,,french ,,art ,,classic ,,and ,,contemporary ,,painting ,,and ,,sculpture ,,by ,w4,c4 ,,brownell ,,new ,,york ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons #ahib ,copyright1 #ahib1 by ,,charles ,,scribner',s ,,sons ,,to ,,auguste ,,rodin ,,contents ,,page ,i4 ,classic ,painting1 #a ,i4 ,character and origin4 ,,ii4 ,claude and ,poussin4 ,,iii4 ,lebrun and ,lesueur4 ,,iv4 ,louis ,quinze4 ,v4 ,greuze and ,chardin4 ,,vi4 ,david1 ,ingres1 and ,prudhon4 ,,ii4 ,romantic ,painting1 #dg ,i4 ,romanticism4 ,,ii4 ,gericault and ,delacroix4 ,,iii4 ,the ,fontainebleau ,group4 ,,iv4 ,the ,academic ,painters4 ,v4 ,couture1 ,puvis de ,chavannes1 and ,regnault4 ,,iii4 ,realistic ,painting1 #hi ,i4 ,realism4 ,,ii4 ,courbet and ,bastien-,lepage4 ,,iii4 ,the ,landscape ,painters2 ,fromentin and ,guillaumet4 ,,iv4 ,historical and ,portrait ,painters4 ,v4 ,baudry1 ,delaunay1 ,bonvin1 ,vollon1 ,gervex1 ,duez1 ,roll1 ,l',hermitte1 ,lerolle1 ,beraud1 ,the ,illustrators4 ,,vi4 ,manet and ,monet4 ,,vii4 ,impressionism2 ,degas4 ,,viii4 ,the ,outlook4 ,,iv4 ,classic ,sculpture1 #aci ,i4 ,claux ,sluters4 ,,ii4 ,jean ,goujon4 ,,iii4 ,style4 ,,iv4 ,clodion1 ,pradier1 and ,etex4 ,v4 ,houdon1 ,david d',angers1 and ,rude4 ,,vi4 ,carpeaux and ,barye4 ,v4 ,academic ,sculpture1 #afe ,i4 ,its ,italianate ,character4 ,,ii4 ,chapu4 ,,iii4 ,dubois4 ,,iv4 ,saint-,marceaux and ,mercie4 ,v4 ,tyranny of ,style4 ,,vi4 ,falguiere1 ,barrias1 ,delaplanche1 and ,le ,feuvre4 ,,vii4 ,fremiet4 ,,viii4 ,the ,institute ,school in ,general4 ,,vi4 ,the ,new ,movement in ,sculpture1 #bje ,i4 ,rodin4 ,,ii4 ,dalou4 ,i ,,classic ,,painting ,i ,more than that of any other modern people ,french art is a national expression4 ,it epitomizes very definitely the national aesthetic judgment and feeling1 and if its manifestations are even more varied than are elsewhere to be met with1 they share a certain character that is very salient4 ,of almost any ,french picture or statue of any modern epoch one's first thought is that it is ,french4 ,the national quite overshadows the personal quality4 ,in the field of the fine arts1 as in nearly every other in which the ,french genius shows itself1 the results are evident of an intellectual co-operation which insures the development of a common standard and tends to subordinate idiosyncrasy4 ,the fine arts1 as well as every other department of mental activity1 reveal the effect of that social instinct which is so much more powerful in ,france than it is anywhere else1 or has ever been elsewhere1 except possibly in the case of the ,athenian republic4 ,add to this influence that of the intellectual as distinguished from the sensuous instinct1 and one has1 ,i think1 the key to this salient characteristic of ,french art which strikes one so sharply and always as so plainly ,french4 ,as one walks through the ,french rooms at the ,louvre1 through the galleries of the ,luxembourg1 through the unending rooms of the ,salon he is impressed by the splendid competence everywhere displayed1 the high standard of culture universally attested1 by the overwhelming evidence that ,france stands at the head of the modern world aesthetically--but not less1 ,i think1 does one feel the absence of imagination1 opportunity1 of spirituality1 of poetry in a word4 ,the ,french themselves feel something of this4 ,at the great ,exposition of #ahhi no pictures were so much admired by them as the ,english1 in which appeared1 even to an excessive degree1 just the qualities in which ,french art is lacking1 and which less than those of any other school showed traces of the now all but universal influence of ,french art4 ,the most distinct and durable impression left by any exhibition of ,french pictures is that the ,french aesthetic genius is at once admirably artistic and extremely little poetic4 ,it is a corollary of the predominance of the intellectual over the sensuous instinct that the true should be preferred to the beautiful1 and some ,french critics are so far from denying this preference of ,french art that they express pride in it1 and1 indeed1 defend it in a way that makes one feel slightly amateurish and fanciful in thinking of beauty apart from truth4 ,a walk through the ,louvre1 however1 suffices to restore one's confidence in his own convictions4 ,the ,french rooms1 at least until modern periods are reached1 are a demonstration that in the sphere of aesthetics science does not produce the greatest artists--that something other than intelligent interest and technical accomplishment are requisite to that end1 and that system is fatal to spontaneity4 ,m4 ,eugene ,veron is the mouthpiece of his countrymen in asserting absolute beauty to be an abstraction1 but the practice of the mass of ,french painters is1 by comparison with that of the great ,italians and ,dutchmen1 eloquent of the lack of poetry that results from a scepticism of abstractions4 ,the ,french classic painters--and the classic-spirit1 in spite of every force that the modern world brings to its destruction1 persists wonderfully in ,france--show little absorption1 little delight in their subject4 ,contrasted with the great names in painting they are eclectic and traditional1 too purely expert4 ,they are too cultivated to invent4 ,selection has taken the place of discovery in their inspiration4 ,they are addicted to the rational and the regulated4 ,their substance is never sentimental and incommunicable4 ,their works have a distinctly professional air4 ,they distrust what cannot be expressed2 what can only be suggested does not seem to them worth the trouble of trying to conceive4 ,beside the world of mystery and the wealth of emotion forming an imaginative penumbra around such a design as ,raphael's ,vision of ,ezekiel1 for instance1 ,poussin's treatment of essentially the same subject is a diagram4 ,on the other hand1 qualities intimately associated with these defects are quite as noticeable in the old ,french rooms of the ,louvre4 ,clearness1 compactness1 measure1 and balance are evident in nearly every canvas4 ,everywhere is the air of reserve1 of intellectual good-breeding1 of avoidance of extravagance4 ,that ,french painting is at the head of contemporary painting1 as far and away incontestably it is1 is due to the fact that it alone has kept alive the traditions of art which1 elsewhere than in ,france1 have given place to other and more material ideals4 ,from the first its practitioners have been artists rather than poets1 have possessed1 that is to say1 the constructive rather than the creative1 the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament1 but they have rarely been perfunctory and never common4 ,french painting in its preference of truth to beauty1 of intelligence to the beatific vision1 of form to color1 in a word1 has nevertheless1 and perhaps a fortiori1 always been the expression of ideas4 ,these ideas almost invariably have been expressed in rigorous form--form which at times fringes the lifelessness of symbolism4 ,but even less frequently1 ,i think1 than other peoples have the ,french exhibited in their painting that contentment with painting in itself that is the dry rot of art4 ,with all their addiction to truth and form they have followed this ideal so systematically that they have never suffered it to become mechanical1 merely formal--as is so often the case elsewhere 7in ,england and among ourselves1 everyone will have remarked7 in instances where form has been mainly considered and where sentiment happens to be lacking4 ,even when care for form is so excessive as to imply an absence of character1 the form itself is apt to be so distinguished as itself to supply the element of character1 and character consequently particularly refined and immaterial4 ,and one quality is always present3 elegance is always evidently aimed at and measurably achieved4 ,native or foreign1 real or factitious as the inspiration of ,french classicism may be1 the sense of style and of that perfection of style which we know as elegance is invariably noticeable in its productions4 ,so that1 we may say1 from ,poussin to ,puvis de ,chavannes1 from ,clouet to ,meissonier1 taste--a refined and cultivated sense of what is sound1 estimable1 competent1 reserved1 satisfactory1 up to the mark1 and above all1 elegant and distinguished--has been at once the arbiter and the stimulus of excellence in ,french painting4 ,it is this which has made the ,france of the past three centuries1 and especially the ,france of to-day--as we get farther and farther away from the great art epochs--both in amount and general excellence of artistic activity1 comparable only with the ,italy of the ,renaissance and the ,greece of antiquity4 ,moreover1 it is an error to assume1 because form in ,french painting appeals to us more strikingly than substance1 that ,french painting is lacking in substance4 ,in its perfection form appeals to every appreciation2 it is in art1 one may say1 the one universal language4 ,but just in proportion as form in a work of art approaches perfection1 or universality1 just in that proportion does the substance which it clothes1 which it expresses1 seem unimportant to those to whom this substance is foreign4 ,some critics have even fancied1 for example1 that ,greek architecture and sculpture--the only ,greek art we know anything about--were chiefly concerned with form1 and that the ideas behind their perfection of form were very simple and elementary ideas1 not at all comparable in complexity and elaborateness with those that confuse and distinguish the modern world4 ,when one comes to ,french art it is still more difficult for us to realize that the ideas underlying its expression are ideas of import1 validity1 and attachment4 ,the truth is largely that ,french ideas are not our ideas2 not that the ,french who--except possibly the ancient ,greeks and the modern ,germans--of all peoples in the world are1 as one may say1 addicted to ideas1 are lacking in them4 ,technical excellence is simply the inseparable accompaniment1 the outward expression of the kind of aesthetic ideas the ,french are enamoured of4 ,their substance is not our substance1 but while it is perfectly legitimate for us to criticise their substance it is idle to maintain that they are lacking in substance4 ,if we call a painting by ,poussin pure style1 a composition of ,david merely the perfection of convention1 one of ,m4 ,rochegrosse's dramatic canvasses the rhetoric of technic and that only1 we miss something4 ,we miss the idea1 the substance1 behind these varying expressions4 ,these are not the less real for being foreign to us4 ,they are less spiritual and more material1 less poetic and spontaneous1 more schooled and traditional than we like to see associated with such adequacy of expression1 but they are not for that reason more mechanical4 ,they are ideas and substance that lend themselves to technical expression a thousand times more readily than do ours4 ,they are1 in fact1 exquisitely adapted to technical expression4 ,the substance and ideas which we desire fully expressed in color1 form1 or words are1 indeed1 very exactly in proportion to our esteem of them1 inexpressible4 ,we like hints of the unutterable1 suggestions of significance that is mysterious and import that is incalculable4 ,the light that never was on sea or land is the illumination we seek4 ,the ,heaven1 not the atmosphere that lies about us in our mature age as in our infancy1 is what appeals most strongly to our subordination of the intellect and the senses to the imagination and the soul4 ,nothing with us very deeply impresses the mind if it does not arouse the emotions4 ,naturally1 thus1 we are predisposed insensibly to infer from ,french articulateness the absence of substance1 to assume from the triumphant facility and felicity of ,french expression a certain insignificance of what is expressed4 ,inferences and assumptions based on temperament1 however1 almost invariably have the vice of superficiality1 and it takes no very prolonged study of ,french art for candor and intelligence to perceive that if its substance is weak on the sentimental1 the emotional1 the poetic1 the spiritual side1 it is exceptionally strong in rhetorical1 artistic1 cultivated1 aesthetically elevated ideas1 as well as in that technical excellence which alone1 owing to our own inexpertness1 first strikes and longest impresses us4 ,when we have no ideas to express1 in a word1 we rarely save our emptiness by any appearance of clever expression4 ,when a ,frenchman expresses ideas for which we do not care1 with which we are temperamentally out of sympathy1 we assume that his expression is equally empty4 ,matthew ,arnold cites a passage from ,mr4 ,palgrave1 and comments significantly on it1 in this sense4 ,the style1 exclaims ,mr4 ,palgrave1 which has filled ,london with the dead monotony of ,gower or ,harley ,streets1 or the pale commonplace of ,belgravia1 ,tyburnia1 and ,kensington2 which has pierced ,paris and ,madrid with the feeble frivolities of the ,rue ,rivoli and the ,strada de ,toledo4 ,upon which ,arnold observes that the architecture of the ,rue ,rivoli expresses show1 splendor1 pleasure1 unworthy things1 perhaps1 to express alone and for their own sakes1 but it expresses them2 whereas1 the architecture of ,gower ,street and ,belgravia merely expresses the impotence of the architect to express anything4 ,and in characterizing the turn for poetry in ,french painting as comparatively inferior1 it will be understood at once1 ,i hope1 that ,i am comparing it with the imaginativeness of the great ,italians and ,dutchmen1 and with ,rubens and ,holbein and ,turner1 and not asserting the supremacy in elevated sentiment over ,claude and ,corot1 ,chardin1 and ,cazin1 of the ,royal ,academy1 or the ,new ,york ,society of ,american ,artists4 ,and so far as an absolute rather than a comparative standard may be applied in matters so much too vast for any hope of adequate treatment according to either method1 we ought never to forget that in criticising ,french painting1 as well as other things ,french1 we are measuring it by an ideal that now and then we may appreciate better than ,frenchmen1 but rarely illustrate as well4 ,,ii ,furthermore1 the qualities and defects of ,french painting--the predominance in it of national over individual force and distinction1 its turn for style1 the kind of ideas that inspire its substance1 its classic spirit in fine--are explained hardly less by its historic origin than by the character of the ,french genius itself4 ,french painting really began in connoisseurship1 one may say4 ,it arose in appreciation1 that faculty in which the ,french have always been1 and still are1 unrivalled4 ,its syntheses were based on elements already in combination4 ,it originated nothing4 ,it was eclectic at the outset4 ,compared with the slow and suave evolution of ,italian art1 in whose earliest dawn its borrowed ,byzantine painting served as a stimulus and suggestion to original views of natural material rather than as a model for imitation and modification1 the painting that sprang into existence1 ,minerva-like1 in full armor1 at ,fontainebleau under ,francis ,i1 was of the essence of artificiality4 ,the court of ,france was far more splendid than1 and equally enlightened with1 that of ,florence4 ,the monarch felt his title to ,maecenasship as justified as that of the ,medici4 ,he created1 accordingly1 ,french painting out of hand--,i mean1 at all events1 the ,french painting that stands at the beginning of the line of the present tradition4 ,he summoned ,leonardo1 ,andrea del ,sarto1 ,rossi1 ,primaticcio1 and founded the famous ,fontainebleau school4 ,of necessity it was ,italianate4 ,it had no ,giotto1 ,masaccio1 ,raphael behind it4 ,italian was the best art going2 ,french appreciation was educated and keen2 its choice between evolution and adoption was inevitable4 ,it was very much in the position in which ,american appreciation finds itself to-day4 ,like our own painters1 the ,french artists of the ,renaissance found themselves familiar with masterpieces wholly beyond their power to create1 and produced by a foreign people who had enjoyed the incomparable advantage of arriving at their artistic apogee through natural stages of growth1 beginning with impulse and culminating in expertness4 ,the situation had its advantages as well as its drawbacks1 certainly4 ,it saved ,french painting an immense amount of fumbling1 of laborious experimentation1 of crudity1 of failure4 ,but it stamped it with an essential artificiality from which it did not fully recover for over two hundred years1 until1 insensibly1 it had built up its own traditions and gradually brought about its own inherent development4 ,in a word1 ,french painting had an intellectual rather than an emotional origin4 ,its first practitioners were men of culture rather than of feeling2 they were inspired by the artistic1 the constructive1 the fashioning1 rather than the poetic1 spirit4 ,and so evident is this inclination in even contemporary ,french painting--and indeed in all ,french aesthetic expression--that it cannot be ascribed wholly to the circumstances mentioned4 ,the circumstances themselves need an explanation1 and find it in the constitution itself of the ,french mind1 which 7owing1 doubtless1 to other circumstances1 but that is extraneous7 is fundamentally less imaginative and creative than co-ordinating and constructive4 ,naturally thus1 when the ,italian influence wore itself out1 and the ,fontainebleau school gave way to a more purely national art2 when ,france had definitely entered into her ,italian heritage and had learned the lessons that ,holland and ,flanders had to teach her as well2 when1 in fine1 the art of the modern world began1 it was an art of grammar1 of rhetoric4 ,certainly up to the time of ,gericault painting in general held itself rather pedantically aloof from poetry4 ,claude1 ,chardin1 what may be called the illustrated vers de societe of the ,louis ,quinze painters--of ,watteau and ,fragonard--even ,prudhon1 did little to change the prevailing color and tone4 ,claude's art is1 in manner1 thoroughly classic4 ,his personal influence was perhaps first felt by ,corot4 ,he stands by himself1 at any rate1 quite apart4 ,he was the first thoroughly original ,french painter1 if indeed one may not say he was the first thoroughly original modern painter4 ,he has been assigned to both the ,french and ,italian schools--to the latter by ,gallophobist critics1 however1 through a partisanship which in aesthetic matters is ridiculous2 there was in his day no ,italian school for him to belong to4 ,the truth is that he passed a large part of his life in ,italy and that his landscape is ,italianate4 ,but more conspicuously still1 it is ideal--ideal in the sense intended by ,goethe in saying1 ,there are no landscapes in nature like those of ,claude4 ,there are not1 indeed4 ,nature has been transmuted by ,claude's alchemy with lovelier results than any other painter--save always ,corot1 shall ,i say8--has ever achieved4 ,witness the pastorals at ,madrid1 in the ,doria ,gallery at ,rome1 the ,dido and ,a,eneas at ,dresden1 the sweet and serene superiority of the ,national ,gallery canvases over the struggling competition manifest in the ,turners juxtaposed to them through the unlucky ambition of the great ,english painter4 ,mr4 ,ruskin says that ,claude could paint a small wave very well1 and acknowledges that he effected a revolution in art1 which revolution consisted mainly in setting the sun in heavens4 ,mainly is delightful1 but ,claude's excellence consists in his ability to paint visions of loveliness1 pictures of pure beauty1 not in his skill in observing the drawing of wavelets or his happy thought of painting sunlight4 ,mr4 ,george ,moore observes ironically of ,mr4 ,ruskin that his grotesque depreciation of ,mr4 ,whistler--the lot of critics being to be remembered by what they have failed to understand--will survive his finest prose passage4 ,i am not sure about ,mr4 ,whistler4 ,contemporaries are too near for a perfect critical perspective4 ,but assuredly ,mr4 ,ruskin's failure to perceive ,claude's point of view--to perceive that ,claude's aim and ,stanfield's1 say1 were quite different2 that ,claude1 in fact1 was at the opposite pole from the botanist and the geologist whom ,mr4 ,ruskin's reverence for nature would make of every landscape painter--is a failure in appreciation than to have shown which it would be better for him as a critic never to have been born4 ,it seems hardly fanciful to say that the depreciation of ,claude by ,mr4 ,ruskin1 who is a landscape painter himself1 using the medium of words instead of pigments1 is1 so to speak1 professionally unjust4 ,go out1 in the springtime1 among the meadows that slope from the shores of the ,swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains4 ,there1 mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus1 the grass grows deep and free2 and as you follow the winding mountain paths1 beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom--paths that forever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation1 steep to the blue water1 studded here and there with new-mown heaps1 filling the air with fainter sweetness--look up toward the higher hills1 where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines4 ,claude's landscape is not ,swiss1 but if it were it would awaken in the beholder a very similar sensation to that aroused in the reader of this famous passage4 ,claude indeed painted landscape in precisely this way4 ,he was perhaps the first--though priority in such matters is trivial beside pre-eminence--who painted effects instead of things4 ,light and air were his material1 not ponds and rocks and clouds and trees and stretches of plain and mountain outlines4 ,he first generalized the phenomena of inanimate nature1 and in this he remains still unsurpassed4 ,but1 superficially1 his scheme wore the classic aspect1 and neither his contemporaries nor his successors1 for over two hundred years1 discovered the immense value of his point of view1 and the puissant charm of his way of rendering nature4 ,poussin1 however1 was the incarnation of the classic spirit1 and perhaps the reason why a disinterested foreigner finds it difficult to appreciate the ,french estimate of him is that no foreigner1 however disinterested1 can quite appreciate the ,french appreciation of the classic spirit in and for itself4 ,but when one listens to expressions of admiration for the one ,french old master1 as one may call ,poussin without invidiousness1 it is impossible not to scent chauvinism1 as one scents it in the ,german panegyrics of ,goethe1 for example4 ,he was a very great painter1 beyond doubt4 ,and as there were great men before ,agamemnon there have been great painters since ,raphael and ,titian1 even since ,rembrandt and ,velasquez4 ,he had a strenuous personality1 moreover4 ,you know a ,poussin at once when you see it4 ,but to find the suggestion of the infinite1 the ,shakespearian touch in his work seems to demand the imaginativeness of ,m4 ,victor ,cherbuliez4 ,when ,mr4 ,matthew ,arnold ventured to remark to ,sainte-,beuve that he could not consider ,lamartine as a very important poet1 ,sainte-,beuve replied3 ,he was important to us4 ,many critics1 among them one severer than ,sainte-,beuve1 the late ,edmond ,scherer1 have given excellent reasons for ,lamartine's absolute as well as relative importance1 and perhaps it is a failure in appreciation on our part that is really responsible for our feeling that ,poussin is not quite the great master the ,french deem him4 ,assuredly he might justifiably apply to himself the ,et-,ego-in-,arcadia inscription in one of his most famous paintings4 ,and the specific service he performed for ,french painting and the relative rank he occupies in it ought not to obscure his purely personal qualities1 which1 if not transcendent1 are incontestably elevated and fine4 ,his qualities1 however1 are very thoroughly ,french qualities--poise1 rationality1 science1 the artistic dominating the poetic faculty1 and style quite outshining significance and suggestion4 ,he learned all he knew of art1 he said1 from the ,bacchus ,torso at ,naples4 ,but he was eclectic rather than imitative1 and certainly used the material he found in the works of his artistic ancestors as freely and personally as ,raphael the frescos of the ,baths of ,titus1 or ,donatello the fragments of antique sculpture4 ,from his time on1 indeed1 ,french painting dropped its ,italian leading-strings4 ,he might often suggest ,raphael--and any painter who suggests ,raphael inevitably suffers for it--but always with an individual1 a native1 a ,french difference1 and he is as far removed in spirit and essence from the ,fontainebleau school as the ,french genius itself is from the ,italian which presided there4 ,in ,poussin1 indeed1 the ,french genius first asserts itself in painting4 ,and it asserts itself splendidly in him4 ,we who ask to be moved as well as impressed1 who demand satisfaction of the susceptibility as well as--shall we say rather than8--interest of the intelligence1 may feel that for the qualities in which ,poussin is lacking those in which he is rich afford no compensation whatever4 ,but ,i confess that in the presence of even that portion of ,poussin's magnificent accomplishment which is spread before one in the ,louvre1 to wish one's self in the ,stanze of the ,vatican or in the ,sistine ,chapel1 seems to me an unintelligent sacrifice of one's opportunities4 ,,iii ,it is a sure mark of narrowness and defective powers of perception to fail to discover the point of view even of what one disesteems4 ,we talk of ,poussin1 of ,louis ,quatorze art--as of its revival under ,david and its continuance in ,ingres--of1 in general1 modern classic art as if it were an art of convention merely2 whereas1 conventional as it is1 its conventionality is--or was1 certainly1 in the seventeenth century--very far from being pure formulary4 ,it was genuinely expressive of a certain order of ideas intelligently held1 a certain set of principles sincerely believed in1 a view of art as positive and genuine as the revolt against the tyrannous system into which it developed4 ,we are simply out of sympathy with its aim1 its ideal2 perhaps1 too1 for that most frivolous of all reasons because we have grown tired of it4 ,but the business of intelligent criticism is to be in touch with everything4 ,tout comprendre1 c'est tout pardonner1 as the ,french ethical maxim has it1 may be modified into the true motto of aesthetic criticism1 ,tout comprendre1 c'est tout justifier4 ,of course1 by criticism one does not mean pedagogy1 as so many people constantly imagine1 nor does justifying everything include bad drawing4 ,but as ,lebrun1 for example1 is not nowadays held up as a model to young painters1 and is not to be accused of bad drawing1 why do we so entirely dispense ourselves from comprehending him at all8 ,lebrun is1 perhaps1 not a painter of enough personal importance to repay attentive consideration1 and historic importance does not greatly concern criticism4 ,but we pass him by on the ground of his conventionality1 without remembering that what appears conventional to us was in his case not only sincerity but aggressive enthusiasm4 ,if there ever was a painter who exercised what creative and imaginative faculty he had with an absolute gusto1 ,lebrun did so4 ,he interested his contemporaries immensely2 no painter ever ruled more unrivalled4 ,he fails to interest us because we have another point of view4 ,we believe in our point of view and disbelieve in his as a matter of course2 and it would be self-contradictory to say1 in the interests of critical catholicity1 that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own4 ,but to say that he has no point of view whatever--to say1 in general1 that modern classic art is perfunctory and mere formulary--is to be guilty of what has always been the inherent vice of protestantism in all fields of mental activity4 ,nowhere has protestantism exhibited this defect more palpably than in the course of evolution of schools of painting4 ,pre-,raphaelitism is perhaps the only exception1 and pre-,raphaelitism was a violent and emotional counter-revolution rather than a movement characterized by catholicity of critical appreciation4 ,literary criticism is certainly full of similar intolerance2 though when ,gautier talks about ,racine1 or ,zola about ,mes ,haines1 or ,mr4 ,howells about ,scott1 the polemic temper1 the temper most opposed to the critical1 is very generally recognized4 ,and in spite of their admirable accomplishment in various branches of literature1 these writers will never quite recover from the misfortune of having preoccupied themselves as critics with the defects instead of the qualities of what is classic4 ,yet the protestantism of the successive schools of painting against the errors of their predecessors has something even more crass about it4 ,contemporary painters and critics thoroughly alive1 and fully in the contemporary aesthetic current1 so far from appreciating modern classic art sympathetically1 are apt to admire the old masters themselves mainly on technical grounds1 and not at all to enter into their general aesthetic attitude4 ,the feeling of contemporary painters and critics 7except1 of course1 historical critics7 for ,raphael's genius is the opposite of cordial4 ,we are out of touch with the ,disputa1 with angels and prophets seated on clouds1 with halos and wings1 with such inconsistencies as the ,doge praying in a picture of the marriage of ,st4 ,catherine1 with the mystic marriage itself4 ,raphael's grace of line and suave space-filling shapes are mainly what we think of2 the rest we call convention4 ,we are become literal and exacting1 addicted to the pedantry of the prescriptive1 if not of the prosaic4 ,take such a picture as ,m4 ,edouard ,detaille's ,le ,reve1 which won him so much applause a few years ago4 ,m4 ,detaille is an irreproachable realist1 and may do what he likes in the way of the materially impossible with impunity4 ,sleeping soldiers1 without a gaiter-button lacking1 bivouacking on the ground amid stacked arms whose bayonets would prick2 above them in the heavens the clash of contending ghostly armies--wraiths born of the sleepers' dreams4 ,that we are in touch with4 ,no one would object to it except under penalty of being scouted as pitiably literal4 ,yet the scheme is as thoroughly conventional--that is to say1 it is as closely based on hypothesis universally assumed for the moment--as ,lebrun's ,triumph of ,alexander4 ,the latter is as much a true expression of an ideal as ,detaille's picture4 ,it is an ideal now become more conventional1 undoubtedly1 but it is as clearly an ideal and as clearly genuine4 ,the only point ,i wish to make is1 that ,lebrun's painting--,louis ,quatorze painting--is not the perfunctory thing we are apt to assume it to be4 ,that is not the same thing1 ,i hope1 as maintaining that ,m4 ,bouguereau is significant rather than insipid4 ,lebrun was assuredly not a strikingly original painter4 ,his crowds of warriors bear a much closer resemblance to ,raphael's ,battle of ,constantine and ,maxentius than the ,transfiguration of the ,vatican does to ,giotto's1 aside from the important circumstance that the difference in the latter instance shows development1 while the former illustrates mainly an enfeebled variation4 ,but there is unquestionably something of ,lebrun in ,lebrun's work--something typical of the age whose artistic spirit he so completely expressed4 ,to perceive that ,louis ,quatorze art is not all convention it is only necessary to remember that ,lesueur is to be bracketed with ,lebrun4 ,all the sympathy which the ,anglo-,saxon temperament withholds from the histrionism of ,lebrun is instinctively accorded to his gentle and graceful contemporary1 who has been called--faute de mieux1 of course--the ,french ,raphael4 ,really ,lesueur is as nearly conventional as ,lebrun4 ,he has at any rate far less force2 and even if we may maintain that he had a more individual point of view1 his works are assuredly more monotonous to the scrutinizing sense4 ,it is impossible to recall any one of the famous ,san ,bruno series with any particularity1 or1 except in subject1 to distinguish these in the memory from the sweet and soft ,st4 ,scholastica in the ,salon ,carre4 ,with more sapience and less sensitiveness1 ,bouguereau is ,lesueur's true successor1 to say which is certainly not to affirm a very salient originality of the older painter4 ,he had a great deal of very exquisite feeling for what is refined and elevated1 but clearly it is a moral rather than an aesthetic delicacy that he exhibits1 and aesthetically he exercises his sweeter and more sympathetic sensibility within the same rigid limits which circumscribe that of ,lebrun4 ,he has1 indeed1 less invention1 less imagination1 less sense of composition1 less wealth of detail1 less elaborateness1 no greater concentration or sense of effect2 and though his color is more agreeable1 perhaps1 in hue1 it gets its tone through the absence of variety rather than through juxtapositions and balances4 ,the truth is1 that both equally illustrate the classic spirit1 the spirit of their age par excellence and of ,french painting in general1 in a supreme degree1 though the conformability of the one is positive and of the other passive1 so to say2 and that neither illustrates quite the subserviency to the conventional which we1 who have undoubtedly just as many conventions of our own1 are wont to ascribe to them1 and to ,lebrun in particular4 ,,iv ,fanciful as the ,louis ,quinze art seems1 by contrast with that of ,louis ,quatorze1 it1 too1 is essentially classic4 ,it is free enough--no one1 ,i think1 would deny that--but it is very far from individual in any important sense4 ,it has1 to be sure1 more personal feeling than that of ,lesueur or ,lebrun4 ,the artist's susceptibility seems to come to the surface for the first time4 ,watteau1 ,fragonard--,fragonard especially1 the exquisite and impudent--are as gay1 as spontaneous1 as careless1 as vivacious as ,boldini4 ,boucher's goddesses and cherubs1 disporting themselves in graceful abandonment on happily disposed clouds1 outlined in cumulus masses against unvarying azure1 are as unrestrained and independent of prescription as ,monticelli's figures4 ,lancret1 ,pater1 ,nattier1 and ,van ,loo--the very names suggest not merely freedom but a sportive and abandoned license4 ,but in what a narrow round they move6 ,how their imaginativeness is limited by their artificiality6 ,what a talent1 what a genius they have for artificiality4 ,it is the era par excellence of dilettantism1 and nothing is less romantic than dilettantism4 ,their evident feeling--and evidently genuine feeling--is feeling for the factitious1 for the manufactured1 for what the ,french call the confectionne4 ,their romantic quality is to that of the modern ,fontainebleau group as the exquisite vers de societe of ,mr4 ,austin ,dobson1 say1 is to the turbulent yet profound romanticism of ,heine or ,burns4 ,every picture painted by them would go as well on a fan as in a frame4 ,all their material is traditional4 ,they simply handle it as enfants terribles4 ,intellectually speaking1 they are painters of a silver age4 ,of ideas they have almost none4 ,they are as barren of invention in any large sense as if they were imitators instead of1 in a sense1 the originators of a new phase4 ,their originality is arrived at rather through exclusion than discovery4 ,they simply drop pedantry and exult in irresponsibility4 ,they are hardly even a school4 ,yet they have1 one and all1 in greater or less degree1 that distinct quality of charm which is eternally incompatible with routine4 ,they are as little constructive as the age itself1 as anything that we mean when we use the epithet ,louis ,quinze4 ,of everything thus indicated one predicates at once unconsciousness1 the momentum of antecedent thought modified by the ease born of habit2 the carelessness due to having one's thinking done for one and the license of proceeding fancifully1 whimsically1 even freakishly1 once the lines and limits of one's action have been settled by more laborious1 more conscientious philosophy than in such circumstances one feels disposed to frame for one's self4 ,there is no break with the ,louis ,quatorze things1 not a symptom of revolt2 only1 after them the deluge6 ,but out of this very condition of things1 and out of this attitude of mind1 arises a new art1 or rather a new phase of art1 essentially classic1 as ,i said1 but nevertheless imbued with a character of its own1 and this character distinctly charming4 ,wherein does the charm consist8 ,in two qualities1 ,i think1 one of which has not hitherto appeared in ,french painting1 or1 indeed1 in any art whatever1 namely1 what we understand by cleverness as a distinct element in treatment--and color4 ,color is very prominent nowadays in all writing about art1 though recently it has given place1 in the fashion of the day1 to values and the realistic representation of natural objects as the painter's proper aim4 ,what precisely is meant by color would be difficult1 perhaps1 to define4 ,a warmer general tone than is achieved by painters mainly occupied with line and mass is possibly what is oftenest meant by amateurs who profess themselves fond of color4 ,at all events1 the ,louis ,quinze painters1 especially ,watteau1 ,fragonard1 and ,pater--and ,boucher has a great deal of the same feeling--were sensitive to that vibration of atmosphere that blends local hues into the ensemble that produces tone4 ,the ensemble of their tints is what we mean by color4 ,since the ,venetians this note had not appeared4 ,they constitute1 thus1 a sort of romantic interregnum--still very classic1 from an intellectual point of view--between the classicism of ,lebrun and the still greater severity of ,david4 ,nothing in the evolution of ,french painting is more interesting than this reverberation of ,tintoretto and ,tiepolo4 ,by cleverness1 as exhibited by the ,louis ,quinze painters1 ,i do not mean mere technical ability1 but something more inclusive1 something relating quite as much to attitude of mind as to dexterity of treatment4 ,they conceive as cleverly as they execute4 ,there is a sense of confidence and capability in the way they view1 as well as in the way they handle1 their light material4 ,they know it thoroughly1 and are thoroughly at one with it4 ,and they exploit it with a serene air of satisfaction1 as if it were the only material in the world worth handling4 ,indeed1 it is exquisitely adapted to their talent4 ,so little significance has it that one may say it exists merely to be cleverly dealt with1 to be represented1 distributed1 compared1 and generally utilized solely with reference to the display of the artist's jaunty skill4 ,it is1 one may say1 merely the raw material for the production of an effect1 and an effect demanding only what we mean by cleverness2 no knowledge and love of nature1 no prolonged study1 no acquaintance with the antique1 for example1 no philosophy whatever--unless poco-curantism be called a philosophy1 which eminently it is not4 ,to be adequate to the requirements--rarely very exacting in any case--made of one1 never to show stupidity1 to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feeling for what is elegant and refined1 to abhor pedantry and take gayety at once lightly and seriously1 and beyond this to take no thought1 is to be clever2 and in this sense the ,louis ,quinze painters are the first1 as they certainly are the typical1 clever artists4 ,in ,louis ,quinze art the subject is more than effaced to give free swing to technical cleverness2 it is itself contributory to such cleverness1 and really a part of it4 ,the artists evidently look on life1 as they paint their pictures1 as the web whereon to sketch exhibitions of skill in the composition of sensation-provoking combinations--combinations1 thus1 provoking sensations of the lightest and least substantial kind4 ,when you stand before one of ,fragonard's bewitching models1 modishly modified into a great--or rather a little--lady1 you not only note the color--full of tone on the one hand and of variety on the other1 besides exhibiting the happiest selective quality in warm and yet delicate hues and tints2 you not only1 furthermore1 observe the clever touch just poised between suggestion and expression1 coquettishly suppressing a detail here1 and emphasizing a characteristic there2 you feel1 in addition1 that the entire object floats airily in an atmosphere of cleverness2 that it is but a bit1 an example1 a miniature type of an environment wholly attuned to the note of cleverness--of competence1 facility1 grace1 elegance1 and other abstract but not at all abstruse qualities1 quite unrelated to what1 in any profound sense1 at least1 is concrete and vitally significant4 ,artificiality so permeated the ,louis ,quinze epoch1 indeed1 that one may say that nature itself was artificial--that is to say1 all the nature ,louis ,quinze painters had to paint2 at least all they could have been called upon to think of painting4 ,what a distinction is1 after all1 theirs6 ,to have created out of nothing1 or next to nothing1 something charming1 and enduringly charming2 something of a truly classic inspiration without dependence at bottom on the real and the actual2 something as little indebted to facts and things as a fairy tale1 and withal marked by such qualities as color and cleverness in so eminent a degree4 ,the ,louis ,quinze painters may be said1 indeed1 to have had the romantic temperament with the classic inspiration4 ,they have audacity rather than freedom1 license modified by strict limitation to the lines within which it is exercised4 ,but there can be no doubt that this limitation is more conspicuous in their charmingly irresponsible works than is1 essentially speaking1 their irresponsibility itself4 ,they never give their imagination free play4 ,sportive and spontaneous as it appears1 it is equally clear that its activities are bounded by conservatory confines4 ,watteau1 born on the ,flemish border1 is almost an exception4 ,temperament in him seems constantly on the verge of conquering tradition and environment4 ,now and then he seems to be on the point of emancipation1 and one expects to come upon some work in which he has expressed himself and attested his ideality4 ,but one is as constantly disappointed4 ,his color and his cleverness are always admirable and winning1 but his import is perversely--almost bewitchingly--slight4 ,what was he thinking of8 one asks1 before his delightful canvases2 and one's conclusion inevitably is1 certainly as near nothing at all as can be consistent with so much charm and so much real power4 ,as to ,watteau1 one's last thought is of what he would have been in a different aesthetic atmosphere1 in an atmosphere that would have stimulated his really romantic temperament to extra-traditional flights1 instead of confining it within the inexorable boundaries of classic custom2 an atmosphere favorable to the free exercise of his adorable fancy1 instead of rigorously insistent on conforming this1 so far as might be1 to customary canons1 and1 at any rate1 restricting its exercise to material a la mode4 ,a little landscape in the ,la ,caze collection in the ,louvre1 whose romantic and truly poetic feeling agreeably pierces through its elegance1 is eloquent of such reflections4 ,v ,with ,greuze and ,chardin we are supposed to get into so different a sphere of thought and feeling that the change has been called a return to nature--that return to nature of which we hear so much in histories of literature as well as of the plastic arts4 ,the notion is not quite sound4 ,chardin is a painter who seems to me1 at least1 to stand quite apart1 quite alone1 in the development of ,french painting1 whereas there could not be a more marked instance of the inherence of the classic spirit in the ,french aesthetic nature than is furnished by ,greuze4 ,the first ,french painter of genre1 in the full modern sense of the term1 the first true interpreter of scenes from humble life--of lowly incident and familiar situations1 of broken jars and paternal curses1 and buxom girls and precocious children--he certainly is4 ,there is certainly nothing regence about him4 ,but the beginning and end of ,greuze's art is convention4 ,he is less imaginative1 less romantic1 less real than the painting his replaced4 ,that was at least a mirror of the ideals1 the spirit1 the society1 of the day4 ,a ,louis ,quinze fan is a genuine and spontaneous product of a free and elastic aesthetic impulse beside one of his stereotyped sentimentalities4 ,the truth is1 ,greuze is as sentimental as a bullfinch1 but he has hardly a natural note in his gamut4 ,nature is not only never his model1 she is never his inspiration4 ,he is distinctively a literary painter2 but this description is not minute enough4 ,his conventions are those not merely of the litterateur1 but of the extremely conventional litterateur4 ,an artless platitude is really more artificial than a clever paradox2 it doesn't even cast a side-light on the natural material with which it deals4 ,greuze's genre is really a genre of his own--his own and that of kindred spirits since4 ,it is as systematic and detached as the art of ,poussin4 ,the forms it embodies merely have more natural1 more familiar associations4 ,but compare one of his compositions with those of the little ,dutch and ,flemish masters1 for truth1 feeling1 nature handled after her own suggestions1 instead of within limits and on lines imposed upon her from without4 ,by the side of ,van ,ostade or ,brauer1 for example1 one of ,greuze's bits of humble life seems like an academic composition1 quite out of touch with its subject1 and1 except for its art1 absolutely lifeless and insipid4 ,in a word1 his choice of subjects1 of genre1 is really no disguise at all of his essential classicality4 ,both ideally and technically1 in the way he conceives and the way he handles his subject1 he is only superficially romantic or real4 ,his literature1 so to speak1 is as conventional as his composition4 ,one may compare him to ,hogarth1 though both as a moralist and a technician a longo intervallo1 of course4 ,he is assuredly not to be depreciated4 ,his scheme of color is clear if not rich1 his handling is frank if not unctuous or subtly interesting1 his composition is careful and clever1 and some of his heads are admirably painted--painted with a genuine feeling for quality4 ,but his merits as well as his failings are decidedly academic1 and as a romanticist he is really masquerading4 ,he is much nearer to ,fragonard than he is to ,edouard ,frere even4 ,chardin1 on the other hand1 is the one distinguished exception to the general character of ,french art in the artificial and intellectual eighteenth century4 ,he is as natural as a ,dutchman1 and as modern as ,vollon4 ,as you walk through the ,french galleries of the ,louvre1 of all the canvases antedating our own era his are those toward which one feels the most sympathetic attraction1 ,i think4 ,you note at once his individuality1 his independence of schools and traditions1 his personal point of view1 his preoccupation with the object as he perceives it4 ,nothing is more noteworthy in the history of ,french art1 in the current of which the subordination of the individual genius to the general consensus is so much the rule1 than the occasional exception--now of a single man1 now of a group of men1 destined to become in its turn a school--the occasional accent or interruption of the smooth course of slow development on the lines of academic precedent4 ,tyrannical as academic precedent is 7and nowhere has it been more tyrannical than in ,french painting7 the general interest in aesthetic subjects which a general subscription to academic precedent implies is certainly to be credited with the force and genuineness of the occasional protestant against the very system that has been powerful enough to popularize indefinitely the subject both of subscription and of revolt4 ,without some such systematic propagandism of the aesthetic cultus as from the first the ,french ,institute has been characterized by1 it is very doubtful if1 in the complexity of modern society1 the interest in aesthetics can ever be made wide enough1 universal enough1 to spread beyond those immediately and professionally concerned with it4 ,the immense impetus given to this interest by a central organ of authority1 that dignifies the subject with which it occupies itself and draws attention to its value and its importance1 has1 a priori1 the manifest effect of leading persons to occupy themselves with it1 also1 who otherwise would never have had their attention drawn to it4 ,it would scarcely be an exaggeration to say1 in other words1 that but for the ,institute there would not be a tithe of the number of names now on the roll of ,french artists4 ,when art is in the air--and nothing so much as an academy produces this condition--the chances of the production of even an unacademic artist are immensely increased4 ,so in the midst of the ,mignardise of ,louis ,quinze painting it is only superficially surprising to find a painter of the original force and flavor of ,chardin4 ,his wholesome and yet subtle variations from the art a la mode of his epoch might have been painted in the ,holland of his day1 or in our day anywhere that art so good as ,chardin's can be produced1 so far as subject and moral and technical attitude are concerned4 ,they are1 in quite accentuated contra-distinction from the works of ,greuze1 thoroughly in the spirit of simplicity and directness4 ,one notes in them at once that moral simplicity which predisposes everyone to sympathetic appreciation4 ,the special ideas of his time seem to pass him by unmoved4 ,he has no community of interest with them4 ,while he was painting his still life and domestic genre1 the whole fantastic whirl of ,louis ,quinze society1 with its aesthetic standards and accomplishments--accomplishments and standards that imposed themselves everywhere else--was in agitated movement around him without in the least affecting his serene tranquillity1 his almost sturdy composure4 ,there can rarely have been such an instance as he affords of an artist's selecting from his environment just those things his own genius needed1 and rejecting just what would have hampered or distracted him4 ,he is as sane1 as unsentimental1 as truthful and unpretending as the most literal and unimaginative ,dutchman of his time or before it2 but he has also that feeling for style1 and that instinct for avoiding the common and unclean which always seem to prevent ,french painters from sinking with their subject1 as ,dutch painters have been said to do4 ,he seems never to let himself go either in the direction of ,greuze's literary and sentimental manipulation of his homely material1 or in the direction of supine satisfaction with this material1 unrelieved and unelevated by an individual point of view1 illustrated by the ,brauers and ,steens and ,ostades4 ,one perceives that what he cared for was really art itself1 for the aesthetic aspect and significance of the life he painted4 ,affectionate as his interest in it evidently was1 he as evidently thought of its artistic potentialities1 its capability of being treated with refinement and delicacy1 and of being made to serve the ends of beauty equally well with the conventionally beautiful material of his fan-painting contemporaries4 ,he looked at the world very originally through and over those round1 horn-bowed spectacles of his1 with a very shrewd and very kindly and sympathetic glance1 too2 quite untinctured with prejudice or even predisposition4 ,one can read his artistic isolation in his countenance with a very little exercise of fancy4 ,,vi ,it is the fashion to think of ,david as the painter of the ,revolution and the ,empire4 ,really he is ,louis ,seize4 ,historical critics say that he had no fewer than four styles1 but apart from obvious labels they would be puzzled to tell to which of these styles any individual picture of his belongs4 ,he was from the beginning extremely1 perhaps absurdly1 enamoured of the antique1 and we usually associate addiction to the antique with the ,revolutionary period4 ,but perhaps politics are slower than the aesthetic movement2 ,david's view of art and practice of painting were fixed unalterably under the reign of philosophism4 ,philosophism1 as ,carlyle calls it1 is the ruling spirit of his work4 ,long before the ,revolution--in #aggd--;he painted what is still his most characteristic picture--,the ,oath of the ,horatii4 ,his art developed and grew systematized under the ,republic and the ,empire2 but ,napoleon1 whose genius crystallized the elements of everything in all fields of intellectual effort with which he occupied himself1 did little but formally consecrate1 in ,french phrase1 the art of the painter of ,the ,oath of the ,horatii and the originator and designer of the ,fete of ,robespierre's ,etre ,supreme4 ,spite of ,david's subserviency and that of others1 he left painting very much where he found it4 ,and he found it in a state of reaction against the ,louis ,quinze standards4 ,the break with these1 and with everything regence1 came with ,louis ,seize1 ,chardin being a notable exception and standing quite apart from the general drift of the ,french aesthetic movement2 and ,greuze being only a pseudo-romanticist1 and his work a variant of1 rather than reactionary from1 the artificiality of his day4 ,before painting could return to nature1 before the idea and inspiration of true romanticism could be born1 a reaction in the direction of severity after the artificial yet irresponsible riot of the ,louis ,quinze painters was naturally and logically inevitable4 ,painting was modified in the same measure with every other expression in the general recueillement that followed the extravagance in all social and intellectual fields of the ,louis ,quinze epoch4 ,but in becoming more chaste it did not become less classical4 ,indeed1 so far as severity is a trait of classicality--and it is only an associated not an essential trait of it--painting became more classical4 ,it threw off its extravagances without swerving from the artificial character of its inspiration4 ,art in general seemed content with substituting the straight line for the curve--a change from ,louis ,quinze to ,louis ,seize that is very familiar even to persons who note the transitions between the two epochs only in the respective furniture of each2 a ,louis ,quinze chair or mirror1 for example1 having a flowing outline1 whereas a ,louis ,seize equivalent is more rigid and rectilinear4 ,david is artificial1 it is to be pointed out1 only in his ensemble4 ,in detail he is real enough4 ,and he always has an ensemble4 ,his compositions1 as compositions1 are admirable4 ,they make a total impression1 and with a vigor and vividness that belong to few constructed pictures4 ,the canvas is always penetrated with ,david--illustrates as a whole1 and with completeness and comparative flawlessness1 his point of view1 his conception of the subject4 ,this1 of course1 is the academic point of view1 the academic conception4 ,but1 as ,i say1 his detail is surprisingly truthful and studied4 ,his picture--which is always nevertheless a picture--is as inconceivable1 as traditional in its inspiration1 as factitious as you like2 his figures are always sapiently and often happily exact4 ,his portraits are absolutely vital characterizations4 ,and in general his sculptural sense1 his self-control1 his perfect power of expressing what he deemed worth expressing1 are really what are noteworthy in his pictures1 far more than their monotonous coloration and the coldness and unreality of the pictures themselves1 considered as moving1 real1 or significant compositions4 ,in admiration of these it is impossible for us nowadays to go as far as even the romanticist1 though extremely catholic1 ,gautier4 ,they leave us cold4 ,we have a wholly different ideal1 which in order to interest us powerfully painting must illustrate--an ideal of more pertinence and appositeness to our own moods and manner of thought and feeling4 ,ingres1 a painter of considerably less force1 ,i think1 comes much nearer to doing this4 ,he is more elastic1 less devoted to system4 ,without being as free1 as sensitive to impressions as we like to see an artist of his powers1 he escapes pedantry4 ,his subject is not ,the ,rape of the ,sabines1 but ,the ,apotheosis of ,homer1 academic but not academically fatuitous4 ,to follow the inspiration of the ,vatican ,stanze in the selection and treatment of ideal subjects is to be far more closely in touch with contemporary feeling as to what is legitimate and proper in imaginative painting1 than to pictorialize an actual event with a systematic artificiality and conformity to abstractions that would surely have made the sculptor of the ,trajan column smile4 ,yet ,i would rather have ,the ,rape of the ,sabines within visiting distance than ,the ,apotheosis of ,homer4 ,it is better1 at least solider1 painting4 ,the painter1 however dominated by his theory1 is more the master of its illustration than ,ingres is of the justification of his admiration for ,raphael4 ,the ,homer attempts more1 but it is naturally not as successful in getting as effective a unity out of its greater complexity4 ,it is in his less ambitious pictures that the genius of ,ingres is unmistakably evident--his heads1 his single figures1 his exquisite drawings almost in outline4 ,his ,odalisque of the ,louvre is not as forceful as ,david's portrait of ,madame ,recamier1 but it is a finer thing4 ,i should like the two to have changed subjects in this instance4 ,his ,source is beautifully drawn and modelled4 ,in everything he did distinction is apparent4 ,inferior assuredly to ,david when he attempted the grand style1 he had a truer feeling for the subtler qualities of style itself4 ,all his works are linearly beautiful demonstrations of his sincerity--his sanity indeed--in proclaiming that drawing is the probity of art4 ,with a few contemporary painters and critics1 whose specific penetration is sometimes in curious contrast with their imperfect catholicity1 he has recently come into vogue again1 after having been greatly neglected since the romantic outburst4 ,but he belongs completely to the classic epoch4 ,neither he nor his refined and sympathetic pupil1 ,flandrin1 did aught to pave the way for the modern movement4 ,intimations of the shifting point of view are discoverable rather in a painter of far deeper poetic interest than either1 spite of ,ingres's refinement and ,flandrin's elevation--in ,prudhon4 ,prudhon is the link between the last days of the classic supremacy and the rise of romanticism4 ,like ,claude1 like ,chardin1 he stands somewhat apart2 but he has distinctly the romantic inspiration1 constrained and regularized by classic principles of taste4 ,he is the ,french ,correggio in far more precise parallelism than ,lesueur is the ,french ,raphael4 ,with a grace and lambent color all his own--a beautiful mother-of-pearl and opalescent tone underlying his exquisite violets and graver hues2 a color-scheme1 on the one hand1 and a sense of design in line and mass more suave and graceful than anything since the great ,italians1 on the other--he recalls the lovely chiaro-oscuro of the exquisite ,parmesan as it is recalled in no other modern painter4 ,occupying1 as incontestably he does1 his own niche in the pantheon of painters1 he nevertheless illustrates most distinctly and unmistakably the slipping away of ,french painting from classic formulas as well as from classic extravagance1 and the tendency to new ideals of wider reach and greater tolerance--of more freedom1 spontaneity1 interest in life and the world--of a definitive break with the contracting and constricting forces of classicism4 ,during its next period1 and indeed down to the present day1 ,french painting will preserve the essence of its classic traditions1 variously modified from decade to decade1 but never losing the quality in virtue of which what is ,french is always measurably the most classic thing going2 but of this next period certainly ,prudhon is the precursor1 who1 with all his classic serenity1 presages its passion for storms1 clouds1 effusion1 and relief4 ,,ii ,,romantic ,,painting ,i ,when we come to ,scott after ,fielding1 says ,mr4 ,stevenson1 we become suddenly conscious of the background4 ,the remark contains an admirable characterization of romanticism2 as distinguished from classicism1 romanticism is consciousness of the background4 ,with ,gros1 ,gericault1 ,paul ,huet1 ,michel1 ,delacroix1 ,french painting ceased to be abstract and impersonal4 ,instead of continuing the classic detachment1 it became interested1 curious1 and catholic4 ,it broadened its range immensely1 and created its effect by observing the relations of its objects to their environment1 of its figures to the landscape1 of its subjects to their suggestions even in other spheres of thought2 ,delacroix1 ,marilhat1 ,decamps1 ,fromentin1 in painting the aspect of ,orientalism1 suggested1 one may almost say1 its sociology4 ,for the abstractions of classicism1 its formula1 its fastidious system of arriving at perfection by exclusions and sacrifices1 it substituted an enthusiasm for the concrete and the actual2 it revelled in natural phenomena4 ,gautier was never more definitely the exponent of romanticism than in saying ,i am a man for whom the visible world exists4 ,to lines and curves and masses and their relations in composition1 succeeds as material for inspiration and reproduction the varied spectacle of the external world4 ,with the early romanticists it may be said that for the first time the external world swims into the painter's ken4 ,but1 above all1 in them the element of personality first appears in ,french painting with anything like general acceptance and as the characteristic of a group1 a school1 rather than as an isolated exception here and there1 such as ,claude or ,chardin4 ,the point of view takes the place of conformity to a standard4 ,the painter expresses himself instead of endeavoring to realize an extraneous and impersonal ideal4 ,what he himself personally thinks1 how he himself personally feels1 is what we read in his works4 ,it is true that1 rightly understood1 the romantic epoch is a period of evolution1 and orderly evolution at that1 if we look below the surface1 rather than of systematic defiance and revolt4 ,it is true that it recast rather than repudiated its inheritance of tradition4 ,nevertheless there has never been a time when the individual felt himself so free1 when every man of any original genius felt so keenly the exhilaration of independence1 when the schools of painting exercised less tyranny and1 indeed1 counted for so little4 ,if it be exact to speak of the romantic school at all1 it should be borne in mind that its adherents were men of the most marked and diverse individualities ever grouped under one standard4 ,the impressionists1 perhaps1 apart1 individuality is often spoken of as the essential characteristic of the painters of the present day4 ,but beside the outburst of individuality at the beginning of the romantic epoch1 much of the painting of the present day seems both monotonous and eccentric--the variation of its essential monotony1 that is to say1 being somewhat labored and express in comparison with the spontaneous multifariousness of the epoch of ,delacroix and ,decamps4 ,in the decade between #ahbj and #ahcj1 at all events1 notwithstanding the strength of the academic tradition1 painting was free from the thraldom of system1 and the imagination of its practitioners was not challenged and circumscribed by the criticism that is based upon science4 ,not only in the painter's freedom in his choice of subject1 but in his way of treating it1 in the way in which he takes it1 is the revolution--or1 as ,i should be inclined to say1 rather1 the evolution--shown4 ,and as what we mean by personality is1 in general1 made up far more of emotion than of mind--there being room for infinitely more variety in feeling than in mental processes among intelligent agents--it is natural to find the ,french romantic painters giving1 by contrast with their predecessors1 such free swing to personal feeling that we may almost sum up the origin of the romantic movement in ,french painting in saying that it was an ebullition of emancipated emotion4 ,and1 to go a step farther1 we may say that1 as nothing is so essential to poetry as feeling1 we meet now for the first time with the poetic element as an inspiring motive and controlling force4 ,the romantic painters were1 however1 by no means merely emotional4 ,they were mainly imaginative4 ,and in painting1 as in literature1 the great change wrought by romanticism consisted in stimulating the imagination instead of merely satisfying the sense and the intellect4 ,the main idea ceased to be as obviously accentuated1 and its natural surroundings were given their natural place2 there was less direct statement and more suggestion2 the artist's effort was expended rather upon perfecting the ensemble1 noting relations1 taking in a larger circle2 a suggested complexity of moral elements took the place of the old simplicity1 whose multifariousness was almost wholly pictorial4 ,instead of a landscape as a tapestry background to a ,holy ,family1 and having no pertinence but an artistic one1 we have ,corot's ,orpheus4 ,,ii ,gericault and ,delacroix are the great names inscribed at the head of the romantic roll4 ,they will remain there4 ,and the distinction is theirs not as awarded by the historical estimate2 it is personal4 ,in the case of ,gericault perhaps one thinks a little of the man and the moment theory4 ,he was1 it is true1 the first romantic painter--at any rate the first notable romantic painter4 ,his struggles1 his steadfastness1 his success--pathetically posthumous--have given him an honorable eminence4 ,his example of force and freedom exerted an influence that has been traced not only in the work of ,delacroix1 his immediate inheritor1 but in that of the sculptor ,rude1 and even as far as that of ,millet--to all outward appearance so different in inspiration from that of his own tumultuous and dramatic genius4 ,and as of late years we look on the stages of any evolution as less dependent on individuals than we used to1 doubtless just as ,luther was confirmed and supported on his way to the ,council at ,worms by the people calling on him from the house-tops not to deny the truth1 ,gericault was sustained and stimulated in the face of official obloquy by a more or less considerable aesthetic movement of which he was really but the leader and exponent4 ,but his fame is not dependent upon his revolt against the ,institute1 his influence upon his successors1 or his incarnation of an aesthetic movement4 ,it rests on his individual accomplishment1 his personal value1 the abiding interest of his pictures4 ,the ,raft of the ,medusa will remain an admirable and moving creation1 a masterpiece of dramatic vigor and vivid characterization1 of wide and deep human interest and truly panoramic grandeur1 long after its contemporary interest and historic importance have ceased to be thought of except by the aesthetic antiquarian4 ,the ,wounded ,cuirassier and the ,chasseur of the ,guard are not documents of aesthetic history1 but noble expressions of artistic sapience and personal feeling4 ,what1 ,i think1 is the notable thing about both ,gericault and ,delacroix1 however1 as exponents1 as the initiators1 of romanticism1 is the way in which they restrained the impetuous temperament they share within the confines of a truly classic reserve4 ,closely considered1 they are not the revolutionists they seemed to the official classicism of their day4 ,not only do they not base their true claims to enduring fame upon a spirit of revolt against official and academic art--a spirit essentially negative and nugatory1 and never the inspiration of anything permanently puissant and attractive--but1 compared with their successors of the present day1 in whose works individual preference and predilection seem to have a swing whose very freedom and irresponsible audacity extort admiration--compared with the confident temerariousness of what is known as modernite1 their self-possession and sobriety seem their most noteworthy characteristics4 ,compared with the ,bar at the ,folies-,bergere1 either the ,raft of the ,medusa or the ,convulsionists of ,tangiers is a classic production4 ,and the difference is not at all due to the forty years' accretion of ,protestantism which ,manet represents as compared with the early romanticists4 ,it is due to a complete difference in attitude4 ,gericault imbued himself with the inspiration of the ,louvre4 ,delacroix is said always to have made a sketch from the old masters or the antique a preliminary to his own daily work4 ,so far from flaunting tradition1 they may be said to have1 in their own view1 restored it2 so far from posing as apostles of innovation1 they may almost be accused of harking back--of steeping themselves in what to them seemed best and finest and most authoritative in art1 instead of giving a free rein to their own unregulated emotions and conceptions4 ,gericault died early and left but a meagre product4 ,delacroix is par excellence the representative of the romantic epoch4 ,and both by the mass and the quality of his work he forms a true connecting link between the classic epoch and the modern--in somewhat the same way as ,prudhon does1 though more explicitly and on the other side of the line of division4 ,he represents culture--he knows art as well as he loves nature4 ,he has a feeling for what is beautiful as well as a knowledge of what is true4 ,he is pre-eminently and primarily a colorist--he is1 in fact1 the introducer of color as a distinct element in ,french painting after the pale and bleak reaction from the ,louis ,quinze decorativeness4 ,his color1 too1 is not merely the prismatic coloration of what had theretofore been mere chiaro-oscuro2 it is original and personal to such a degree that it has never been successfully imitated since his day4 ,withal1 it is apparently simplicity itself4 ,its hues are apparently the primary ones1 in the main4 ,it depends upon no subtleties and refinements of tints for its effectiveness4 ,it is significant that the absorbed and affected ,rossetti did not like it2 it is too frank and clear and open1 and shows too little evidence of the morbid brooding and hysterical forcing of an arbitrary and esoteric note dear to the ,english pre-,raphaelites4 ,it attests a delight in color1 not a fondness for certain colors1 hues1 tints--a difference perfectly appreciable to either an unsophisticated or an educated sense4 ,it has a solidity and strength of range and vibration combined with a subtle sensitiveness1 and1 as a result of the fusion of the two1 a certain splendor that recalls ,saracenic decoration4 ,and with this mastery of color is united a combined firmness and expressiveness of design that makes ,delacroix unique by emphasizing his truly classic subordination of informing enthusiasm to a severe and clearly perceived ideal--an ideal in a sense exterior to his purely personal expression4 ,in a word1 his chief characteristic--and it is a supremely significant trait in the representative painter of romanticism--is a poetic imagination tempered and trained by culture and refinement4 ,when his audacities and enthusiasms are thought of1 the directions in his will for his tomb should be remembered too3 ,il n'y sera place ni embleme1 ni buste1 ni statue2 mon tombeau sera copie tres exactement sur l'antique1 ou ,vignoles ou ,palladio1 avec des saillies tres prononcees1 contrairement a tout ce qui se fait aujourd'hui en architecture4 ,let there be neither emblem1 bust1 nor statue on my tomb1 which shall be copied very scrupulously after the antique1 either ,vignola or ,palladio1 with prominent projections1 contrary to everything done to-day in architecture4 ,in a sense all ,delacroix is in these words4 ,,iii ,delacroix's color deepens into an almost musical intensity occasionally in ,decamps1 whose oriental landscapes and figures1 far less important intellectually1 far less magistrales in conception1 have at times1 one may say perhaps without being too fanciful1 a truly symphonic quality that renders them unique4 ,the ,suicide is like a chord on a violin4 ,but it is when we come to speak of the ,fontainebleau ,group1 in especial1 ,i think1 that the aesthetic susceptibility characteristic of the latter half of the nineteenth century feels1 to borrow ,m4 ,taine's introduction to his lectures on ,the ,ideal in ,art1 that the subject is one only to be treated in poetry4 ,of the noblest of all so-called schools1 ,millet is perhaps the most popular member4 ,his popularity is in great part1 certainly1 due to his literary side1 to the sentiment which pervades1 which drenches1 one may say1 all his later work--his work after he had1 on overhearing himself characterized as a painter of naked women1 betaken himself to his true subject1 the ,french peasant4 ,a literary1 and a very powerful literary side1 ,millet undoubtedly has2 and instead of being a weakness in him it is a power4 ,his sentimental appeal is far from being surplusage1 but1 as is not ,i think popularly appreciated1 it is subordinate1 and the fact of its subordination gives it what potency it has4 ,it is idle to deny this potency1 for his portrayal of the ,french peasant in his varied aspects has probably been as efficient a characterization as that of ,george ,sand herself4 ,but1 if a moral instead of an aesthetic effect had been ,millet's chief intention1 we may be sure that it would have been made far less incisively than it has been4 ,compare1 for example1 his peasant pictures with those of the almost purely literary painter ,jules ,breton1 who has evidently chosen his field for its sentimental rather than its pictorial value1 and whose work is1 perhaps accordingly1 by contrast with ,millet's1 noticeably external and superficial even on the literary side4 ,when ,millet ceased to deal in the ,correggio manner with ,correggiesque subjects1 and devoted himself to the material that was really native to him1 to his own peasant genius--whatever he may have thought about it himself1 he did so because he could treat this material pictorially with more freedom and less artificiality1 with more zest and enthusiasm1 with a deeper sympathy and a more intimate knowledge of its artistic characteristics1 its pictorial potentialities4 ,he is1 ,i think1 as a painter1 a shade too much preoccupied with this material1 he is a little too philosophical in regard to it1 his pathetic struggle for existence exaggerated his sentimental affiliations with it somewhat1 he made it too exclusively his subject1 perhaps4 ,we gain1 it may be1 at his expense4 ,with his artistic gifts he might have been more fortunate1 had his range been broader4 ,but in the main it is his pictorial handling of this material1 with which he was in such acute sympathy1 that distinguishes his work1 and that will preserve its fame long after its humanitarian and sentimental appeal has ceased to be as potent as it now is--at the same time that it has itself enforced this appeal in the subordinating manner ,i have suggested4 ,when he was asked his intention1 in his picture of a maimed calf borne away on a litter by two men1 he said it was simply to indicate the sense of weight in the muscular movement and attitude of the bearers' arms4 ,his great distinction1 in fine1 is artistic4 ,his early painting of conventional subjects is not without significance in its witness to the quality of his talent4 ,another may paint ,french peasants all his life and never make them permanently interesting1 because he has not ,millet's admirable instinct and equipment as a painter4 ,he is a superb colorist1 at times--always an enthusiastic one2 there is something almost unregulated in his delight in color1 in his fondness for glowing and resplendent tone4 ,no one gets farther away from the academic grayness1 the colorless chiaro-oscuro of the conventional painters4 ,he runs his key up and loads his canvas1 occasionally1 in what one may call not so much barbaric as uncultivated and elementary fashion4 ,he cares so much for color that sometimes1 when his effect is intended to be purely atmospheric1 as in the ,angelus1 he misses its justness and fitness1 and so1 in insisting on color1 obtains from the color point of view itself an infelicitous--a colored--result4 ,occasionally he bathes a scene in yellow mist that obscures all accentuations and play of values4 ,but always his feeling for color betrays him a painter rather than a moralist4 ,and in composition he is1 ,i should say1 even more distinguished4 ,his composition is almost always distinctly elegant4 ,even in so simple a scheme as that of ,the ,sower1 the lines are as fine as those of a ,raphael4 ,and the way in which balance is preserved1 masses are distributed1 and an organic play of parts related to each other and each to the sum of them is secured1 is in all of his large works so salient an element of their admirable excellence1 that1 to those who appreciate it1 the dependence of his popularity upon the sentimental suggestion of the raw material with which he dealt seems almost grotesque4 ,in his line and mass and the relations of these in composition1 there is a severity1 a restraint1 a conformity to tradition1 however personally felt and individually modified1 that evince a strong classic strain in this most unacademic of painters4 ,millet was certainly an original genius1 if there ever was one4 ,in spite of1 and in open hostility to1 the popular and conventional painting of his day1 he followed his own bent and went his own way4 ,better1 perhaps1 than any other painter1 he represents absolute emancipation from the prescribed1 from routine and formulary4 ,but it would be a signal mistake to fail to see1 in the most characteristic works of this most personal representative of romanticism1 that subordination of the individual whim and isolated point of view to what is accepted1 proven1 and universal1 which is essentially what we mean by the classic attitude4 ,one may almost go so far as to say1 considering its reserve1 its restraint and poise1 its sobriety and measure1 its quiet and composure1 its subordination of individual feeling to a high sense of artistic decorum1 that1 romantic as it is1 unacademic as it is1 its most incontestable claim to permanence is the truly classic spirit which1 however modified1 inspires and infiltrates it4 ,beside some of the later manifestations of individual genius in ,french painting1 it is almost academic4 ,in ,corot1 anyone1 ,i suppose1 can see this note1 and it would be surplusage to insist upon it4 ,he is the ideal classic-romantic painter1 both in temperament and in practice4 ,millet's subject1 not1 ,i think1 his treatment--possibly his wider range--makes him seem more deeply serious than ,corot1 but he is not essentially as nearly unique4 ,he is unrivalled in his way1 but ,corot is unparalleled4 ,corot inherits the tradition of ,claude2 his motive1 like ,claude's1 is always an effect1 and1 like ,claude's1 his means are light and air4 ,but his effect is a shade more impalpable1 and his means are at once simpler and more subtle4 ,he gets farther away from the phenomena which are the elements of his ensemble1 farther than ,claude1 farther than anyone4 ,his touch is as light as the zephyr that stirs the diaphanous drapery of his trees4 ,beside it ,claude's has a suspicion1 at least1 of unctuousness4 ,it has a pure1 crisp1 vibrant accent1 quite without analogue in the technic of landscape painting4 ,taking technic in its widest sense1 one may speak of ,corot's shortcomings--not1 ,i think1 of his failures4 ,it would be difficult to mention a modern painter more uniformly successful in attaining his aim1 in expressing what he wishes to express1 in conveying his impression1 communicating his sensations4 ,that a painter of his power1 a man of the very first rank1 should have been content--even placidly content--to exercise it within a range by no means narrow1 but plainly circumscribed1 is certainly witness of limitation4 ,delacroix is an eagle1 ,i am only a skylark1 he remarked once1 with his characteristic cheeriness4 ,his range is not1 it is true1 as circumscribed as is generally supposed outside of ,france4 ,outside of ,france his figure-painting1 for example1 is almost unknown4 ,we see chiefly variations of his green and gray arbored pastoral--now idyllic1 now heroic1 now full of freshness1 the skylark quality1 now of grave and deep harmonies and wild1 sweet notes of transitory suggestion4 ,of his figures we only know those shifting shapes that blend in such classic and charming manner with the glades and groves of his landscapes4 ,of his ,hagar in the ,wilderness1 his ,st4 ,jerome1 his ,flight into ,egypt1 his ,democritus1 his ,baptism of ,christ1 with its nine life-size figures1 who1 outside of ,france1 has even heard8 ,how many foreigners know that he painted what are called architectural subjects delightfully1 and even genre with zest8 ,but compared with his landscape1 in which he is unique1 it is plain that he excels nowhere else4 ,the splendid display of his works in the ,centenaire ,exposition of the great ,world's ,fair of #ahhi1 was a revelation of his range of interest rather than of his range of power4 ,it was impossible not to perceive that1 surprising as were his essays in other fields to those who only knew him as a landscape painter1 he was essentially and integrally a painter of landscape1 though a painter of landscape who had taken his subject in a way and treated it in a manner so personal as to be really unparalleled4 ,outside of landscape his interest was clearly not real4 ,in his other works one notes a certain debonnaire irresponsibility4 ,he pursued nothing seriously but out-of-doors1 its vaporous atmosphere1 its crisp twigs and graceful branches1 its misty distances and piquant accents1 what ,thoreau calls its inaudible panting4 ,his true theme1 lightly as he took it1 absorbed him2 and no one of any sensitiveness can ever regret it4 ,his powers1 following the indication of his true temperament1 his most genuine inspiration1 are concentrated upon the very finest thing imaginable in landscape painting2 as1 indeed1 to produce as they have done the finest landscape in the history of art1 they must have been4 ,there are1 however1 two things worth noting in ,corot's landscape1 beyond the mere fact that1 better even than ,rousseau1 he expresses the essence of landscape1 dwells habitually among its inspirations1 and is its master rather than its servant4 ,one is the way in which he poetizes1 so to speak1 the simplest stretches of sward and clumps of trees1 and long clear vistas across still ponds1 with distances whose accents are pricked out with white houses and yellow cows and placid fishers and ferrymen in red caps1 seen in glimpses through curtains of sparse1 feathery leafage--or peoples woodland openings with nymphs and fawns1 silhouetted against the sunset glow1 or dancing in the cool gray of dusk4 ,a man of no reading1 having only the elements of an education in the general sense of the term1 his instinctive sense for what is refined was so delicate that we may say of his landscapes that1 had the ,greeks left any they would have been like ,corot's4 ,and this classic and cultivated effect he secured not at all1 or only very incidentally1 through the force of association1 by dotting his hillsides and vaporous distances with bits of classic architecture1 or by summing up his feeling for the ,dawn in a graceful figure of ,orpheus greeting with extended gesture the growing daylight1 but by a subtle interpenetration of sensuousness and severity resulting in precisely the sentiment fitly characterized by the epithet classic4 ,the other trait peculiar to ,corot's representation of nature and expression of himself is his color4 ,no painter ever exhibited1 ,i think1 quite such a sense of refinement in so narrow a gamut4 ,green and gray1 of course1 predominate and set the key1 but he has an interestingly varied palette on the hither side of splendor whose subtleties are capable of giving exquisite pleasure4 ,never did anyone use tints with such positive force4 ,tints with ,corot have the vigor and vibration of positive colors--his lilacs1 violets1 straw-colored hues1 his almost ,quakerish coquetry with drabs and slates and pure clear browns1 the freshness and bloom he imparted to his tones1 the sweet and shrinking wild flowers with which as a spray he sprinkled his humid dells and brook margins4 ,but ,corot's true distinction--what gives him his unique position at the very head of landscape art1 is neither his color1 delicate and interesting as his color is1 nor his classic serenity harmonizing with1 instead of depending upon1 the chance associations of architecture and mythology with which now and then he decorates his landscapes2 it is the blithe1 the airy1 the truly spiritual way in which he gets farther away than anyone from both the actual pigment that is his instrument1 and from the phenomena that are the objects of his expression--his ethereality1 in a word4 ,he has communicated his sentiment almost without material1 one may say1 so ethereally independent of their actual analogues is the interest of his trees and sky and stretch of sward4 ,this sentiment1 thus mysteriously triumphant over color or form1 or other sensuous charm1 which nevertheless are only subtly subordinated1 and by no manner of means treated lightly or inadequately1 is as exalted as any that has in our day been expressed in any manner4 ,indeed1 where1 outside of the very highest poetry of the century1 can one get the same sense of elation1 of aspiring delight1 of joy unmixed with regret--since the splendor of truth which ,plato defined beauty to be1 is more animating and consoling than the weary weight of all this unintelligible world1 is depressing to a spirit of lofty seriousness and sanity8 99 99 99 99 99 ,dupre and ,diaz are the decorative painters of the ,fontainebleau group4 ,they are1 of modern painters1 perhaps the nearest in spirit to the old masters1 pictorially speaking4 ,they are rarely in the grand style1 though sometimes ,dupre is restrained enough to emulate if not to achieve its sobriety4 ,but they have the bel air1 and belong to the aristocracy of the painting world4 ,diaz1 especially1 has almost invariably the patrician touch4 ,it lacks the exquisiteness of ,monticelli's1 in which there is that curiously elevated detachment from the material and the real that the ,italians--and the ,provencal painter's inspiration and method1 as well as his name and lineage1 suggest an ,italian rather than a ,french association--exhibit far oftener than the ,french4 ,but ,diaz has a larger sweep1 a saner method4 ,he is never eccentric1 and he has a dignity that is ,iberian1 though he is ,french rather than ,spanish on his aesthetic side1 and at times is as conservative as ,rousseau--without1 however1 reaching ,rousseau's lofty simplicity except in an occasional happy stroke4 ,both he and ,dupre are primarily colorists4 ,dupre sees nature through a prism4 ,diaz's groups of dames and gallants have a jewel-like aspect2 they leave the same impression as a tangle of ribbons1 a bunch of exotic flowers1 a heap of gems flung together with the felicity of haphazard4 ,in general1 and when they are in most completely characteristic mood1 it is not the sentiment of nature that one gets from the work of either painter4 ,it is not even their sentiment of nature--the emotion aroused in their susceptibilities by natural phenomena4 ,what one gets is their personal feeling for color and design--their decorative quality1 in a word4 ,the decorative painter is he to whom what is called subject1 even in its least restricted sense and with its least substantial suggestions1 is comparatively indifferent4 ,nature supplies him with objects2 she is not in any intimate degree his subject4 ,she is the medium through which1 rather than the material of which1 he creates his effects4 ,it is her potentialities of color and design that he seeks1 or at any rate1 of all her infinitely numerous traits1 it is her hues and arabesques that strike him most forcibly4 ,he is incurious as to her secrets and calls upon her aid to interpret his own1 but he is so independent of her1 if he be a decorative painter of the first rank--a ,diaz or a ,dupre--that his rendering of her1 his picture1 would have an agreeable effect1 owing to its design or color or both1 if it were turned upside down4 ,decorative painting in this sense may easily be carried so far as to seem incongruous and inept1 in spite of its superficial attractiveness4 ,the peril that threatens it is whim and freak4 ,some of ,monticelli's1 some of ,matthew ,maris's pictures1 illustrate the exaggeration of the decorative impulse4 ,after all1 a painter must get his effect1 whatever it be and however it may shun the literal and the exact1 by rendering things with pigments4 ,and some of the decorative painters only escape things by obtruding pigments1 just as the trompe-l'oeil or optical illusion painters get away from pigments by obtruding things4 ,it is the distinction of ,diaz and ,dupre that they avoid this danger in most triumphant fashion4 ,on the contrary1 they help one to see the decorative element in nature1 in things1 to a degree hardly attained elsewhere since the days of the great ,venetians4 ,their predilection for the decorative element is held in leash by the classic tradition1 with its reserve1 its measure1 its inculcation of sobriety and its sense of security4 ,dupre paints ,seine sunsets and the edge of the forest at ,fontainebleau1 its long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight1 in a way that conveys the golden glow1 the silvery gleam1 the suave outline of spreading leafage1 and the massive density of mysterious boscage with the force of an almost abstract acuteness4 ,does nature look like this8 ,who knows8 ,but in this semblance1 surely1 she appeared to ,dupre's imagination4 ,and doubtless ,diaz saw the mother-of-pearl tints in the complexion of his models1 and is not to be accused of artificiality1 but to be credited with a true sincerity of selection in juxtaposing his soft corals and carnations and gleaming topaz1 amethyst1 and sapphire hues4 ,the most exacting literalist can hardly accuse them of solecism in their rendering of nature1 true as it is that their decorative sense is so strong as to lead them to impose on nature their own sentiment instead of yielding themselves to absorption in hers1 and thus1 in harmonious and sympathetic concert with her1 like ,claude and ,corot1 ,rousseau and ,daubigny1 interpreting her subtle and supreme significance4 99 99 99 99 99 ,rousseau carried the fundamental principle of the school farther than the others--with him interest1 delight in1 enthusiasm for nature became absorption in her4 ,whereas other men have loved nature1 it has been acutely remarked1 ,rousseau was in love with her4 ,it was felicitously of him1 rather than of ,dupre or ,corot1 that the naif peasant inquired1 ,why do you paint the tree2 the tree is there1 is it not8 ,and never did nature more royally reward allegiance to her than in the sustenance and inspiration she furnished for ,rousseau's genius4 ,you feel the point of view in his picture1 but it is apparently that of nature herself as well as his own4 ,it is not the less personal for this4 ,on the contrary1 it is extremely personal1 and few pictures are as individual1 as characteristic4 ,occasionally ,diaz approaches him1 as ,i have said1 but only in the very happiest and exceptional moments1 when the dignity of nature as well as her charm seems specially to impress and impose itself upon the less serious painter4 ,but ,rousseau's selection seems instinctive and not sought out4 ,he knows the secret of nature's pictorial element4 ,he is at one with her1 adopts her suggestions so cordially and works them out with such intimate sympathy and harmoniousness1 that the two forces seem reciprocally to reinforce each other1 and the result gains many fold in power from their subtle co-operation4 ,his landscapes have in this way a ,wordsworthian directness1 simplicity1 and severity4 ,they are not troubled and dramatic like ,turner's4 ,they are not decorative like ,dupre's1 they have not the solemn sentiment of ,daubigny's1 or the airy aspiration and fairy-like blitheness of ,corot's4 ,but there is in them all breathing human passion2 and at times1 as in ,le ,givre1 they rise to majesty and real grandeur because they are impregnated with the sentiment1 as well as are records of the phenomena1 of nature1 and one may say of ,rousseau1 paraphrasing ,mr4 ,arnold's remark about ,wordsworth1 that nature seems herself to take the brush out of his hand and to paint for him with her own bare1 sheer1 penetrating power4 ,rousseau1 however1 is ,french1 and in virtue of his nativity exhibits always what ,wordsworth's treatment of nature exhibits only occasionally1 namely1 the ,gallic gift of style4 ,it is rarely as felicitous as in ,corot1 in every detail of whose every work1 one may almost say1 its informing1 co-ordinating1 elevating influence is distinctly to be perceived2 but it is always present as a factor1 as a force dignifying and relieving from all touch1 all taint of the commonness that is so often inseparably associated with art whose absorption in nature is listlessly unthinking instead of enthusiastic and alert4 ,in ,rousseau1 too1 in a word1 we have the classic strain1 as at least a psychological element1 and note as one source of his power his reserve and restraint1 his perfect self-possession4 ,in ,daubigny a similar attitude toward nature is obvious1 but with a sensible difference4 ,affection for1 rather than absorption in her1 is his inspiration4 ,daubigny stands somewhat apart from the ,fontainebleau group1 with whom nevertheless he is popularly and properly associated1 for though he painted ,normandy mainly1 he was spiritually of the ,barbizon kindred4 ,he stands1 however1 somewhat apart from ,french painting in general1 ,i think4 ,there is less style1 more sentiment1 more poetry in his landscapes than in those of his countrymen who are to be compared with him4 ,beyond what is admirable in them there is something attaching as well4 ,he drew and engraved a good deal1 as well as painted4 ,he did not concentrate his powers enough1 perhaps1 to make as signal and definite a mark as otherwise he might have done4 ,he is a shade desultory1 and too spontaneous to be systematic4 ,one must be systematic to reach the highest point1 even in the least material spheres4 ,but never have the grave and solemn aspects of landscape found a sweeter and serener spirit to interpret them4 ,in some of his pictures there is a truly religious feeling4 ,his frankness recalls ,constable's1 but it is more distinguished in being more spiritual4 ,he has not ,diaz's elegance1 nor ,corot's witchery1 nor ,rousseau's power1 but nature is more mysteriously1 more mystically significant to him1 and sets a deeper chord vibrating within him4 ,he is a sensitive instrument on which she plays1 rather than a magician who wins her secrets1 or an observer whose generalizing imagination she sets in motion4 ,the design of some of his important works1 notably that of his last ,salon picture1 is very distinguished1 and in one of his large canvases representing a road like that from ,barbizon through the level plain to ,chailly1 there is the spirit and sentiment of all the summer evenings that ever were4 ,but he has distinctly less power than the strict ,fontainebleau group4 ,he has1 in force1 less affinity with them than ,troyon has1 whose force is often magnificent1 and whose landscape is so sweet1 often1 and often so strong as well1 that one wonders a little at his fondness for cattle--in spite of the way in which he justifies it by being the first of cattle painters4 ,and neither ,daubigny nor ,troyon1 nor1 indeed1 ,rousseau himself1 often reaches in dramatic grandeur the lofty landscape of ,michel1 who1 with ,paul ,huet 7the latter in a more strictly historical sense7 were so truly the forerunners and initiators of the romantic landscape movement1 both in sentiment and chronology1 in spite of their ,dutch tradition1 as to make the common ascription of its debt to ,constable1 whose aid was so cordially welcomed in the famous ,salon of #ahbd1 a little strained4 ,,iv ,but quite aside from the group of poetic painters which stamped its impress so deeply upon the romantic movement at the outset1 that to this day it is ,delacroix and ,millet1 ,decamps and ,corot whom we think of when we think of the movement itself1 the classic tradition was preserved all through the period of greatest stress and least conformity by painters of great distinction1 who1 working under the romantic inspiration and more or less according to what may be called romantic methods1 nevertheless possessed the classic temperament in so eminent a degree that to us their work seems hardly less academic than that of the ,revolution and the ,empire4 ,not only ,ingres1 but ,delaroche and ,ary ,scheffer1 painted beside ,gericault and ,delacroix4 ,ary ,scheffer was an eloquent partisan of romanticism1 yet his ,dante and ,beatrice and his ,temptation of ,christ are admirable only from the academic point of view4 ,delaroche's ,hemicycle and his many historical tableaux are surely in the classic vein1 however free they may seem in subject and treatment by contrast with the works of ,david and ,ingres4 ,they leave us equally cold1 at all events1 and in the same way--for the same reason4 ,they betray the painter's preoccupation with art rather than with nature4 ,they do1 in truth1 differ widely from the works which they succeeded1 but the difference is not temperamental4 ,they suggest the ,french phrase1 plus ca change1 plus c'est la meme chose4 ,gerome1 for example1 feels the exhilaration of the free air of romanticism fanning his enthusiasm4 ,he does not confine himself1 as1 born a decade or two earlier1 certainly he would have done1 to classic subject4 ,he follows ,decamps and ,marilhat to the ,orient1 which he paints with the utmost freedom1 so far as the choice of theme is concerned--descending even to the danse du ventre of a ,turkish cafe4 ,he paints historical pictures with a realism unknown before his day4 ,he is almost equally famous in the higher class of genre subjects4 ,but throughout everything he does it is easy to perceive the academic point of view1 the classic temperament4 ,david assuredly would never have chosen one of ,gerome's themes2 but had he chosen it1 he would have treated it in much the same way4 ,allowance made for the difference in time1 in general feeling of the aesthetic environment1 the change in ideas as to what was fit subject for representation and fitting manner of treating the same subject1 it is hardly an exaggeration to say that ,ingres would have sincerely applauded ,gerome's ,cleopatra issuing from the carpet roll before ,caesar4 ,and if he failed to perceive the noble dramatic power in such a work as the ,ave1 ,caesar1 morituri te salutant1 his failure would nowadays1 at least among intelligent amateurs1 be ascribed to an intolerance which it is one of the chief merits of the romantic movement to have adjudged absurd4 ,it is a source of really aesthetic satisfaction to see everything that is attempted as well done as it is in the works of such painters as ,bouguereau and ,cabanel4 ,of course the feeling that denies them large importance is a legitimate one4 ,the very excellence of their technic1 its perfect adaptedness to the motive it expresses1 is1 considering the insignificance of the motive1 subject for criticism2 inevitably it partakes of the futility of its subject-matter4 ,of course the personal value of the man1 the mind1 behind any plastic expression is1 in a sense1 the measure of the expression itself4 ,if it be a mind interested in pouncet-box covers1 in the pictorial setting forth of themes whose illustration most intimately appeals to the less cultivated and more rudimentary appreciation of fine art--as indisputably the ,madonnas and ,charities and ,oresteses and ,bacchus ,triumphs of ,m4 ,bouguereau do--one may very well dispense himself from the duty of admiring its productions4 ,life is short1 and more important things1 things of more significant import1 demand attention4 ,the grounds on which the works of ,bouguereau and ,cabanel are admired are certainly insufficient4 ,but they are experts in their sphere4 ,what they do could hardly be better done4 ,if they appeal to a bourgeois1 a philistine ideal of beauty1 of interest1 they do it with a perfection that is pleasing in itself4 ,no one else does it half so well4 ,to minds to which they appeal at all1 they appeal with the force of finality2 for these they create as well as illustrate the type of what is admirable and lovely4 ,it is as easy to account for their popularity as it is to perceive its transitory quality4 ,but not only is it a mark of limitation to refuse all interest to such a work as1 for example1 ,m4 ,cabanel's ,birth of ,venus1 in the painting of which a vast deal of technical expertness is enjoyably evident1 and which in every respect of motive and execution is far above similar things done elsewhere than in ,france2 it is a still greater error to confound such painters as ,m4 ,cabanel and ,m4 ,bouguereau with other painters whose classic temperament has been subjected to the universal romantic influence equally with theirs1 but whose production is as different from theirs as is that of the thorough and pure romanticists1 the truly poetic painters4 ,the instinct of simplification is an intelligent and sound one4 ,its satisfaction is a necessary preliminary to efficient action of any kind1 and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy4 ,but in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by a consideration of everything appealing to consideration1 and not at all by heated and wilful1 or superior and supercilious1 exclusions4 ,catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity4 ,to follow the line of least resistance1 not to take into account those elements of a problem1 those characteristics of a subject1 to which1 superficially and at first thought1 one is insensitive1 is to dispense one's self from a great deal of particularly disagreeable industry1 but the result is only transitorily agreeable to the sincere intelligence4 ,it is in criticism1 ,i think1 though no doubt in criticism alone1 preferable to lose one's self in a maze of perplexity--distressing as this is to the critic who appreciates the indispensability of clairvoyance in criticism--rather than to reach swiftly and simply a conclusion which candor would have foreseen as the inevitable and unjudicial result of following one's own likes and whims1 and one's contentment with which must be alloyed with a haunting sense of insecurity4 ,in criticism it is perhaps better to keep balancing counter-considerations than to determine brutally by excluding a whole set of them because of the difficulty of assigning them their true weight4 ,in this way1 at least1 one preserves the attitude of poise1 and poise is perhaps the one essential element of criticism4 ,in a word1 that catholicity of sensitiveness which may be called mere impressionism1 behind which there is no body of doctrine at all1 is more truly critical than intolerant depreciation or unreflecting enthusiasm4 ,the main thing to do1 says ,mr4 ,arnold1 in a significant passage1 is to get one's self out of the way and let humanity judge4 ,it is temptingly simple to deny all importance to painters who are not poetic painters4 ,and the temptation is especially seductive when the prosaic painters are paralleled by such a distinguished succession of their truly poetic brethren as are the painters of the romantic epoch who are possessed of the classic temperament4 ,but real criticism immediately suggests that prose has its place in painting as in literature4 ,in literature we do not insist even that the poets be poetic4 ,poetic is not the epithet that would be applied1 for instance1 to ,french classic verse or the ,english verse of the eighteenth century1 compared with the poetry1 ,french or ,english1 which we mean when we speak of poetry4 ,yet no one would think of denying the value of ,dryden or even of ,boileau4 ,no one would even insist that1 distinctly prosaic as are the qualities of ,boileau--and ,i should say his was a crucial instance--he would have done better to abjure verse4 ,and painting1 in a wide sense1 is just as legitimately the expression of ideas in form and color as literature is the expression of ideas in words4 ,it is perfectly plain that ,meissonier was not especially enamoured of beauty1 as ,corot1 as ,troyon1 as ,decamps was4 ,but nothing could be less critical than to deny ,meissouier's importance and the legitimate interest he has for every educated and intelligent person1 in spite of his literalness and his insensitiveness to the element of beauty1 and indeed to any truly pictorial significance whatever in the wide range of subjects that he essayed1 with1 in an honorable sense1 such distinguished success4 ,especially in ,america1 ,i think1 where of recent years we have shown an ,athenian sensitiveness to new impressions1 the direct descendants of the classic period of ,french painting have suffered from the popularity of the ,fontainebleau group4 ,their legitimate attachment to art1 instead of the ,fontainebleau absorption in nature1 has given them a false reputation of artificiality4 ,but the prose element in art has its justification as well as the poetic1 and it is witness of a narrow culture to fail in appreciation of its admirable accomplishment4 ,the academic wing of the ,french romantic painting is marked precisely by a breadth of culture that is itself a source of agreeable and elevated interest4 ,the neo-,grec painters are thoroughly educated4 ,they lack the picturesque and unexpected note of their poetic brethren--they lack the moving and interpreting1 the elevating and exquisite touch of these2 nay1 they lack the penetrating distinction that radiates even from rusticity itself when it is inspired and transfigured as it appears in such works as those of ,millet and ,rousseau4 ,but their distinction is not less real for being the distinction of cultivation rather than altogether native and absolute4 ,it is perhaps even more marked1 more pervasive1 more directly associated with the painter's aim and effect4 ,one feels that they are familiar with the philosophy of art1 its history and practice1 that they are articulate and eclectic1 that for being less personal and powerful their horizon is less limited1 their purely intellectual range1 at all events1 and in many cases their aesthetic interest1 wider4 ,they have more the cultivated man's bent for experimentation1 for variety4 ,they care more scrupulously for perfection1 for form4 ,with a far inferior sense of reality and far less felicity in dealing with it1 their sapient skill in dealing with the abstractions of art is more salient4 ,to be blind to their successful handling of line and mass and movement1 is to neglect a source of refined pleasure4 ,to lament their lack of poetry is to miss their admirable rhetoric2 to regret their imperfect feeling for decorativeness is to miss their delightful decorum4 ,v ,as one has1 however1 so often occasion to note in ,france--where in every field of intellectual effort the influence of schools and groups and movements is so great that almost every individuality1 no matter how strenuous1 falls naturally and intimately into association with some one of them--there is every now and then an exception that escapes these categories and stands quite by itself4 ,in modern painting such exceptions1 and widely different from each other as the poles1 are ,couture and ,puvis de ,chavannes4 ,better than in either the true romanticists with the classic strain1 or the academic romanticists with the classic temperament1 the blending of the classic and romantic inspirations is illustrated in ,couture4 ,the two are in him1 indeed1 actually fused4 ,in ,puvis de ,chavannes they appear in a wholly novel combination2 his classicism is absolutely unacademic1 his romanticism unreal beyond the verge of mysticism1 and so preoccupied with visions that he may almost be called a man for whom the actual world does not exist--in the converse of ,gautier's phrase4 ,his distinction is wholly personal4 ,he lives evidently on an exceedingly high plane--dwells habitually in the delectable uplands of the intellect4 ,the fact that his work is almost wholly decorative is not at all accidental4 ,his talent1 his genius if one chooses1 requires large spaces1 vast dimensions4 ,there has been a great deal of rather profitless discussion as to whether he expressly imitates the primitifs or reproduces them sympathetically4 ,but really he does neither2 he deals with their subjects occasionally1 but always in a completely modern1 as well as a thoroughly personal1 way4 ,his color is as original as his general treatment and composition4 ,he had no schooling1 in the ,ecole des ,beaux ,arts sense4 ,a brief period in ,henri ,scheffer's studio1 three months under ,couture1 after he had begun life in an altogether different field of effort1 yielded him all the explicit instruction he ever had4 ,his real study was done in ,italy1 in the presence of the old masters of ,florence4 ,with this equipment he revolutionized modern decoration1 established1 at any rate1 a new convention for it4 ,his convention is a little definite1 a little bald4 ,one may discuss it apart from his own handling of it1 even4 ,it is a shade too express1 too confident1 too little careless both of tradition and of the typical qualities that secure permanence4 ,in other hands one can easily imagine how insipid it might become4 ,it has too little body1 its scheme is too timorous1 too vaporous to be handled by another4 ,puvis de ,chavannes will probably have few successful imitators4 ,but one must immediately add that if he does not found a school1 his own work is1 perhaps for that reason1 at all events in spite of it1 among the most important of the day4 ,quite unperturbed by current discussions1 which are certainly of the noisiest by which the current of artistic development was ever deflected1 he has kept on his way1 and has finally won all suffrages for an aesthetic expression that is really antagonistic to the general aesthetic spirit of his time4 ,puvis de ,chavannes is1 perhaps1 the most interesting figure in ,french painting to-day4 ,couture is little more than a name4 ,it is curious to consider why4 ,twenty years ago he was still an important figure4 ,he had been an unusually successful teacher4 ,many ,american painters of distinction1 especially1 were at one time his pupils--,hunt1 ,la ,farge1 ,george ,butler4 ,he theorized as much1 as well--perhaps even better than--he painted4 ,his ,entretiens d'atelier are as good in their way as his ,baptism of the ,prince ,imperial4 ,he had a very distinguished talent1 but he was too distinctly clever--clever to the point of sophistication4 ,in this respect he was distinctly a man of the nineteenth century4 ,his great work1 ,romains de la ,decadence1 created as fine an effect at the ,centenary ,exhibition of the ,paris ,world's ,fair in #ahhi as it does in the ,louvre1 whence it was then transferred1 but it was distinctly a decorative effect--the effect of a fine panel in the general mass of color and design2 it made a fine centre4 ,it remains his greatest performance1 the performance upon which chiefly his fame will depend1 though as painting it lacks the quality and breadth of ,le ,fauconnier1 perhaps the most interesting of his works to painters themselves1 and of the ,day-,dreams of the ,new ,york ,metropolitan ,museum of ,art4 ,its permanent interest perhaps will be the historical one1 due to the definiteness with which it assigns ,couture his position in the evolution of ,french painting4 ,it shows1 as everything of ,couture shows1 the absence of any pictorial feeling so profound and personal as to make an impression strong enough to endure indefinitely4 ,and it has not1 on the other hand1 the interest of reality--that faithful and enthusiastic rendering of the external world which gives importance to and fixes the character of the ,french painting of the present day4 ,had ,regnault lived1 he would have more adequately--or should ,i say more plausibly8--marked the transition from romanticism to realism4 ,temperamentally he was clearly a thorough romanticist--far more so1 for instance1 than his friend ,fortuny1 whose intellectual reserve is always conspicuous4 ,he essayed the most vehement kind of subjects1 even in the classical field1 where he treated them with truly romantic truculence4 ,he was himself always1 moreover1 and ideally cared as little for nature as a fairy-story teller4 ,in this sense he was more romantic than the romanticists4 ,his ,automedon1 his portrait of ,general ,prim1 even his ,salome1 are wilful in a degree that is either superb or superficial1 as one looks at them2 but at any rate they are romantic a outrance4 ,at the same time it was unmistakably the aspect of things rather than their significance1 rather than his view of them1 that appealed to him4 ,he was farther away from the classic inspiration than any other romanticist of his fellows2 and at the same time he cared for the external world more on its own account and less for its suggestions1 than any painter of equal force before ,courbet and ,bastien-,lepage4 ,the very fact that he was not1 intellectually speaking1 wholly dans son assiette1 as the ,french say1 shows that he was a genius of a transitional moment4 ,one's final thought of him is that he died young1 and one thinks so not so much because of the dramatic tragedy of his taking off by possibly the last ,prussian bullet fired in the war of #ahgj-ga1 as because of the essentially experimental character of his painting4 ,undoubtedly he would have done great things4 ,and undoubtedly they would have been different from those that he did2 probably in the direction--already indicated in his most dignified performance--of giving more consistency1 more vivid definiteness1 more reality1 even1 to his already striking conceptions4 ,,iii ,,realistic ,,painting ,i ,to an intelligence fully and acutely alive1 its own time must1 ,i think1 be more interesting than any other4 ,the sentimental1 the scholastic1 the speculative temperament may look before or after with longing or regret2 but that sanity of mind which is practical and productive must find its most agreeable sensations in the data to which it is intimately and inexorably related4 ,the light upon ,greek literature and art for which we study ,greek history1 the light upon ,roman history for which we study ,latin literature and art1 are admirable to us in very exact proportion as we study them for our ends4 ,to every man and every nation that really breathes1 true vitality of soul depends upon saying to one's self1 with an emotion of equivalent intensity to the emotion of patriotism celebrated in ,scott's familiar lines1 ,this is my own1 my native era and environment4 ,culture is impossible apart from cosmopolitanism1 but self-respect is more indispensable even than culture4 ,french art alone at the present time possesses absolute self-respect4 ,it possesses this quality in an eminent1 in even an excessive degree2 but it possesses it1 and in virtue of it is endued with a preservative quality that saves it from the emptiness of imitation and the enervation of dilettantism4 ,it has1 in consequence1 escaped that recrudescence of the primitive and inchoate known in ,england and among ourselves as pre-,raphaelitism4 ,it has escaped also that almost abject worship of classic models which ,winckelmann and ,canova made universal in ,germany and ,italy--not to speak of its echoes elsewhere4 ,it has always stood on its own feet1 and1 however lacking in the higher qualities of imaginative initiative1 on the one hand1 and however addicted to the academic and the traditional on the other1 has always both respected its aesthetic heritage and contributed something of its own thereto4 ,why should not one feel the same quick interest1 the same instinctive pride in his time as in his country8 ,is not sympathy with what is modern1 instant1 actual1 and apposite a fair parallel of patriotism8 ,neglect of other times in the heir of all the ages is analogous to chauvinism1 and indicative of as ill-judged an attitude as that of provincial blindness to other contemporary points of view and systems of philosophy than one's own4 ,culture is equally hostile to both1 and in art culture is as important a factor as it is in less special fields of activity and endeavor4 ,but in art1 as elsewhere1 culture is a means to an actual1 present end1 and the pre-,raphaelite sentiment that dictates mere reproduction of what was once a genuine expression is as sterile as servile imitation of exotic modes of thought1 dress1 and demeanor is universally felt to be4 ,the past--the antique1 the renaissance1 the classic1 and romantic ideals are to be used1 not adopted2 in the spirit of ,goethe1 at once the most original of modern men and the most saturated with culture1 exhibited in his famous saying3 ,nothing do ,i call my own which having inherited ,i have not reconquered for myself4 ,it would indeed be a singular thing were the field of aesthetics the only one uninvaded by the scientific spirit of the time4 ,the one force especially characteristic of our era is1 ,i suppose1 the scientific spirit4 ,it is at any rate everywhere manifest1 and it possesses the best intellects of the century4 ,a priori one may argue about its hostility1 essential or other1 to the artistic1 the constructive spirit2 but to do so is at the most to beat the air1 to waste one's breath1 to ,ruskinize1 in a word4 ,interest in life and the world1 instead of speculation or self-expression1 is the note of the day4 ,the individual has withered terribly4 ,he is supplanted by the type4 ,materialism has its positive gospel2 it is not at all the formulated expression of ,goethe's spirit that denies4 ,nature has acquired new dignity4 ,she cannot be studied too closely1 nor too long4 ,the secret of the universe is now pursued through observation1 as formerly it was through fasting and prayer4 ,nothing is sacred nowadays because everything receives respect4 ,if absolute beauty is now smiled at as a chimera1 it is because beauty is perceived everywhere4 ,whatever is may not be right--the maxim has too much of an ex cathedra sound--but whatever is is interesting4 ,our attitude is at once humbler and more curious4 ,the sense of the immensity1 the immeasurableness of things1 is more intimate and profound4 ,what one may do is more modestly conceived2 what might be done1 more justly appreciated4 ,there is less confidence and more aspiration4 ,the artist's eye is on the object in more concentrated gaze than ever heretofore4 ,if his sentiment1 his poetry1 is no longer inevitable1 as ,wordsworth complained ,goethe's was not1 it is more reverent1 at any rate more circumspect4 ,if he is less exalted he is more receptive--he is more alive to impressions for being less of a philosopher4 ,if he scouts authority1 if even he accepts somewhat weakly the thraldom of dissent from traditional standards and canons1 it is because he is convinced that the material with which he has to deal is superior to all canons and standards4 ,if he esteems truth more than beauty1 it is because what he thinks truth is more beautiful in his eyes than the stereotyped beauty he is adjured to attain4 ,in any case1 the distinction of the realistic painters--like that of the realists in literature1 where1 also1 it need not be said1 ,france has been in the lead--is measurably to have got rid of solecisms2 to have made1 indeed1 obvious solecisms1 and solecisms of conception as well as of execution1 a little ridiculous4 ,it is1 to be sure1 equally ridiculous to subject romantic productions to realistic standards1 to blind one's self to the sentiment that saturates such romantic works as ,scott's and ,dumas's1 or ,gericault's and ,diaz's1 and is wholly apposite to its own time and point of view4 ,the great difficulty with a principle is that it is universal1 and that when we deal with facts of any kind whatever1 universality is an impossible ideal4 ,scott and ,gericault are1 nowadays1 in what we have come to deem essentials1 distinctly old-fashioned4 ,it might be well to try and imitate them1 if imitation had any salt in it1 which it has not2 or if it were possible to do what they did with their different inspiration1 which it is not4 ,mr4 ,stevenson is1 ,i think1 an example of the danger of essaying this latter in literature1 just as a dozen eminent painters of less talent--for no one has so much talent as ,mr4 ,stevenson--are examples in painting4 ,but there are a thousand things1 not only in the technic of the romanticists but in their whole attitude toward their art and their material1 that are nowadays impossible to sincere and spontaneous artists4 ,details which have no importance whatever in the ensemble of the romantic artist are essential to the realist4 ,art does not stand still4 ,its canons change4 ,there is a constant evolution in its standards1 its requirements4 ,a conventional background is no more an error in ,french classic painting than in tapestry2 a perfunctory scheme of pure chiaro-oscuro is no blemish in one of ,diaz's splendid forest landscapes2 such phenomena in a work of ,raffaelli or ,pointelin would jar1 because1 measured by the standards to which modern men must1 through the very force of evolution itself1 subscribe1 they can but appear solecisms4 ,in a different set of circumstances1 under a different inspiration1 and with a different artistic attitude1 solecisms they certainly are not4 ,but1 as ,thackeray makes ,ethel ,newcome say1 ,we belong to our belongings4 ,our circumstances1 inspiration1 artistic attitude1 are involuntary and possess us as our other belongings do4 ,in ,gautier's saying1 for instance1 ,i am a man for whom the visible world exists1 which ,i have quoted as expressing the key-note of the romantic epoch1 it is to be noted that the visible world is taken as a spectacle simply--significant1 suggestive or merely stimulant1 in accordance with individual bent4 ,gautier and the romanticists generally had little concern for its structure4 ,to many of them it was indeed rather a canvas than a spectacle even--just as to many1 if not to most1 of the realists it is its structure rather than its significance that altogether appeals2 the romanticists in general sketched their ideas and impressions upon it1 as the naturalists have in the main studied its aspects and constitution1 careless of the import of these1 pictorially or otherwise4 ,indeed one is tempted often to inquire of the latter1 ,why so much interest in what apparently seems to you of so little import8 ,are we never to have your skill1 your observation1 your amassing of documents turned to any account8 ,where is the realistic tragedy1 comedy1 epic1 composition of any sort8 ,courbet's ,cantonniers1 ,manet's ,bar1 or ,bastien-,lepage's ,joan of ,arc1 perhaps4 ,but what is indisputable is1 that we are irretrievably committed to the present general aesthetic attitude and inspiration1 and must share not only the romanticists' impatience with academic formulae and conventions1 but the realists' devotion to life and the world as they actually exist4 ,the future may be different1 but we are living in the present1 and what is important is1 after all1 to live4 ,it is also so difficult that not to take the line of least resistance is fatuity4 ,,ii ,it is at least an approximation to ascribe the primacy of realism to ,courbet1 though ascriptions of the kind are at best approximations4 ,not only was he the first1 or among the first1 to feel the interest and importance of the actual world as it is and for what it is rather than for what it suggests1 but his feeling in this direction is intenser than that of anyone else4 ,manet was preoccupied with the values of objects and spaces4 ,bastien-,lepage1 while painting these with the most scrupulous fidelity1 was nevertheless always attentive to the significance and import of what he painted4 ,courbet was a pure pantheist4 ,he was possessed by the material1 the physical1 the actual4 ,he never varies it a hair's-breadth4 ,he never lifts it a fraction of a degree4 ,but by his very absorption in it he dignifies it immensely4 ,he illustrates magnificently its possibilities4 ,he brings out into the plainest possible view its inherent1 integral1 aesthetic quality1 independent of any extraneity4 ,no painter ever succeeded so well with so little art1 one is tempted to say4 ,beside his1 the love of nature which we ascribe to the ordinary realist is a superficial emotion4 ,he had the sentiment of reality in the highest degree2 he had it intensely4 ,if he did not represent nature with the searching subtlety of later painters1 he is certainly the forerunner of naturalism4 ,he has absolutely no ideality4 ,he is blind to all intimations of immortality1 all unearthly voices4 ,yet it would be wholly an error to suppose him a mere literalist4 ,no one is farther removed from the painstaking1 grubbing imitators of detail so justly denounced and ridiculed by ,mr4 ,whistler4 ,he has the generalizing faculty in very distinguished degree1 and in very large measure4 ,every trait of his talent1 indeed1 is large1 manly2 but for a certain qualification--which must be made--one might add1 ,olympian4 ,this qualification perhaps may be not unfairly described as earthiness--never an agreeable trait1 and one to which probably is due the depreciation of ,courbet that is so popular even among appreciative critics4 ,it is easy to characterize ,courbet as brutal and material1 but what is easy is generally not exact4 ,what one glibly stigmatizes as brutality and grossness may1 after all1 be something of a particularly strong savor1 enjoyed by the painter himself with a gusto too sterling and instinctive to be justifiably neglected1 much less contemned4 ,the first thing to do in estimating an artist's accomplishment1 which is to place one's self at his point of view1 is1 in ,courbet's case1 unusually difficult4 ,we are all dreamers1 more or less--in more or less desultory fashion--and can all appreciate that prismatic turn of what is real and actual into a position wherein it catches glints of the imagination4 ,the imagination is a universal touchstone4 ,the sense of reality is a special1 an individual faculty4 ,when one is poetizing in an amateur1 a dilettante way1 as most of us poetize1 a picture of ,courbet1 which seems to flaunt and challenge the imagination in virtue of its defiant reality1 its insistence on the value and significance of the prosaic and the actual1 appears coarse and crude4 ,it is not1 however4 ,it is very far from that4 ,it is rather elemental than elementary--in itself a prodigious distinction4 ,no modern painter has felt more intensely and reproduced more vigorously the sap that runs through and vivifies the various forms of natural phenomena4 ,to censure his shortcomings1 to regret his imaginative incompleteness1 is to miss him altogether4 ,it is easy to say he had all the coarseness without the sentiment of the ,french peasantry1 whence he sprang2 that his political radicalism attests a lack of the serenity of spirit indispensable to the sincere artist2 that he had no conception of the beautiful1 the exquisite--the fact remains that he triumphs over all his deficiencies1 and in very splendid fashion4 ,he is1 in truth1 of all the realists for whom he discovered the way1 and set the pace1 as it were1 one of the two naturalistic painters who have shown in any high degree the supreme artistic faculty--that of generalization4 ,however impressive ,manet's picture may be2 however brilliant ,monet's endeavor to reproduce sunlight may seem2 however refined and elegant ,degas's delicate selection of pictorial material--for broad and masterful generalization1 for enduing what he painted with an interest deeper than its surface and underlying its aspect1 ,courbet has but one rival among realistic painters4 ,i mean1 of course1 ,bastien-,lepage4 ,there is an important difference between the two4 ,in ,courbet the sentiment of reality dominates the realism of the technic2 in ,bastien-,lepage the technic is realistically carried infinitely farther1 but the sentiment quite transcends realism4 ,imagine ,courbet essaying a ,jeanne d',arc6 ,bastien-,lepage painting ,courbet's ,cantonniers would not have stopped1 as ,courbet has done1 with expressing their vitality1 their actual interest1 but at the same time that he represented them in far greater technical completeness he would also have occupied himself with their psychology4 ,he is indeed quite as distinctly a psychologist as he is a painter4 ,his favorite problem1 aside from that of technical perfection1 which perhaps equally haunted him1 is the rendering of that resigned1 bewildered1 semi-hypnotic1 vaguely and yet intensely longing spiritual expression to be noted by those who have the eyes to see it in the faces and attitudes now of the peasant laborer1 now of the city pariah4 ,all his peasant women are potentially ,jeannes d',arc--,les ,foins1 ,tired1 ,petite ,fauvette1 for example4 ,the note is still more evident in the ,london ,bootblack and the ,london ,flower-girl1 in which the outcast ,east ,end spiritlessness of the ,british capital is caught and fixed with a ,zola-like veracity and vigor4 ,such a phase as this is not so much pictorial or poetic1 as psychological4 ,bastien-,lepage's happiness in rendering it is a proof of the exceeding quickness and sureness of his observation2 but his preoccupation with it is equally strong proof of his interest in the things of the mind as well as in those of the senses4 ,this is his great distinction1 ,i think4 ,he beats the realist on his own ground 7except perhaps ,monet and his followers--,i remember no attempt of his to paint sunlight71 but he is imaginative as well4 ,he is not1 on the other hand1 to be in anywise associated with the romanticists4 ,degas's acid characterization of him1 as the ,bouguereau of the modern movement1 is only just1 if we remember what very radical and fundamental changes the modern movement implies in general attitude as well as in special expression4 ,i should be inclined1 rather1 to apply the analogy to ,m4 ,dagnan-,bouveret1 though here1 too1 with many reserves looking mainly to the difference between true and vapid sentiment4 ,it is interesting to note1 however1 the almost exclusively intellectual character of this imaginative side of ,bastien-,lepage4 ,he does not view his material with any apparent sympathy1 such as one notes1 or at all events divines1 in ,millet4 ,both were ,french peasants2 but whereas ,millet's interest in his fellows is instinctive and absorbing1 ,bastien-,lepage's is curious and detached4 ,if his pictures ever succeed in moving us1 it is impersonally1 in virtue of the camera-like scrutiny he brings to bear on his subject1 and the effectiveness with which he renders it1 and of the reflections which we institute of ourselves1 and which he fails to stimulate by even the faintest trace of a loving touch or the betrayal of any sympathetic losing of himself in his theme4 ,you feel just the least intimation of the doctrinaire1 the systematic aloofness of the spectator4 ,in moral attitude as well as in technical expression he no more assimilates the various phases of his material1 to reproduce them afterward in new and original combination1 than he expresses the essence of landscape in general1 as the ,fontainebleau painters do even in their most photographic moments4 ,both his figures and his landscapes are clearly portraits--typical and not merely individual1 to be sure1 but somehow not exactly creations4 ,his skies are the least successful portions of his pictures1 ,i think2 one must generalize easily to make skies effective1 and perhaps it is not fanciful to note the frequency of high horizons in his work4 ,the fact remains that ,bastien-,lepage stands at the head of the modern movement in many ways4 ,his friend1 ,m4 ,andre ,theuriet1 has shown1 in a brochure published some years ago1 that he was himself as interesting as his pictures4 ,he took his art very seriously1 and spoke of it with a dignity rather uncommon in the atmosphere of the studios1 where there is apt to be more enthusiasm than reflection4 ,i recall vividly the impatience with which he once spoke to me of painting to show what you can do4 ,his own standard was always the particular ideal he had formed1 never within the reach of his ascertained powers4 ,and whatever he did1 one may say1 illustrates the sincerity and elevation of this remark1 whether one's mood incline one to care most for this psychological side--undoubtedly the more nearly unique side--of his work1 or for such exquisite things as his ,forge or the portrait of ,mme ,sarah ,bernhardt4 ,incontestably he has the true tradition1 and stands in the line of the great painters4 ,and he owes his permanent place among them not less to his perception that painting has a moral and significant1 as well as a representative and decorative sanction1 than to his perfect harmony with his own time in his way of illustrating this--to his happy fusion of aspect admirably rendered with profound and stimulating suggestion4 ,,iii ,of the realistic landscape painters1 the strict impressionists apart1 none is more eminent than ,m4 ,cazin1 whose work is full of interest1 and if at times it leaves one a little cold1 this is perhaps an affair of the beholder's temperament rather than of ,m4 ,cazin's4 ,he is a thoroughly original painter1 and1 what is more at the present day1 an imaginative one4 ,he sees in his own way the nature that we all see1 and paints it not literally but personally4 ,but his landscapes invariably attest1 above all1 an attentive study of the phenomena of light and air1 and their truthfulness is the more marked for the personality they illustrate4 ,the impression they make is of a very clairvoyant and enthusiastic observation exercised by an artist who takes more pleasure in appreciation than in expression1 whose pleasure in his expression is subordinate to his interest in the external world1 and in large measure confined to the delight every artist has in technical felicity when he can attain it4 ,their skies are beautifully observed--graduated in value with delicate verisimilitude from the horizon up1 and wind-swept1 or drenched with mist1 or ringing clear1 as the motive may dictate4 ,all objects take their places with a precision that1 nevertheless1 is in nowise pedantic1 and is perfectly free4 ,cazin's palette is1 moreover1 a thoroughly individual one4 ,it is very pure1 and if its range is not great1 it is at any rate not grayed into insipidity and ineffectualness1 but is as positive as if it were more vivid4 ,a distinct air of elegance1 a true sense of style1 is noteworthy in many of his pictures2 not only in the important ones1 but occasionally when the theme is so slight as to need hardly any composition whatever--the mere placing of a tree1 its outline1 its relation to a bank or a roadway1 are often unmistakably distinguished4 ,cazin is not exclusively a landscape painter1 and though the landscape element in all his works is a dominant one1 even in his ,hagar and ,ishmael in the ,desert1 and his ,judith ,setting out for ,holofernes's ,camp 7in which latter one can hardly identify the heroine at all71 the fact that he is not a landscape painter1 pure and simple1 like ,harpignies and ,pointelin1 perhaps accounts for his inferiority to them in landscape sentiment4 ,in ,france it is generally assumed that to devote one's self exclusively to any one branch of painting is to betray limitations1 and there are few painters who would not resent being called landscapists4 ,something1 perhaps1 is lost in this way4 ,it witnesses a greater pride in accomplishment than in instinctive bent4 ,but however that may be1 ,cazin never penetrates to the sentiment of nature that one feels in such a work as ,harpignies's ,moonrise1 for example1 or in almost any of ,pointelin's grave and impressive landscapes4 ,hardly less truthful1 ,i should say1 though perhaps less intimately and elaborately real 7a romanticist would say less superficially real7 than ,cazin's1 the work of both these painters is more pictorial4 ,they have a quicker sense for the beautiful1 ,i think4 ,they feel very certainly much more deeply the suggestiveness of a scene4 ,they are not so debonnaires in the presence of their problems4 ,in a sense1 for that reason1 they understand them better4 ,there is very little feeling of the desert1 the illimitable space1 where1 according to ,balzac1 ,god is and man is not1 in the ,hagar and ,ishmael2 indeed there seems to have been no attempt on the part of the painter to express any4 ,true as his sand-heap is1 you feel somehow that there may be a kitchen-garden or the entrance to a coal-mine on the other side of it1 or a little farther along4 ,and the landscape of the ,judith1 fine as its sweep is1 and admirable as are the cool tone and clear distance of the picture1 might really be that of the south meadow of some particular farm or other4 ,the contrast which ,guillaumet presents to ,fromentin affords a very striking illustration of the growth of the realistic spirit in recent years4 ,fromentin is so admirable a painter that ,i can hardly fancy any appreciative person wishing him different4 ,his devoted admirer and biographer1 ,m4 ,louis ,gonse1 admits1 and indeed expressly records1 ,fromentin's own lament over the insufficiency of his studies4 ,fond as he was of horses1 for instance1 he does not know them as a draughtsman with the science of such a conventional painter in many other respects as ,schreyer4 ,but it is not in the slightly amateurish nature of his technical equipment--realized perfectly by himself1 of course1 as the first critic of the technic of painting among all who have ventured upon the subject--that his painting differs from ,guillaumet's4 ,it is his whole point of view4 ,his ,africa is that of the critic1 the litterateur1 the raffine4 ,guillaumet's is ,africa itself4 ,you feel before ,guillaumet's ,luxembourg canvases1 as in looking over the slightest of his vivid memoranda1 that you are getting in an acute and concentrated form the sensations which the actual scenes and types rendered by the painter would stimulate in you1 supposing1 of course1 that you were sufficiently sensitive4 ,fromentin1 in comparison1 is occupied in picture-making--giving you a beautifully colored and highly intelligent pictorial report as against ,guillaumet's actual reproduction4 ,there is no question as to which of the two painters has the greater personal interest2 but it is just as certain that for abiding value and enduring charm personal interest must either be extremely great or else yield to the interest inherent in the material dealt with1 an interest that ,guillaumet brings out with a felicity and a puissance that are wholly extraordinary1 and that nowadays meet with a readier and more sympathetic recognition that even such delicate personal charm as that of ,fromentin4 ,,iv ,so thoroughly has the spirit of realism fastened upon the artistic effort of the present that temperaments least inclined toward interest in the actual feel its influences1 and show the effects of these4 ,the most recalcitrant illustrate this technically1 however rigorously they may preserve their point of view4 ,they paint at least more circumspectly1 however they may think and feel4 ,an historical painter like ,jean ,paul ,laurens1 interested as he is in the memorable moments and dramatic incidents of the past1 and exhibiting as he does1 first of all1 a sense of what is ideally forceful and heroic1 is nevertheless clearly concerned for the realistic value of his representation far more than a generation ago he would have been4 ,when ,luminais paints a scene from ,gaulish legend1 he is not quite1 but nearly1 as careful to make it pictorially real as he is to have it dramatically effective4 ,m4 ,francois ,flameng1 expanding his book illustration into a mammoth canvas commemorative of the ,vendean insurrection1 is almost daintily fastidious about the naturalistic aspect of his abundant detail4 ,m4 ,benjamin-,constant's artificially conceived seraglio scenes are as realistically rendered as is indicated by a recent caricature depicting an astonished sneak-thief1 foiled in an attempted rape of the jewels in a sultana's diadem1 painted with such deceptive illusoriness by ,m4 ,benjamin-,constant's clever brush4 ,the military painters1 ,detaille1 ,de ,neuville1 ,berne-,bellecour1 do not differ from ,vernet more by painting incidents instead of phases of warfare1 by substituting the touch of dramatic genre for epic conceptions1 than they do by the scrupulously naturalistic rendering that in them supplants the old academic symbolism4 ,their dragoons and fantassins are not merely more real in what they do1 but in how they look4 ,vernet's look like tin soldiers by comparison2 certainly like soldiers de convenance4 ,aime ,morot evidently used instantaneous photography1 and his magnificent cavalry charges suggest not only carnage1 but ,muybridge as well4 ,the great portrait-painters of the day--,carolus-,duran1 ,bonnat1 ,ribot--are realists to the core4 ,they are very far from being purely portrait-painters of course1 and their realism shows itself with splendid distinction in other works4 ,few painters of the nude have anything to their credit as fine as the figure ,m4 ,carolus-,duran exhibited at the ,paris ,exposition in #ahhi4 ,ribot's ,saint ,sebastian is one of the most powerful pictures of modern ,french art4 ,bonnat's ,christ became at once famous4 ,each picture is painted with a vigor and point of realistic detail that are peculiar to our own time2 painted to-day1 ,bonnat's fine and sculptural ,fellah ,woman and ,child1 of the ,metropolitan ,museum1 would be accented in a dozen ways in which now it is not4 ,but it is perhaps in portraiture that the eminence of these painters is most explicit4 ,they are at the head of contemporary portraitists1 at all events4 ,and their portraits are almost defiantly real1 void often of arrangement1 and as little artificial as the very frequently prosaic atmosphere appertaining to their sometimes very stark subjects suggests4 ,a portrait by ,bonnat blinks nothing in the subject2 its aim and accomplishment are the rendering of the character in a vivid fashion--including the reproduction of cobalt cravats and creased trousers even--which would have mightily embarrassed ,van ,dyck or ,velasquez4 ,ribot reproduces ,ribera often1 but he deals with fewer externals1 fewer effects1 taken in the widest sense4 ,carolus-,duran1 the swell portrait-painter of the day1 artificial as he may be in the quality of his mind1 nevertheless seeks and attains1 first of all1 the sense of an even exaggerated life-likeness in his charming sitters4 ,they are1 first of all1 people2 the pictorial element takes care of itself2 sometimes even--so overmastering is the realistic tendency--the plush of the chair1 the silk of the robe1 the cut of the coat1 seems1 to an observer who thinks of the old traditions of ,titian1 of ,raphael1 of ,moroni1 unduly emphasized1 even for realism4 ,v ,one element of modernity is a certain order of eclecticism4 ,it is not the eclecticism of the ,bolognese painters1 for example1 illustrating the really hopeless attempt to combine the supposed and superficial excellences1 always dissociated from the essence1 of different points of view4 ,it is a free choice of attitude1 rather1 due to the release of the individual from the thraldom of conformity that ruled even during the romantic epoch4 ,hence a great deal of admirable work1 of which one hardly thinks whether it is realistic or not1 side by side with the more emphatic expressions of the realistic spirit4 ,and this work is of all degrees of realism1 never1 however1 getting very far away from the naturalistic basis on which more and more everyone is coming to insist as the necessary and only solid pedestal of any flight of fancy4 ,baudry is perhaps the nearest of the really great men to the ,bolognese order of eclecticism4 ,i suppose he must be classed among the really great men1 so many painters of intelligence place him there1 though ,i must myself plead the laic privilege of a slight scepticism as to whether time will approve their enthusiasm4 ,he is certainly very effective1 and in certainly his own way1 idle as it is to say that his drafts on the great ,italians are no greater than those of ,raphael on the antique frescos4 ,he had a great love of color and a native instinct for it2 with perhaps more appreciation than invention1 his imagination has something very personal in the zealous enthusiasm with which he exercised it1 though ,i think it must be admitted that his reflections of ,tiepolo1 ,titian1 ,tintoretto and his attenuated expansions of ,michael ,angelo's condensed grandiosity1 recall the eclecticism of the ,carracci far more than that of ,raphael4 ,but his manner is the modern manner1 and it is altogether more effective1 more fetching1 to use a modern term1 than anything purely academic can be4 ,elie ,delaunay1 another master of decoration1 is1 on the other hand1 as real as the most rigorous literalist could ask of a painter of decorative works4 ,chartran1 who has an individual charm that both ,baudry and ,delaunay lack1 inferior as he is to them in sweep and power1 is perhaps in this respect midway between the two4 ,clairin is1 like ,mazerolles1 a pure fantaisiste4 ,dubufe fils1 whose at least equally famous father ranks in a somewhat similar category with ,couture1 shows a distinct advance upon him in reality of rendering1 as the term would be understood at present4 ,in other departments of painting the note of realism is naturally still more universally apparent2 but as in the work of the painters of decoration it is often most noticeable as an undertone1 indicating a point of departure rather than an aim4 ,bonvin is a realist only as ,chardin1 as ,van der ,meer of ,delft1 as ,nicholas ,maes were1 before the jargon of realism had been thought of4 ,he is1 first of all1 an exquisite artist1 in love with the beautiful in reality1 finding in it the humblest material1 and expressing it with the gentlest1 sweetest1 aesthetic severity and composure imaginable4 ,the most fastidious critic needs but a touch of human feeling to convert any characterization of this most refined and elevated of painters into pure panegyric4 ,vollon's touch is felicity itself1 and it is evident that he takes more pleasure in exercising and exploiting it than in its successful imitation1 striking as its imitative quality is4 ,gervex and ,duez are very much more than impressionists1 both in theory and practice4 ,there is nothing polemic in either4 ,painters extol in the heartiest way the color1 the creative coloration of ,gervex's ,rolla1 quite aside from its dramatic force or its truth of aspect4 ,personal feeling is clearly the inspiration of every work of ,duez1 not the demonstration of a theory of treating light and atmosphere4 ,the same may be said of ,roll at his best1 as in his superb rendering of what may be called the modern painter's conception of the myth of ,europa4 ,compared with ,paul ,veronese's admirable classic1 that violates all the unities 7which ,veronese1 nevertheless1 may readily be pardoned by all but literalists and theorists for neglecting71 this splendid nude girl in plein air1 flecked with splotches of sunlight filtered through a sieve of leafage1 with her realistic taurine companion1 and their environment of veridically rendered out-of-doors1 may stand for an illustrative definition of modernity2 but what you feel most of all is ,roll4 ,it is ten chances to one that he has never even been to ,venice or thought of ,veronese4 ,he has not always been so successful2 as when in his ,work he earned ,degas's acute comment3 ,a crowd is made with five persons1 not with fifty4 7,il y a cinquante figures1 mais je ne vois pas la foule2 on fait une foule avec cinq1 et non pas avec cinquante47 ,but he has always been someone4 ,compare with him ,l',hermitte1 a painter who illustrates sometimes the possibility of being an artificial realist4 ,his ,vintage at the ,metropolitan ,museum1 his ,harvesters at the ,luxembourg1 are excellently real and true in detail1 but in idea and general expression they might compete for the prix de ,rome4 ,the same is measurably true of ,lerolle1 whose pictures are more sympathetic--sometimes they are very sympathetic--but on the whole display less power4 ,but in each instance the advocate a outrance of realism may justly1 ,i think1 maintain that a painter with a natural predisposition toward the insipidity of the academic has been saved from it by the inherent sanity and robustness of the realistic method4 ,jean ,beraud1 even1 owes something to the way in which his verisimilitude of method has reinforced his artistic powers4 ,his delightful ,parisiennes--modistes' messengers crossing wet glistening pavements against a background of gray mist accented with poster-bedizened kiosks and regularly recurring horse-chestnut trees2 elegantes at prayer1 in somewhat distracted mood1 on prie-dieus in the vacant and vapid ,paris churches2 seated at cafe tables on the busy1 leisurely boulevards1 or posing tout bonnement for the reproduction of the most fascinating feminine ensemble in the world--owe their charm 7,i may say again their fetchingness7 to the faithfulness with which their portraitist has studied1 and the fidelity with which he has reproduced1 their differing types1 more than to any personal expression of his own view of them4 ,fancy ,beraud's masterpiece1 the ,salle ,graffard--that admirable characterization of crankdom embodied in a socialist reunion--painted by an academic painter4 ,how absolutely it would lose its pith1 its force1 its significance1 even its true distinction4 ,and his ,magdalen at the ,pharisee's ,house1 which is almost equally impressive--far more impressive of course in a literary and1 ,i think1 legitimate1 sense--owes even its literary effectiveness to its significant realism4 ,what the illustrators of the present day owe to the naturalistic method1 it is almost superfluous to point out4 ,illustrators in ,france are1 in general1 painters as well1 some of them very eminent painters4 ,daumier1 who passed in general for a contributor to illustrated journals1 even such journals as ,le ,petit ,journal pour ,rire1 was not only a genius of the first rank1 but a painter of the first class4 ,monvel and ,montenard at present are masterly painters4 ,but in their illustration as well as in their painting1 they show a notable change from the illustration of the days of ,daumier and ,dore4 ,the difference between the elegant 7or perhaps rather the handsome7 drawings of ,bida1 an artist of the utmost distinction1 and that of the illustrators of the present day who are comparable with him--their name is not legion--is a special attestation of the influence of the realistic ideal in a sphere wherein1 if anywhere1 one may say1 realism reigns legitimately1 but wherein also the conventional is especially to be expected4 ,one cannot indeed be quite sure that the temptations of the conventional are resisted by the ultra-realistic illustrators of our own time1 ,rossi1 ,beaumont1 ,albert ,lynch1 ,myrbach4 ,they have certainly a very handy way of expressing themselves2 one would be justified in suspecting the labor-saving1 the art-sparing kodak1 behind many of their most unimpeachable successes4 ,but the attitude taken is quite other than it used to be1 and the change that has come over ,french aesthetic activity in general can be noted in very sharp definition by comparing a book illustrated twenty years ago by ,albert ,lynch1 with1 for example1 ,maupassant's ,pierre et ,jean1 the distinguished realism of whose text is adequately paralleled--and the implied eulogy is by no means trivial--by the pictorical commentary1 so to speak1 which this first of modern illustrators has supplied4 ,and an even more striking illustration of the evolution of realistic thought and feeling1 as well as of rendering1 is furnished by the succession of ,forain to ,grevin1 as an illustrator of the follies of the day1 the characteristic traits of the ,parisian seamy side1 morally speaking4 ,grevin is as conventional as ,murger1 in philosophy1 and--though infinitely cleverer--as ,mars in drawing4 ,forain1 with the pencil of a realism truly ,japanese1 illustrates with sympathetic incisiveness the pitiless pessimism of ,flaubert1 ,goncourt1 and ,maupassant as well4 ,,vi ,but to go back a little and consider the puissant individualities1 the great men who have really given its direction to and1 as it were1 set the pace of1 the realistic movement1 and for whom1 in order more conveniently to consider impressionism pure and simple by itself1 ,i have ventured to disturb the chronological sequence of evolution in ,french painting--a sequence that1 even if one care more for ideas than for chronology1 it is more temerarious to vary from in things ,french than in any others4 ,to go back in a word to ,manet2 the painter of whom ,m4 ,henri ,houssaye has remarked3 ,manet sowed1 ,m4 ,bastien-,lepage has reaped4 ,manet was certainly one of the most noteworthy painters that ,france or any other country has produced4 ,his is the great1 the very rare1 merit of having conceived a new point of view4 ,that he did not illustrate this in its completeness1 that he was a sign-post1 as ,albert ,wolff very aptly said1 rather an exemplar1 is nothing4 ,he was totally unheralded1 and he was in his way superb4 ,no one before him had essayed--no one before him had ever thought of--the immense project of breaking1 not relatively but absolutely1 with the conventional4 ,looking for the first time at one of his pictures1 one says that customary notions1 ordinary brushes1 traditional processes of even the highest authenticity1 have been thrown to the winds4 ,hence1 indeed1 the scandal which he caused from the first and which went on increasing1 until1 owing to the acceptance1 with modifications1 of his point of view by the most virile and vigorous painters of the day1 he became1 as he has become1 in a sense the head of the corner4 ,manet's great distinction is to have discovered that the sense of reality is achieved with a thousand-fold greater intensity by getting as near as possible to the actual1 rather than resting content with the relative1 value of every detail4 ,everyone who has painted since ,manet has either followed him in this effort or has appeared jejune4 ,take as an illustration of the contrary practice such a masterpiece in its way as ,gerome's ,eminence ,grise4 ,in this picture1 skilfully and satisfactorily composed1 the relative values of all the colors are admirably1 even beautifully1 observed4 ,the correspondence of the gamut of values to that of the light and dark scale of such an actual scene is perfect4 ,before ,manet1 one could have said that this is all that is required or can be secured1 arguing that exact imitation of local tints and general tone is impossible1 owing to the difference between nature's highest light and lowest dark1 and the potentialities of the palette4 ,in other words1 one might have said1 that inasmuch as you can squeeze absolute white and absolute black out of no tubes1 the thing to do is first to determine the scale of your picture and then make every note in it bear the same relation to every other that the corresponding note in nature bears to its fellows in its own corresponding but different scale4 ,this is what ,gerome has done in the ,eminence ,grise--a scene1 it will be remembered1 on a staircase in a palace interior4 ,manet inquires what would happen to this house of cards shored up into verisimilitude by mere correspondence1 if ,gerome had been asked to cut a window in his staircase and admit the light of out-of-doors into his correspondent but artificial scene4 ,the whole thing would have to be done over again4 ,the scale of the picture running from the highest palette white to the lowest palette dark1 and yet the key of an actual interior scene being much nearer middle-tint than the tint of an actual out-of-doors scene1 it would be impossible to paint with any verisimilitude the illumination of a window from the outside1 the resources of the palette having already been exhausted1 every object having been given a local value solely with relation1 so far as truth of representation is concerned1 to the values of every other object1 and no effort being made to get the precise value of the object as it would appear under analogous circumstances in nature4 ,it may be replied1 and ,i confess ,i think with excellent reason1 that ,gerome's picture has no window in it1 and therefore that to ask of him to paint a picture as he would if he were painting a different picture1 is pedantry4 ,the old masters are still admirable1 though they only observed a correspondence to the actual scale of natural values1 and were not concerned with imitation of it4 ,but it is to be observed that1 successful as their practice is1 it is successful in virtue of the unconscious co-operation of the beholder's imagination4 ,and nowadays not only is the exercise of the imagination become for better or worse a little old-fashioned1 but the one thing that is insisted on as a starting-point and basis1 at the very least1 is the sense of reality4 ,and it is impossible to exaggerate the way in which the sense of reality has been intensified by ,manet's insistence upon getting as near as possible to the individual values of objects as they are seen in nature--in spite of his abandonment of the practice of painting on a parallel scale4 ,things now drop into their true place1 look as they really do1 and count as they count in nature1 because the painter is no longer content with giving us change for nature1 but tries his best to give us nature itself4 ,perspective acquires its actual significance1 solids have substance and bulk as well as surfaces1 distance is perceived as it is in nature1 by the actual interposition of atmosphere1 chiaro-oscuro is abolished--the ways in which reality is secured being in fact legion the moment real instead of relative values are studied4 ,something is lost1 very likely--an artist cannot be so intensely preoccupied with reality as1 since ,manet1 it has been incumbent on painters to be1 without missing a whole range of qualities that are so precious as rightly perhaps to be considered indispensable4 ,until reality becomes in its turn an effect unconsciously attained1 the painter's imagination will be held more or less in abeyance4 ,and perhaps we are justified in thinking that nothing can quite atone for its absence4 ,meantime1 however1 it must be acknowledged that ,manet first gave us this sense of reality in a measure comparable with that which successively ,balzac1 ,flaubert1 ,zola gave to the readers of their books--a sense of actuality and vividness beside which the traditionary practice seemed absolutely fanciful and mechanical4 ,applying ,manet's method1 his invention1 his discovery1 to the painting of out-of-doors1 the plein air school immediately began to produce landscapes of astonishing reality by confining their effort to those values which it is in the power of pigments to imitate4 ,the possible scale of mere correspondence being of course from one to one hundred1 they secured greater truth by painting between twenty and eighty1 we may say4 ,hence the grayness of the most successful ,french landscapes of the present day--those of ,bastien-,lepage's backgrounds1 of ,cazin's pictures4 ,sunlight being unpaintable1 they confined themselves to the representation of what they could represent4 ,in the interest of truth1 of reality1 they narrowed the gamut of their modulations1 they attempted less1 upheld by the certainty of accomplishing more4 ,for a time ,french landscape was pitched in a minor key4 ,suddenly ,claude ,monet appeared4 ,impressionism1 as it is now understood1 and as ,manet had not succeeded in popularizing it1 won instant recognition4 ,monet's discovery was that light is the most important factor in the painting of out-of-doors4 ,he pushed up the key of landscape painting to the highest power4 ,he attacked the fascinating1 but of course demonstrably insolvable1 problem of painting sunlight1 not illusorily1 as ,fortuny had done by relying on contrasts of light and dark correspondent in scale1 but positively and realistically4 ,he realized as nearly as possible the effect of sunlight--that is to say1 he did as well and no better in this respect than ,fortuny had done--but he created a much greater illusion of a sunlit landscape than anyone had ever done before him1 by painting those parts of his picture not in sunlight with the exact truth that in painting objects in shadow the palette can compass4 ,nothing is more simple4 ,take a landscape with a cloudy sky1 which means diffused light in the old sense of the term1 and observe the effect upon it of a sudden burst of sunlight4 ,what is the effect where considerable portions of the scene are suddenly thrown into marked shadow1 as well as others illuminated with intense light8 ,is the absolute value of the parts in shadow lowered or raised8 ,raised1 of course1 by reflected light4 ,formerly1 to get the contrast between sunlight and shadow in proper scale1 the painter would have painted the shadows darker than they were before the sun appeared4 ,relatively they are darker1 since their value1 though heightened1 is raised infinitely less than the value of the parts in sunlight4 ,absolutely1 their value is raised considerably4 ,if1 therefore1 they are painted lighter than they were before the sun appeared1 they in themselves seem truer4 ,the part of ,monet's picture that is in shadow is measurably true1 far truer than it would have been if painted under the old theory of correspondence1 and had been unnaturally darkened to express the relation of contrast between shadow and sunlight4 ,scale has been lost4 ,what has been gained8 ,simply truth of impressionistic effect4 ,why8 ,because we know and judge and appreciate and feel the measure of truth with which objects in shadow are represented2 we are insensibly more familiar with them in nature than with objects directly sun-illuminated1 the value as well as the definition of which are far vaguer to us on account of their blending and infinite heightening by a luminosity absolutely overpowering4 ,in a word1 in sunlit landscapes objects in shadow are what customarily and unconsciously we see and note and know1 and the illusion is greater if the relation between them and the objects in sunlight1 whose value habitually we do not note1 be neglected or falsified4 ,add to this source of illusion the success of ,monet in giving a juster value to the sunlit half of his picture than had even been systematically attempted before his time1 and his astonishing trompe-l'oeil is1 ,i think1 explained4 ,each part is truer than ever before1 and unless one have a specially developed sense of ensemble in this very special matter of values in and affected by sunlight1 one gets from ,monet an impression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got before1 that he may be pardoned for feeling1 and even for enthusiastically proclaiming1 that in ,monet realism finds its apogee4 ,to sum up3 ,the first realists painted relative values2 ,manet and his derivatives painted absolute values1 but in a wisely limited gamut2 ,monet paints absolute values in a very wide range1 plus sunlight1 as nearly as he can get it--as nearly as pigment can be got to represent it4 ,perforce he loses scale1 and therefore artistic completeness1 but he secures an incomparably vivid effect of reality1 of nature--and of nature in her gayest1 most inspiring manifestation1 illuminated directly and indirectly1 and everywhere vibrant and palpitating with the light of all our physical seeing4 ,monet is so subtle in his own way1 so superbly successful within his own limits1 that it is time wasted to quarrel with the convention-steeped philistine who refuses to comprehend even his point of view1 who judges the pictures he sees by the pictures he has seen4 ,he has not only discovered a new way of looking at nature1 but he has justified it in a thousand particulars4 ,concentrated as his attention has been upon the effects of light and atmosphere1 he has reproduced an infinity of nature's moods that are charming in proportion to their transitoriness1 and whose fleeting beauties he has caught and permanently fixed4 ,rousseau made the most careful studies1 and then combined them in his studio4 ,courbet made his sketch1 more or less perfect1 face to face with his subject1 and elaborated it afterward away from it4 ,corot painted his picture from nature1 but put the ,corot into it in his studio4 ,monet's practice is in comparison drastically thorough4 ,after thirty minutes1 he says--why thirty instead of forty or twenty1 ,i do not know2 these mysteries are ,eleusinian to the mere amateur--the light changes2 he must stop and return the next day at the same hour4 ,the result is immensely real1 and in ,monet's hands immensely varied4 ,one may say as much1 having regard to their differing degrees of success1 of ,pissaro1 who influenced him1 and of ,caillebotte1 ,renoir1 ,sisley1 and the rest of the impressionists who followed him4 ,he is himself the prominent representative of the school1 however1 and the fact that one representative of it is enough to consider1 is eloquent of profound criticism of it4 ,for decorative purposes a hole in one's wall1 an additional window through which one may only look satisfactorily during a period of thirty minutes1 has its drawbacks4 ,a walk in the country or in a city park is after all preferable to anyone who can really appreciate a ,monet--that is1 anyone who can feel the illusion of nature which it is his sole aim to produce4 ,after all1 what one asks of art is something different from imitative illusion4 ,its essence is illusion1 ,i think1 but illusion taken in a different sense from optical illusion--trompe-l'oeil4 ,its function is to make dreams seem real1 not to recall reality4 ,monet is enduringly admirable mainly to the painter who envies and endeavors to imitate his wonderful power of technical expression--the thing that occupies most the conscious attention of the true painter4 ,to others he must remain a little unsatisfactory1 because he is not only not a dreamer1 but because he does nothing with his material except to show it as it is--a great service surely1 but largely excluding the exercise of that architectonic faculty1 personally directed1 which is the very life of every truly aesthetic production4 ,,vii ,in fine1 the impressionist has his own conventions2 no school can escape them1 from the very nature of the case and the definition of the term4 ,the conventions of the impressionists1 indeed1 are particularly salient4 ,can anyone doubt it who sees an exhibition of their works8 ,in the same number of classic1 or romantic1 or merely realistic pictures1 is there anything quite equalling the monotony that strikes one in a display of canvasses by ,claude ,monet and his fellows and followers8 ,but the defect of impressionism is not mainly its technical conventionality4 ,it is1 as ,i think everyone except its thick-and-thin advocates must feel1 that pursued a outrance it lacks a seriousness commensurate with its claims--that it exhibits indeed a kind of undertone of frivolity that is all the nearer to the absolutely comic for the earnestness1 so to speak1 of its unconsciousness4 ,the reason is1 partly no doubt1 to be ascribed to its debonnaire self-satisfaction1 its disposition to lightly run amuck at an august thing1 the traditions of centuries namely1 to its bumptiousness1 in a word4 ,but chiefly1 ,i think1 the reason is to be found in its lack of anything properly to be called a philosophy4 ,this is surely a fatal flaw in any system1 because it involves a contradiction in terms2 and to say that to have no philosophy is the philosophy of the impressionists1 is merely a word-juggling bit of question-begging4 ,a theory of technic is not a philosophy1 however systematic it may be4 ,it is a mechanical1 not an intellectual1 point of view4 ,it is not a way of looking at things1 but of rendering them4 ,it expresses no idea and sees no relations2 its claims on one's interest are exhausted when once its right to its method is admitted4 ,the remark once made of a typically literal person--that he cared so much for facts that he disliked to think they had any relations--is intimately applicable to the whole impressionist school4 ,technically1 of course1 the impressionist's relations are extremely just--not exquisite1 but exquisitely just4 ,but merely to get just values is not to occupy one's self with values ideally1 emotionally1 personally4 ,it is merely to record facts4 ,certainly any impressionist rendering of the light and shade and color relations of objects seems eloquent beside any traditional and conventional rendering of them2 but it is because each object is so carefully observed1 so truly painted1 that its relation to every other is spontaneously satisfactory2 and this is a very different thing from the result of truly pictorial rendering with its constructive appeal1 its sense of ensemble1 its presentation of an idea by means of the convergence and interdependence of objects focussed to a common and central effect4 ,to this impressionism is absolutely insensitive4 ,it is the acme of detachment1 of indifference4 ,turgenieff1 according to ,mr4 ,george ,moore1 complained of ,zola's ,gervaise ,coupeau1 that ,zola explained how she felt1 never what she thought4 ,qu'est que ca me fait si elle suait sous les bras1 ou au milieu du dos8 he asked1 with most pertinent penetration4 ,he is quite right4 ,really we only care for facts when they explain truths4 ,the desultory agglomeration of never so definitely rendered details necessarily leaves the civilized appreciation cold4 ,what distinguishes the civilized from the savage appreciation is the passion for order4 ,the tendency to order1 said ,senancour1 should form an essential part of our inclinations1 of our instinct1 like the tendencies to self-preservation and to reproduction4 ,the two latter tendencies the savage possesses as completely as the civilized man1 but he does not share the civilized man's instinct for correlation4 ,and in this sense1 ,i think1 a certain savagery is justly to be ascribed to the impressionist4 ,his productions have many attractions and many merits--merits and attractions that the traditional painting has not4 ,but they are really only by a kind of automatic inadvertence1 pictures4 ,they are not truly pictorial4 ,and a picture should be something more than even pictorial4 ,to be permanently attaching it should give at least a hint of the painter's philosophy--his point of view1 his attitude toward his material4 ,in the great pictures you can not only discover this attitude1 but the attitude of the painter toward life and the world in general4 ,everyone has as distinct an idea of the philosophy of ,raphael as of the qualities of his designs4 ,the impressionist not only does not show you what he thinks1 he does not even show you how he feels1 except by betraying a fondness for violets and diffused light1 and by exhibiting the temper of the radical and the rioter4 ,the order of a blithe1 idyllic landscape by ,corot1 of one of ,delacroix's pieces of concentric coloration1 of an example of ,ingres's purity of outline1 shows not only temperament1 but the position of the painter in regard to the whole intellectual world so far as he touches it at all4 ,what does a canvas of ,claude ,monet show in this respect8 ,it is more truthful but not less impersonal than a photograph4 ,degas is the only other painter usually classed with the impressionists1 of whom this may not be said4 ,but ,degas is hardly an impressionist at all4 ,he is one of the most personal painters1 if not the most personal painter1 of the day4 ,he is as original as ,puvis de ,chavannes4 ,what allies him with the impressionists is his fondness for fleeting aspects1 his caring for nothing beyond aspect--for the look of things and their transitory look4 ,he is an enthusiastic admirer of ,ingres--who1 one would say1 is the antithesis of impressionism4 ,he never paints from nature4 ,his studies are made with the utmost care1 but they are arranged1 composed1 combined by his own sense of what is pictorial--by1 at any rate1 his own idea of the effects he wishes to create4 ,he cares absolutely nothing for what ordinarily we understand by the real1 the actual1 so far as its reality is concerned2 he sees nothing else1 to be sure1 and is probably very sceptical about anything but colors and shapes and their decorative arrangement2 but he sees what he likes in reality and follows this out with an inerrancy so scrupulous1 and even affectionate1 as to convey the idea that in his result he himself counts for almost nothing4 ,this at least may be said of him1 that he shows what1 given genius1 can be got out of the impressionist method artistically and practically employed to the end of illustrating a personal point of view4 ,a mere amateur can hardly distinguish between a ,caillebotte and a ,sisley1 for example1 but everyone identifies a ,degas as immediately and as certainly as he does a ,whistler4 ,his work is perfectly sincere and admirably intelligent4 ,it has neither the pose nor the irresponsibility of the impressionists4 ,his artistic apotheosis of the ballet-girl is merely the result of his happy discovery of something delightfully1 and in a very true sense naturally1 decorative in material that is in the highest degree artificial4 ,his impulse is as genuine and spontaneous as if the substance upon which it is exercised were not the acme of the exotic1 and already arranged with the most elaborate conventionality4 ,nothing indeed could be more opposed to the elementary crudity of impressionism than his distinction and refinement1 which may be said to be carried to a really fin de siecle degree4 ,,viii ,whatever the painting of the future is to be1 it is certain not to be the painting of ,monet4 ,for the present1 no doubt1 ,monet is the last word in painting4 ,to belittle him is not only whimsical1 but ridiculous4 ,he has plainly worked a revolution in his art4 ,he has taken it out of the vicious circle of conformity to1 departure from1 and return to abstractions and the so-called ideal4 ,no one hereafter who attempts the representation of nature--and for as far ahead as we can see with any confidence1 the representation of nature1 the pantheistic ideal if one chooses1 will increasingly intrench itself as the painter's true aim--no one who seriously attempts to realize this aim of now universal appeal will be able to dispense with ,monet's aid4 ,he must perforce follow the lines laid down for him by this astonishing naturalist4 ,any other course must result in solecism1 and if anything future is certain1 it is certain that the future will be not only inhospitable to1 but absolutely intolerant of1 solecism4 ,henceforth the basis of things is bound to be solid and not superficial1 real and not fantastic4 ,but--whether the future is to commit itself wholly to prose1 or is to preserve in new conditions the essence of the poetry that1 in one form or another1 has persisted since plastic art began--for the superstructure to be erected on the sound basis of just values and true impressions it is justifiably easy to predict a greater interest and a more real dignity than any such preoccupation with the basis of technic as ,monet's can possibly have4 ,and though1 even as one says it1 one has the feeling that the future is pregnant with some genius who will out-,monet ,monet1 and that painting will in some now inconceivable way have to submit hereafter to a still more rigorous standard than it does at present--,i have heard the claims of binocular vision urged--at the same time the true child of nature may console himself with the reflection that accuracy and competence are but the accidents1 at most the necessary phenomena1 of what really and essentially constitutes fine art of any kind--namely1 the expression of a personal conception of what is not only true but beautiful as well4 ,in ,france less than anywhere else is it likely that even such a powerful force as modern realism will long dominate the constructive1 the architectonic faculty1 which is part of the very fibre of the ,french genius4 ,the exposition and illustration of a theory believed in with a fervency to be found only among a people with whom the intelligence is the chief element and object of experiment and exercise1 are a natural concomitant of mental energy and activity4 ,but no theory holds them long in bondage4 ,at the least1 it speedily gives place to another formulation of the mutinous freedom its very acceptance creates4 ,and the conformity that each of them in succession imposes on mediocrity is always varied and relieved by the frequent incarnations in masterful personalities of the natural national traits--of which1 ,i think1 the architectonic spirit is one of the most conspicuous4 ,painting will again become creative1 constructive1 personally expressive4 ,its basis having been established as scientifically impeccable1 its superstructure will exhibit the taste1 the elegance1 the imaginative freedom1 exhibited within the limits of a cultivated sense of propriety1 that are an integral part of the ,french painter's patrimony4 ,,iv ,,classic ,,sculpture ,i ,french sculpture naturally follows very much the same course as ,french painting4 ,its beginnings1 however1 are ,gothic1 and the ,renaissance emancipated rather than created it4 ,italy1 over which the ,gothic wave passed with less disturbing effect than anywhere else1 and where the ,pisans were doing pure sculpture when everywhere farther north sculpture was mainly decorative and rigidly architectural1 had a potent influence4 ,but the modern phases of ,french sculpture have a closer relationship with the ,chartres ,cathedral than modern ,french painting has with its earliest practice2 and ,claux ,sluters1 the ,burgundian ,fleming who modelled the wonderful ,moses ,well and the tombs of ,jean ,sans ,peur and ,phillippe le ,hardi at ,dijon1 among his other anachronistic masterpieces1 exerted considerably greater influence upon his successors than the ,touraine school of painting and the ,clouets did upon theirs4 ,these works are a curious compromise between the ,gothic and the modern spirits4 ,sluters was plainly a modern temperament working with ,gothic material and amid ,gothic ideas4 ,in itself his sculpture is hardly decorative1 as we apply the epithet to modern work4 ,it is just off the line of rigidity1 of insistence in every detail of its right and title to individuality apart from every other sculptured detail4 ,the prophets in the niches of the beautiful ,dijon ,well1 the monks under the arcades of the beautiful ,burgundian tombs1 have little relation with each other as elements of a decorative sculptural composition4 ,they are in the same style1 that is all4 ,each of them is in interest quite independent of the other4 ,compared with one of the ,pisans' pulpits they form a congeries rather than a composition4 ,compared with ,goujon's ,fountain of the ,innocents their motive is not decorative at all4 ,isaiah1 ,ezekiel1 ,jeremiah asserts his individuality in a way the more sociable prophets of the ,sistine ,chapel would hesitate to do4 ,they have a little the air of hermits--of artistic anchorites1 one may say4 ,they are ,gothic1 too1 not only in being thus sculpturally undecorative and uncomposed1 but in being beautifully subordinate to the architecture which it is their unmistakable ancillary function to decorate in the most delightful way imaginable--in being in a word architecturally decorative4 ,the marriage of the two arts is1 ,gothically1 not on equal terms4 ,it never occurred1 of course1 to the ,gothic architect that it should be4 ,his ensemble was always one of which the chief1 the overwhelming1 one may almost say the sole1 interest is structural4 ,he even imposed the condition that the sculpture which decorated his structure should be itself architecturally structural4 ,one figure of the portals of ,chartres is almost as like another as one pillar of the interior is like its fellows2 for the reason--eminently satisfactory to the architect--that it discharges an identical function4 ,emancipation from this thraldom of the architect is ,sluters's great distinction1 however4 ,he is modern in this sense1 without going so far--without going anything like so far--as the modern sculptor who divorces his work from that of the architect with whom he is called upon to combine to the end of an ensemble that shall be equally agreeable to the sense satisfied by form and that satisfied by structure4 ,his figures1 subordinate as they are to the general architectural purpose and function of what they decorate1 are not only not purely structural in their expression1 stiff as they still are from the point of view of absolutely free sculpture2 they are1 moreover1 not merely unrelated to each other in any essential sense1 such as that in which the figures of the ,pisans and of ,goujon are related2 they are on the contrary each and all wonderfully accentuated and individualized4 ,every ecclesiastic on the ,dijon tombs is a character study4 ,every figure on the ,well has a psychologic as well as a sculptural interest4 ,poised between ,gothic tradition and modern feeling1 between a reverend and august aesthetic conventionality and the dawn of free activity1 ,sluters is one of the most interesting and stimulating figures in the whole history of sculpture4 ,and the force of his characterizations1 the vividness of his conceptions1 and the combined power and delicacy of his modelling give him the added importance of one of the heroes of his art in any time or country4 ,there is something extremely ,flemish in his sense of personality4 ,a similar interest in humanity as such1 in the individual apart from the type1 is noticeable in the pictures of the ,van ,eycks1 of ,memling1 of ,quentin ,matsys1 and ,roger ,van der ,weyden1 wherein all idea of beauty1 of composition1 of universal appeal is subordinated as it is in no other art--in that of ,holland no more than in that of ,italy--to the representation in the most definite1 precise1 and powerful way of some intensely human personality4 ,there is the same extraordinary concreteness in one of ,matsys's apostles and one of ,sluters's prophets4 ,michel ,colombe1 the pupil of ,claux and ,anthoniet and the sculptor of the monument of ,francois ,,ii41 ,duke of ,brittany1 at ,nantes1 the relief of ,st4 ,george and the ,dragon for the ,chateau of ,gaillon1 now in the ,louvre1 and the ,fontaine de ,beaune1 at ,tours1 and ,jean ,juste1 whose noble masterpiece1 the ,tomb of ,louis ,,xii4 and ,anne of ,brittany1 is the finest ornament of the ,cathedral of ,st4 ,denis1 bridge the distance and mark the transition to ,goujon1 ,cousin1 and ,germain ,pilon far more suavely than the school of ,fontainebleau did the change from that of ,tours to ,poussin4 ,cousin1 though the monument of ,admiral ,chabot is a truly marvellous work1 witnessing a practical sculptor's hand1 is really to be classed among painters4 ,and ,germain ,pilon's compromise with ,italian decorativeness1 graceful and fertile sculptor as his many works show him to have been1 resulted in a lack of personal force that has caused him to be thought on the one hand seriously injured by the bastard sentiment proper to the school of ,fontainebleau1 as ,mrs4 ,pattison somewhat sternly remarks1 and on the other to be reprehended by ,germain ,brice in #agah1 for evincing quelque reste du gout gothique--some reminiscence of ,gothic taste4 ,jean ,goujon is really the first modern ,french sculptor4 ,,ii ,he remains1 too1 one of the very finest1 even in a competition constantly growing more exacting since his day4 ,he had a very particular talent1 and it was exhibited in manifold ways4 ,he is as fine in relief as in the round4 ,his decorative quality is as eminent as his purely sculptural side4 ,compared with his ,italian contemporaries he is at once full of feeling and severe4 ,he has nothing of ,pilon's chameleon-like imitativeness4 ,he does not1 on the other hand1 break with the traditions of the best models known to him--and1 undoubtedly he knew the best4 ,his works cover and line the ,louvre1 and anyone who visits ,paris may get a perfect conception of his genius--certainly anyone who in addition visits ,rouen and beholds the lovely tracery of his earliest sculpture on the portal of ,st4 ,maclou4 ,he was eminently the sculptor of an educated class1 and appealed to a cultivated appreciation4 ,coming as he did at the acme of the ,french ,renaissance1 when ,france was borrowing with intelligent selection whatever it considered valuable from ,italy1 he pleased the dilettanti4 ,there is something distinctly swell in his work4 ,he does not perhaps express any overmastering personal feeling1 nor does he stamp the impress of ,french national character on his work with any particular emphasis4 ,he is too well-bred and too cultivated1 he has too much aplomb4 ,but his works show both more personal feeling and more national character than the works of his contemporaries elsewhere4 ,for line he has a very intimate instinct1 and of mass1 in the sculptor's as well as the painter's sense1 he has a native comprehension4 ,compare his ,diana of the ,louvre with ,cellini's in the adjoining room from the point of view of pure sculpture4 ,goujon's group is superb in every way4 ,cellini's figure is tormented and distorted by an impulse of decadent though decorative aestheticism4 ,goujon's caryatides and figures of the ,innocents ,fountain are equally sculptural in their way--by no means arabesques1 as is so much of ,renaissance relief1 and the modern relief that imitates it4 ,everything in fine that ,goujon did is unified with the rest of his work and identifiable by the mark of style4 ,,iii ,what do we mean by style8 ,something1 at all events1 very different from manner1 in spite of ,mr4 ,hamerton's insistence upon the contrary4 ,is the quality in virtue of which--as ,mr4 ,dobson paraphrases ,gautier-- ,the bust outlives the throne1 ,the coin ,tiberius the specific personality of the artist who carved the bust or chiselled the coin that have thus outlived all personality connected with them8 ,not that personality is not of the essence of enduring art4 ,it is1 on the contrary1 the condition of any vital art whatever4 ,but what gives the object1 once personally conceived and expressed1 its currency1 its universality1 its eternal interest--speaking to strangers with familiar vividness1 and to posterity as to contemporaries--is something aside from its personal feeling4 ,and it is this something and not specific personality that style is4 ,style is the invisible wind through whose influence the lion on the flag of the ,persian poet moves and marches4 ,the lion of personality may be painted never so deftly1 with never so much expression1 individual feeling1 picturesqueness1 energy1 charm2 it will not move and march save through the rhythmic1 waving influence of style4 ,nor is style necessarily the grand style1 as ,arnold seems to imply1 in calling it a peculiar recasting and heightening1 under a certain condition of spiritual excitement1 of what a man has to say in such a manner as to add dignity and distinction to it4 ,perhaps the most explicit examples of pure style owe their production to spiritual coolness2 and1 in any event1 the word peculiar in a definition begs the question4 ,buffon is at once juster and more definite in saying3 ,style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put into our thoughts4 ,it is singular that this simple and lucid utterance of ,buffon should have been so little noticed by those who have written in ,english on style4 ,in general ,english writers have apparently misconceived1 in very curious fashion1 ,buffon's other remark1 le style c'est l'homme2 by which aphorism ,buffon merely meant that a man's individual manner depends on his temperament1 his character1 and which he1 of course1 was very far from suspecting would ever be taken for a definition4 ,following ,buffon's idea of order and movement1 we may say1 perhaps1 that style results from the preservation in every part of some sense of the form of the whole4 ,it implies a sense of relations as well as of statement4 ,it is not mere expression of a thought in a manner peculiar to the artist 7in words1 color1 marble1 what not71 but it is such expression penetrated with both reminiscence and anticipation4 ,it is1 indeed1 on the contrary1 very nearly the reverse of what we mean by expression1 which is mainly a matter of personal energy4 ,style means correctness1 precision1 that feeling for the ensemble on which an inharmonious detail jars4 ,expression results from a sense of the value of the detail4 ,if ,walt ,whitman1 for example1 were what his admirers' defective sense of style fancies him1 he would be expressive4 ,if ,french academic art had as little expression as its censors assert1 it would still illustrate style--the quality which modifies the native and apposite form of the concrete individual thing with reference to what has preceded and what is to follow it2 the quality1 in a word1 whose effort is to harmonize the object with its environment4 ,when this environment is heightened1 and universal instead of logical and particular1 we have the grand style2 but we have the grand style generally in poetry1 and to be sure of style at all prose--such prose as ,goujon's1 which in no wise emulates ,michael ,angelo's poetry--may justifiably neglect in some degree the specific personality that tends to make it poetic and individual4 ,,iv ,after ,goujon1 ,clodion is the great name in ,french sculpture1 until we come to ,houdon1 who may almost be assigned to the nineteenth century4 ,there were throughout the eighteenth century honorable artists1 sculptors of distinction beyond contest4 ,but sculpture is such an abstract art itself that the sculpture which partook of the artificiality of the eighteenth century has less interest for us1 less that is concrete and appealing than even the painting of the epoch4 ,it derived its canons and its practice from ,puget--the ,french ,bernini1 who with less grace and less dilettante extravagance than his ,italian exemplar had more force and solidity4 ,with less cleverness1 less charm--for ,bernini1 spite of the disesteem in which his juxtaposition to ,michael ,angelo and his apparent unconsciousness of the attitude such juxtaposition should have imposed upon him1 cause him to be held1 has a great deal of charm and is extraordinarily clever--he is more sincere1 more thorough-going1 more respectable4 ,coysevox is chiefly ,puget exaggerated1 and his pupil1 ,coustou1 who comes down to nearly the middle of the eighteenth century1 contributed nothing to ,french sculptural tradition4 ,but ,clodion is a distinct break4 ,he is as different from ,coysevox and ,coustou as ,watteau is from ,lebrun4 ,he is the essence of what we mean by ,louis ,quinze4 ,his work is clever beyond characterization4 ,it has in perfection what sculptors mean by color--that is to say a certain warmth of feeling1 a certain insouciance1 a brave carelessness for sculpturesque traditions1 a free play of fancy1 both in the conception and execution of his subjects4 ,like the ,louis ,quinze painters1 he has his thoughtless1 irresponsible1 involuntary side1 and like them--like the best of them1 that is to say1 like ,watteau--he is never quite as good as he could be4 ,he seems not so much concerned at expressing his ideal as at pleasing1 and pleasing people of too frivolous an appreciation to call forth what is best in him4 ,he devoted himself almost altogether to terra-cotta1 which is equivalent to saying that the exquisite and not the impressive was his aim4 ,thoroughly classic1 so far as the avoidance of everything naturalistic is concerned1 he is yet as little severe and correct as the painters of his day4 ,he spent nine years in ,rome1 but though enamoured in the most sympathetic degree of the antique1 it was the statuettes and figurines1 the gay and social1 the elegant and decorative side of antique sculpture that exclusively he delighted in4 ,his work is ,tanagra ,gallicized4 ,it is not the group of ,the ,deluge1 or the ,entry of the ,french into ,munich1 or ,hercules in ,repose1 for which he was esteemed by contemporaries or is prized by posterity4 ,he is admirable where he is inimitable--that is to say1 in the delightful decoration of which he was so prodigal4 ,it is not in his compositions essaying what is usually meant by sculptural effect1 but in his vases1 clocks1 pendants1 volutes1 little reliefs of nymphs riding dolphins over favoring breakers and amid hospitable foam1 his toilettes of ,venus1 his facade ornamentations1 his applied sculpture1 in a word1 that his true talent lies4 ,after him it is natural that we should have a reversion to quasi-severity and imitation of the antique--just as ,david succeeded to the ,louis ,quinze pictorial riot--and that the ,french contemporaries of ,canova and ,thorwaldsen1 those literal1 though enthusiastic illustrators of ,winckelmann's theories1 should be ,pradier and ,etex and the so-called ,greek school4 ,pradier's ,greek inspiration has something ,swiss about it1 one may say--he was a ,genevan--though his figures were simple and largely treated4 ,he had a keen sense for the feminine element--the ewig ,weibliche--and expressed it plastically with a zest approaching gusto4 ,yet his statues are women rather than statues1 and1 more than that1 are handsome rather than beautiful4 ,etex1 it is to be feared1 will be chiefly remembered as the unfortunately successful rival of ,rude in the ,arc de ,triomphe de l',etoile decoration4 ,v ,having in each case more or less relation with1 but really wholly outside of and superior to all schools whatever--except the school of nature1 which permits as much freedom as it exacts fidelity--is the succession of the greatest of ,french sculptors since the ,renaissance and down to the present day3 ,houdon1 ,david d',angers1 ,rude1 ,carpeaux1 and ,barye4 ,houdon is one of the finest examples of the union of vigor with grace4 ,he will be known chiefly as a portraitist1 but such a masterpiece as his ,diana shows how admirable he was in the sphere of purely imaginative theme and treatment4 ,classic1 and even conventionally classic as it is1 both in subject and in the way the subject is handled--compared for example with ,m4 ,falguiere's ,nymph ,hunting1 which is simply a realistic ,diana--it is designed and modelled with as much personal freedom and feeling as if ,houdon had been stimulated by the ambition of novel accomplishment1 instead of that of rendering with truth and grace a time-honored and traditional sculptural motive4 ,its treatment is beautifully educated and its effect refined1 chaste1 and elevated in an extraordinary degree4 ,no master ever steered so near the reef of clock-tops1 one may say1 and avoided it so surely and triumphantly4 ,the figure is light as air and wholly effortless at the same time4 ,there has rarely been such a distinguished success in circumventing the great difficulty of sculpture--which is to rob marble or metal of its specific gravity and make it appear light and buoyant1 just as the difficulty of the painter is to give weight and substance to his fictions4 ,but ,houdon's admirable busts of ,moliere1 ,diderot1 ,washington1 ,franklin1 and ,mirabeau1 his unequalled statue of ,voltaire in the foyer of the ,francais and his ,san ,bruno in ,santa ,maria degli ,angeli at ,rome are the works on which his fame will chiefly rest1 and1 owing to their masterly combination of strength with style1 rest securely4 ,to see the work of ,david d',angers1 one must go to ,angers itself and to ,pere-,lachaise4 ,the ,louvre is lamentably lacking in anything truly representative of this most eminent of all portraitists in sculpture1 ,i think1 not excepting even ,houdon1 if one may reckon the mass as well as the excellence of his remarkable production and the way in which it witnesses that portraiture is just what he was born to do4 ,the ,philopoemen of the ,louvre is a fine work1 even impressively large and simple4 ,but it is the competent work of a member of a school and leaves one a little cold4 ,its academic quality quite overshadows whatever personal feeling one may by searching find in the severity of its treatment and the way in which a classic motive has been followed out naturally and genuinely instead of perfunctorily4 ,it gives no intimation of the faculty that produced the splendid gallery of medallions accentuated by an occasional bust and statue1 of ,david's celebrated contemporaries and quasi-contemporaries in every field of distinction4 ,it is impossible to overestimate the interest and value1 the truth and the art of these4 ,whether the subject be intractable or not seems to have made no difference to ,david4 ,he invariably produced a work of art at the same time that he expressed the character of its motive with uncompromising fidelity4 ,his portraits1 moreover1 are pure sculpture4 ,there is nothing of the cameo-cutter's art about them4 ,they are modelled not carved4 ,the outline is no more important than it is in nature1 so far as it is employed to the end of identification4 ,it is used decoratively4 ,there are surprising effects of fore-shortening1 exhibiting superb1 and as it were unconscious ease in handling relief--that most difficult of illusions in respect of having no law 7at least no law that it is worth the sculptor's while to try to discover7 of correspondence to reality4 ,forms and masses have a definition and a firmness wholly remarkable in their independence of the usual low relief's reliance on pictorial and purely linear design4 ,they do not blend picturesquely with the background1 and do not depend on their suggestiveness for their character4 ,they are always realized1 executed--sculpture in a word whose suggestiveness1 quite as potent as that of feebler executants1 begins only when actual representation has been triumphantly achieved instead of impotently and skilfully avoided4 ,of ,rude's genius one's first thought is of its robustness1 its originality4 ,everything he did is stamped with the impress of his personality4 ,at the same time it is equally evident that ,rude's own temperament took its color from the transitional epoch in which he lived1 and of which he was par excellence the sculptor4 ,he was the true inheritor of his ,burgundian traditions4 ,his strongest side was that which allies him with his artistic ancestor1 ,claux ,sluters4 ,but he lived in an era of general culture and aestheticism1 and all his naturalistic tendencies were complicated with theory4 ,he accepted the antique not merely as a stimulus1 but as a model4 ,he was not only a sculptor but a teacher1 and the formulation of his didacticism complicated considerably the free exercise of his expression4 ,at the last1 as is perhaps natural1 he reverted to precedent and formulary1 and in his ,hebe and the ,eagle of ,jupiter and his ,l',amour ,dominateur du ,monde1 is more at variance than anywhere else with his native instinct1 which was1 to cite the admirable phrase of ,m4 de ,fourcaud1 exterioriser nos idees et nos ames4 ,but throughout his life he halted a little between two opinions--the current admiration of the classic1 and his own instinctive feeling for nature unsystematized and unsophisticated4 ,his ,jeanne d',arc is an instance4 ,in spite of the violation of tradition1 which at the time it was thought to be1 it seems to-day to our eyes to err on the side of the conventional4 ,it is surely intellectual1 classic1 even factitious in conception as well as in execution4 ,in some of its accessories it is even modish4 ,it illustrates not merely the abstract turn of conceiving a subject which ,rude always shared with the great classicists of his art1 but also the arbitrariness of treatment against which he always protested4 ,without at all knowing it1 he was in a very intimate sense an eclectic in many of his works4 ,he believed in forming a complete mental conception of every composition before even posing a model1 as he used to tell his students1 but in complicated compositions this was impossible1 and he had small talent for artificial composition4 ,furthermore1 he often distrusted--quite without reason1 but after the fatal manner of the rustic--his own intuitions4 ,but one mentions these qualifications of his genius and accomplishment only because both his genius and accomplishment are so distinguished as to make one wish they were more nearly perfect than they are4 ,it is really idle to wish that ,rude had neglected the philosophy of his art1 with which he was so much occupied1 and had devoted himself exclusively to treating sculptural subjects in the manner of a nineteenth century successor of ,sluters and ,anthoniet4 ,he might have been a greater sculptor than he was1 but he is sufficiently great as he is4 ,if his ,mercury is an essay in conventional sculpture1 his ,petit ,pecheur is frank and free sculptural handling of natural material4 ,his work at ,lille and in ,belgium1 his reclining figure of ,cavaignac in the cemetery of ,montmartre1 his noble figures of ,gaspard ,monge at ,beaune1 of ,marshal ,bertrand1 and of ,ney1 are all cast in the heroic mould1 full of character1 and in no wise dependent on speculative theory4 ,few sculptors have displayed anything like his variety and range1 which extends1 for example1 from the ,baptism of ,christ to a statue of ,louis ,,xiii4 enfant1 and includes portraits1 groups1 compositions in relief1 and heroic statues4 ,in all his successful work one cannot fail to note the force and fire of the man's personality1 and perhaps what one thinks of chiefly in connection with him is the misfortune which we owe to the vacillation of ,m4 ,thiers of having but one instead of four groups by him on the piers of the ,arc de ,triomphe de l',etoile4 ,carpeaux used to say that he never passed the ,chant du ,depart without taking off his hat4 ,one can understand his feeling4 ,no one can have any appreciation of what sculpture is without perceiving that this magnificent group easily and serenely takes its rank among the masterpieces of sculpture of all time4 ,it is1 in the first place1 the incarnation of an abstraction1 the spirit of patriotism roused to the highest pitch of warlike intensity and self-sacrifice1 and in the second this abstract motive is expressed in the most elaborate and comprehensive completeness--with a combined intricacy of detail and singleness of effect which must be the despair of any but a master in sculpture4 ,,vi ,carpeaux perhaps never did anything that quite equals the masterpiece of his master ,rude4 ,but the essential quality of the ,chant du ,depart he assimilated so absolutely and so naturally that he made it in a way his own4 ,he carried it farther1 indeed4 ,if he never rose to the grandeur of this superb group1 and he certainly did not1 he nevertheless showed in every one of his works that he was possessed by its inspiration even more completely than was ,rude himself4 ,his passion was the representation of life1 the vital and vivifying force in its utmost exuberance1 and in its every variety1 so far as his experience could enable him to render it4 ,he was infatuated with movement1 with the attestation in form of nervous energy1 of the quick translation of thought and emotion into interpreting attitude4 ,his figures are1 beyond all others1 so thoroughly alive as to seem conscious of the fact and joy of pure existence4 ,they are animated1 one may almost say inspired1 with the delight of muscular activity1 the sensation of exercising the functions with which nature endows them4 ,and accompanying this supreme motive and effect is a delightful grace and winningness of which few sculptors have the secret1 and which suggest more than any one else ,clodion's decorative loveliness4 ,an even greater charm of sprite-like1 fairy attractiveness1 of caressing and bewitching fascination1 a more penetrating and seductive engagingness plays about ,carpeaux's ,flora1 ,i think1 than is characteristic even of ,clodion's figures and reliefs4 ,carpeaux is at all events nearer to us1 and if he has not the classic detachment of ,clodion he substitutes for it a quality of closer attachment and more intimate appeal4 ,he is at his best perhaps in the ,danse of the ,nouvel ,opera facade1 wherein his elfin-like grace and exuberant vitality animate a group carefully1 and even classically composed1 exhibiting skill and restraint as well as movement and fancy4 ,possibly his temperament gives itself too free a rein in the group of the ,luxembourg ,gardens1 in which he has been accused by his own admirers of sacrificing taste to turbulence and securing expressiveness at the expense of saner and more truly sculptural aims4 ,but fancy the ,luxembourg ,gardens without ,the ,four ,quarters of the ,world supporting the ,earth4 ,parisian censure of his exuberance is very apt to display a conventional standard of criticism in the critic rather than to substantiate its charge4 ,barye's place in the history of art is more nearly unique1 perhaps1 than that of any of the great artists4 ,he was certainly one of the greatest of sculptors1 and he had either the good luck or the mischance to do his work in a field almost wholly unexploited before him4 ,he has in his way no rivals1 and in his way he is so admirable that the scope of his work does not even hint at his exclusion from rivalry with the very greatest of his predecessors4 ,a perception of the truth of this apparent paradox is the nearest one may come1 ,i think1 to the secret of his excellence4 ,no matter what you do1 if you do it well enough1 that is1 with enough elevation1 enough spiritual distinction1 enough transmutation of the elementary necessity of technical perfection into true significance--you succeed4 ,and this is not the sense in which motive in art is currently belittled4 ,it is rather the suggestion of ,mrs4 ,browning's lines3 ,better far ,pursue a frivolous trade by serious means ,than a sublime art frivolously4 ,nothing could be more misleading than to fancy ,barye a kind of modern ,cellini4 ,less than any sculptor of modern times is he a decorative artist4 ,the small scale of his works is in great part due to his lack of opportunity to produce larger ones4 ,nowadays one does what one can1 even the greatest artists2 and ,barye had no ,lorenzo de',medici for a patron1 but1 instead1 a frowning ,institute1 which confined him to such work as1 in the main1 he did4 ,he did it con amore it need not be added1 and thus lifted it at once out of the customary category of such work4 ,his bronzes were never articles de ,paris1 and their excellence transcends the function of teaching our sculptors and amateurs the lesson that household is as dignified a province as monumental1 art4 ,his groups are not essentially clock-tops1 and the work of perhaps the greatest artist1 in the line from ,jean ,goujon to ,carpeaux can hardly be used to point the moral that clock-tops ought to be good4 ,cellini's ,perseus is really more of a parlor ornament than ,barye's smallest figure4 ,why is he so obviously great as well as so obviously extraordinary8 one constantly asks himself in the presence of his bronzes4 ,perhaps because he expresses with such concreteness1 such definiteness and vigor a motive so purely an abstraction4 ,the illustration in intimate elaboration of elemental force1 strength1 passion1 seems to have been his aim1 and in everyone of his wonderfully varied groups he attains it superbly--not giving the beholder a symbol of it merely2 in no degree depending upon association or convention1 but exhibiting its very essence with a combined scientific explicitness and poetic energy to which antique art alone1 one may almost say1 has furnished a parallel4 ,for this1 fauna served him as well as the human figure1 though1 could he have studied man with the facility which the ,jardin des ,plantes afforded him of observing the lower animals1 he might have used the medium of the human figure more frequently than he did4 ,when he did1 he was hardly less successful2 and the four splendid groups that decorate the ,pavillons ,denon and ,richelieu of the ,louvre are in the very front rank of the heroic sculpture of the modern world4 ,v ,,academic ,,sculpture ,i ,from ,barye to the ,institute is a long way4 ,nothing could be more interhostile than his sculpture and that of the professors at the ,ecole des ,beaux-,arts4 ,and in considering the ,french sculpture of the present day we may say that1 aside from the great names already mentioned--,houdon1 ,david d',angers1 ,rude1 ,carpeaux1 and ,barye--and apart from the new movement represented by ,rodin and ,dalou1 it is represented by the ,institute1 and that the ,institute has reverted to the ,italian inspiration4 ,the influence of ,canova and the example of ,pradier and ,etex were not lasting4 ,indeed1 ,greek sculpture has perished so completely that it sometimes seems to live only in its legend4 ,with the modern ,french school1 the academic school1 it is quite supplanted by the sculpture of the ,renaissance4 ,and this is not unreasonable4 ,the ,renaissance sculpture is modern2 its masters did finely and perfectly what since their time has been done imperfectly1 but essentially its artistic spirit is the modern artistic spirit1 full of personality1 full of expression1 careless of the type4 ,nowadays we patronize a little the ideal4 ,you may hear very intelligent critics in ,paris--who in ,paris is not an intelligent critic8--speak disparagingly of the ,greek want of expression2 of the lack of passion1 of vivid interest1 of significance in a word1 in ,greek sculpture of the ,periclean epoch4 ,the conception of absolute beauty having been discovered to be an abstraction1 the tradition of the purely ideal has gone with it4 ,the caryatids of the ,erechtheum1 the horsemen of the ,parthenon frieze1 the reliefs of the ,nike ,apteros balustrade are admired certainly2 but they are hardly sympathetically admired2 there is a tendency to relegate them to the limbo of subjects for aesthetic lectures4 ,and yet no one can have carefully examined the brilliant productions of modern ,french sculpture without being struck by this apparent paradox3 that1 whereas all its canons are drawn from a study of the ,renaissance1 its chief characteristic is1 at bottom1 a lack of expression1 a carefulness for the type4 ,the explanation is this3 in the course of time1 which at last makes all things even1 the individuality1 the romanticism of the ,renaissance has itself become the type1 is now itself become classical1 and the modern attitude toward it1 however sympathetic compared with the modern attitude toward the antique1 is to a noteworthy degree factitious and artificial4 ,and in art everything depends upon the attitude of mind4 ,it is this which prevents ,ingres from being truly ,raphaelesque1 and ,pradier from being really classical4 ,if1 therefore1 it can justly be said of modern ,french sculpture that its sympathy for the ,renaissance sculpture obscures its vision of the ideal1 it is clearly to be charged with the same absence of individual significance with which its thick-and-thin partisans reproach the antique4 ,the circumstance that1 like the ,renaissance sculpture1 it deals far more largely in pictorial expression than the antique does1 is1 if it deals in them after the ,renaissance fashion and not after a fashion of its own1 quite beside the essential fact4 ,there is really nothing in common between an academic ,french sculptor of the present day and an ,italian sculptor of the fifteenth century1 except the possession of what is called the modern spirit4 ,but the modern spirit manifests itself in an enormous gamut1 and the differences of its manifestations are as great in their way1 and so far as our interest in them is concerned1 as the difference between their inspiration and the mediaeval or the antique inspiration4 ,,ii ,chapu1 who died a year or two ago1 is perhaps the only eminent sculptor of the time whose inspiration is clearly the antique1 and when ,i add that his work appears to me for this reason none the less original1 it will be immediately perceived that ,i share imperfectly the ,french objection to the antique4 ,indeed1 nowadays to have the antique inspiration is to be original ex vi termini2 nothing is farther removed from contemporary conventions4 ,but this is true in a much more integral sense4 ,the pre-eminent fact of ,greek sculpture1 for example1 is1 from one point of view1 the directness with which it concerns itself with the ideal--the slight temporary or personal element with which it is alloyed4 ,when one calls an artist or a work ,greek1 this is what is really meant2 it is the sense in which ,raphael is ,greek4 ,chapu is ,greek in this way1 and thus individualized among his contemporaries1 not only by having a different inspiration from them1 but by depending for his interest on no convention fixed or fleeting and on no indirect support of accentuated personal characteristics4 ,perhaps the antiquary of a thousand years from now1 to whom the traits which to us distinguish so clearly the work of certain sculptors who seem to have nothing in common will betray only their common inspiration1 will be even less at a loss than ourselves to find traces of a common origin in such apparently different works as ,chapu's ,mercury and his ,jeunesse of the ,regnault monument4 ,he will by no means confound these with the classical productions of ,m4 ,millet or ,m4 ,cavelier1 we may be sure4 ,and this1 ,i repeat1 because their purely ,greek spirit1 the subordination in their conception and execution of the personal element1 the direct way in which the sculptor looks at the ideal1 the type1 not only distinguish them among contemporary works1 which are so largely personal expressions1 but give them an eminent individuality as well4 ,like the ,greek sculpture1 they are plainly the production of culture1 which in restraining wilfulness1 however happily inspired1 and imposing measure and poise1 nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the faculties themselves4 ,the skeptic who may very plausibly inquire the distinction between that vague entity1 the ideal1 and the personal idea of the artist concerned with it1 can be shown this distinction better than it can be expressed in words4 ,he will appreciate it very readily1 to return to ,chapu1 by contrasting the ,jeanne d',arc at the ,luxembourg ,gallery with such different treatment of the same theme as ,m4 ,bastien-,lepage's picture1 now in the ,new ,york ,metropolitan ,museum1 illustrates4 ,contrary to his almost invariable practice of neglecting even design in favor of impersonal natural representation1 ,bastien-,lepage's ,jeanne d',arc is the creature of wilful originality1 a sort of embodied protest against conventionalism in historical painting2 she is the illustration of a theory1 she is this and that systematically and not spontaneously2 the predominance of the painter's personality is plain in every detail of his creation4 ,chapu's ,maid is the ideal1 more or less perfectly expressed2 she is everybody's ,maid1 more or less adequately embodied4 ,the statue is the antipodes of the conventional much more so1 even1 to our modern sense1 than that of ,rude2 it suggests no competition with that at ,versailles or the many other characterless conceptions that abound4 ,it is full of expression--arrested just before it ceases to be suggestive2 of individuality restrained on the hither side of peculiarity4 ,the ,maid is hearing her voices as distinctly as ,bastien-,lepage's figure is1 but the fact is not forced upon the sense1 but is rather disclosed to the mind with great delicacy and the dignity becoming sculpture4 ,no one could1 of course1 mistake this work for an antique--an error that might possibly be made1 supposing the conditions favorable1 in the case of ,chapu's ,mercury2 but it presents1 nevertheless1 an excellent illustration of a modern working naturally and freely in the antique spirit4 ,it is as affecting1 as full of direct appeal1 as a modern work essays to be2 but its appeal is to the sense of beauty1 to the imagination1 and its effect is wrought in virtue of its art and not of its reality4 ,no1 individuality is no more inconsistent with the antique spirit than it is with eccentricity1 with the extravagances of personal expression4 ,is there more individuality in a thirteenth-century grotesque than in the ,faun of the ,capitol8 ,for sculpture especially1 art is eminently1 as it has been termed1 the discipline of genius1 and it is only after the sculptor's genius has submitted to the discipline of culture that it evinces an individuality which really counts1 which is really thrown out in relief on the background of crude personality4 ,and if there be no question of perfection1 but only of the artist's attitude1 one has but to ask himself the real meaning of the epithet ,shakespearian to be assured of the harmony between individuality and the most impersonal practice4 ,nevertheless1 this attitude and this perfection1 characteristic as they are of ,chapu's work1 have their peril4 ,when the quickening impulse1 of whose expression they are after all but conditions1 fails1 they suddenly appear so misplaced as to render insignificant what would otherwise have seemed respectable enough work4 ,everywhere else of great distinction--even in the execution of so perfunctory a task as a commission for a figure of ,mechanical ,art in the ,tribunal de ,commerce--at the great ,triennial ,exposition of #ahhc ,chapu was simply insignificant4 ,there was never a more striking illustration of the necessity of constant renewal of inspiration1 of the constant danger of lapse into the perfunctory and the hackneyed1 which threatens an artist of precisely ,chapu's qualities4 ,another of equal eminence escapes this peril2 there is not the same interdependence of form and content to be disturbed by failure in the latter2 or1 better still1 the merits of form are not so distinguished as to require imperatively a corresponding excellence of intention4 ,in fact1 it is because of the exceptional position that he occupies in deriving from the antique1 instead of showing the academic devotion to ,renaissance romanticism which characterizes the general movement of academic ,french sculpture1 that in any consideration of this sculpture ,chapu's work makes a more vivid impression than that of his contemporaries1 and thus naturally takes a foremost place4 ,,iii ,m4 ,paul ,dubois1 for example1 in the characteristics just alluded to1 presents the greatest possible contrast to ,chapu2 but he will never1 we may be sure1 give us a work that could be called insignificant4 ,his work will always express himself1 and his is a personality of very positive idiosyncrasy4 ,m4 ,dubois1 indeed1 is probably the strongest of the ,academic group of ,french sculptors of the day4 ,the tomb of ,general ,lamoriciere at ,nantes has remained until recently one of the very finest achievements of sculpture in modern times4 ,there is in effect nothing markedly superior in the ,cathedral of ,st4 ,denis1 which is a great deal to say--much more1 indeed1 than the glories of the ,italian ,renaissance1 which lead us out of mere momentum to forget the ,french1 permit one to appreciate4 ,indeed1 the sculpture of ,m4 ,dubois seems positively to have but one defect1 a defect which from one point of view is certainly a quality1 the defect of impeccability4 ,it is at any rate impeccable2 to seek in it a blemish1 or1 within its own limitations1 a distinct shortcoming1 is to lose one's pains4 ,as workmanship1 and workmanship of the subtler kind1 in which every detail of surface and structure is perceived to have been intelligently felt 7though rarely enthusiastically rendered71 it is not merely satisfactory1 but visibly and beautifully perfect4 ,but in the category in which ,m4 ,dubois is to be placed that is very little2 it is always delightful1 but it is not especially complimentary to ,m4 ,dubois1 to occupy one's self with it4 ,on the other hand1 by impeccability is certainly not here meant the mere success of expressing what one has to express--the impeccability of ,canova and his successors1 for example4 ,the difficulty is with ,m4 ,dubois's ideal1 with what he so perfectly expresses4 ,in the last analysis this is not his ideal more than ours4 ,and this1 indeed1 is what makes his work so flawless in our eyes1 so impeccable4 ,it seems as if of what he attempts he attains the type itself2 everyone must recognize its justness4 ,the reader will say at once here that ,i am cavilling at ,m4 ,dubois for what ,i praised in ,chapu4 ,but let us distinguish4 ,the two artists belong to wholly different categories4 ,chapu's inspiration is the antique spirit4 ,m4 ,dubois1 is1 like all academic ,french sculptors1 except ,chapu indeed1 absolutely and integrally a romanticist1 completely enamoured of the ,renaissance4 ,the two are so distinct as to be contradictory4 ,the moment ,m4 ,dubois gives us the type in a ,florentine ,minstrel1 to the exclusion of the personal and the particular1 he fails in imaginativeness and falls back on the conventional4 ,the type of a ,florentine ,minstrel is infallibly a convention4 ,m4 ,dubois1 not being occupied directly with the ideal1 is bound to carry his subject and its idiosyncrasies much farther than the observer could have foreseen4 ,to rest content with expressing gracefully and powerfully the notion common to all connoisseurs is to fall short of what one justly exacts of the romantic artist4 ,indeed1 in exchange for this one would accept very faulty work in this category with resignation4 ,whatever we may say or think1 however we may admire or approve1 in romantic art the quality that charms1 that fascinates1 is not adequacy but unexpectedness4 ,in addition to the understanding1 the instinct demands satisfaction4 ,the virtues of ,charity and ,faith and the ideas of ,military ,courage and ,meditation could not be more adequately illustrated than by the figures which guard the solemn dignity of ,general ,lamoriciere's sleep4 ,there is a certain force1 a breadth of view in the general conception1 something in the way in which the sculptor has taken his task1 closely allied to real grandeur4 ,the confident and even careless dependence upon the unaided value of its motive1 making hardly any appeal to the fancy on the one hand1 and seeking no poignant effect on the other1 endues the work with the poise and purity of effortless strength4 ,it conveys to the mind a clear impression of manliness1 of qualities morally refreshing4 ,but such work educates us so inexorably1 teaches us to be so exacting6 ,after enjoying it to its and our utmost1 we demand still something else1 something more moving1 more stirring1 something more directly appealing to our impulse and instinct4 ,even in his free and charming little ,st4 ,john ,baptist of the ,luxembourg1 and his admirable bust of ,baudry one feels like asking for more freedom still1 for more swing4 ,dubois certainly is the last artist who needs to be on his guard against letting himself go4 ,why is it that in varying so agreeably ,renaissance themes--compare the ,military ,courage and ,michael ,angelo's ,pensiero1 or the ,charity and the same group in ,della ,quercia's fountain at ,sienna--it is restraint1 rather than audacity1 that governs him8 ,is it caution or perversity8 ,in a word1 imaginativeness is what permanently interests and attaches1 the imaginativeness to which in sculpture the ordinary conventions of form are mere conditions1 and the ordinary conventions of idea mere material4 ,one can hardly apply generalities of the kind to ,m4 ,dubois without saying too much1 but it is nevertheless true that one may illustrate the grand style and yet fail of being intimately and acutely sympathetic2 and ,m4 ,dubois1 to whose largeness of treatment and nobility of conception no one will deny something truly suggestive of the grand style1 does thus fail4 ,it is not that he does not possess charm1 and charm in no mean proportion to his largeness and nobility1 but for the elevation of these into the realm of magic1 into the upper air of spontaneous spiritual activity1 his imagination has1 for the romantic imagination which it is1 a trifle too much self-possession--too much sanity1 if one chooses4 ,he has the ambitions1 the faculties1 of a lyric poet1 and he gives us too frequently recitative4 ,,iv ,it is agreeable in many ways to turn from the rounded and complete impeccability of ,m4 ,dubois to the fancy of ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux4 ,more than any of his rivals1 ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux possesses the charm of unexpectedness4 ,he is not perhaps to be called an original genius1 and his work will probably leave ,french sculpture very nearly where it found it4 ,indeed1 one readily perceives that he is not free from the trammels of contemporary convention4 ,but how easily he wears them1 and if no severe pains and birth-throes accompany the evolution of his conceptions1 how graceful these conceptions are6 ,they are perhaps of the ,canova family2 the ,harlequin1 for instance1 which has had such a prodigious success1 is essentially ,milanese sculpture2 essentially even the ,genius ,guarding the ,secret of the ,tomb is a fantastic rather than an original work4 ,but how the manner1 the treatment1 triumphs over the ,canova insipidity6 ,it is not only ,milanese sculpture better done1 the execution beautifully sapient and truthful instead of cheaply imitative1 the idea broadly enforced by the details instead of frittered away among them2 it is ,milanese sculpture essentially elevated and dignified4 ,loosely speaking1 the mere article de vertu becomes a true work of art4 ,and this transformation1 or rather this development of a germ of not too great intrinsic importance1 is brought about in the work of ,saint-,marceaux by the presence of an element utterly foreign to the ,canova sculpture and its succession--the element of character4 ,if to the clever workmanship of the ,italians he merely opposed workmanship of a superior kind as well as quality--thoroughly artistic workmanship1 that is to say--his sculpture would be far less interesting than it is4 ,he does1 indeed1 noticeably do this2 there is a felicity entirely delightful1 almost magical1 in every detail of his work4 ,but when one compares it with the sculpture of ,m4 ,dubois1 it is not of this that one thinks so much as of a certain individual character with which ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux always contrives to endue it4 ,this is not always in its nature sculptural1 it must be admitted1 and it approaches perhaps too near the character of genre to have the enduring interest that purely sculptural qualities possess4 ,but it is always individual1 piquant1 and charming1 and in it consists ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux's claim upon us as an artist4 ,no one else1 even given his powers of workmanship1 that is to say as perfectly equipped as he1 could have treated so thoroughly conventional a genre subject as the ,harlequin as he has treated it4 ,the mask is certainly one of the stock properties of the subject1 but notice how it is used to confer upon the whole work a character of mysterious witchery4 ,it is as a whole1 if you choose1 an article de ,paris1 with the distinction of being seriously treated2 the modelling and the movement admirable as far as they go1 but well within the bounds of that anatomically artistic expression which is the raison d'etre of sculpture and its choice of the human form as its material4 ,but the character saves it from this category2 what one may almost call its psychological interest redeems its superficial triviality4 ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux is always successful in this way4 ,one has only to look at the eyes of his figures to be convinced how subtle is his art of expressing character4 ,here he swings quite clear of all convention and manifests his genius positively and directly4 ,the unfathomable secret of the tomb is in the spiritual expression of the guarding genius1 and the elaborately complex movement concentrated upon the urn and directly inspired by the ephebes of the ,sistine ceiling is a mere blind4 ,the same is true of the portrait heads which within his range ,m4 ,saint ,marceaux does better than almost anyone4 ,m4 ,renan's ,confessions hardly convey as distinct a notion of character as his bust exhibited at the ,triennial of #ahhc4 ,many of the sculptors' anonymous heads1 so to speak1 are hardly less remarkable4 ,long after the sharp edge of one's interest in the striking pose of his ,harlequin and the fine movement and bizarre features of his ,genius has worn away1 their curious spiritual interest1 the individual cachet of their character1 will sustain them4 ,and so integrally true is this of all the productions of ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux's talent1 that it is quite as perceptible in works where it is not accentuated and emphasized as it is in those of which ,i have been speaking2 it is a quality that will bear refining1 that is even better indeed in its more subtle manifestations4 ,the figure of the ,luxembourg ,gallery1 the young ,dante reading ,virgil1 is an example2 a girl's head1 the forehead swathed in a turban1 first exhibited some years ago1 is another4 ,the charm of these is more penetrating1 though they are by no means either as popular or as important works as the ,genius of the ,tomb or the ,harlequin4 ,in the time to come ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux will probably rely more and more on their quality of grave and yet alert distinction1 and less on striking and eccentric variations of themes from ,michael ,angelo like the ,genius1 and illustrations like the ,harlequin of the artistic potentialities of the ,canova sculpture4 ,with considerably less force than ,m4 ,dubois and decidedly less piquancy than ,m4 ,saint-,marceaux1 ,m4 ,antonin ,mercie has perhaps greater refinement than either4 ,his outline is a trifle softer1 his sentiment more gracious1 more suave4 ,his work is difficult to characterize satisfactorily1 and the fact may of course proceed from its lack of force1 as well as from the well-understood difficulty of translating into epithets anything so essentially elusive as suavity and grace of form4 ,at one epoch in any examination of academic ,french sculpture that of ,m4 ,mercie seems the most interesting2 it is so free from exaggeration of any kind on the one hand1 it realizes its idea so satisfactorily on the other1 and this idea is so agreeable1 so refined1 and at the same time so dignified4 ,the ,david is an early work now in the ,luxembourg gallery1 reproductions of which are very popular1 and the reader may judge how well it justifies these remarks4 ,being an early work1 one cannot perhaps insist on its originality2 in ,france1 a young sculptor must be original at his peril2 his education is so complete1 he must have known and studied the beauties of classic sculpture so thoroughly1 that not to be impressed by them so profoundly as to display his appreciativeness in his first work is apt to argue a certain insensitiveness4 ,and every one cannot have creative genius4 ,what a number of admirable works we should be compelled to forego if creative genius were demanded of an artist of the present day when the best minds of the time are occupied with other things than art6 ,one is apt to forget that in our day the minds that correspond with the artistic miracles of the ,renaissance are absorbed in quite different departments of effort4 ,m4 ,mercie's ,david would perhaps never have existed but for ,donatello's4 ,as far as plastic motive is concerned1 it may without injustice be called a variant of that admirable creation1 and from every point of view except that of dramatic grace it is markedly inferior to its inspiration2 as an embodiment of triumphant youth1 of the divine ease with which mere force is overcome1 it has only a superficial resemblance to the original4 ,but if with ,m4 ,mercie ,david was simply a classic theme to be treated1 which is exactly what it of course was not with ,donatello1 it is undeniable that he has expressed himself very distinctly in his treatment4 ,a less sensitive artist would have vulgarized instead of merely varying the conception1 whereas one can easily see in ,m4 ,mercie's handling of it the ease1 science1 and felicitous movement that have since expressed themselves more markedly1 more positively1 but hardly more unmistakably1 in the sculptor's maturer works4 ,of these the chief is perhaps the ,gloria ,victis1 which now decorates the ,square ,montholon2 and its identity of authorship with the ,david is apparent in spite of its structural complexity and its far greater importance both in subject and execution4 ,its subject is the most inspiring that a ,french sculptor since the events of #ahgj-ga 7so lightly considered by those who only see the theatric side of ,french character7 could treat4 ,its general interest1 too1 is hardly inferior2 there is something generally ennobling in the celebration of the virtues of the brave defeated that surpasses the commonplace of paeans4 ,m4 ,mercie was1 in this sense1 more fortunate than the sculptor to whom the ,berlinese owe the bronze commemoration of their victory4 ,perhaps to call his treatment entirely worthy of the theme1 is to forget the import of such works as the tombs of the ,medici ,chapel at ,florence4 ,there is a region into whose precincts the dramatic quality penetrates only to play an insufficient part4 ,but in modern art to do more than merely to keep such truths in mind1 to insist on satisfactory plastic illustrations of them1 is not only to prepare disappointment for one's self1 but to risk misjudging admirable and elevated effort2 and to regret the fact that ,france had only ,m4 ,mercie and not ,michael ,angelo to celebrate her ,gloria ,victis is to commit both of these errors4 ,after all1 the subjects are different1 and the events of #ahgj-ga had compensations for ,france which the downfall of ,florentine liberty was without2 so that1 indeed1 a note of unmixed melancholy1 however lofty its strain1 would have been a discord which ,m4 ,mercie has certainly avoided4 ,he has avoided it in rather a marked way1 it is true4 ,his monument is dramatic and stirring rather than inwardly moving4 ,it is rhetorical rather than truly poetic2 and the admirable quality of its rhetoric1 its complete freedom from vulgar or sentimental alloy--its immense superiority to ,anglo-,saxon rhetoric1 in fine--does not conceal the truth that it is rhetoric1 that it is prose and not poetry after all4 ,mercie's ,gloria ,victis is very fine2 ,i know nothing so fine in modern sculpture outside of ,france4 ,but then there is not very much that is fine at all in modern sculpture outside of ,france2 and modern ,french sculpture1 and ,m4 ,mercie along with it as one of its most eminent ornaments1 have made it impossible to speak of them in a relative way4 ,the antique and the ,renaissance sculpture alone furnish their fit association1 and like the ,renaissance and the antique sculpture they demand a positive and absolute1 and not a comparative criticism4 ,v ,well1 then1 speaking thus absolutely and positively1 the cardinal defect of the ,institute sculpture--and the refined and distinguished work of ,m4 ,mercie better perhaps than almost any other assists us to see this--is its over-carefulness for style4 ,this is indeed the explanation of what ,i mentioned at the outset as the chief characteristic of this sculpture1 the academic inelasticity1 namely1 with which it essays to reproduce the ,renaissance romanticism4 ,but for the fondness for style integral in the ,french mind and character1 it would perceive the contradiction between this romanticism and any canons except such as are purely intuitive and indefinable4 ,in comparison with the ,renaissance sculptors1 the ,french academic sculptors of the present day are certainly too exclusive devotees of ,buffon's order and movement1 and too little occupied with the thought itself--too little individual4 ,in comparison with the antique1 this is less apparent1 but ,i fancy not less real4 ,we are so accustomed to think of the antique as the pure and simple embodiment of style1 as a sublimation1 so to speak of the individual into style itself1 that in this respect we are scarcely fair judges of the antique4 ,in any case we know very little of it2 we can hardly speak of it except by periods4 ,but it is plain that the ,greek is so superior to any subsequent sculpture in this one respect of style that we rarely think of its other qualities4 ,our judgment is inevitably a comparative one1 and inevitably a comparative judgment fixes our attention on the ,greek supremacy of style4 ,indeed1 in looking at the antique the thought itself is often alien to us1 and the order and movement1 being more nearly universal perhaps1 are all that occupy us4 ,a family tombstone lying in the cemetery at ,athens1 and half buried in the dust which blows from the ,piraeus roadway1 has more style than ,m4 ,mercie's ,quand-,meme group for ,belfort1 which has been the subject of innumerable encomiums1 and which has only style and no individuality whatever to commend it4 ,and the ,athenian tombstone was probably furnished to order by the marble-cutting artist of the period1 corresponding to those whose signs one sees at the entrances of our own large cemeteries4 ,still we may be sure that the ordinary ,athenian citizen who adjudged prizes between ,a,eschylus and ,sophocles1 and to whom ,pericles addressed the oration which only exceptional culture nowadays thoroughly appreciates1 found plenty of individuality in the decoration of the ,parthenon1 and was perfectly conscious of the difference between ,phidias and his pupils4 ,even now1 if one takes the pains to think of it1 the difference between such works as the so-called ,genius of the ,vatican and the ,athenian marbles1 or between the ,niobe group at ,florence and the ,venus torso at ,naples1 for example1 seems markedly individual enough1 though the element of style is still to our eyes the most prominent quality in each4 ,indeed1 if one really reflects upon the subject1 it will not seem exaggeration to say that to anyone who has studied both with any thoroughness it would be more difficult to individualize the mass of modern ,french sculpture than even that of the best ,greek epoch--the epoch when style was most perfect1 when its reign was1 as it sometimes appears to us1 most absolute4 ,and if we consider the ,renaissance sculpture1 its complexity is so great1 its individuality is so pronounced1 that one is apt to lose sight of the important part which style really plays in it4 ,in a work by ,donatello we see first of all his thought2 in a ,madonna of ,mino's it is the idea that charms us2 the ,delia ,robbia frieze at ,pistoja is pure genre4 ,but modern academic ,french sculpture feels the weight of ,de ,musset's handicap--it is born too late into a world too old4 ,french art in general feels this1 ,i think1 and painting suffers from it equally with sculpture4 ,culture1 the ,institute1 oppress individuality4 ,but whereas ,corot and ,millet have triumphed over the ,institute there are--there were1 at least1 till yesterday--hardly any ,millets and ,corots of sculpture whose triumph is as yet assured4 ,the tendency1 the weight of authority1 the verdict of criticism1 always conservative in ,france1 are all the other way4 ,at the ,ecole des ,beaux-,arts one learns1 negatively1 not to be ridiculous4 ,this is a great deal2 it is more than can be learned anywhere else nowadays--witness ,german1 ,italian1 above all ,english exhibitions4 ,positively one learns the importance of style2 and if it were not for academic ,french sculpture1 one would say that this was something the importance of which could not be exaggerated4 ,but in academic ,french sculpture it is exaggerated1 and1 what is fatal1 one learns to exaggerate it in the schools4 ,the traditions of ,houdon are noticeably forgotten4 ,not that ,houdon's art is not eminently characterized by style2 the ,san ,bruno at ,rome is in point of style an antique4 ,but compare his ,voltaire in the foyer of the ,comedie ,francaise with ,chapu's ,berryer of the ,palais de ,justice1 to take one of the very finest portrait-statues of the present day4 ,chapu's statue is more than irreproachable1 it is elevated and noble1 it is in the grand style2 but it is plain that its impressiveness is due to the fact that the subject is conceived as the ,orator in general and handled with almost a single eye to style4 ,the personal interest that accentuates every detail of the ,voltaire--the physiognomy1 the pose1 the right hand1 are marvellously characteristic--simply is not sought for in ,chapu's work4 ,of this quality there is more in ,houdon's bust of ,moliere1 whom of course ,houdon never saw1 than in almost any production of the modern school4 ,chapu's works1 and such exceptions as the heads of ,baudry and ,renan already mentioned1 apart1 one perceives that the modern school has made too many statues of the ,republique1 too many ,ledas and ,susannahs and ,quand-,memes and ,gloria ,victis4 ,and its penchant for ,renaissance canons only emphasizes the absolute commonplace of many of these4 ,on the other hand1 if ,houdon's felicitous harmony of style and individual force are forgotten1 there is hardly any recognized succession to the imaginative freedom1 the verve1 the triumphant personal fertility of ,rude and ,carpeaux4 ,at least1 such as there is has not preserved the dignity and in many instances scarcely the decorum of those splendid artists4 ,much of the sculpture which figures at the yearly ,salons is1 to be sure1 the absolute negation of style2 its main characteristic is indeed eccentricity2 its main virtues1 sincerity 7which in art1 of course1 is only a very elementary virtue7 and good modelling 7which in sculpture is equally elementary74 ,occasionally in the midst of this display of fantasticality there is a work of promise or even of positive interest4 ,the observer who has not a weak side for the graceful conceits1 invariably daintily presented and beautifully modelled1 of ,m4 ,moreau-,vauthier for example1 must be hard to please2 they are of the very essence of the article de ,paris1 and only abnormal primness can refuse to recognize the truth that the article de ,paris has its art side4 ,m4 ,moreau-,vauthier is not perhaps a modern ,cellini2 he has certainly never produced anything that could be classed with the ,perseus of the ,loggia de' ,lanzi1 or even with the ,fontainebleau ,diana2 but he does more than anyone else to keep alive the tradition of ,florentine preciosity1 and about everything he does there is something delightful4 ,still the fantastic has not made much headway in the ,institute1 and it is so foreign to the ,french genius1 which never tolerates it after it has ceased to be novel1 that it probably never will4 ,it is a great tribute to ,french catholicity of mind and largeness of temper that ,carpeaux's ,la ,danse remains in its position on the facade of the ,grand ,opera4 ,french sentiment regarding it was doubtless accurately expressed by the fanatic who tried to ink it indelibly after it was first exposed4 ,this vandal was right from his point of view--the point of view of style4 ,almost the one work of absolute spontaneity among the hundreds which without and within decorate ,m4 ,garnier's edifice1 it is thus a distinct jar in the general harmony2 it distinctly mars the order and movement of ,m4 ,garnier's thought1 which is fundamentally opposed to spontaneity4 ,but imagine the devotion to style of a milieu in which a person who would throw ink on a confessedly fine work of art is actuated by an impersonal dislike of incongruity6 ,dislike of the incongruous is almost a ,french passion1 and1 like all qualities1 it has its defect1 the defect of tolerating the conventional4 ,it is through this tolerance1 for example1 that one of the freest of ,french critics of art1 a true ,voltairian1 ,stendhal1 was led actually to find ,guido's ideal of beauty higher than ,raphael's1 and to miss entirely the grandeur of ,tintoretto4 ,critical opinion in ,france has not changed radically since ,stendhal's day4 ,,vi ,the ,french sculptor may draw his inspiration from the sources of originality itself1 his audience will measure the result by conventions4 ,it is this fact undoubtedly that is largely responsible for the over-carefulness for style already remarked4 ,hence the work of ,m4 ,aime-,millet and of ,professors ,guillaume and ,cavelier1 and the fact that they are professors4 ,hence also the election of ,m4 ,falguiere to succeed to the chair of the ,beaux-,arts left vacant by the death of ,jouffroy some years ago4 ,all of these have done admirable work4 ,professor ,guillaume's ,gracchi group at the ,luxembourg is alone enough to atone for a mass of productions of which the ,castalian ,fount of a recent ,salon is the cold and correct representative4 ,cavalier's ,gluck1 destined for the ,opera1 is spirited1 even if a trifle galvanic4 ,millet's ,apollo1 which crowns the main gable of the ,opera1 stands out among its author's other works as a miracle of grace and rhythmic movement4 ,m4 ,falguiere's admirers1 and they are numerous1 will object to the association here made4 ,falguiere's range has always been a wide one1 and everything he has done has undoubtedly merited a generous portion of the prodigious encomiums it has invariably obtained4 ,yet1 estimating it in any other way than by energy1 variety1 and mass1 it is impossible to praise it highly with precision4 ,it is too plainly the work of an artist who can do one thing as well as another1 and of which cleverness is1 after all1 the spiritual standard4 ,bartholdi1 who also should not be forgotten in any sketch of ,french sculpture1 would1 ,i am sure1 have acquitted himself more satisfactorily than ,falguiere did in the colossal groups of the ,trocadero and the ,arc de ,triomphe de l',etoile4 ,to acquit himself satisfactorily is ,bartholdi's specialty4 ,these two groups are the largest and most important that a sculptor can have to do4 ,the crowning of the ,arc de ,triomphe at least was a splendid opportunity4 ,neither of them had any distinction of outline1 of mass1 of relation1 or of idea4 ,both were conventional to the last degree4 ,that on the ,arc had even its ludicrous details1 such as occur only from artistic absent-mindedness in a work conceived and executed in a fatigued and hackneyed spirit4 ,the ,saint ,vincent de ,paul of the ,pantheon1 which justly passes for the sculptor's chef-d'oeuvre is in idea a work of large humanity4 ,m4 ,falguiere is behind no one in ability to conceive a subject of this kind with propriety1 and his subject here is inspiring if ever a subject was4 ,the ,petit ,martyr of the ,luxembourg has a real charm1 but it too is content with too little1 as one finds out in seeing it often2 and it is in no sense a large work1 scarcely larger than the tiresomely popular ,running ,boy of the same museum1 which nevertheless in its day marked an epoch in modelling4 ,indeed1 so slight is the spiritual hold that ,m4 ,falguiere has on one1 that it really seems as if he were at his best in such a frankly carnal production as his since variously modified ,nymph ,hunting of the ,triennial ,exposition of #ahhc4 ,the idea is nothing or next to nothing1 but the surface faire is superb4 ,m4 ,barrias1 ,m4 ,delaplanche1 and ,m4 ,le ,feuvre have each of them quite as much spontaneity as ,m4 ,falguiere1 though the work of neither is as important in mass and variety4 ,m4 ,delaplanche is always satisfactory1 and beyond this there is something large about what he does that confers dignity even in the absence of quick interest4 ,his proportions are simple1 his outline flowing1 and the agreeable ease of his compositions makes up to a degree for any lack of sympathetic sentiment or impressive significance3 witness his excellent ,maternal ,instruction1 of the little park in front of ,sainte ,clothilde4 ,m4 ,le ,feuvre's qualities are very nearly the reverse of these3 he has a fondness for integrity quite hostile in his case to simplicity4 ,in his very frank appeal to one's susceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations1 which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends4 ,the result is a mannerism that in the end ceases to impress1 and even becomes disagreeable4 ,as nearly as may be in a ,french sculptor it borders on sentimentality1 and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures become limp1 and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear less touching than lackadaisical4 ,but his being himself too conscious of it should not obscure the fact that he has a way of his own4 ,m4 ,barrias is an artist of considerably greater powers than either ,m4 ,le ,feuvre or ,m4 ,delaplanche2 but one has a vague perception that his powers are limited1 and that to desire in his case what one so sincerely wishes in the case of ,m4 ,dubois1 namely1 that he would let himself go1 would be unwise4 ,happily1 when he is at his best there is no temptation to form such a wish4 ,the ,premieres ,funerailles is a superb work--the chef-d'oeuvre of our modern sculpture1 a ,french critic enthusiastically terms it4 ,it is hardly that2 it has hardly enough spiritual distinction--not quite enough of either elegance or elevation--to merit such sweeping praise4 ,but it may be justly termed1 ,i think1 the most completely representative of the masterpieces of that sculpture4 ,its triumph over the prodigious difficulties of elaborate composition in the round--difficulties to which ,m4 ,barrias succumbed in the ,spartacus of the ,tuileries ,gardens--and its success in subordinating the details of a group to the end of enforcing a single motive1 preserving the while their individual interest1 are complete4 ,nothing superior in this respect has been done since ,john of ,bologna's ,rape of the ,sabines4 ,,vii ,m4 ,emmanuel ,fremiet occupies a place by himself4 ,there have been but two modern sculptors who have shown an equally pronounced genius for representing animals--namely1 ,barye1 of course1 and ,barye's clever but not great pupil1 ,cain4 ,the tigress in the ,central ,park1 perhaps the best bronze there 7the competition is not exacting71 and the best also of the several variations of the theme of which1 at one time1 the sculptor apparently could not tire1 familiarizes ,americans with the talent of ,cain4 ,in this association ,rouillard1 whose horse in the ,trocadero ,gardens is an animated and elegant work1 ought to be mentioned1 but it is hardly as good as the neighboring elephant of ,fremiet as mere animal representation 7the genre exists and has excellences and defects of its own71 while in more purely artistic worth it is quite eclipsed by its rival4 ,still if fauna is interesting in and of itself1 which no one who knows ,barye's work would controvert1 it is still more interesting when1 to put it brutally1 something is done with it4 ,in his ambitious and colossal work at the ,trocadero1 ,m4 ,fremiet does in fact use his fauna freely as artistic material1 though at first sight it is its zooelogical interest that appears paramount4 ,the same is true of the elephant near by1 in which it seems as if he had designedly attacked the difficult problem of rendering embodied awkwardness decorative4 ,still more conspicuous1 of course1 is the artistic interest1 the fancy1 the humor1 the sportive grace of his ,luxembourg group of a young satyr feeding honey to a brace of bear's cubs1 because he here concerns himself more directly with his idea and gives his genius freer play4 ,and everyone will remember the sensation caused by his impressively repulsive ,gorilla ,carrying off a ,woman4 ,but it is when he leaves this kind of thing entirely1 and1 wholly forgetful of his studies at the ,jardin des ,plantes1 devotes himself to purely monumental work1 that he is at his best4 ,and in saying this ,i do not at all mean to insist on the superiority of monumental sculpture to the sculpture of fauna2 it is superior1 and ,barye himself cannot make one content with the exclusive consecration of admirable talent to picturesque anatomy illustrating distinctly unintellectual passions4 ,m4 ,fremiet1 in ecstasy over his picturesque anatomy at the ,jardin des ,plantes1 would scout this2 but it is nevertheless true that in such works as the ,age de la pierre1 which1 if it may be called a monumental clock-top1 is nevertheless certainly monumental2 his ,louis d',orleans1 in the quadrangle of the restored ,chateau de ,pierrefonds2 his ,jeanne d',arc 7the later statue is not1 ,i think1 essentially different from the earlier one72 and his ,torch-bearer of the ,middle ,ages1 in the new ,hotel de ,ville of ,paris1 not only is his subject a subject of loftier and more enduring interest than his elephants and deer and bears1 but his own genius finds a more congenial medium of expression4 ,in other words1 any one who has seen his ,torch-bearer or his ,louis d',orleans must conclude that ,m4 ,fremiet is losing his time at the ,jardin des ,plantes4 ,in monumental works of the sort he displays a commanding dignity that borders closely upon the grand style itself4 ,the ,jeanne d',arc is indeed criticised for lack of style4 ,the horse is fine1 as always with ,m4 ,fremiet2 the action of both horse and rider is noble1 and the homogeneity of the two1 so to speak1 is admirably achieved4 ,but the character of the ,maid is not perfectly satisfactory to a priori critics1 to critics who have more or less hard and fast notions about the immiscibility of the heroic and the familiar4 ,the ,jeanne d',arc is of course a heroic statue1 illustrating one of the most puissant of profane legends2 and it is unquestionably familiar and1 if one chooses1 defiantly unpretentious4 ,perhaps the ,maid as ,m4 ,fremiet represents her could never have accomplished legend-producing deeds4 ,certainly she is the ,maid neither of ,chapu1 nor of ,bastien-,lepage1 nor of the current convention4 ,she is1 rather1 pretty1 sympathetically childlike1 mignonne2 but ,m4 ,fremiet's conception is an original and a gracious one1 and even the critic addicted to formulae has only to forget its title to become thoroughly in love with it2 beside this merit a priori shortcomings count very little4 ,but the other two works just mentioned are open to no objection of this kind or of any other1 and in the category to which they belong they are splendid works4 ,since ,donatello and ,verrocchio nothing of the kind has been done which surpasses them2 and it is only ,m4 ,fremiet's penchant for animal sculpture1 and his fondness for exercising his lighter fancy in comparatively trivial objets de vertu1 that obscure in any degree his fine talent for illustrating the grand style with natural ease and large simplicity4 ,,viii ,i have already mentioned the most representative among those who have arrived of the school of academic ,french sculpture as it exists to-day1 though it would be easy to extend the list with ,antonin ,carles1 whose ,jeunesse of the ,world's ,fair of #ahhi is a very graceful embodiment of adolescence2 ,suchetet1 whose ,byblis of the same exhibition caused his early death to be deplored2 ,adrien ,gaudez1 ,etcheto1 ,idrac1 and1 of course1 many others of distinction4 ,there is no looseness in characterizing this as a school2 it has its own qualities and its corresponding defects4 ,it stands by itself--apart from the ,greek sculpture and from its inspiration1 the ,renaissance1 and from the more recent traditions of ,houdon1 or of ,rude and ,carpeaux4 ,it is a thoroughly legitimate and unaffected expression of national thought and feeling at the present time1 at once splendid and simple4 ,the moment of triumph in any intellectual movement is1 however1 always a dangerous one4 ,a slack-water period of intellectual slothfulness nearly always ensues4 ,ideas which have previously been struggling to get a hearing have become accepted ideas that have almost the force of axioms2 no one thinks of their justification1 of their basis in real truth and fact2 they take their place in the great category of conventions4 ,the mind feels no longer the exhilaration of discovery1 the stimulus of fresh perception2 the sense becomes jaded1 enthusiasm impossible4 ,dealing with the same material and guided by the same principles1 its production becomes inevitably hackneyed1 artificial1 lifeless2 the ,zeit-,geist1 the ,time-,spirit1 is really a kind of ,sisyphus1 and the essence of life is movement4 ,this law of perpetual renewal1 of the periodical quickening of the human spirit1 explains the barrenness of the inheritance of the greatest men2 shows why originality is a necessary element of perfection2 why ,phidias1 ,praxiteles1 ,donatello1 ,michael ,angelo 7not to go outside of our subject71 had no successors4 ,once a thing is done it is done for all time1 and the study of perfection itself avails only as a stimulus to perfection in other combinations4 ,in fact1 the more nearly perfect the model the greater the necessity for an absolute break with it in order to secure anything like an equivalent in living force2 in its direction at least everything vital has been done4 ,so its lack of original force1 its over-carefulness for style1 its inevitable sensitiveness to the criticism that is based on convention1 make the weak side of the ,french academic sculpture of the present day1 fine and triumphant as it is4 ,that the national thought and feeling are not a little conventional1 and have the academic rather than a spontaneous inspiration1 has1 however1 lately been distinctly felt as a misfortune and a limitation by a few sculptors whose work may be called the beginning of a new movement out of which1 whatever may be its own limitations1 nothing but good can come to ,french sculpture and of which the protagonists are ,auguste ,rodin and ,jules ,dalou4 ,,vi ,,the ,,new ,,movement ,,in ,,sculpture ,i ,side by side with the academic current in ,french art has moved of recent years a naturalist and romantic impulse whose manifestations have been always vigorous though occasionally exaggerated4 ,in any of the great departments of activity nationally pursued--as art has been pursued in ,france since ,francis ,i4--there are always these rival currents1 of which now one and now the other constantly affects the ebb and flow of the tide of thought and feeling4 ,the classic and romantic duel of #ahcj1 the rise of the naturalist opposition to ,hugo and romanticism in our own day1 are familiar instances of this phenomenon in literature4 ,the revolt of ,gericault and ,delacroix against ,david and ,ingres are equally well known in the field of painting4 ,of recent years the foundation of the periodical ,l',art and its rivalry with the conservative ,gazette des ,beaux ,arts mark with the same definiteness1 and an articulate precision1 the same conflict between truth1 as new eyes see it1 and tradition4 ,never1 perhaps1 since the early ,renaissance1 however1 has nature asserted her supremacy over convention in such unmistakable1 such insistent1 and1 one may say1 ,i think1 such intolerant fashion as she is doing at the present moment4 ,sculpture1 in virtue of the defiant palpability of its material1 is the most impalpable of the plastic arts1 and therefore it feels less quickly than the rest1 perhaps1 the impress of the influences of the epoch and their classifying canons4 ,natural imitation shows first in sculpture1 and subsists in it longest4 ,but convention once its conqueror1 the return to nature is here most tardy1 because1 owing to the impalpable1 the elusive quality of sculpture1 though natural standards may everywhere else be in vogue1 no one thinks of applying them to so specialized an expression4 ,its variation depends therefore more completely on the individual artist himself4 ,niccolo ,pisano1 for example1 died when ,giotto was two years old1 but1 at the other end of the historic line of modern art1 it has taken years since ,delacroix to furnish recognition for ,auguste ,rodin4 ,the stronghold of the ,institute had been mined many times by revolutionary painters before ,dalou took the grand medal of the ,salon4 ,owing to the relative and in fact polemic position which these two artists occupy1 the movement which they represent1 and of which as yet they themselves form a chief part1 a little obscures their respective personalities1 which are nevertheless1 in sculpture1 by far the most positive and puissant of the present epoch4 ,m4 ,rodin's work1 especially1 is so novel that one's first impression in its presence is of its implied criticism of the ,institute4 ,one thinks first of its attitude1 its point of view1 its end1 aim1 and means1 and of the utter contrast of these with those of the accepted contemporary masters in his art--of ,dubois and ,chapu1 ,mercie and ,saint-,marceaux4 ,one judges generally1 and instinctively avoids personal and direct impressions4 ,the first thought is not1 ,are the ,saint ,jean and the ,bourgeois de ,calais successful works of art8 ,but1 ,can they be successful if the accepted masterpieces of modern sculpture are not to be set down as insipid8 ,one is a little bewildered4 ,it is easy to see and to estimate the admirable traits and the shortcomings of ,m4 ,dubois's delightful and impressive reminiscences of the ,renaissance1 of ,m4 ,mercie's refined and graceful compositions4 ,they are of their time and place4 ,they embody1 in distinguished manner and in an accentuated degree1 the general inspiration4 ,their spiritual characteristics are traditional and universal1 and technically1 without perhaps often passing beyond it1 they exhaust cleverness4 ,you may enjoy or resent their classic and exemplary excellences1 as you feel your taste to have suffered from the lack or the superabundance of academic influences2 ,i cannot fancy an ,american insensitive to their charm4 ,but it is plain that their perfection is a very different thing from the characteristics of a strenuous artistic personality seeking expression4 ,if these latter when encountered are seen to be evidently of an extremely high order1 contemporary criticism1 at all events1 should feel at once the wisdom of beginning with the endeavor to appreciate1 instead of making the degree of its own familiarity with them the test of their merit4 ,french aesthetic authority1 which did this in the instances of ,barye1 of ,delacroix1 of ,millet1 of ,manet1 of ,puvis de ,chavannes1 did it also for many years in the instance of ,m4 ,rodin4 ,it owes its defeat in the contest with him--for like the recalcitrants in the other contests1 ,m4 ,rodin has definitively triumphed--to the unwise attempt to define him in terms heretofore applicable enough to sculptors1 but wholly inapplicable to him4 ,it failed to see that the thing to define in his work was the man himself1 his temperament1 his genius4 ,taken by themselves and considered as characteristics of the ,institute sculptors1 the obvious traits of this work might1 that is to say1 be adjudged eccentric and empty4 ,fancy ,professor ,guillaume suddenly subordinating academic disposition of line and mass to true structural expression6 ,one would simply feel the loss of his accustomed style and harmony4 ,with ,m4 ,rodin1 who deals with nature directly1 through the immediate force of his own powerful temperament1 to feel the absence of the ,institute training and traditions is absurd4 ,the question in his case is simply whether or no he is a great artistic personality1 an extraordinary and powerful temperament1 or whether he is merely a turbulent and capricious protestant against the measure and taste of the ,institute4 ,but this is really no longer a question1 however it may have been a few years ago2 and when his ,dante portal for the new ,palais des ,arts ,decoratifs shall have been finished1 and the public had an opportunity to see what the sculptor's friend and only serious rival1 ,m4 ,dalou1 calls one of the most1 if not the most original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of the nineteenth century1 it will be recognized that ,m4 ,rodin1 so far from being amenable to the current canon1 has brought the canon itself to judgment4 ,how and why1 people will perceive in proportion to their receptivity4 ,candor and intelligence will suffice to appreciate that the secret of ,m4 ,rodin's art is structural expression1 and that it is this and not any superficial eccentricity of execution that definitely distinguishes him from the ,institute4 ,just as his imagination1 his temperament1 his spiritual energy and ardor individualize the positive originality of his motive1 so the expressiveness of his treatment sets him aside from all as well as from each of the ,institute sculptors in what may be broadly called technical attitude4 ,no sculptor has ever carried expression further4 ,the sculpture of the present day has certainly not occupied itself much with it4 ,the ,institute is perhaps a little afraid of it4 ,it abhors the baroque rightly enough1 but very likely it fails to see that the expression of such sculpture as ,m4 ,rodin's no more resembles the contortions of the ,dresden ,museum giants than it does the composure of ,m4 ,delaplanche4 ,the baroque is only violent instead of placid commonplace1 and is as conventional as any professor of sculpture could desire4 ,expression means individual character completely exhibited rather than conventionally suggested4 ,it is certainly not too much to say that in the sculpture of the present day the sense of individual character is conveyed mainly by convention4 ,the physiognomy has usurped the place of the physique1 the gesture of the form1 the pose of the substance4 ,and face1 gesture1 form are1 when they are not brutally naturalistic and so not art at all1 not individual and native1 but typical and classic4 ,very much of the best modern sculpture might really have been treated like those antique figurines of which the bodies were made by wholesale1 being supplied with individual heads when the time came for using them4 ,this has been measurably true since the disappearance of the classic dress and the concealment of the body by modern costume4 ,the nudes of the early ,renaissance1 in painting still more than in sculpture1 are differentiated by the faces4 ,the rest of the figure is generally conventionalized as thoroughly as the face itself is in ,byzantine and the hands in ,giottesque painting4 ,giotto could draw admirably1 it need not be said4 ,he did draw as well as the contemporary feeling for the human figure demanded4 ,when the ,renaissance reached its climax and the study of the antique led artists to look beneath drapery and interest themselves in the form1 expression made an immense step forward4 ,color was indeed almost lost sight of in the new interest1 not to reappear till the ,venetians4 ,but owing to the lack of visible nudity1 to the lack of the classic gymnasia1 to the concealments of modern attire1 the knowledge of and interest in the form remained1 within certain limits1 an esoteric affair4 ,the general feeling1 even where1 as in the ,italy of the quattro and cinque centi1 everyone was a connoisseur1 did not hold the artist to expression in his anatomy as the general ,greek feeling did4 ,everyone was a connoisseur of art alone1 not of nature as well4 ,consequently1 in spite of such an enthusiastic genius as ,donatello1 who probably more than any other modern has most nearly approached the ,greeks--not in spiritual attitude1 for he was eminently of his time1 but in his attitude toward nature--the human form in art has for the most part remained1 not conventionalized as in the ,byzantine and ,gothic times1 but thoroughly conventional4 ,michael ,angelo himself certainly may be charged with lending the immense weight of his majestic genius to perpetuate the conventional4 ,it is not his distortion of nature1 as pre-,raphaelite limitedness glibly asserts1 but his carelessness of her prodigious potentialities1 that marks one side of his colossal accomplishment4 ,just as the lover of architecture as architecture will protest that ,michael ,angelo's was meretricious1 however inspiring1 so ,m4 ,rodin declares his sculpture unsatisfactory1 however poetically impressive4 ,he used to do a little anatomy evenings1 he said to me1 and used his chisel next day without a model4 ,he repeats endlessly his one type--the youth of the ,sistine ceiling4 ,any particular felicity of expression you are apt to find him borrowing from ,donatello--such as1 for instance1 the movement of the arm of the ',david1' which is borrowed from ,donatello's ',st4 ,john ,baptist4' ,most people to whom ,michael ,angelo's creations appear celestial in their majesty at once and in their winningness would deny this4 ,but it is worth citing both because ,m4 ,rodin strikes so many crude apprehensions as a ,french ,michael ,angelo1 whereas he is so radically removed from him in point of view and in practice that the unquestionable spiritual analogy between them is rather like that between kindred spirits working in different arts1 and because1 also1 it shows not only what ,m4 ,rodin is not1 but what he is4 ,the grandiose does not run away with him4 ,his imagination is occupied largely in following out nature's suggestions4 ,his sentiment does not so drench and saturate his work as to float it bodily out of the realm of natural into that of supernal beauty1 there to crystallize in decorative and puissant visions appearing out of the void and only superficially related to their corresponding natural forms4 ,standing before the ,medicean tombs the modern susceptibility receives perhaps the most poignant1 one may almost say the most intolerable1 impression to be obtained from any plastic work by the hand of man2 but it is a totally different impression from that left by the sculptures of the ,parthenon pediments1 not only because the sentiment is wholly different1 but because in the great ,florentine's work it is so overwhelming as wholly to dominate purely natural expression1 natural character1 natural beauty4 ,in the ,medici ,chapel the soul is exalted2 in the ,british ,museum the mind is enraptured4 ,the object itself seems to disappear in the one case1 and to reveal itself in the other4 ,i do not mean to compare ,m4 ,rodin with the ,greeks--from whom in sentiment and imagination he is1 of course1 as totally removed as what is intensely modern must be from the antique--any more than ,i mean to contrast him with ,michael ,angelo1 except for the purposes of clearer understanding of his general aesthetic attitude4 ,association of anything contemporary with what is classic1 and especially with what is greatest in the classic1 is always a perilous proceeding4 ,very little time is apt to play havoc with such classification4 ,i mean only to indicate that the resemblance to ,michael ,angelo1 found by so many persons in such works as the ,dante doors1 is only of the loosest kind--as one might1 through their common lusciousness1 compare peaches with pomegranates--and that to the discerning eye1 or the eye at all experienced in observing sculpture1 ,m4 ,rodin's sculpture is far more closely related to that of ,donatello and the ,greeks4 ,it1 too1 reveals rather than constructs beauty1 and by the expression of character rather than by the suggestion of sentiment4 ,an illustration of ,m4 ,rodin's affinity with the antique is an incident which he related to me of his work upon his superb ,age d',airain4 ,he was in ,naples2 he saw nature in freer inadvertence than she allows elsewhere2 he had the best of models4 ,under these favoring circumstances he spent three months on a leg of his statue2 which is equivalent to saying that ,i had at last absolutely mastered it1 said he4 ,one day in the ,museo ,nazionale he noticed in an antique the result of all his study and research4 ,nature1 in other words1 is ,m4 ,rodin's material in the same special sense in which it was the antique material1 and in which1 since ,michael ,angelo and the high ,renaissance1 it has been for the most part only the sculptor's means4 ,it need not be said that the personality of the artist may be as strenuous in the one case as in the other2 unless1 indeed1 we maintain1 as perhaps we may1 that individuality is more apt to atrophy in the latter instance2 for as one gets farther and farther away from nature he is in more danger from conventionality than from caprice4 ,and this is in fact what has happened since the high ,renaissance1 the long line of conventionalities being continued1 sometimes punctuated here and there as by ,clodion or ,houdon1 ,david1 ,rude1 or ,barye1 sometimes rising into great dignity and refinement of style and intelligence1 as in the contemporary sculpture of the ,institute1 but in general almost purely decorative or sentimental1 and1 so far as natural expression is concerned1 confining itself to psychological rather than physical character4 ,what is it1 for instance1 that distinguishes a group like ,m4 ,dubois's ,charity from the genre sentiment or incident of some ,german or ,italian professor8 ,qualities of style1 of refined taste1 of elegance1 of true intelligence4 ,its artistic interest is purely decorative and sentimental4 ,really what its average admirer sees in it is the same moral appeal that delights the simple admirers of ,german or ,italian treatment of a similar theme4 ,it is simply infinitely higher bred4 ,its character is developed no further4 ,its significance as form is not insisted on4 ,the parts are not impressively differentiated1 and their mysterious mutual relations and correspondences are not dwelt on4 ,the physical character1 with its beauties1 its salient traits of every kind1 appealing so strongly to the sculptor to whom nature appears plastic as well as suggestive1 is wholly neglected in favor of the psychological suggestion4 ,and the individual character1 the cachet of the whole1 the artistic essence and ensemble1 that is to say1 ,m4 ,dubois has1 after the manner of most modern sculpture1 conveyed in a language of convention1 which since the time of the ,siennese fountain1 at all events1 has been classical4 ,the literary artist does not proceed in this way4 ,he does not content himself with telling us1 for example1 that one of his characters is a good man or a bad man1 an able1 a selfish1 a tall1 a blonde1 or a stupid man1 as the case may be4 ,he takes every means to express his character1 and to do it1 according to ,m4 ,taine's definition of a work of art1 more completely than it appears in nature4 ,he recognizes its complexity and enforces the sense of reality by a thousand expedients of what one may almost call contrasting masses1 derivative movements1 and balancing planes4 ,he distinguishes every possible detail that plays any structural part1 and1 in short1 instead of giving us the mere symbol of the ,sunday-school books1 shows us a concrete organism at once characteristic and complex4 ,judged with this strictness1 which in literary art is elementary1 how much of the best modern sculpture is abstract1 symbolic1 purely typical4 ,what insipid fragments most of the really eminent ,institute statues would make were their heads knocked off by some band of modern barbarian invaders4 ,in the event of such an irruption1 would there be any torsos left from which future ,poussins could learn all they should know of the human form8 ,would there be any disjecta membra from which skilled anatomists could reconstruct the lost ensemble1 or at any rate make a shrewd guess at it8 ,would anything survive mutilation with the serene confidence in its fragmentary but everywhere penetrating interest which seems to pervade the most fractured fraction of a ,greek relief on the ,athenian acropolis8 ,yes1 there would be the debris of ,auguste ,rodin's sculpture4 ,in our day the human figure has never been so well understood4 ,back of such expressive modelling as we note in the ,saint ,jean1 in the ,adam and ,eve1 in the ,calaisiens1 in a dozen figures of the ,dante doors1 is a knowledge of anatomy such as even in the purely scientific profession of surgery can proceed only from an immense fondness for nature1 an insatiable curiosity as to her secrets1 an inexhaustible delight in her manifestations4 ,from the point of view of such knowledge and such handling of it1 it is no wonder that the representations of nature which issue from the ,institute seem superficial4 ,one can understand that from this point of view very delightful sculpture1 very refined1 very graceful1 very perfectly understood within its limits1 may appear like baudruche--inflated gold-beater's skin1 that is to say1 of which toy animals are made in ,france1 and which has thus passed into studio argot as the figure for whatever lacks structure and substance4 ,ask ,m4 ,rodin the explanation of a movement1 an attitude1 in one of his works which strikes your convention-steeped sense as strange1 and he will account for it just as an anatomical demonstrator would--pointing out its necessary derivation from some disposition of another part of the figure1 and not at all dwelling on its grace or its other purely decorative felicity4 ,its artistic function in his eyes is to aid in expressing fully and completely the whole of which it forms a part1 not to constitute a harmonious detail merely agreeable to the easily satisfied eye4 ,but then the whole will look anatomical rather than artistic4 ,there is the point exactly4 ,will it8 ,i remember speculating about this in conversation with ,m4 ,rodin himself4 ,isn't there danger1 ,i said1 of getting too fond of nature1 of dissecting with so much enthusiasm that the pleasure of discovery may obscure one's feeling for pure beauty1 of losing the artistic in the purely scientific interest1 of becoming pedantic1 of imitating rather than constructing1 of missing art in avoiding the artificial8 ,i had some difficulty in making myself understood2 this perpetual see-saw of nature and art which enshrouds aesthetic dialectics as in a ,scotch mist seems curiously factitious to the truly imaginative mind4 ,but ,i shall always remember his reply1 when he finally made me out1 as one of the finest severings conceivable of a ,gordian knot of this kind4 ,oh1 yes1 said he2 there is1 no doubt1 such a danger for a mediocre artist4 ,m4 ,rodin is1 whatever one may think of him1 certainly not a mediocre artist4 ,the instinct of self-preservation may incline the ,institute to assert that he obtrudes his anatomy4 ,but prejudice itself can blind no one of intelligence to his immense imaginative power1 to his poetic possession4 ,his work precisely illustrates what ,i take to have been1 at the best epochs1 the relations of nature to such art as is loosely to be called imitative art--what assuredly were those relations in the mind of the ,greek artist4 ,nature supplies the parts and suggests their cardinal relations4 ,insufficient study of her leaves these superficial and insipid4 ,inartistic absorption in her leaves them lifeless4 ,the imagination which has itself conceived the whole1 the idea1 fuses them in its own heat into a new creation which is imitative only in the sense that its elements are not inventions4 ,the art of sculpture has retraced its steps far enough to make pure invention1 as of ,gothic griffins and ,romanesque symbology1 unsatisfactory to everyone4 ,but1 save in ,m4 ,rodin's sculpture1 it has not fully renewed the old alliance with nature on the old terms--,donatello's terms2 the terms which exact the most tribute from nature1 which insist on her according her completest significance1 her closest secrets1 her faculty of expressing character as well as of suggesting sentiment4 ,very beautiful works are produced without her aid to this extent4 ,we may be sure of this without asking ,m4 ,rodin to admit it4 ,he would not do his own work so well were he prepared to2 as ,millet pointed out when asked to write a criticism of some other painter's canvas1 in estimating the production of his fellows an artist is inevitably handicapped by the feeling that he would have done it very differently himself4 ,it is easy not to share ,m4 ,rodin's gloomy vaticinations as to ,french sculpture based on the continued triumph of the ,institute style and suavity4 ,the ,institute sculpture is too good for anyone not himself engaged in the struggle to avoid being impressed chiefly by its qualities to the neglect of its defects4 ,at the same time it is clear that no art can long survive in undiminished vigor that does not from time to time renew its vitality by resteeping itself in the influences of nature4 ,and so ,m4 ,rodin's service to ,french sculpture becomes1 at the present moment1 especially signal and salutary because ,french sculpture1 however refined and delightful1 shows1 just now1 very plainly the tendency toward the conventional which has always proved so dangerous1 and because ,m4 ,rodin's work is a conspicuous1 a shining example of the return to nature on the part not of a mere realist1 naturalist1 or other variety of mediocre artist1 but of a profoundly poetic and imaginative temperament4 ,this is why1 one immediately perceives in studying his works1 ,rodin's treatment1 while exhausting every contributary detail to the end of complete expression1 is never permitted to fritter away its energy either in the mystifications of optical illusion1 or in the infantine idealization of what is essentially subordinate and ancillary4 ,this is why he devotes three months to the study of a leg1 for example--not to copy1 but to possess it4 ,indeed1 no sculptor of our time has made such a sincere and1 in general1 successful1 effort to sink the sense of the material in the conception1 the actual object in the artistic idea4 ,one loses all sense of bronze or marble1 as the case may be1 not only because the artistic significance is so overmastering that one is exclusively occupied in apprehending it1 but because there are none of those superficial graces1 those felicities of surface modelling1 which1 however they may delight1 infallibly distract as well4 ,such excellences have assuredly their place4 ,when the motive is conventional or otherwise insipid1 or even when its character is distinctly light without being trivial1 they are legitimately enough agreeable4 ,and because1 in our day1 sculptural motives have generally been of this order we have become accustomed to look for such excellences1 and1 very justly1 to miss them when they are absent4 ,grace of pose1 suavity of outline1 pleasing disposition of mass1 smooth1 round deltoids and osseous articulations1 and perpetually changing planes of flesh and free play of muscular movement1 are excellences which1 in the best of academic ,french sculpture1 are sensuously delightful in a high degree4 ,but they invariably rivet our attention on the successful way in which the sculptor has used his bronze or marble to decorative ends1 and when they are accentuated so as to dominate the idea they invariably enfeeble its expression4 ,with ,m4 ,rodin one does not think of his material at all2 one does not reflect whether he used it well or ill1 caused it to lose weight and immobility to the eye or not1 because all his superficial modelling appears as an inevitable deduction from the way in which he has conceived his larger subject1 and not as handling at all4 ,in reality1 of course1 it is the acme of sensitive handling4 ,the point is a nice one4 ,his practice is a dangerous one4 ,it would be fatal to a less strenuous temperament4 ,to leave1 in a manner and so far as obvious insistence on it goes1 handling to take care of itself1 is to incur the peril of careless1 clumsy1 and even brutal1 modelling1 which1 so far from dissembling its existence behind the prominence of the idea1 really emphasizes itself unduly because of its imperfect and undeveloped character4 ,detail that is neglected really acquires a greater prominence than detail that is carried too far1 because it is sensuously disagreeable4 ,but when an artist like ,m4 ,rodin conceives his spiritual subject so largely and with so much intensity that mere sensuous agreeableness seems too insignificant to him even to be treated with contempt1 he treats his detail solely with reference to its centripetal and organic value1 which immediately becomes immensely enhanced1 and the detail itself1 dropping thus into its proper place1 takes on a beauty wholly transcending the ordinary agreeable aspect of sculptural detail4 ,and the ensemble1 of course1 is in this way enforced as it can be in no other1 and we get an idea of ,victor ,hugo or ,st4 ,john ,baptist so powerfully and yet so subtly suggested1 that the abstraction seems actually all that we see in looking at the concrete bust or statue4 ,objections to ,m4 ,rodin's handling as eccentric or capricious1 appear to the sympathetic beholder of one of his majestic works the very acme of misappreciation1 and their real excuse--which is1 as ,i have said1 the fact that such handling is as unfamiliar as the motives it accompanies--singularly poor and feeble4 ,as for the common nature of these motives1 the character of the personality which appears in their varied presentments1 it is almost idle to speak in the absence of the work itself1 so eloquent is this at once and so untranslatable4 ,but it may be said approximately that ,m4 ,rodin's temperament is in the first place deeply romantic4 ,everything the ,institute likes repels him4 ,he has the poetic conception of art and its mission1 and in poetry any authoritative and codifying consensus seems to him paradoxical4 ,style1 in his view1 unless it is something wholly uncharacterizable1 is a vague and impalpable spirit breathing through the work of some strongly marked individuality1 or else it is formalism4 ,he delights in the fantasticality of the ,gothic4 ,the west facade of ,rouen inspires him more than all the formulae of ,palladian proportions4 ,he detests systematization4 ,he reads ,shakespeare1 ,schiller1 ,dante almost exclusively4 ,he sees visions and dreams dreams4 ,the awful in the natural forces1 moral and material1 seems his element4 ,he believes in freedom1 in the absolute emancipation of every faculty4 ,as for study1 study nature4 ,if then you fail in restraint and measure you are a mediocre artist1 whom no artificial system devised to secure measure and restraint could have rescued from essential insignificance4 ,no poet or landscape painter ever delighted more in the infinitely varied suggestiveness and exuberance of nature1 or ever felt the formality of much that passes for art as more chill and drear4 ,hence in all his works we have the sense1 first of all1 of an overmastering sincerity2 then of a prodigious wealth of fancy2 then of a marvellous acquaintance with his material4 ,his imagination has all the vivacity and tumultuousness of ,rubens's1 but its images1 if not better understood1 which would perhaps be impossible1 are more compact and their evolution more orderly4 ,and they are furthermore one and all vivified by a wholly remarkable feeling for beauty4 ,in spite of all his knowledge of the external world1 no artist of our time is more completely mastered by sentiment4 ,in the very circumstance of being free from such conventions as the cameo relief1 the picturesque costume details1 the goldsmith's work characteristic of the ,renaissance1 now so much in vogue1 ,m4 ,rodin's things acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicity and sincerity of sentiment4 ,the same model posed for the ,saint ,jean that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios1 but compared with the result in the latter cases1 that in the former is even more remarkable for sentiment than for its structural sapience and general physical interest4 ,how perfectly insignificant beside its moral impressiveness are the graceful works whose sentiment does not result from the expression of the form1 but is conveyed in some convention of pose1 of gesture1 of physiognomy6 ,it is like the contrast between a great and a graceful actor4 ,the one interests you by his intelligent mastery of convention1 by the tact and taste with which he employs in voice1 carriage1 facial expression1 gesture1 diction1 the several conventions according to which ideas and emotions are habitually conveyed to your comprehension4 ,salvini1 ,coquelin1 ,got1 pass immediately outside the realm of conventions4 ,their language1 their medium of communication1 is as new as what it expresses4 ,they are inventive as well as intelligent4 ,their effect is prodigiously heightened because in this way1 the warp as well as the woof of their art being expressive and original1 the artistic result is greatly fortified4 ,given the same model1 ,m4 ,rodin's result is in like manner expressly and originally enforced far beyond the result toward which the academic ,french school employs the labels of the ,renaissance as conventionally as its predecessor at the beginning of the century employed those of the antique4 ,formerly we used to do ,greek1 says ,m4 ,rodin1 with no small justice2 now we do ,italian4 ,that is all the difference there is4 ,and ,i cannot better conclude this imperfect notice of the work of a great master1 in characterizing which such epithets as majestic1 ,miltonic1 grandiose suggest themselves first of all1 than by calling attention to the range which it covers1 and to the fact that1 even into the domain which one would have called consecrate to the imitators of the antique and the ,renaissance1 ,m4 ,rodin's informing sentiment and sense of beauty penetrate with their habitual distinction2 and that the little child's head entitled ,alsace1 that considerable portion of his work represented by ,the ,wave and the ,shore1 for example1 and a small ideal female figure1 which the manufacturer might covet for reproduction1 but which1 as ,bastien-,lepage said to me1 is a definition of the essence of art1 are really as noble as his more majestic works are beautiful4 ,,ii ,aube is another sculptor of acknowledged eminence who ranges himself with ,m4 ,rodin in his opposition to the ,institute4 ,his figures of ,bailly and ,dante are very fine1 full of a most impressive dignity in the ensemble1 and marked by the most vigorous kind of modelling4 ,one may easily like his ,gambetta less4 ,but for years ,rodin's only eminent fellow sculptor was ,dalou4 ,perhaps his protestantism has been less pronounced than ,m4 ,rodin's4 ,it was certainly long more successful in winning both the connoisseur and the public4 ,the state itself1 which is now and then even more conservative than the ,institute1 has charged him with important works1 and the ,salon has given him its highest medal4 ,and he was thus recognized long before ,m4 ,rodin's works had risen out of the turmoil of critical contention to their present envied if not cordially approved eminence4 ,but for being less energetic1 less absorbed1 less intense than ,m4 ,rodin's1 ,m4 ,dalou's enthusiasm for nature involves a scarcely less uncompromising dislike of convention4 ,he had no success at the ,ecole des ,beaux ,arts4 ,unlike ,rodin1 he entered those precincts and worked long within them1 but never sympathetically or felicitously4 ,the rigor of academic precept was from the first excessively distasteful to his essentially and eminently romantic nature4 ,he chafed incessantly4 ,the training doubtless stood him in good stead when he found himself driven by hard necessity into commercial sculpture1 into that class of work which is on a very high plane for its kind in ,paris1 but for which the manufacturer rather than the designer receives the credit4 ,but he probably felt no gratitude to it for this1 persuaded that but for its despotic prevalence there would have been a clearer field for his spontaneous and agreeable effort to win distinction in4 ,he greatly preferred at this time the artistic anarchy of ,england1 whither he betook himself after the ,commune--not altogether upon compulsion1 but by prudence perhaps2 for like ,rodin1 his birth1 his training1 his disposition1 his ideas1 have always been as liberal and popular in politics as in art1 and in ,france a man of any sincerity and dignity of character has profound political convictions1 even though his profession be purely aesthetic4 ,in ,england he was very successful both at the ,academy and with the amateurs of the aristocracy1 of many of whom he made portraits1 besides finding ready purchasers among them for his imaginative works4 ,the list of these latter begins1 if we except some delightful decoration for one of the ,champs-,elysees palaces1 with a statue called ,la ,brodeuse1 which won for him a medal at the ,salon of #ahgj4 ,since then his production has been prodigious in view of its originality1 of its lack of the powerful momentum extraneously supplied to the productive force that follows convention and keeps in the beaten track4 ,his numerous peasant subjects at one time led to comparison of him with ,millet1 but the likeness is of the most superficial kind4 ,there is no spiritual kinship whatever between him and ,millet4 ,dalou models the ,marquis de ,dreux-,breze with as much zest as he does his ,boulonnaise allaitant son enfant2 his touch is as sympathetic in his ,rubens-like ,silenus as in his naturalistic ,berceuse4 ,furthermore1 there is absolutely no note of melancholy in his realism--which1 at the present time1 is a point well worth noting4 ,his vivacity excludes the pathetic4 ,traces of ,carpeaux's influence are plain in his way of conceiving such subjects as ,carpeaux would have handled4 ,no one could have come so closely into contact with that vigorous individuality without in some degree undergoing its impress1 without learning to look for the alert and elegant aspects of his model1 whatever it might be4 ,but with ,carpeaux's distinction ,dalou has more poise4 ,he is considerably farther away from the rococo4 ,his ideal is equally to be summarized in the word ,life1 but he cares more for its essence1 so to speak1 than for its phenomena1 or at all events manages to make it felt rather than seen4 ,one perceives that humanity interests him on the moral side1 that he is interested in its significance as well as its form4 ,accordingly with him the movement illustrates the form1 which is in its turn truly expressive1 whereas occasionally1 so bitter was his disgust with the pedantry of the schools1 with ,carpeaux the form is used to exhibit movement4 ,then1 too1 ,m4 ,dalou has a certain nobility which ,carpeaux's vivacity is a shade too animated to reach4 ,motive and treatment blend in a larger sweep4 ,the graver substance follows the planes and lines of a statelier if less brilliant style4 ,it has1 in a word1 more style4 ,i can find no exacter epithet1 on the whole1 for ,dalou's large distinction1 and conscious yet sober freedom1 than the word ,venetian4 ,there is some subtle phrenotype that associates him with the great colorists4 ,his work is1 in fact1 full of color1 if one may trench on the jargon of the studios4 ,it has the sumptuousness of ,titian and ,paul ,veronese4 ,its motives are cast in the same ample mould4 ,many of his figures breathe the same air of high-born ease and well-being1 of serene and not too intellectual composure4 ,there is an aristocratic tincture even in his peasants--a kind of native distinction inseparable from his touch4 ,and in his women there is a certain gracious sweetness1 a certain exquisite and elusive refinement elsewhere caught only by ,tintoretto1 but illustrated by ,tintoretto with such penetrating intensity as to leave perhaps the most nearly indelible impression that the sensitive amateur carries away with him from ,venice4 ,the female figures in the colossal group which should have been placed in the ,place de la ,republique1 but was relegated by official stupidity to the ,place des ,nations1 are examples of this patrician charm in carriage1 in form1 in feature1 in expression4 ,they have not the witchery1 the touch of ,bohemian sprightliness that make such figures as ,carpeaux's ,flora so enchanting1 but they are at once sweeter and more distinguished4 ,the sense for the exquisite which this betrays excludes all dross from ,m4 ,dalou's rich magnificence4 ,even the ,silenus group illustrates exuberance without excess3 ,i spoke of it just now as ,rubens-like1 but it is only because it recalls ,rubens's superb strength and riotous fancy2 it is in reality a ,rubens-like motive purged in the execution of all ,flemish grossness4 ,there is even in ,dalou's fantasticality of this sort a measure and distinction which temper animation into resemblance to such delicate blitheness as is illustrated by the ,bargello ,bacchus of ,jacopo ,sansovino4 ,sansovino afterward1 by the way1 amid the artificiality of ,venice1 whither he went1 wholly lost his individual force1 as ,m4 ,dalou1 owing to his love of nature1 is less likely to do4 ,but his sketch for a monument to ,victor ,hugo1 and perhaps still more his memorial of ,delacroix in the ,luxembourg ,gardens1 point warningly in this direction1 and it would perhaps be easier than he supposes to permit his extraordinary decorative facility to lead him on to execute works unpenetrated by personal feeling1 and recalling less the acme of the ,renaissance than the period just afterward1 when original effort had exhausted itself and the movement of art was due mainly to momentum--when1 as in ,france at the present moment1 the enormous mass of artistic production really forced pedantry upon culture1 and prevented any but the most strenuous personalities from being genuine1 because of the immensely increased authoritativeness of what had become classic4 ,certainly ,m4 ,dalou is far more nearly in the current of contemporary art than his friend ,rodin1 who stands with his master ,barye rather defiantly apart from the regular evolution of ,french sculpture1 whereas one can easily trace the derivation of ,m4 ,dalou and his relations to the present and the immediate past of his art in his country4 ,his work certainly has its ,fragonard1 its ,clodion1 its ,carpeaux side4 ,like every temperament that is strongly attracted by the decorative as well as the significant and the expressive1 pure style in and for itself has its fascinations1 its temptations for him4 ,of course it does not succeed in getting the complete possession of him that it has of the ,institute4 ,and there is1 as ,i have suggested1 an important difference1 disclosed in the fact that ,m4 ,dalou uses his faculty for style in a personal rather than in the conventional way4 ,his decoration is distinctly ,dalou1 and not arrangements after classic formulae4 ,it is full of zest1 of ardor1 of audacity4 ,so that if his work has what one may call its national side1 it is because the author's temperament is thoroughly national at bottom1 and not because this temperament is feeble or has been academically repressed4 ,but the manifest fitness with which it takes its place in the category of ,french sculpture shows the moral difference between it and the work of ,m4 ,rodin4 ,morally speaking1 it is mainly--not altogether1 but mainly--rhetorical1 whereas ,m4 ,rodin's is distinctly poetic4 ,it is delightful rhetoric and it has many poetic strains--such as the charm of penetrating distinction ,i have mentioned4 ,but with the passions in their simplest and last analysis he hardly occupies himself at all4 ,such a work as ,la ,republique1 the magnificent bas-relief of the ,hotel de ,ville in ,paris1 is a triumph of allegorical rhetoric1 very noble1 not a little moving1 prodigious in its wealth of imaginative material1 composed from the centre and not arranged with artificial felicity1 full of suggestiveness1 full of power1 abounding in definite sculptural qualities1 both moral and technical2 it again is ,rubens-like in its exuberance1 but of firmer texture1 more closely condensed4 ,but anything approaching the kind of impressiveness of the ,dante portal it certainly does not essay4 ,it is in quite a different sphere4 ,its exaltation is1 if not deliberate1 admirably self-possessed4 ,to find it theatrical would be simply a mark of our absurd ,anglo-,saxon preference for reserve and repression in circumstances naturally suggesting expansion and elation--a preference surely born of timorousness and essentially very subtly theatrical itself4 ,it is simply not deeply1 intensely poetic1 but1 rather1 a splendid piece of rhetoric1 as ,i say4 ,so1 too1 is the famous ,mirabeau relief1 which is perhaps ,m4 ,dalou's masterpiece1 and which represents his national side as completely as the group for the ,place des ,nations does those of his qualities ,i have endeavored to indicate by calling them ,venetian4 ,observe the rare fidelity which has contributed its weight of sincerity to this admirable relief4 ,every prominent head of the many members of the ,assembly1 who nevertheless rally behind ,mirabeau with a fine pell-mell freedom of artistic effect1 is a portrait4 ,the effect is like that of similar works designed and executed with the large leisure of an age very different from the competition and struggling hurry of our own4 ,in every respect this work is as ,french as it is individual4 ,it is penetrated with a sense of the dignity of ,french history4 ,it is as far as possible removed from the cheap genre effect such a scheme in less skilful hands might easily have had4 ,mirabeau's gesture1 in fact his entire presence1 is superb1 but the marquis is as fine in his way as the tribune in his4 ,the beholder assists at the climax of a great crisis1 unfolded to him in the impartial spirit of true art1 quite without partisanship1 and though manifestly stimulated by sympathy with the nobler cause1 even more acutely conscious of the grandeur of the struggle and the distinction of those on all sides engaged in it1 and acquiring from these a kind of elation1 of exaltation such as the ,frenchman experiences only when he may give expression to his artistic and his patriotic instincts at the same moment4 ,the distinctly national qualities of this masterpiece1 and their harmonious association with the individual characteristics of ,m4 ,dalou1 his love of nature1 his native distinction1 his charm1 and his power1 in themselves bear eminent witness to the vitality of modern ,french sculpture1 in spite of all the influences which tend to petrify it with system and convention4 ,m4 ,rodin stands so wholly apart that it would be unsafe perhaps to argue confidently from his impressive works the potentiality of periodical renewal in an art over which the ,institute presides with still so little challenge of its title4 ,but it is different with ,m4 ,dalou4 ,extraordinary as his talent is1 its unquestioned and universal recognition is probably in great measure due to the preparedness of the environment to appreciate extraordinary work of the kind1 to the high degree which ,french popular aesthetic education1 in a word1 has reached4 ,and one's last word about contemporary ,french sculpture--even in closing a consideration of the works of such protestants as ,rodin and ,dalou--must be a recognition of the immense service of the ,institute in education of this kind4 ,let some country without an institute1 around which what aesthetic feeling the age permits may crystallize1 however sharply1 give us a ,rodin and a ,dalou6