 
 to the care of those that dwell thereon. Cornfield and pasture, 
 river and woodland, the little villages that happen among 
 them — these are the subjects that inspire Lhermitte's art, the 
 things that he knows and that have always been part of his 
 own life. 
 
 Such scenes he paints with absolute simplicity of aim : 
 choosing them with rare judgment and with an almost unerring 
 instinct for beauty. He is not concerned with problems 
 either of paint or of humanity. He does not confuse the 
 function of the scientist with that of the artist. The tragedy 
 or pathos of the peasant s life is often quietly indicated in
 
 the pose of his figures, but is never revealed and insisted 
 on in detail. His women and men stand in his pictures as 
 they stand in their own countryside, keeping such of their 
 secrets as are not for the eye of the passer-by. His art is 
 essentially synthetic rather than analytic. So far as his powers 
 go he is a creator ; and what he makes has unity. 
 
 From the technical point of view, his great strength lies 
 in his drawing a matter of some importance in an age of 
 paint. As a fact, he was once low and sombre in tone. 
 From that stage he has steadily progressed ; and now, if not 
 a great colourist in the sense of devising new and striking 
 and brilliant contrasts and combinations, he nevertheless gives 
 us the colour of light upon trees, upon water, upon the 
 stubble and the rippling corn with a quiet and harmonious 
 truth and purity that is attained by few of his fellows. But 
 no one has dared to cavil at his drawing. Forty years ago, 
 he made his first fame thereby, and his hand has not yet lost 
 its cunning. And this quality is shown not only in the 
 absolute accuracy with which he expresses form, but in his 
 handling of perspective. Lhermitte's landscapes reach back 
 to their ultimate distance with subtle and exquisite gradation. 
 His compositions are not cut up like the painted cloths of a 
 theatre scene. His figures occur naturally therein. They 
 work in the fields or pass along the roads in the way of 
 mankind. They do not, on the one hand, reek of the studio ; 
 nor, on the other, are they only factors in a colour scheme, 
 or mere details of a pattern. They are alive and eloquent 
 of life. 
 
 It is doubtless due to his long practice of the art of 
 drawing with charcoal, that Lhermitte is so superb a pastellist. 
 In his hands, this delicate and difficult method is wielded 
 with consummate ability. When one examines, with a glass, 
 the technique of, for instance, that great pastel with the simple
 
 title, ""Women Washing," one cannot but be struck with 
 admiration at its extraordinary certainty of touch and directness 
 of execution. All is clean, crisp work, put in with the sureness 
 of a master, without timidity, without ostentation. And it is 
 all pure drawing — something far more than the harmonious 
 smudge which many a clever painter, wandering for once in 
 this pleasant path, and obsessed with the habit of the palette, 
 too often is content to produce. As a consequence, Lhermitte's 
 pastels have an almost unrivalled purity and brilliance of 
 colour. In the example mentioned, the light dances and 
 quivers on the leaves and on the running water with absolute 
 verisimilitude. In this phase of his work the artist is at 
 his best. 
 
 As an etcher he has already gained a high place in the 
 estimation of those who understand and love the art of the 
 needle. As a painter he is already assured of a position of 
 which he may well be proud. His work makes a wide and 
 convincing appeal to those who, laying aside the curiosities of 
 super-criticism, love a good picture that they can understand. 
 And so long as his canvases last, and corn is grown upon the 
 earth, will there be some to cherish these records of the wind 
 upon the wheat, and the reapers bending to their labour in the 
 sunlight. For Lhermitte paints his home ; and the spirit thereof 
 finds ever an echo in the hearts of many men. 
 
 EDWARD F. STRANGE. 
 
 Leon Lhermitte was born on July 31st, 1844, 
 at Mont-Sainte-Pere on the Marne, France.
 
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 47 The Reapers, by Leon Lhermitte. 
 
 48 Changing Pastures, by Leon Lhermitte.
 
 49 A Village Street, by Leon Lhermitte. 
 
 50 The Calvary, by Leon Lhermitte.
 
 
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 55 Near Mont St. Pere, by Leon Lhermitte.
 
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 57 Harvest Time ; Pas de Calais, by Leon Lhermitte. 
 
 56 A Quiet Pool, by Leon Lhermitte.
 
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 59 The Anglers, 
 
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 Press Notices of the Collection* 
 
 The Times, May 21s/, 1909. 
 
 " Messrs. Wallis, at the French Gallery, confine themselves to four 
 masters, all living — Joseph Israels, Matthew Maris, Harpignies, and Lhermitte ; 
 and of these four the show is the most noteworthy that has been seen 
 for a long time. In the case of Matthew Maris, who has lived in London 
 for many years in close retirement, to see no fewer than 17 of his works 
 gathered in one room will be a surprise to collectors, for it means the 
 greater part of the output of one of the most unproductive of the first-rate 
 men. For years he is said not to have painted at all, and he was 
 always the slowest and most fastidious of artists. But here we have 
 ' The Christening,' the ' Lady with Goats,' ' Butterflies,' and almost all 
 the others that have become celebrated, so that he can really be judged 
 in his beauties and in his limitations. He paints a kind of fairyland, and 
 his pictures are ' such stuff as dreams are made of.' " 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, May 26th, 1909. 
 
 " This is the ninety-sixth exhibition of this time-honoured, but still 
 flourishing, gallery. The art of four distinguished painters is illustrated : 
 Harpignies and Lhermitte among Frenchmen, Matthew Maris and Israels 
 among Netherlanders. What gives to the exhibition, however, its distinc- 
 tiveness is the unrivalled display of the art of Matthew Maris, one of 
 the truest poet-painters of the nineteenth century, and an artist who 
 stands absolutely alone as representing pictorially the current of mys- 
 ticism which in modern times has invaded and permeated the realism of 
 the Netherlands. ****** 
 
 "We think less at the moment of the technique, exquisitely expressive 
 and consummate of its kind, than of the creation from within of a soul- 
 world wholly human and yet wholly strange and remote. There is nothing 
 exactly like it in contemporary painting, nothing so remote from realism and 
 actuality, and yet so entirely modern in its unconscious effort to break loose 
 from modernity. The vivifying heat of romantic passion, muted and 
 restrained, yet ever present, is in all this quietude, this realm of dreams made 
 dimly, beautifully visible. The landscape-study ' Montmartre ' is terrible in 
 its lofty severity of statement. ' The Christening,' a grim, half-indicated, half- 
 obliterated scene outside a church ; ' The Enchanted Castle,' a forest of 
 towers guessed at rather than seen through a forest of trees — these are 
 presented with a mysticism so intense in its very reticence that it admits of no 
 actual definition in words. ' The Lady of Shalott ' is a design greatly, weirdly 
 expressive, though the academic professor might not find it defensible. By
 
 the side of it the usual pretty pseudo-romantic renderings of the popular 
 legend appear so much trivial prettiness. * * + * 
 
 " ' The Prince and Princess ' is such a summing-up of all the fairy tales 
 of childhood, a thing of such delicate harmony, such moving beauty, that it is 
 hard to look upon it with eyes undimmed. ■ Enfant Couchee ' — a blue-frocked, 
 fair-haired child, who gazes seemingly outward, but really perceives only the 
 happy daydream, symbolised by the gay, ephemeral butterflies, is as a 
 painting the finest thing in the exhibition. The directness, the simplicity in 
 subtlety of the rendering is admirable. * * + * 
 
 " It is unnecessary, it would be foolish, to compare the work of this 
 gifted Dutch ' small master ' of modern times with that of those great fixed 
 stars of the world of art. But these half-shades, so difficult of realisation, 
 but which are of the very essence of life and of art, are just what he does 
 achieve, as hardly any other modern master has done. Search through art 
 for anything exactly matching the expression of this happy young dreamer, 
 who still hears the music of the spheres, to which we are deaf, and you will 
 search in vain. The ' Lady with the Goats,' this ' petite Princesse ' who sits 
 weaving and wondering in the luminous twilight, timorously watched from 
 the thicket by the goats, is such a realisation of Maeterlinck's idea of youth 
 enveloped and directed by a mysterious destiny as the hfe-work of the poet- 
 dramatist himself could hardly furnish. • The Girl at the 'Well,' one of 
 Matthew Maris's best-known paintings, was at the Guildhall Exhibition, 
 and more recently at the Royal Academy. As a picture of lonely, self- 
 communing maidenhood, mysteriously shielded by unseen influences from 
 the rude touch of life, it is among his finest things. 
 
 " Two of the masterpieces of Israels are in the gallery : one the 
 famous • Drowned Fisherman.' from the Young Collection : the other 
 ' Grace before Meat,' a work, to our thinking, finer still in its dramatic 
 force and unusual virility, not less of execution than of conception. 
 
 " Harpignies, who is copiously represented here — as he has been in 
 many an exhibition and many a sale lately, both in his earlier and later 
 styles — is seen to the greatest advantage in some works of the middle time, 
 such as the noble ' Bords de la Loire.' This is the true Harpignies. the 
 austere master whose landscape art is noble in design, authoritative almost 
 to the point of harshness, and yet very tender, as only the work of the 
 true nature-worshipper can be. 
 
 " Lhermitte in such august company as this is just a little dwarfed. 
 He gave such fair promise in that early work, the grave, spacious 
 landscape, ■ End of the Day,' here exhibited, that more might have 
 been expected from him than has been actually achieved. His most 
 accomphshed performances are those in fusain (charcoal) and in pastel, 
 and examples, complete and admirable enough in their way, of this 
 accomplishment, this industry, are included in the current show of the 
 French Gallery. The not less complete oil paintings of the period of 
 maturity show this pastel-like touch, and. though they stand for realism 
 half transformed by the poetry of sympathy, betray too much in the 
 working out of unemotional calmness and calculation to be wholly 
 convincing. The exhibition as a whole is of remarkable interest, and 
 maintains an unusually high level of excellence."
 
 The Manchester Guardian, May 29th, 1909. 
 
 '■ At the French Gallery, Pall Mall, in an exhibition of remarkable 
 interest, can be studied the work of four outstanding Continental artists still 
 painting. * * * * 
 
 " The present collection in London is, therefore, of exceptional ioterest ; 
 it includes such lovely spiritual visions of the child as ' Enfant Couchee ' and 
 the ' Butterflies '- paintings that one finds on thinking of them afterwards 
 have touched one's nature beneath the joy they gave with a disquieting 
 intensity, with something of the foreign spiritual contact one feels in Blake's 
 child poems. The 'Young Cook.' painted in 1871. is an exquisite example 
 of the sweet realism that excludes the sentimental from his art. She is as 
 near life as Millais's girls in ' Autumn Leaves.' but some wand has touched the 
 colour — she is ' fey.' He does the same miracle with a sinister outskirt 
 of modem Paris in his ' Montmartre,' with its strange patch of red in the 
 clay hill and its little w^istful space of sky. In others, such as ' The 
 Enchanted Wood,' and ' The Prince and Princess,' he ■weaves in terms of 
 pure fantasy. ' Christening,' a pastel, is an approach to the affairs of men, 
 and for that reason perhaps has a hint of tragedy."' 
 
 The Observer. June 6th, 1909. 
 
 " Four modern Dutch and French masters of the group that at the 
 present moment has almost ousted the old masters in public favour, if one 
 may judge from the astounding results of recent auction sales, form the 
 unusually attractive programme of an exhibition that has been opened at the 
 French Gallery. *■ * * ,;, 
 
 '• Technical mastery constitutes but one side of Matthew Maris's great 
 art. There is another side to it. more significant perhaps, and more general 
 in its appeal — and this is the rare and exquisite charm of his romantic 
 imagination, for the veteran painter has retained through all his life the mind 
 of a fanciful innocent child, unpolluted by contact with the cruel and ugly 
 realities of this world, for which there is no place in his art. His records of 
 facts are tinged w^ith romance ; but w^hen he gives free rein to his imagination, 
 he creates a Maeterlinckian world of mysterious woods and enchanted castles, 
 peopled by princes and princesses who lead not a real existence, but a dream 
 life, and whose most serious occupation seems to be the chasing of butterflies. 
 There is a visionary dreamy charm in the expression of his very peasant 
 girls and kitchen maids, something of the mystery that is the eternal 
 attraction of Lionardo's ' Mona Lisa.' The wide open eyes of the exquisitely 
 beautiful ' Enfant Couchee ' reveal a whole world of vague dreams and 
 longings." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette. April 25th. 1909. 
 
 " The speciality of this exhibition is the show of Matthew Maris's. 
 Maris's come to us generally as ■ single spies,' but here are seventeen — 
 and it is a ' battalion.' We see him, for a wonder, at all periods, and 
 in all moods. Here is a landscape done when he was fifteen — if we 
 remember rightly his birth-date — and here are performances of his later
 
 maturity. Here he is seen as the author of the fairy tale one who 
 embodies dreams and fancies in turquoise and pale gold — a painter of the 
 light that never was on sea or land. The piece called ' Butterflies ' 
 is about the best of his visions of an enchanted world ; yet there is even a 
 deeper poetry, perhaps, in the conception of the background to ' Lady w^ith 
 Goats.' Figures like ' Boy with a Hoop ' and ' The Young Cook ' are of the 
 sturdiest and yet of the most refined realism. And a piece — it happens to be 
 a landscape in which poetry is combined with realism is the canvas called 
 ' Montemartre ' : the Montemartre of 1872. A little dull, at first but very 
 characteristic — are its dominant browns and greys and its scanty reds. But 
 you lose consciousness of dulness as gradually its subtlety reveals itself to 
 you ; and your experience of this canvas ends with the conviction that it is 
 at once creation and record." 
 
 The Standard, May 31*-/, 1909. 
 
 " At the French Gallery, Pall Mall, Messrs. Wallis and Son have had 
 many excellent exhibitions, but rarely one that surpasses in quality their 
 present collection of 61 paintings, the work of four masters Matthew 
 Maris, Israels, Harpignies. and Lhermitte. The honours, of course, are 
 with Maris, of whom there are seventeen works. Never- in England at 
 least - have so many examples of his unique and original art been brought 
 together, except at the Guildhall some years ago. when a small collection of 
 the Dutch master's work was exhibited. * ^ + + 
 
 " The work of Joseph Israels comes next in artistic merit, and he, too, is 
 admirably represented by some of the best examples of his art, such as 
 ' The Drowned Fisherman,' a rather early work, the pathetic ' Grief,' and his 
 ' Sheltering from the Storm,' which, though rated highly by some critics, is 
 too much like Millet, and not half so original or so dramatic as the ' Grace 
 before Meat ' (25) or as the ' Making Pancakes ' (23). There are good 
 examples of Harpignies, w^hose art is really very varied, if it be austere in 
 sentiment. ' The View in the Campagna ' (30), ' A View on the Oise ' (35), and 
 ' Bords de la Loire ' (36) all show the true Harpignies and his art at the early 
 and later periods of his long artistic life. 
 
 " The fourth artist, Lhermitte, is seen, perhaps, most to advantage in his 
 pastels, which are most accomplished, and give the illusion of light and 
 atmosphere wonderfully. Draw^ings like ' The Reapers ' (47) and ' Changing 
 Pastures ' (48) illustrate this side of his art very well. ' The End of the Day ' 
 is the best of the oil paintings. Altogether this exhibition is one of the best 
 of its kind." 
 
 The Daily News, May 22nd. 1909. 
 
 " An exhibition which appeals to all lovers of noble art has been 
 organised at the French Gallery, Pall Mall. Four veteran artists only are 
 represented : Harpignies, than whom none possesses a more profound sense 
 of landscape design : Joseph Israels, the interpreter of the peasant life of 
 Holland, as in a still loftier way was Millet of the peasant life of France ; 
 Matthew Maris, whose dream will now hardly take visible shape : and Leon 
 Lhermitte, the pastoralist." * * + *
 
 " Seldom, if ever, has Harpignies surpassed, whether in expressive 
 design, in eloquent colour that seems to re-breathe the life of nature, or in 
 imaginatively true lighting, two relatively small landscapes now to be seen. 
 On the opposite wall is a great sunset piece which demonstrates how 
 young the artist v/as at eighty-five. By Israels are an early and 
 immature ' Faggot Gatherers,' an impressively designed and gravely 
 handled picture on a big scale. ' The Drowned Fisherman,' and among 
 others a small interior, ' Grief,' which takes high rank in his oeuvre. There 
 is a moving simplicity in the design of the figures, the solemn beauty of the 
 death chamber is communicated to and revealed by the brush of the artist. 
 For the rest, Lhermitte, who has not the exalted vision of Matthew Maris, 
 the dramatic power of Israels, nor the uplifted naturalism of Harpignies, can 
 advantageously be studied in some eighteen pictures and pastels." 
 
 Glasgow Herald, April 21s/, 1909. 
 
 " Exhibitions at the French Gallery, Pall Mall, are apt to be important 
 in proportion to their infrequency. * * * * 
 
 " During his 70 years of life Matthew Maris has painted -or at any 
 rate permitted to leave his studio-less than that number of pictures. He 
 cannot be charged with over-production. Of these no fewer than 17 
 may now be seen in Pall Mall. Several of the most lovely are lent by 
 Scottish collectors, for in the neighbourhood of Glasgow the genius of this 
 poet-painter, who even as a child knew everything of himself, was 
 early recognised. At least one comes from Montreal, where are about half- 
 a-dozen of the very finest examples. At the French Gallery it is possible 
 to trace the development of Matthew Maris's art onward from when as a not 
 particularly skilled student he did the ' Cottage Scene,' past the study of 
 ' The Beach at Scheveningen,' done in 1854, a little in the manner of his 
 forerunner Adrian Van de Velde, but with a hint of himself in the treatment 
 of the grey sands ; onward through his incomparable period of the early 
 seventies, and onward again to some of those later works in which he has 
 failed wholly to capture the essentials of a dreamy vision. Indisputably 
 belonging to the front rank are the ' Montmartre,' 1872, considerably bigger 
 and not less perfect in poise and temper than ' The Four Mills,' which 
 caused such a stir at Christie's the other day ; the 'Enfant Couchee,' 1873, 
 of a little girl in blue and tempered white, quiet eyed, lying on a bank, above 
 hover two splendid butterflies ; the larger ' Butterflies ' of the following 
 year, beneath which is said to be another exquisite picture ; ' The Young 
 Cook,' 1871, which hauntingly sublimates a humble calling ; and the subtly 
 tender, intimately gracious ' Girl at the Well.' * + * * 
 
 "Though the 17 pictures by this mystic artist will constitute the clou 
 of the exhibition for many visitors, each of the other three painters is admir- 
 ably represented. Than Harpignies no European landscapist has had a finer 
 sense of landscape design, so to say of the architecture of a picture. He is a 
 master of firmly rooted stately trees, of the structure, the colour, the texture 
 of the earth ; and as someone has pointed out, his humblest cart road has 
 force and value. Half a century hence wealthy Americans will vie with one 
 another to acquire some of the landscapes of Harpignies — landscapes so
 
 strong, of so universal a temper, that they seem to image the eternal youth 
 of the world. Seldom if ever has he surpassed two now exhibited Views in 
 the Campagna they are called. In design, in the use of the nurtured green 
 of the earth, in the natural magic of the lighting, they could hardly be 
 excelled. These were painted in 1896-7. Opposite is the much larger 
 ' Sunset on the Banks of the Ain,' a wonderful picture for a man of 
 eighty-five. 
 
 " The biggest canvas, ' The Dro^^?ned Fisherman,' shows how 
 impressively Israels can design, so to say, with his subject matter. The 
 procession moves away from the turbulent sea gravely, rhythmically. In 
 addition to a very early and immature ' Faggot Gatherers,' a delightfully 
 expressive ' Making Pancakes,' and several others, we see Israels at one 
 of his consummate moments in the small interior ' Grief,' dating probably 
 from the late sixties. The figures of the girl and the child in the death 
 chamber have a monumental inevitability of design, and the closely realised 
 environment is worthy of them. This emphatically is an exhibition to be 
 visited." 
 
 The Westminster Gazette. June 21s/, 1909. 
 
 " The Summer Exhibition at the French Gallery consists of selected 
 pictures by four of the most distinguished artists of modern times Israels, 
 Matthew Maris. Harpignies, and Lhermitte. To students of the work of these 
 great naturalists the collection should be very valuable, for it includes repre- 
 sentative examples of them, not only at their best, but at most of the vital 
 stages of their careers. By Maris, for instance, we have those two gems 
 •The Young Cook' (8) and 'The Girl at the Well' (15), as well as a series 
 of those exquisite fairy-tales in which he is almost unrivalled ranging 
 from a wonderful drawing, 'The Enchanted Castle' (12) to the idyll baldly 
 entitled ' Lady with Goats ' — the true story whereof perhaps only the painter 
 knows. The collection is a notable one from every point of view." 
 
 M'
 
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