ART & ARCHITECTURE: The Art - France
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[29] On the other hand it must be admitted that, if the modern craftsmen are so enamored of their trade that they scorn to dilute it with anything else whatsoever, they certainly contrive to ring a surprising number of changes on the mere trick of painting in oil. What a variety of studies of bits, things in air, earth and water, seen and imagined, they set themselves to paint, and with what a variety of individual skills they do paint these refractory models. The most obvious, daylight appearance of the most commonplace, the oddest accident of artificial lighting or situation, occasionally a corner or an interior which no man ever say or can hope to see, the morceau in nature, man, life, death, and fable, and all done with such a versatility of employment of the same limited means and with such a happy knack of doing it well, plausibly and satisfactorily. If they no longer read, nor combine, nor dream, they have poured into this one narrow channel of a handicraft such a multitude of wits and tours de main as the world never saw before. Each man has his own method, and nearly everyone succeeds to judge by such a display as this, never was one human trade more glorified. Even the casual wayfarer, to whom painting in oil appeals no more than banking, or ballistics, or sewing baseballs, feels that here is a vocation in which the workers, ignorant though they may be of all the things that interest him, have certainly a great faith and a great mastery.

All this is old, of course, and has been threshed over many times already, but, after all, there is a limit to the things to be said even about Art, with a capital A. The familiar subject comes up again, as persistently as ever in these fire-new galleries. In those of Holland, for example, it is all good painting and, practically, nothing else; in those of Great Britain, on the contrary, there is a singular variety of themes, historical, literary, imaginative, allegorical, metaphysical, but by no means the same high standard of technical excellence. The distinction is striking and most plainly set forth. But even in the latter school the new leaven is working; a paragraph in the introduction to the Fine Arts Department in the official catalogue of the "British Section," written by Mr. J. E. Hodgson, R. A., thus announces the gradual transformation visible to the experts: "One element has dropped out of our pictures to a great extent, and appears likely to disappear altogether, [30] that may be called the literary element. Whereas forty years ago, in a figure picture, it was not thought possible to command attention or to gratify the intellect, except by illustrating some author, poet, novelist or historian, art in these later days is allowed to assume a prouder and more independent attitude and to rely on its own resources. The anecdote is fast disappearing from pictures, and its place is taken by careful elaboration of the aspect."

It is then, "careful elaboration of the aspect" that we have to consider in the latest development of contemporary French art as exemplified in the Exposition Art Gallery. We may imagine one of our connoisseurs, no longer in his first youth, capable of appreciating good painting but not quite sufficiently in tough with the modern movement. This critic, hankering after more things in his art than painter's painting, will say, we will suppose, that the French artists read excessively little. They know about two or three of the principal Scriptural and classic incidents of course, the story of Judith, of Hagar, the Annunciation and the Crucifixion, and they know that Diana was a huntress, had nympths for followers and was spied upon by Actaeon. But as to that thirst for exactness of archaeological information which still sends the English painters to the British Museum and South Kensington before they begin their erudite compositions, these Frenchmen know it not, and they appreciate their classic themes do little that they represent the chaste Diana as eternally naked, and thereby insult her far more flagrantly than did the Boeotian hunter. Even when they do paint abstractions, he would say, or classic or Scriptural subject, it is only a case of an arbitrary name applied to the studio model, who may be recognized in one canvas as a "Madonna" and in another as an "Enigma," and they would do better, he may conclude, by confining themselves to their artistic, possibly, but certainly unintellectual, portraits and landscapes which seem to him to constitute more than half of their output.

And he will be able to cite authorities in support of these heresies. Monsieur Fernand Cormon, for instance, who bears an honored name in the Paris Salons, writes an open letter to the "young English painter" recently in which he urges them, above all things, not to be carried away by the better painting qualities of his compatriots but to stick to their own views of art, to "never lose sight of that sincerity of feeling which is the essence of originality. These words he underscores. "I would most earnestly implore them," he adds, "not to forget their national qualities not to lose, when in our midst, their power of subtle and searching analysis, or their sense of exquisite mystic poetry." This appeal he bases on the fact, as it appears to him, that there are only two national schools of painting at the present day, the French and the English. The artists of all the other nations, America included, with the exception of a few remarkable personalities, such as Israels in Holland, Von Uhde in Germany and a few others, " are but the pupils of the French school." There is no word here in confirmation of [31] the modern doctrine that painting is concerned with good painting alone, and that mystic poetry and subtle analysis are for the bad painters only. But then M. Cormon himself is one of the few good French artists who still go in for learned and historical or semi-scientific compositions, so that he may be biased in favor of the "literary artists" himself.

There is no doubt that the French school is well represented in the World's Columbian Exposition. Both the old methods and the new are here presented by some of their most distinguished examples, but the latter are, naturally, much the more in evidence. After the Art Jury for the Chicago Fair, which was composed of twenty-eight of the leading painters and sculptors, had accepted some 420 canvases in oil alone, including both those hors concours and admis d'office, it was found, after the experimental hanging, that there was still room for more in the space allotted, and more were accordingly chosen. When the World's Fair Commisioners made their tour of Europe in the summer of 1891 they were nowhere more favorably received than in Paris; M. Ribot, Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Berger, Director of the Paris Exposition of 1889, M. Antonin Proust, Art Director of that exposition, M. Guiot, Minister of Commerce, M. Favette, appointed by the French Government Special Commissioner to superintend and organize the French section of the Chicago exhibition, all manifested the proper interest in this opportunity to assert once more before the world the supremacy of French art. M. Proust was appointed Commissiare General of the art Department for Chicago, but resigned this post in December, 1892, and was succeeded by M. Roger Ballu, then recently made commissioner for all exhibitions of the fine arts both in France and abroad. The amount of wall space allotted by the Chicago [32] authorities, 29,201 square feet, the next largest to that reserved for the United States, was very considerably less than that asked for. In the section of sculpture in which it has been held in very modern times that the true supremacy of contemporary French art lay great efforts were also made. Much of the completeness and importance of this section is due to the enterprise of the Chicago Art Institute, the officers of which made direct application to the French department of the Beaux-Arts for facilities to acquire casts, the size of the originals, of the principal works of living sculptors. To this institute will probably go, at the close of the Fair, the very valuable collection of casts accordingly taken in the Museum of Comparative Sculpture in the Trocadero, embracing examples of the decorative and architectural sculpture of France from the eleventh to the nineteenth century, and which formed such an interesting feature of the Exposition of 1889. These are arranged in the East Court of the main building of the Art Gallery. The American committee who undertook the making of these casts in connection with the French authorities paid the greater part of the costs of execution and all those of packing and of transportation. Permission having been refused by the administration of the city of Paris and of the Government to some of the living sculptors who wished to send their works, the property of these public bodies, to Chicago, authority to have casts taken from them was readily granted. Thus, of those selected by the representatives of the Art Institute, the director of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle authorized the casting of FREMIET'S "Stone Age;" the director of the Musees Nationaux et de l'Ecole du Louvre, that of CHAPU's "Joan of Arc;" and the director of the Batiments Civils, that of CAIN's "Rhinoceros Attacked by Tigers." Figures from RODIN's much discussed group of the "Burghers of Calais" were also secured, FALGIUERE's "Diana," BARRIAS' "Mozart Enfant" and "Dernieres Funerailles," MERCIE'S "Quand Meme!" IDRAC'S "Salammbo," and the four famous figures from the tomb of General Lamoriciere by PAUL DUBOIS. None of these statues are new, at least in the modern sense of the word, but they are among the finest of any modern school, and their future presence at Chicago, even in counterfeit plaster, will be a liberal education. They will remain the property of the Art Institute, [33] but the Commissariat General des Beaux-Arts paid the costs of their package and transportation on the condition that they should be placed in the French fine arts galleries during the Exposition. Before the French section in the great Manufactures Building sits the new figure by Falguiere, a special commission from the Ministre des Beaux-Arts, which is also to remain in the city of Chicago, the stalwart seated figure of Republican France, crowded and cuirassed, grasping her sword and her tablet inscribed with the Droits de l'homme." Even our discontented critic is forced to admit that they didn't do any better sculpture even in the palmy days of Gerome and Cabanel.

Equal efforts were made to secure, on these Western shores, an adequate representation of the products of the great national art manufactories, and the truly imposing display thus gotten together was exhibited to the admiring Parisians in the Palais de l'Industrie early in March of this year, before shipment. The Sevres Establishment makes the most important showing, and its cunning workers in biscuit have invaded the department of the reproductive sculptor with singular delicacy and perfection of manipulation. Here may be seen again CHAPU's bust of the President of the French Republic, INJALBERT's "Republique," AUBE's "Liberte" and "Francois Boucher," SUCHETET's "Leda," BARRIAS' Mozart Enfant," AIZELIN's "Judith," "DELOYE' "Catherine of Russia." The decorated pieces, vases, plaques, table-service, etc., are to be seen, and not to be described. One of the most magnificent of these object, however, the great VASE DE RENNES, 150 centimetres high, the largest piece ever made, has been admirably reproduced in polychrome lithography for this work, having been specially placed at the disposal of the publisher by M. Baumgart, Director of the Sevres manufactory. Four months of labor and sixteen printings have been required to produce this sumptuous reproduction of this magnificent piece. The national manufactories of tapestries of the Gobelins and of Beauvais, have also contributed their finest examples; from the former come the famous "Filleule des Fees," from Mazerolle's painting, the border by Galland, the "APOTHEOSIS OF HOMER," after Ingres' painting in the Louvre, Ehrmann's beautiful figures of "PRINTING" and "ILLUMINATING," also reproduced by polychrome lithography for this work, and from the latter, ten grand tapesttry panels, the "Four Quarters of France," the "East" and the "West," from the paintings by Collin and Cesbron, the panels in the style of the Renaissance, "Mars and Venus," "Neptune and Amphitrite," from the paintings by Badin, and the luxurious salon upholstery after the designs by M. Chabal. No such display of woven stuffs was ever before seen on the shores of a Western lake. Among the multitude of works of decorative art only a few can be here cited, the ivory statuette of "Amphitrite" by Mercie, enameled with gold and placed on a pedestal of goldsmith's work, the faience plate decorated by Mme. Moreau-Nelaton, the metal work of Brateau, and the cups of translucent enamel, gold, cloisonne, of Thesmar.

It is hope to give in this publication, in the full-page plates and in those among the text, a careful [34] selection from among the most worthy and the most remarkable of these masterpieces which in so many fields of art demonstrate so strongly the curious taste and intelligence of the French mind and the cunning of the French hand. Another of the lithographs, for instance,- translating with a skill that many a painter might envy the pearly and translucent tones of flesh - gives a reproduction of the largest painting on ivory said to be known to art or commerce with its ornate frame, the beautiful back of Mme. HORTENSE RICHARD's dreamer. This lady painter, Parisian born and pupil of James Bertrand, Lefebvre and Bouguereau, is well known in the Salon galleries by her miniatures and paintings on porcelain. This "DORMEUSE" was first shown at the Salon of 1892. Among the etchings, the collector's attention will probably be first attracted by Quarante's sympathetic rendering of COURTOIS' hardy portrait of "la belle MADAME GAUTREAU," the most distinguished, not only of the eight that he exhibited at the Salon de Champ de Mars in 1891 but of all that he has painted, if we may judge by his own verdict, or by the Jury's, and a beautiful piece of painting of pearly enameled flesh, auburn hair and white robe. In strong contrast with this radiant assertion of life and pride is his other exhibit, also shown at the Paris Exposition of 1889, the loving portrait of a young girl on her bed of death, - "Une Bienheureuse," "Happy are the Dead that die in the Lord!" Another of these etchings of price is that by Champollion after GEORGE ROCHEGROSSE's newest work, "LE BUTIN" - a painting which is to this courageous young artist's other pictures as a study of a hand or a foot is to those other painters. Weary of his gigantic and crowded canvases, he has here, for the moment, settled down to the study of the morceau, that is to say, of a single group, with only a suggestion of his far-reaching archaoelogy thrown in [35] in the costume of the armed guard and in the bit of enameled brick wall behind him and his unhappy captives, perhaps a bit of one of those walls that M. and Mme. Dieulafoy unearthed in their last Persian expedition. Perhaps this "Booty," feminine and otherwise, is part of that which Cyrus carried off from that immense plunder of Babylon which Mr. Rochegrosse figured so vigorously at the Salon of 1891. And to set off against Mme. Gautreau we may put in our porfolios the charming tinted etching executed by Maurice Deville after CORCOS's pretty girl in blue, - a pearl of brunettes and a triumphant assertion of the compatibility of sweetness and the grand style.

The experienced picture-seer, before alluded to, with his eye for balance and distinction of composition and originality and style of conception, might pretend that he found in many of these modern works which aspired the most to the fine old historical and allegorical traces of that levelling tendency which he deplores. For instance, M. Rochegrosse's new picture, he might aver, had by no means even the relative importance as a work of art of his grand "Mort de Babylone" and is no better painted than at least certain parts of that immense and dislocated composition. There were studies of the nude, he will assert, in the foreground and a general able and harmonious arrangement of the diffused and tormented light in Belshazzar's great court which proved that very good painting was quite possible in the biggest archaeological machine. And the picture which has the most good qualities in it is naturally the most valuable work of art. Also he may, possibly, state that he has seen much more naturally supernatural fairies than these pretty one of Mme. MADELEINE LEMAIRE's, reproduced at the head of this chapter, and some that were somewhat less suggestive of the footlights. But the purple-winged, impossible dogs that draw this aerial chariot, he will admit, are chimerical enough, and he may be reduced to silence by the information that this painting was shown first at the critical new Salon of the Champ de Mars last year, and that Mme. Lemaire is a Societaire of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts. There are not many ladies admitted into this carefully picked company of painters and sculptors. This one, with all her technical skill, has the proper femine taste for the proper feminine [36] things, - such as pretty, imaginative and sentimental subjects, birds, flowers, fan-paintings, etc. All these generally desirable qualities she demonstrates in her compositions for book-illustrations. In addition to this "CHAR DE FEES" she sends to Chicago a new rendering of the pretty woman in the autumn woods lamenting the "FALLING OF THE LEAVES," also reproduced for this work by M. Bourgeois's etching, and an excellent painting of some plums at the foot of a tree. The initial to this chapter, another good old subject, is from M. EUGENE-ROMAIN THIRION's Salon picture of 1889 showing how Cupid, having finally overcome all opposition including that of his puissant mother, carried off his beloved Psyche, "tout heureuse dans son royaume," says the artist's quotation.

One of the most brilliant examples of the painting of modern toilettes in the whole exhibition is M. JULES MACHARD's so-called "GARDEN PARTY," which hangs at the right of one of the entrances of one of the smaller rooms and which is merely a very capable study of a handsome lady in a handsome white satin gown, with a fine, big plumed hat, just as shown in our plate. It is a very civilized garden indeed for which such raiment is intended. This work was first exhibited at the Salon of 1892. ALPHONSE MOUTEE is a Marseilles painter and his Southern lovers, basking "IN THE SUN" on top of their wall are not concerned about the appositeness of their apparel and are therefore more natural, according to some theorists. This painter also sends a view of the entrance to the harbor of Marseilles. The modern growth of luxury has not been without its influence upon M. LUMINAIS and for the last few years he has shown a growing disposition to abandon his early Gauls for their much more sumptuously attired descendants of the reigns of the Louis. To Jackson Park he, accordingly, sends two of his latest canvases, the "End of Romance" and the "HUNTSMEN, SIXTEENTH CENTURY." In the former, one of D'Artagnan's friends - or, much more probably, one of his foes - is left behind in a pleasant wooded valley with a fine sword-thrust through his body and is found by some compassionate monks; in the latter, there is no story at all but one of the riches color studies in the galleries, the landscape, the costumes and the handsome, silky coats of the horses all rendered with great technical ability.

[37] - In one of the three large central galleries of their section, No. 57, the French commissioners have arranged three or four of their very largest canvases and some half dozen of the most important studies of the nude in their collection. On a table near the Western entrance are displayed MEISSONIER's essays in sculpture, from the latest posthumous exhibitions of his works in Paris - the two equestrian statuettes, the 'Herald of Murcia, Trumpeter of Louis Xii," and the spirited, galloping figure of "Marshal Duroc;" a sketch or maquette executed for the last painting on which the artist worked, "1796, Campagne d'Italie;" the maquette of a "Wounded Horse," executed for the painting, "Siege de Paris;" the figure of a "Dancing Muse," for the tapestry of the painting "Le Chan," and the design for a chimney for his own studio in the Boulevard Maresherbes. All these, excepting the last, are in bronze after cire perdue, and each bears the stamp of the medal in bronze of Meissonier, designed by Chaplain. The projet de cheminee shows a plain marble or stone shelf supported on the shoulders of two bronze, nude athletes, so realistically modeled, apparently, as to promise to walk away at any moment and the mantlepiece tumble. On this is placed the well-known statuette of Meissonier executed by Vicenzo Genito in 1878. One one side of this large gallery is hung P. Franc Lamy's "Flowery Spring," and, on the opposite one, "ONE THE SHORE," by RAPHAEL COLLIN; on the eastern wall is ALBERT FOURIE's "SPRINGTIME," all of these being very large canvases with numerous figures the size of life. On the western wall is CLAUDE BOURGONNIER's "TEMPTATION," and, in other corners, Henri Eugene Delacroix's "Sea Birds and Wave" and J. B. AUGUSTIN NEMOZ "On the Brink of the Abyss," the figures in these being also of the size of life. Here is a sufficent variety of theme for that painting of the fleshly body in which the modern school takes such a deep technical interest, and a greater variety of treatment or of method and theory of seeing flesh in plein air it would be difficult to find. Collin's nymphs dancing on the sea shore are pearly and opalescent and elusive to a surprising degree; Franc Lamy's rather Parisian Dryads, seem to exaggerate the greenish reflections of the surrounding foliage on their pretty bodies and are distinctly of that hue; Fourie's Bacchantes, also in the woods but apparently somewhat more in the open, are hot and purple and lavender in their tone to a disagreeable extent. The three other painters, working on somewhat smaller canvases but also on subjects which may be called imaginative, are much more realistic in their treatment, and of these Bourgonnier's is undoubtedly the best painting. His subject is the very old one of the temptations of the flesh, the unfortunate tempted mortal, according to the legend, being represented by the monk, St. Anthony, and, in logical sequence, the painter has here rendered the warm, palpitating body of his temptress with a skill of brush work and a charm of color that render his study one of the best paintings of the nude in the Exhibition. M. Nemoz has complicated his version of the same object lesson by some accessories, such as the brink of an abyss into which [38] the tempted one is evidently to fall, a serpent, etc., but his temptress is rather ugly and vulgar, and the same taint of the commonplace affects M. Delacroix's nymph riding the crest of the wave, as it does also his two other exhibits, a very matronly person yawning and stretching preparatory to her bath in the stream, and, to a less degree, two or three other ladies in a harvest field at twilight.

Very good flesh painting, but quite wrong in quality under the circumstances, may also be found in EMMANUEL BENNER's "THE ALARM," a family of the Stone Age period suddenly issuing from their cavern home because of a chance visit from a friendly bear. Here the flesh, not only of the mother, but of the father and of the old grandmother behind is as fair and soft as though it never had been exposed to wind and weather; but this is the usual practice of painters who undertake to restore for us the prehistoric times. Even the best of them, Cormon, is not above this tendency to paint pretty things. An excuse frequently put forward for this departure from conscientiousness, is that the prehistoric woman's hair was red, as is in this instance. In the Ethnological department of the Liberal Arts at Paris, in 1889, were a number of very interesting groups representing our very primitive ancestors in their first stages, and in these, constructed according to the latest scientific discoveries, they were represented in all their natural unloveliness, shock-headed, leathern-skinned, unclean savages. The beautiful roses and pinks and shapely forms of M. Benner's stout-hearted mother with the stone hatchet, are the products of civilization only, as are roofs, soap and fine line. Some of the comforts and safeties of this civilization may be seen for instance, in M. VICTOR GABRIEL GILBERT's "HOROSCOPE," a painted arrangement of fine ladies and luxurious flowers on a handsome lawn on the edge of a grove, and the necessary military element may be found in the pictures by MARIUS ROY and GEORGE JULES AUGUSTE CAIN also reproduced in the textual plates for this chapter. The former's canvas shows us some "Zouaves" and chasseurs a pied campaigning, and it appears to be somewhere about meal time; the latter's "BARRICADE IN 1830" represents a serious bit of fighting with the necessary poseur in the centre foreground. This picture was executed in 1889.

The echoes of the great Franco-German war are finally dying away in French art, and the absence of important military pictures is quite noticeable in these galleries, though there is not understood to have been any formal interdiction of them as at the Paris international displays. There are about as many works treating of soldiering - though mostly in the times of peaceful reviews - in the German [39] galleries, a few in the Spanish and Italian, and even little Holland has three or four canvases devoted to the martial appearance of the Dutch troops. DeNeuville, being deceased, is represented only in the American loan collection, by his famous "Porteur de Depeches," owned by Mr. Collis P. Huntington of New York, and Detaille figures much more conspicuously in the catalogue than on the walls. Among the French watercolors, however, is a large study of Sappeurs from his brush, not catalogued. Of the regular 1870-1871 fighting scene there are only one or two examples, Boutigny's "Combat in a Village" and Guignard's "Scouts in Flight," two Uhlans tearing down a snowy road, one fallen forward on his horse's neck and his comrade dragging at the bridle to urge the animal on. In some contrasts with the smooth brush work of the "Combat" is the more vigorous treatment of Boutigny's second picture, illustrating some forgotten incident of the great campaign in Italy in which the General Bonaparte sits at a little table on a causeway and interrogates a native brought before him. MM. Grolleron, LeBlant and MOREAU DE TOURS also find themes in the Revolutionary period, the former with his officers of the "blues" captured by the Vendean peasants and tied to a tree, the picture dated 1889; the second with his very dramatic and amusing "Return of the Regiment," and the third with his theatrical "CARNOT AT WATTIGNIES." This latter artist is the legitimate successor of the stilted military painters of the last century and one of the most sentimental and unartistic of the present day. His warriors are forever either striking attitudes for le drapeau, or la glorie. or else appealing to the groundlings in another way be self-conscious heroics.

His "CARNOT," for instance, is a truly representative example of that historic method of taking the serious business of war which the gallic rhetoricians still maintain, even at this day. The illustrious ancestor of the present head of the French Republic - worthy of a more dignified representation - comes cheering and flourishing his chapeau, open-mouthed and demonstrative, almost as large as life, down into the foreground of the canvas; and the painter testifies his treatment by this quotation, in the official catalogue: "A grenadier fell wounded; Carnot took his musket from him and, resuming his place at the head of the column, he continued to mount [40] the plateau. Carnot and Duquesnay arrived at the same moment on the summit of the plateau and threw themselves into each other's arms to the cry of "Vive la Republique!'"

Grolleron and Le Blant are in better taste, though they approach their subjects from very different points of view. The former renders a good dramatic incident in a serious and well-considered composition, soberly and rather better painted than usual; the latter brings a sly touch of sarcasm and humor. His "Retour du Regiment," - from the heroic army of the Sambre-et-Meuse we will suppose, - shows the grimy, ragged and ferocious battalion drawn for inspection in the public square and idly reviewed by a supercilious crowd of dandies, muscadins and incroyables, each the dernier cri de la mode and each more absurd than his neighbor. The warriors scowl darkly under this complacent observation, and there are signs of an outbreak on the part of one or two of the older moustaches. M. HENRI-PAUL MOTTE, forsaking for the moment his antiquarian researches in which he has won his renown, sends a large and spirited, but somewhat hard and spotty composition, the "10th of August, 1792," in which the gallant Swiss guards, in very red coats, are once more massacred by the Paris mob on the steps of the Tuileries.

DELORT goes back to the picturesque eighteenth century and shows a mounted recruiting sergeant drumming up recruits in the open place by the public fountain; MM. Chaperon, Loustaunau and Jeanniot give us bits from the armies of today, the former being represented by his well-known Douce au Regiment shown at Paris in 1889, the soldier's morning bath by means of a hose turned on him across the long barracks as though he were a conflagration. Jeanniot's "Marching Troops" may be found in the watercolor gallery, and is a distinctly modern conception, - the vacant, unthinking material out of which the bulk of armies are made.

[41] - M. ALFRED PARIS's "ROUTED," also reproduced for this work, gives a picturesque throng of mounted Arabs in full flight down a rocky ravine, - doubtless with the ever-victorious French troops at their heels in hot pursuit.

Among the hors texte plates, etchings and photogravures may be found as much variety of theme and treatment as this collection of paintings affords. The extremists of any school are here scarcely represented; the Paris juries seem to have adopted for their motto, sanity, rather than toleration. Some of the etchings have already been described, among the other that may be here noticed are Scriptural legends, one mythological and one hunting scene, one marine that includes a study of the nude, and among the photogravures, two speciments of the domestic genre, one of the XVIII century and one of the XIX. M. PAUL-ALEXANDRE-ALFRED LEROY's version of the healing of "THE BLIND MEN OF JERICHO," etched sympathetically by SALMON, is a very large canvas, the figures being nearly the size of life, and is dated 1890. Here we have the modern method of treating Biblical story, the personages, including the Healer himself, being all every-day Eastern folk taken in some every-day incident. There is, however, as is well-known, a still later method, exploited by Messrs. UHDE, Jean Beraud, and one or two followers, in which the story is transferred bodily to modern times. One of the latest and most courageous of these enterprises of doubtful tast, Beraud's "Crucifixion" on the heights of Montmartre, Joseph of Aimathea, the disciples and the mourners being all French blouses, is hung in these galleries. In the German section may be found one of the at least two examples in which Uhde has represented the personages of the Nativity as nineteenth century wayfarers, or work-people, this one being somewhat the less gross of the two and being, incidently, beautifully painted. A woman, poorly clad and in great trouble, stands leaning against the wayside fence in the snow and the twilight and watches anxiously the disappearing figure of her husband who has turned off to the left towards some dwelling, evidently to demand shelter. M. Leroy is less enterprising, but he also dispenses with all the usual conventional baggage, the haloes, the attitudes and the artificial groupings. M. LOUIS PRIOU calls his quasi-mythological composition Satyre aux abois, which may be translated, "SATYR IN DISTRESS," but it is evident that this goat-footed is not in much real tribulation. While two of his uncouth offspring tug at his beard and his pointed ears, a malicious naiad in the stream drenches them all [42] with water, and the satyrs are said to have hated water in those times. This is also a large canvas, painted with much carefulness but not with much concern for the classics. The etching is by M. TEYSSONNIERES, and COURTRY has rendered M. PAUL TAVERNIER's "WHIPPER-IN SOUNDING THE SORTIE DE L'EAU, blowing gallantly in his hunting horn the appropriate notes for the wearied quarry's safe landing on the opposite side of the stream. As thee is no unseemly slaughter here, and the stag seems to promise to leave all his pursuers duly behind, we can appreciate the cheerfulness and picturesqueness of the wooded scene and the good equipment of design and color which the painter has brought to the aid of his venery.

ROSSET-GRANGER's Epave," or "FLOTSAM," first exhibited at the Champ de Mars in 1892, is a painter's problem, wrought out to amuse himself or shew his skill but not having much relation to art as generally understood. The problem is to render flesh tones, under certain conditions of death, wetness and reflections from sea-water, and when it is done the solution does not much interest anyone but painters. The accuracy of the modeling of the body may be appreciated, however, even by the unlearned, and M. PAUL-VICTOR AVRIL has made an excellent plate out of this most difficult subject.

The photogravure plates range, as will be seen, from reproductions or orgies like M. FOURIE's "PRINTEMPS" to discreet and conventional ceremonies such as "AUBLET'S "FETE-DIEU," or pretty ones like Toudouze's watercolor, "THE CRADLE SONG." This charming soubrette has carried her charge in his handsome, state cradle out under the trees, swung him on the branches in some manner - but in such a way that the ropes will certainly slip, and now proceeds to sing him to sleep. What could be nicer or better adapted to watercolor art. M. AUBLET's picture, on the contrary, is one of his largest and most important, and one of his best-known, having been one of the principal of those exhibited in his collection shown in the Petit galleries in 1889. It is seriously painted and with something less of dryness in the color than he generally gets, warm, summery, luxurious but not too cheerful in color or sentiment, as fits the preparations for a great religious commemoration, Corpus Christi day.

[43] - Still warmer, more sunny and still better painted is DEBAT-PONSAN's "Midi," "NOON-TIME," from the Salon of 1890, a most learned and admirable rendering of the beauty of sunshine and, incidentally, of the charm of the rest after rural labor and the joy of humble domesticity. Possibly things are a little too well ordered in this well-balanced composition, but the defect is not a serious one. To most minds this painting will appear to be more really decorative in character than M. PAUL-LOUIS DELANCE's "DECORATIVE PANEL-WATER," also reproduced for these pages, a very large upright canvas, sober and inclined to grays in the color, and with no particular little charm of compensation in sight for this toiler, unless it be the scaly heap under his feet. More of these humble folk, artfully arranged but with very little artificial glossing over of their awkward rusticity, may be seen in GEORGE LAUGEE's "IN THE SPRING-TIME OF LIFE," a very upright and much embarrassed pair facing each other in a pleasantly illuminated bit of greenery. Bastien-Lepage was one of the first to render this subtle charm of the tender passion burning sweetly through an uncouth exterior, like the flame of a horn lantern, as it were.

No resume of the important paintings of the nude in the Exposition would be complete without mention of M. BOUGUEREAU's work, and, as it happens fortunately, this artist, dearer to collectors than to other artists, has chosen to be represented in this department by one of the very latest and best examples of his much-prized and much-derided flesh painting. "Le Guepier," "THE WASPS' NEST," given the painter's particular point of view - and, most any point of view is allowable in Art - is not only allowable but pretty, ingenious and well nigh charming. The idea is new, which is something, considering the number of changes that have been rung on the Young Woman and Cupid; the composition is graceful; the drawing is impeccable, as always with this Academician, and the pearly, lustrous, unrealistic flesh-painting becomes perfectly appropriate in this little boudoir allegory. You would not have Youth and Amour with the epidermis of peasants or bank clerks. So this heavenly-skinned maid - in the much embellished likeness of the Lily of Jersy - as she goes [44] heedlessly through this pleasant forest of nowhere-in-particular, comes suddenly upon this little congregation of loves and is immediately assailed by them in a buzzing, tumultuous swarm. What can be neater as a small bit of fancy, or more appropriate decoration for our sophisticated salons, where neither such maids nor such loves can come but in fancy. The painter's two other canvases, equally important in point of size, are far less so in any other respect. One of them is an insipid waxen Madonna in the clouds adored by insipid waxen cherubs, and the other, a trifle more virile, shows us the three women - impossibly clean - come to the mouth of the tomb. "Le Guepier" first appeared in 1892, in the same year as Raphael Collin's "Au Bord de la Mer, and Mr. Yerkes, of Chicago, is the proud possessor thereof.

The connoisseurs of realism can turn from this unreality to M. MOREAU DE TOUR's fin de siecle conception, "LES MORPHINOMANES" - two ladies of rather uncertain age and unpleasant aspect in the act of administering to themselves with little subcutaneous injections. From this very contemporary subject we may fly to M. CHARLES RONOT, of Dijon, who has taken the trouble to materialize for us one of the irreverent Lucien's flippant reports of the dialogues of the great shades in the under world. His personages are three great monarchs and the scoffer Maenippus; the latter rails at the fallen majesties, indignant at the outrage of their fall: "The real outrage was that of your conduct on the earth, when you compelled your subjects to offer you adoration, when you carried yourself insolently over freemen, when you forgot so completely that one day you should die; now, you may weep that you have lost all." Croesus exclaims, "Great gods! where are all my immense riches!" [45] Midas says, "Where is my gold?" and Sardanapalus, "Where, my pleasures?" and Maenippus answers, insolently, "Good enough! weep for them!" From this not very profound satire the painter has produced a large canvas, the figures nearly the size of life, and each in the conventionally appropriate attitude to his sentiments of the moment. And M. EDOUARD VIMONT, falling back on the stock academical subject of the "DEATH OF ARCHIMEDES," has painted a large, well-arranged and sufficiently archaelogical composition of the end of the learned mathematician, so absorbed in his calculations that he neither heard the roar around him of the city taken by assault nor the entrance of the barbarian soldier who was to slay him.

As already stated, the comparatively very small and carefully selected representation of contemporary French art in these galleries keeps itself well within certain definite bounds. The followers of Manet are scarcely in evidence at all; the work of the Institute is here, but scarcely in sufficient force to make a noticeable feature. M. BONNAT, for instance, has three portrait canvases, two of them of his latest and most characterisitc, that of Cardinal Lavigerie, sitting upright, dignified, imposing, bringing the full force of all his Churchly dignity to bear upon the painter in front of him who is painting his portrait, and that of Renan, stooping, familiar, hands on thighs, but even more imposing in his weight of years and authority. CARLOUS-DURAN has sent four portraits, the three officially catalogued scarcely characteristic of his best and most sumptuous methods, though one of them is the very clever full-length study of a lady in gray, from the Salon of a year or two ago, and another the somewhat unfortunate presentation of the richissime American whose carefully confectioned complexion scarcely accords with the elaborate magnificence of her toilet. But, as an afterthought possibly, he has added that beautiful painting of his daughter, sitting sideways and regarding you with the lustrous and candid eyes of youth, that will probably remain one of his masterpieces. JEAN-PAUL LAURENS is by no means so striking as he was in the Salon exhibit of this year; his "Christopher Columbus" is a very perfunctory [46] contribution to the discoverer's celebration, and suggests nothing more inspiring than a rather shabbily appointed histrionic rehearsal, the discoverer presenting his back to the audience whilst he bows to a very temporary sovereign on the property man's second-best throne. The "SEVEN TROUBADOURS" - discussing in a pleasant Renaissance garden shade the foundation of their floral games - is a much more serious work of art. In the gallery of designs a long stretch of wall space is occupied by his illustrations to Augustin Thierry's "Recits merovingiens," very much in the style of design of his paintings of Ste. Genevieve on the Pantheon walls, erudite, heavy, inspired rather by mediaeval unloveliness than be mediaeval picturesqueness, as suits the Merovingian chronicles. A still more unsatisfactory contribution to the history of Columbus is BENJAMIN CONSTANT'S "Triumph" of the discoverer - a good decor de ballet.

Among the worthy portraits of the French section must not be omitted that of ROBERT-FLEURY, by his son, TONY ROBERY-FLEURY, or, in a different method, that by HENNER of his brother. The painter of flesh according to rule exhibts three of these studies of heads. ROLL is represented by three, large canvases, the most noticeable being the study of two nude figures seated on the grass, of 1891, and the portraits of a little boy on a gray pony, painted in 1887. In the former the difficulties of the composition are overcome in a measure by a flattening down and conventionalizing of the background that for a mid-day, plein air, study might possibly be called timid. M. HENRY LEVY has sufficient courage in the matter of composition and gives us a new version of the "Death of Eurydice" - that unhappy lady, quite nude, falling over sideways in the arms of a (presumably) angel of death, sufficiently unprepossessing and awkward, who comes slanting down through the air to embrace her while the distracted Orpheus kneels at her feet. The shepherd Aristaeus, through whose ill-advised pursuit of her through the snake-haunted meadows of Sicily this catastrophe has been brought about, has discreetly disappeared. This painting is from the Salon of 1891. HENRI MOTTE's "Circe," on the contrary, is an exceedingly plausible and intelligent version of the changing of Ulysses' companions, quite in the best vein of this most intelligent and ingenious story-teller. The enchantress has seated the unlucky sailors in chairs of state around a handsome semicircle in her lofty palace, the wine cup has done its work, and as they droop in their seats in drowsy torpor [47] she passes along in front of them and touches each one lightly with a long wand. And as each one is touched, the man disappears and a dreadful pig appears from under the cuirass or the mantle. Only two or three survivors are left, and the transformed, in their new brute shapes, follow stupidly or wonderingly this awful queen. She reappears also in CITALON's well-known East Indian transformation, seen at the Paris Exposition of 1889, seated, nearly nude and curiously jeweled and veiled, on a strange sort of Hindu throne in a bluish light, and with the swine in the foreground.

This borrowing of Indian or Persian trappings to adorn a classic or Scriptural story is one of the comparatively late inventions of the painters, justifiable enough notwithstanding its complete lack of logic. The example of GUSTAV MOREAU has had much to do with the adoption of this semi-decorative, semi-mystical rendering of old themes, this painter, unfortunately, not being represented at Chicago. His "David" and his "Apparition," the latter particularly, are works of curious interest and imaginative power. The "Apparition" is that of the head of the Baptist to Salone, as she dances before Herod, and the same terrible heroine appears agina in the watercolor by BOUTET DE MONVEL reproduced for these pages, - the most original and most valuable of the four of five pictures by which he is represented among the Society of French aquarellists in these galleries. In some of the details of the costume and the wall and in the extreme care bestowed upon the execution, finished with gold and with incised work, the painter has borrowed suggestions from Oriental miniatures, but on the whole his small semi-barbaric decorative painting is highly original and interesting. The picture is dated 1893. Much less inventiveness and ingenuity have been bestowed upon the two large decorative panels by G. DUBUFE, fils, "The Grasshopper" and "THE ANT," Salon de Champ de Mars, 1891, the latter only appearing here. A better painted nude figure is his pastel of "Slumber," shown among the exhibit of the society of painters in that medium, - a beautiful exhibit of the adaptability of these chalks to the rendering of fleshly texture. CLAIRIN, without any allegory, has painted a cheerful decorative composition in watercolors, "VENICE IN THE LAST CENTURY," marble terrace, masquers and gondola, the subject naturally leading up to a pictorial arrangement in the style and manner with which FRANCOIS FLAMENG has achieved such picturesque results.

The latter painter, though he has not sent any of his ingenious Venetian compositions, is represented by two very important canvases, the "TARGET PRACTICE IN THE TRENCHES OF DIEPPE," from the [48] Salon of 1886, and his large triptych of the "Flight into Egypt," first exhibited at the old Salon in 1892, and a charming combination of the modern touch with fifteenth century sentiment. The former is shown in our reproduction; the composition is exceedingly well managed and interesting, and there is something in the atmosphere, in the general style and manner and occupation of these serious citizens and citizenesses of the good year 1795 whom it is so difficult to take seriously that perfectly comports with that slight derisory air with which the painters would have us contemplate these times and personages. In reality they were serious enough, but in this mimic scene the artist has evidently rendered them with his tongue in his cheek. A broader sense of humor, a lesser neatness of malice, is visible in the "RETURN OF THE MISSIONARY" of that satirist of the Church, JOSE FRAPPA, - here the old contrast between the sincere and the self-indulgent laborers in the vineyard is wrought out frankly and with good artistic effect. The great majority of works of art, being executed in all directness and simplicity, are better adapted to the comprehension of laymen, on whom satire is apt to be wasted; and of these less complex and more sincere paintings a number betray such very high technical excellence that their names should be preserved even in this much-condensing record.

Among the first of these shall be placed ADRIEN-LOUIS DEMONT's "Lilies" - growing in the garden of the Virgin and glowing in wonderful sunset tones - that first appeared in the Salon of 1889, a work in which the beauty of color and simplicity of theme adequately represent the pious spirit which we conceive should be brought to such a subject. Of those in which this admirable and first-class painting does not necessarily lead up to any particular spiritual insight the number is much greater, - TATTEGRAIN's "Worm Hunters" seeking their hidden bait on the shining sands at low tide in the very early dawn; EUGENE BERTHELON's stormy marine, painted in 1892 and celebrating the rescue by the life boat of Yport of the crew of the wrecked bark Pauline; EUGENE CHIGOT's beautiful "Evening at Berck-sur-Mer;" RAFFAELLI's biggest canvas, unsparing and brutal in its vivid realism, "Peasants of Plougasnou, Brittany," dated 1876, and LA TOUCHE's charming pastel, the child and the "Perfume of Flowers." Here is a wide range of subjects in which to display that remarkable excellence of technical power to which allusion was made in the opening of this chapter, and of which if the contemporary French are to be deprived of it - as has been asserted - these and many other canvases will remain to posterity to proclaim their one time superiority.

In the United States loan collection - as has also been said - may be found other masterpieces of the somewhat older school, three or four of which have been reproduced for this publication by the permission of their owners to complete this resume of treasurers, TROYON'S "DROVE OF CATTLE AND SHEEP," from the collection of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt; COROT's 'EVENING," ROSA BONHEUR's "PASTORAL" and ROUSSEAU's [49] "VIEW ON THE SEINE," all from the collection of Mr. Jay Gould. Of these all but the ROUSSEAU will be found among the full-page plates. Some of the most famous of these loan pictures have already been alluded to; of MEISSONIER, so recently deceased, the Exposition contains his "View near Poissy," lent by a Philadelphia owner and a "Reconnaissance," by a Chicago one, in addition to his essays in sculpture and LALAUZE's fine etching of "THE HALT," formerly in the great Wilson collection, shown in the department of French etching. It is to be feared that it will be long before we shall see again on this side the ocean such a notable gathering of famous canvases as in this contribution from the private galleries of America.

Among the full-page plates will also be found CHAMPOLLION's admirable etching of DORE's fantastic vase, "THE VINE," and a photogravure of the latest of those very clever adaptations by EDOUARD DANTAN, of the chalky and dusty interiors of sculptors' ateliers as background for the warm tones of the naked human body, the "RESTORATION," Salon 1887. Among the facsimile typogravures or colored etchings may be found very good reproductions of the pretty fisher-girl study by the Concarneau painter, ALFRED GUILLOU, "MY LITTLE BROTHER," the proud young "RAJAH'S DAUGHTER" by a newer artist, PAUL SINIBALDI, and CHAPLIN'S voluptuous "SOUVENIRS." Of the innumerable canvases of which it was desired to present some duplicate only a few can be mentioned, - DUEZ's "Walking on the Water," from the Salon of the Champs de Mars, 1891, the best of his three exhibitsl L'HERMITTE's "Haying," painted in 1887 in his best manner and so much to be preferred to his later "Friend of the Lowly," in which he abandoned his own paths to undertake to follow in the mystical ones of VON UHDE; AIME MOROT's famous "Bravo, Toro!" RIXEN's ingeniously evil "Don Juan in Hell," subject taken from Baudelaire's Fleurs de Mal, and shown at the Paris Exposition in 1889; ROSSET-GRANGER's pleasant color study of a young girl in rose purple with a scarlet geranium bush beside her chasing butterflies against a paneling of blue enameled tiles, - a more acceptable "subject" than his uncanny "FLOTSAM AND JETSAM;" TISSOT's well-known four pictures illustrating a modern English version of the parable of "The Prodigal Son," also seen at Paris in 1889; JULIEN DUPRE'S peasant girl and cows in the "Valley of the Durdent," and CARRIER-BELLEUSE's clever and beautiful drawings of ornamental vases. All these, and many more, are well-worthy of reproduction if circumstances had permitted.

A number of the accepted masterpieces of the contemporary school of sculpture have already been enumerated among those to remain in Chicago after the Fair as the property of the Art Institute. While these familiar works do not by any means exhaust the interest of the sculpture exhibit it is not to be denied that their absence would make a big hole in it, and that it would in general require several of the newer and less known to take the place of one of these. Among those more unfamiliar in this country that [50] do give evidence of the abounding taste and fertility of inventiveness so characteristic of this best work one of the most striking, as it is one of the most beautiful, is the seated figure of "La Securite" for the grand stairway of honor of the Hotel de Ville, Paris, by the late EUGENE DELAPLANCHE, executed in 1883. The plaster cast of this also is to go to the Chicago Art Institute. In this graceful, armed virgin, with her cuirass and sword, her hand on her thigh and the naked baby asleep in her lap, the best traditions of this new Renaissance of sculpture seem to be preserved. Also for the Institute is SAINT-MARCEAU's "Genius Guarding the Secret of the Tomb," counted among these classics, and a lesser-known work, PUECH's "Siren" has been thought worthy to complete the furnishings of the central, circular gallery, No. 58, with this statue, MERCIE'S "David," IDRAC's "Salammbo" and the four figures from General Lamoriciere's tomb seated in the four niches. The nude, marble statuette, "The Star," by Puech, is somewhat more graceful and conventional than the "Siren." FREMIET, in addition to his "Man of the Stone Age," is represented by his new "Velasquez," and an excellent study of a wounded hound contemplating with some anxiety the bandage on his fore leg; MOREAU-VAUTIER, by a marble statue of a nude Bacchante lying prone on her back and four smaller works, busts and statuettes in ivory and ivory and bronze. One of these, the "FLORENTINE HEAD' of a young girl, in the two materials, will be found among the etchings executed in color; the "Fortune" and the "Nereide," ivory statuettes, are beautiful little examples of the sculptor's art applied to the rehabilitation of the article de Paris. Among the many life-size nude figures one of the most original is the "Perversity," in chiseled bronze of the eccentric M. RINGEL DILLZACH, a young girl stooping forward, holding in her outstretched hand a bird's nest and with a serpent coiled around her arm threatening the nestlings. The artist's meaning, unless it is the very trivial one implied by the title, is not clear, - a reproach which can be applied to a good deal of his work. His terra-cotta statue of a "Parisienne" is much of the same family as the ladies in whom Jeean Beraud delights, but not quite so far advanced as those of Jan Van Beers.

The American loan collection contributed four very important examples of the latest French sculpture, - GEROME's "Pygmalion and Galatea," in delicately tinted marble, the size of life, and three marble groups from RODIN's famous "Gates of Hell," Francesa and Paolo and Andromeda. The first [51] is loaned by Mr. Chas. T. Yerkes of Chicago, and the latter by Mr. Henry Sargent of New York. Rodin is also represented, in the French galleries, by one of his much-discussed "Burgers of Calais" and by a bronze portrait bust of a man. Something of the modern touch is also to be seen in the very amusing plaster group by RAOUL LARCHE, two boyish and impish young fauns struck with the reflection of their own images in the still pool, and VERLET's nude, life-size figure of Orpheus, going down to seek his wife and stepping over Cerberus whose three heads have a strange cat-like aspect. Of the comparatively few figures in costume the most striking is Fremiet's proud, life-size, equestrian statue of Velasquez, one of the finest and proudest tributes ever rendered by one artist to another, and the much smaller and simpler boyish figure of Agrippa d'Aubigne, extending his had in his oath, executed in bronze, cire perdue, by PIERRE RAMBAUD. La Fountaine's rather pointless story of the "Two Pigeons" furnishes a title to JEAN FRERE for a graceful group in bronze of two young lovers.

The nude figures of the size of life are bewildering in number and somewhat monotonous in their uniform technical excellence. The diversity of pose and action that can be given within the limits of due sculpturesque and artistic restraint is not very great, the degree of characterization that can be bestowed upon the smooth, graceful, youthful feminine figures, none of them without some conventional or idealizing modification, is but limited, and the subjects and titles are but seldom of much importance. Thus HANNAUX's "Phryne" is of a somewhat unusual, muscular type; not only are all the usual divinities and personifications represented undraped but some who would be much surprised to find themselves so presented, Diana, Judith, Tobit, the modern mother, Hero and Leander. FELIX SOULES' "Rape of Iphigenia," the original owned by the French Government, represents the goddess completely bared, carrying away Agamemnon's daughter with great strides; GUSTAV MICHEL's nude Fortune holding up her diadem, a marble statuette of which is shown here, is also the property of the State. The latter sculptor and M. TURCAN have both executed life-size groups of that ancient couple, the blind man and the paralytic, Michel's being the more ingenious and "tormented" of the two. GAUDEZ's nymph Echo, youthful and graceful, running with Pan's pipes in her hands, LAMI's pretty maid, kneeling in penitence in her [52] "First Transgression," HUGUES' mother playing with her child, which has received a gold medal, and LARROUX's "Judith," are all works of the first importance. The Premiere Faute" is among the collections of the national museums, and the same sculptor's "Danish Hound," of the size of life, viewing with concern the snail crawling on the edge of his platter, is in the Luxembourg. But of all these nude figures none surpasses in a certain charm and serenity HOUDON's Diana, to be seen in the great collection of French historic sculpture and architecture which fills the East Court, and adds such an imposing chapter to the story of this nation's contribution to civilization.

The development of a culture for art in these United States owes so much to France, so very many of those painters and sculptors who strive to contribute to the building up of the American school have derived both their training and their enlightenment from those hospitable shores, that it will not be without a certain grief that the passing of the sceptre of Art from her hands will be viewed by the younger nation.