FRENCH ART

_CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY PAINTINGAND SCULPTURE_

BYW. C. BROWNELL

NEW YORKCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS1892

Copyright, 1892, byCHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TO AUGUSTE RODIN

CONTENTS

 PAGE

I. Classic Painting, 1 I. Character and origin. II. Claude and Poussin. III. Lebrun and Lesueur. IV. Louis Quinze. V. Greuze and Chardin. VI. David, Ingres, and Prudhon. 

II. Romantic Painting, 47 I. Romanticism. II. Géricault and Delacroix. III. The Fontainebleau Group. IV. The Academic Painters. V. Couture, Puvis de Chavannes, and Regnault. 

III. Realistic Painting, 89 I. Realism. II. Courbet and Bastien-Lepage. III. The Landscape Painters; Fromentin and Guillaumet. IV. Historical and Portrait Painters. V. Baudry, Delaunay, Bonvin, Vollon, Gervex, Duez, Roll, L'Hermitte, Lerolle, Béraud, The Illustrators. VI. Manet and Monet. VII. Impressionism; Degas. VIII. The Outlook. 

IV. Classic Sculpture, 139 I. Claux Sluters. II. Jean Goujon. III. Style. IV. Clodion, Pradier, and Etex. V. Houdon, David d'Angers, and Rude. VI. Carpeaux and Barye. 

V. Academic Sculpture, 165

 I. Its Italianate Character. II. Chapu. III. Dubois. IV. Saint-Marceaux and Mercié. V. Tyranny of Style. VI. Falguière, Barrias, Delaplanche, and Le Feuvre. VII. Frémiet. VIII. The Institute School in General. 

VI. The New Movement in Sculpture, 205 I. Rodin. II. Dalou. 

I

CLASSIC PAINTING

I

More than that of any other modern people French art is a nationalexpression. It epitomizes very definitely the national æsthetic judgmentand feeling, and if its manifestations are even more varied than areelsewhere to be met with, they share a certain character that is verysalient. Of almost any French picture or statue of any modern epochone's first thought is that it is French. The national quite overshadowsthe personal quality. In the field of the fine arts, as in nearly everyother in which the French genius shows itself, the results are evidentof an intellectual co-operation which insures the development of acommon standard and tends to subordinate idiosyncrasy. The fine arts, aswell as every other department of mental activity, reveal the effect ofthat social instinct which is so much more powerful in France than it isanywhere else, or has ever been elsewhere, except possibly in the caseof the Athenian republic. Add to this influence that of the intellectualas distinguished from the sensuous instinct, and one has, I think, thekey to this salient characteristic of French art which strikes one sosharply and always as so plainly French. As one walks through the Frenchrooms at the Louvre, through the galleries of the Luxembourg, throughthe unending rooms of the _Salon_ he is impressed by the splendidcompetence everywhere displayed, the high standard of cultureuniversally attested, by the overwhelming evidence that France stands atthe head of the modern world æsthetically--but not less, I think, doesone feel the absence of imagination, opportunity, of spirituality, ofpoetry in a word. The French themselves feel something of this. At thegreat Exposition of 1889 no pictures were so much admired by them as theEnglish, in which appeared, even to an excessive degree, just thequalities in which French art is lacking, and which less than those ofany other school showed traces of the now all but universal influence ofFrench art. The most distinct and durable impression left by anyexhibition of French pictures is that the French æsthetic genius is atonce admirably artistic and extremely little poetic. 

It is a corollary of the predominance of the intellectual over thesensuous instinct that the true should be preferred to the beautiful, and some French critics are so far from denying this preference ofFrench art that they express pride in it, and, indeed, defend it in away that makes one feel slightly amateurish and fanciful in thinking ofbeauty apart from truth. A walk through the Louvre, however, suffices torestore one's confidence in his own convictions. The French rooms, atleast until modern periods are reached, are a demonstration that in thesphere of æsthetics science does not produce the greatest artists--thatsomething other than intelligent interest and technical accomplishmentare requisite to that end, and that system is fatal to spontaneity. M. Eugène Véron is the mouthpiece of his countrymen in asserting absolutebeauty to be an abstraction, but the practice of the mass of Frenchpainters is, by comparison with that of the great Italians and Dutchmen, eloquent of the lack of poetry that results from a scepticism ofabstractions. The French classic painters--and the classic-spirit, inspite of every force that the modern world brings to its destruction, persists wonderfully in France--show little absorption, little delightin their subject. Contrasted with the great names in painting they areeclectic and traditional, too purely expert. They are too cultivated toinvent. Selection has taken the place of discovery in their inspiration. They are addicted to the rational and the regulated. Their substance isnever sentimental and incommunicable. Their works have a distinctlyprofessional air. They distrust what cannot be expressed; what can onlybe suggested does not seem to them worth the trouble of trying toconceive. Beside the world of mystery and the wealth of emotion formingan imaginative penumbra around such a design as Raphael's Vision ofEzekiel, for instance, Poussin's treatment of essentially the samesubject is a diagram. 

On the other hand, qualities intimately associated with these defectsare quite as noticeable in the old French rooms of the Louvre. Clearness, compactness, measure, and balance are evident in nearly everycanvas. Everywhere is the air of reserve, of intellectual good-breeding, of avoidance of extravagance. That French painting is at the head ofcontemporary painting, as far and away incontestably it is, is due tothe fact that it alone has kept alive the traditions of art which, elsewhere than in France, have given place to other and more materialideals. From the first its practitioners have been artists rather thanpoets, have possessed, that is to say, the constructive rather than thecreative, the organizing rather than the imaginative temperament, butthey have rarely been perfunctory and never common. French painting inits preference of truth to beauty, of intelligence to the beatificvision, of form to color, in a word, has nevertheless, and perhaps _àfortiori_, always been the expression of ideas. These ideas almostinvariably have been expressed in rigorous form--form which at timesfringes the lifelessness of symbolism. But even less frequently, Ithink, than other peoples have the French exhibited in their paintingthat contentment with painting in itself that is the dry rot of art. With all their addiction to truth and form they have followed this idealso systematically that they have never suffered it to become mechanical, merely _formal_--as is so often the case elsewhere (in England and amongourselves, everyone will have remarked) in instances where form has beenmainly considered and where sentiment happens to be lacking. Even whencare for form is so excessive as to imply an absence of character, theform itself is apt to be so distinguished as itself to supply theelement of character, and character consequently particularly refinedand immaterial. And one quality is always present: elegance is alwaysevidently aimed at and measurably achieved. Native or foreign, real orfactitious as the inspiration of French classicism may be, the sense ofstyle and of that perfection of style which we know as elegance isinvariably noticeable in its productions. So that, we may say, fromPoussin to Puvis de Chavannes, from Clouet to Meissonier, _taste_--arefined and cultivated sense of what is sound, estimable, competent, reserved, satisfactory, up to the mark, and above all, elegant anddistinguished--has been at once the arbiter and the stimulus ofexcellence in French painting. It is this which has made the France ofthe past three centuries, and especially the France of to-day--as we getfarther and farther away from the great art epochs--both in amount andgeneral excellence of artistic activity, comparable only with the Italyof the Renaissance and the Greece of antiquity. 

Moreover, it is an error to assume, because form in French paintingappeals to us more strikingly than substance, that French painting islacking in substance. In its perfection form appeals to everyappreciation; it is in art, one may say, the one universal language. Butjust in proportion as form in a work of art approaches perfection, oruniversality, just in that proportion does the substance which itclothes, which it expresses, seem unimportant to those to whom thissubstance is foreign. Some critics have even fancied, for example, thatGreek architecture and sculpture--the only Greek art we know anythingabout--were chiefly concerned with form, and that the ideas behind theirperfection of form were very simple and elementary ideas, not at allcomparable in complexity and elaborateness with those that confuse anddistinguish the modern world. When one comes to French art it is stillmore difficult for us to realize that the ideas underlying itsexpression are ideas of import, validity, and attachment. The truth islargely that French ideas are not our ideas; not that the Frenchwho--except possibly the ancient Greeks and the modern Germans--of allpeoples in the world are, as one may say, addicted to ideas, are lackingin them. Technical excellence is simply the inseparable accompaniment, the outward expression of the kind of æsthetic ideas the French areenamoured of. Their substance is not our substance, but while it isperfectly legitimate for us to criticise their substance it is idle tomaintain that they are lacking in substance. If we call a painting byPoussin pure style, a composition of David merely the perfection ofconvention, one of M. Rochegrosse's dramatic canvasses the rhetoric oftechnic and that only, we miss something. We miss the idea, thesubstance, behind these varying expressions. These are not the less realfor being foreign to us. They are less spiritual and more material, lesspoetic and spontaneous, more schooled and traditional than we like tosee associated with such adequacy of expression, but they are not forthat reason more mechanical. They are ideas and substance that lendthemselves to technical expression a thousand times more readily than doours. They are, in fact, exquisitely adapted to technical expression. 

The substance and ideas which we desire fully expressed in color, form, or words are, indeed, very exactly in proportion to our esteem of them, inexpressible. We like hints of the unutterable, suggestions ofsignificance that is mysterious and import that is incalculable. Thelight that "never was on sea or land" is the illumination we seek. The"Heaven, " not the atmosphere that "lies about us" in our mature age as"in our infancy, " is what appeals most strongly to our subordination ofthe intellect and the senses to the imagination and the soul. Nothingwith us very deeply impresses the mind if it does not arouse theemotions. Naturally, thus, we are predisposed insensibly to infer fromFrench articulateness the absence of substance, to assume from thetriumphant facility and felicity of French expression a certaininsignificance of what is expressed. Inferences and assumptions based ontemperament, however, almost invariably have the vice of superficiality, and it takes no very prolonged study of French art for candor andintelligence to perceive that if its substance is weak on thesentimental, the emotional, the poetic, the spiritual side, it isexceptionally strong in rhetorical, artistic, cultivated, æstheticallyelevated ideas, as well as in that technical excellence which alone, owing to our own inexpertness, first strikes and longest impresses us. 

When we have no ideas to express, in a word, we rarely save ouremptiness by any appearance of clever expression. When a Frenchmanexpresses ideas for which we do not care, with which we aretemperamentally out of sympathy, we assume that his expression isequally empty. Matthew Arnold cites a passage from Mr. Palgrave, andcomments significantly on it, in this sense. "The style, " exclaims Mr. Palgrave, "which has filled London with the dead monotony of Gower orHarley Streets, or the pale commonplace of Belgravia, Tyburnia, andKensington; which has pierced Paris and Madrid with the feeblefrivolities of the Rue Rivoli and the Strada de Toledo. " Upon whichArnold observes that "the architecture of the Rue Rivoli expresses show, splendor, pleasure, unworthy things, perhaps, to express alone and fortheir own sakes, but it expresses them; whereas, the architecture ofGower Street and Belgravia merely expresses the impotence of thearchitect to express anything. "

And in characterizing the turn for poetry in French painting ascomparatively inferior, it will be understood at once, I hope, that I amcomparing it with the imaginativeness of the great Italians andDutchmen, and with Rubens and Holbein and Turner, and not asserting thesupremacy in elevated sentiment over Claude and Corot, Chardin, andCazin, of the Royal Academy, or the New York Society of AmericanArtists. And so far as an absolute rather than a comparative standardmay be applied in matters so much too vast for any hope of adequatetreatment according to either method, we ought never to forget that incriticising French painting, as well as other things French, we aremeasuring it by an ideal that now and then we may appreciate better thanFrenchmen, but rarely illustrate as well. 

II

Furthermore, the qualities and defects of French painting--thepredominance in it of national over individual force and distinction, its turn for style, the kind of ideas that inspire its substance, itsclassic spirit in fine--are explained hardly less by its historic originthan by the character of the French genius itself. French paintingreally began in connoisseurship, one may say. It arose in appreciation, that faculty in which the French have always been, and still are, unrivalled. Its syntheses were based on elements already in combination. It originated nothing. It was eclectic at the outset. Compared with theslow and suave evolution of Italian art, in whose earliest dawn itsborrowed Byzantine painting served as a stimulus and suggestion tooriginal views of natural material rather than as a model for imitationand modification, the painting that sprang into existence, Minerva-like, in full armor, at Fontainebleau under Francis I, was of the essence ofartificiality. The court of France was far more splendid than, andequally enlightened with, that of Florence. The monarch felt his titleto Mæcenasship as justified as that of the Medici. He created, accordingly, French painting out of hand--I mean, at all events, theFrench painting that stands at the beginning of the line of the presenttradition. He summoned Leonardo, Andrea del Sarto, Rossi, Primaticcio, and founded the famous Fontainebleau school. Of necessity it wasItalianate. It had no Giotto, Masaccio, Raphael behind it. Italian wasthe best art going; French appreciation was educated and keen; itschoice between evolution and adoption was inevitable. It was very muchin the position in which American appreciation finds itself to-day. Likeour own painters, the French artists of the Renaissance found themselvesfamiliar with masterpieces wholly beyond their power to create, andproduced by a foreign people who had enjoyed the incomparable advantageof arriving at their artistic apogee through natural stages of growth, beginning with impulse and culminating in expertness. 

The situation had its advantages as well as its drawbacks, certainly. Itsaved French painting an immense amount of fumbling, of laboriousexperimentation, of crudity, of failure. But it stamped it with anessential artificiality from which it did not fully recover for overtwo hundred years, until, insensibly, it had built up its own traditionsand gradually brought about its own inherent development. In a word, French painting had an intellectual rather than an emotional origin. Itsfirst practitioners were men of culture rather than of feeling; theywere inspired by the artistic, the constructive, the fashioning, ratherthan the poetic, spirit. And so evident is this inclination in evencontemporary French painting--and indeed in all French æstheticexpression--that it cannot be ascribed wholly to the circumstancesmentioned. The circumstances themselves need an explanation, and find itin the constitution itself of the French mind, which (owing, doubtless, to other circumstances, but that is extraneous) is fundamentally lessimaginative and creative than co-ordinating and constructive. 

Naturally thus, when the Italian influence wore itself out, and theFontainebleau school gave way to a more purely national art; when Francehad definitely entered into her Italian heritage and had learned thelessons that Holland and Flanders had to teach her as well; when, infine, the art of the modern world began, it was an art of grammar, ofrhetoric. Certainly up to the time of Géricault painting in general helditself rather pedantically aloof from poetry. Claude, Chardin, what maybe called the illustrated _vers de société_ of the Louis Quinzepainters--of Watteau and Fragonard--even Prudhon, did little to changethe prevailing color and tone. Claude's art is, in manner, thoroughlyclassic. His _personal_ influence was perhaps first felt by Corot. Hestands by himself, at any rate, quite apart. He was the first thoroughlyoriginal French painter, if indeed one may not say he was the firstthoroughly original modern painter. He has been assigned to both theFrench and Italian schools--to the latter by Gallophobist critics, however, through a partisanship which in æsthetic matters is ridiculous;there was in his day no Italian school for him to belong to. The truthis that he passed a large part of his life in Italy and that hislandscape is Italianate. But more conspicuously still, it isideal--ideal in the sense intended by Goethe in saying, "There are nolandscapes in nature like those of Claude. " There are not, indeed. Nature has been transmuted by Claude's alchemy with lovelier resultsthan any other painter--save always Corot, shall I say?--has everachieved. Witness the pastorals at Madrid, in the Doria Gallery at Rome, the "Dido and Æneas" at Dresden, the sweet and serene superiority of theNational Gallery canvases over the struggling competition manifest inthe Turners juxtaposed to them through the unlucky ambition of the greatEnglish painter. Mr. Ruskin says that Claude could paint a small wavevery well, and acknowledges that he effected a revolution in art, whichrevolution "consisted mainly in setting the sun in heavens. " "Mainly" isdelightful, but Claude's excellence consists in his ability to paintvisions of loveliness, pictures of pure beauty, not in his skill inobserving the drawing of wavelets or his happy thought of paintingsunlight. Mr. George Moore observes ironically of Mr. Ruskin that hisgrotesque depreciation of Mr. Whistler--"the lot of critics" being "tobe remembered by what they have failed to understand"--"will survive hisfinest prose passage. " I am not sure about Mr. Whistler. Contemporariesare too near for a perfect critical perspective. But assuredly Mr. Ruskin's failure to perceive Claude's point of view--to perceive thatClaude's aim and Stanfield's, say, were quite different; that Claude, infact, was at the opposite pole from the botanist and the geologist whomMr. Ruskin's "reverence for nature" would make of every landscapepainter--is a failure in appreciation than to have shown which it wouldbe better for him as a critic never to have been born. It seems hardlyfanciful to say that the depreciation of Claude by Mr. Ruskin, who is alandscape painter himself, using the medium of words instead ofpigments, is, so to speak, professionally unjust. 

"Go out, in the springtime, among the meadows that slope from theshores of the Swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. There, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grassgrows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom--paths thatforever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down inscented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there withnew-mown heaps, filling the air with fainter sweetness--look up towardthe higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silentlyinto their long inlets among the shadows of the pines. "

Claude's landscape is not Swiss, but if it were it would awaken in thebeholder a very similar sensation to that aroused in the reader of thisfamous passage. Claude indeed painted landscape in precisely this way. He was perhaps the first--though priority in such matters is trivialbeside pre-eminence--who painted _effects_ instead of _things_. Lightand air were his material, not ponds and rocks and clouds and trees andstretches of plain and mountain outlines. He first generalized thephenomena of inanimate nature, and in this he remains still unsurpassed. But, superficially, his scheme wore the classic aspect, and neither hiscontemporaries nor his successors, for over two hundred years, discovered the immense value of his point of view, and the puissantcharm of his way of rendering nature. 

Poussin, however, was the incarnation of the classic spirit, and perhapsthe reason why a disinterested foreigner finds it difficult toappreciate the French estimate of him is that no foreigner, howeverdisinterested, can quite appreciate the French appreciation of theclassic spirit in and for itself. But when one listens to expressions ofadmiration for the one French "old master, " as one may call Poussinwithout invidiousness, it is impossible not to scent chauvinism, as onescents it in the German panegyrics of Goethe, for example. He was a verygreat painter, beyond doubt. And as there were great men beforeAgamemnon there have been great painters since Raphael and Titian, evensince Rembrandt and Velasquez. He had a strenuous personality, moreover. You know a Poussin at once when you see it. But to find the suggestionof the infinite, the Shakespearian touch in his work seems to demand theimaginativeness of M. Victor Cherbuliez. When Mr. Matthew Arnoldventured to remark to Sainte-Beuve that he could not consider Lamartineas a very important poet, Sainte-Beuve replied: "He was important tous. " Many critics, among them one severer than Sainte-Beuve, the lateEdmond Scherer, have given excellent reasons for Lamartine's absolute aswell as relative importance, and perhaps it is a failure inappreciation on our part that is really responsible for our feeling thatPoussin is not quite the great master the French deem him. Assuredly hemight justifiably apply to himself the "Et-Ego-in-Arcadia" inscriptionin one of his most famous paintings. And the specific service heperformed for French painting and the relative rank he occupies in itought not to obscure his purely personal qualities, which, if nottranscendent, are incontestably elevated and fine. 

His qualities, however, are very thoroughly French qualities--poise, rationality, science, the artistic dominating the poetic faculty, andstyle quite outshining significance and suggestion. He learned all heknew of art, he said, from the Bacchus Torso at Naples. But he waseclectic rather than imitative, and certainly used the material he foundin the works of his artistic ancestors as freely and personally asRaphael the frescos of the Baths of Titus, or Donatello the fragments ofantique sculpture. From his time on, indeed, French painting dropped itsItalian leading-strings. He might often suggest Raphael--and any painterwho suggests Raphael inevitably suffers for it--but always with anindividual, a native, a French difference, and he is as far removed inspirit and essence from the Fontainebleau school as the French geniusitself is from the Italian which presided there. In Poussin, indeed, the French genius first asserts itself in painting. And it assertsitself splendidly in him. 

We who ask to be moved as well as impressed, who demand satisfaction ofthe susceptibility as well as--shall we say rather than?--interest ofthe intelligence, may feel that for the qualities in which Poussin islacking those in which he is rich afford no compensation whatever. But Iconfess that in the presence of even that portion of Poussin'smagnificent accomplishment which is spread before one in the Louvre, towish one's self in the Stanze of the Vatican or in the Sistine Chapel, seems to me an unintelligent sacrifice of one's opportunities. 

III

It is a sure mark of narrowness and defective powers of perception tofail to discover the point of view even of what one disesteems. We talkof Poussin, of Louis Quatorze art--as of its revival under David and itscontinuance in Ingres--of, in general, modern classic art as if it werean art of convention merely; whereas, conventional as it is, itsconventionality is--or was, certainly, in the seventeenth century--veryfar from being pure formulary. It was genuinely expressive of a certainorder of ideas intelligently held, a certain set of principlessincerely believed in, a view of art as positive and genuine as therevolt against the tyrannous system into which it developed. We aresimply out of sympathy with its aim, its ideal; perhaps, too, for thatmost frivolous of all reasons because we have grown tired of it. 

But the business of intelligent criticism is to be in touch witheverything. "Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner, " as the Frenchethical maxim has it, may be modified into the true motto of æstheticcriticism, "Tout comprendre, c'est tout justifier. " Of course, by"criticism" one does not mean pedagogy, as so many people constantlyimagine, nor does justifying everything include bad drawing. But asLebrun, for example, is not nowadays held up as a model to youngpainters, and is not to be accused of bad drawing, why do we so entirelydispense ourselves from comprehending him at all? Lebrun is, perhaps, not a painter of enough personal importance to repay attentiveconsideration, and historic importance does not greatly concerncriticism. But we pass him by on the ground of his conventionality, without remembering that what appears conventional to us was in his casenot only sincerity but aggressive enthusiasm. If there ever was apainter who exercised what creative and imaginative faculty he had withan absolute gusto, Lebrun did so. He interested his contemporariesimmensely; no painter ever ruled more unrivalled. He fails to interestus because we have another point of view. We believe in our point ofview and disbelieve in his as a matter of course; and it would beself-contradictory to say, in the interests of critical catholicity, that in our opinion his may be as sound as our own. But to say that hehas no point of view whatever--to say, in general, that modern classicart is perfunctory and mere formulary--is to be guilty of what hasalways been the inherent vice of protestantism in all fields of mentalactivity. 

Nowhere has protestantism exhibited this defect more palpably than inthe course of evolution of schools of painting. Pre-Raphaelitism isperhaps the only exception, and pre-Raphaelitism was a violent andemotional counter-revolution rather than a movement characterized bycatholicity of critical appreciation. Literary criticism is certainlyfull of similar intolerance; though when Gautier talks about Racine, orZola about "Mes Haines, " or Mr. Howells about Scott, the polemic temper, the temper most opposed to the critical, is very generally recognized. And in spite of their admirable accomplishment in various branches ofliterature, these writers will never quite recover from the misfortuneof having preoccupied themselves as critics with the defects instead ofthe qualities of what is classic. Yet the protestantism of thesuccessive schools of painting against the errors of their predecessorshas something even more crass about it. Contemporary painters andcritics thoroughly alive, and fully in the contemporary æstheticcurrent, so far from appreciating modern classic art sympathetically, are apt to admire the old masters themselves mainly on technicalgrounds, and not at all to enter into their general æsthetic attitude. The feeling of contemporary painters and critics (except, of course, historical critics) for Raphael's genius is the opposite of cordial. Weare out of touch with the "Disputa, " with angels and prophets seated onclouds, with halos and wings, with such inconsistencies as the "Dogepraying" in a picture of the marriage of St. Catherine, with the mysticmarriage itself. Raphael's grace of line and suave space-filling shapesare mainly what we think of; the rest we call convention. We are becomeliteral and exacting, addicted to the pedantry of the prescriptive, ifnot of the prosaic. 

Take such a picture as M. Edouard Detaille's "Le Rêve, " which won him somuch applause a few years ago. M. Detaille is an irreproachable realist, and may do what he likes in the way of the materially impossible withimpunity. Sleeping soldiers, without a gaiter-button lacking, bivouacking on the ground amid stacked arms whose bayonets would prick;above them in the heavens the clash of contending ghostlyarmies--wraiths born of the sleepers' dreams. That we are in touch with. No one would object to it except under penalty of being scouted aspitiably literal. Yet the scheme is as thoroughly conventional--that isto say, it is as closely based on hypothesis universally assumed for themoment--as Lebrun's "Triumph of Alexander. " The latter is as much a trueexpression of an ideal as Detaille's picture. It is an ideal now becomemore conventional, undoubtedly, but it is as clearly an ideal and asclearly genuine. The only point I wish to make is, that Lebrun'spainting--Louis Quatorze painting--is not the perfunctory thing we areapt to assume it to be. That is not the same thing, I hope, asmaintaining that M. Bouguereau is significant rather than insipid. Lebrun was assuredly not a strikingly original painter. His crowds ofwarriors bear a much closer resemblance to Raphael's "Battle ofConstantine and Maxentius" than the "Transfiguration" of the Vaticandoes to Giotto's, aside from the important circumstance that thedifference in the latter instance shows development, while the formerillustrates mainly an enfeebled variation. But there is unquestionablysomething of Lebrun in Lebrun's work--something typical of the age whoseartistic spirit he so completely expressed. 

To perceive that Louis Quatorze art is not all convention it is onlynecessary to remember that Lesueur is to be bracketed with Lebrun. Allthe sympathy which the Anglo-Saxon temperament withholds from thehistrionism of Lebrun is instinctively accorded to his gentle andgraceful contemporary, who has been called--_faute de mieux_, ofcourse--the French Raphael. Really Lesueur is as nearly conventional asLebrun. He has at any rate far less force; and even if we may maintainthat he had a more individual point of view, his works are assuredlymore monotonous to the scrutinizing sense. It is impossible to recallany one of the famous San Bruno series with any particularity, or, except in subject, to distinguish these in the memory from the sweet andsoft "St. Scholastica" in the _Salon Carré_. With more sapience and lesssensitiveness, Bouguereau is Lesueur's true successor, to say which iscertainly not to affirm a very salient originality of the older painter. He had a great deal of very exquisite feeling for what is refined andelevated, but clearly it is a moral rather than an æsthetic delicacythat he exhibits, and æsthetically he exercises his sweeter and moresympathetic sensibility within the same rigid limits which circumscribethat of Lebrun. He has, indeed, less invention, less imagination, lesssense of composition, less wealth of detail, less elaborateness, nogreater concentration or sense of effect; and though his color is moreagreeable, perhaps, in hue, it gets its tone through the absence ofvariety rather than through juxtapositions and balances. The truth is, that both equally illustrate the classic spirit, the spirit of their age_par excellence_ and of French painting in general, in a supreme degree, though the conformability of the one is positive and of the otherpassive, so to say; and that neither illustrates quite the subserviencyto the conventional which we, who have undoubtedly just as manyconventions of our own, are wont to ascribe to them, and to Lebrun inparticular. 

IV

Fanciful as the Louis Quinze art seems, by contrast with that of LouisQuatorze, it, too, is essentially classic. It is free enough--no one, Ithink, would deny that--but it is very far from individual in anyimportant sense. It has, to be sure, more personal feeling than that ofLesueur or Lebrun. The artist's susceptibility seems to come to thesurface for the first time. Watteau, Fragonard--Fragonard especially, the exquisite and impudent--are as gay, as spontaneous, as careless, asvivacious as Boldini. Boucher's goddesses and cherubs, disportingthemselves in graceful abandonment on happily disposed clouds, outlinedin cumulus masses against unvarying azure, are as unrestrained andindependent of prescription as Monticelli's figures. Lancret, Pater, Nattier, and Van Loo--the very names suggest not merely freedom but asportive and abandoned license. But in what a narrow round they move!How their imaginativeness is limited by their artificiality! What atalent, what a genius they have for artificiality. It is the era _parexcellence_ of dilettantism, and nothing is less romantic thandilettantism. Their evident feeling--and evidently genuine feeling--isfeeling for the factitious, for the manufactured, for what the Frenchcall the _confectionné_. Their romantic quality is to that of the modernFontainebleau group as the exquisite _vers de société_ of Mr. AustinDobson, say, is to the turbulent yet profound romanticism of Heine orBurns. Every picture painted by them would go as well on a fan as in aframe. All their material is traditional. They simply handle it as_enfants terribles_. Intellectually speaking, they are painters of asilver age. Of ideas they have almost none. They are as barren ofinvention in any large sense as if they were imitators instead of, in asense, the originators of a new phase. Their originality is arrived atrather through exclusion than discovery. They simply drop pedantry andexult in irresponsibility. They are hardly even a school. 

Yet they have, one and all, in greater or less degree, that distinctquality of charm which is eternally incompatible with routine. They areas little constructive as the age itself, as anything that we mean whenwe use the epithet Louis Quinze. Of everything thus indicated onepredicates at once unconsciousness, the momentum of antecedent thoughtmodified by the ease born of habit; the carelessness due to having one'sthinking done for one and the license of proceeding fancifully, whimsically, even freakishly, once the lines and limits of one's actionhave been settled by more laborious, more conscientious philosophy thanin such circumstances one feels disposed to frame for one's self. Thereis no break with the Louis Quatorze things, not a symptom of revolt;only, after them the deluge! But out of this very condition of things, and out of this attitude of mind, arises a new art, or rather a newphase of art, essentially classic, as I said, but nevertheless imbuedwith a character of its own, and this character distinctly charming. Wherein does the charm consist? In two qualities, I think, one of whichhas not hitherto appeared in French painting, or, indeed, in any artwhatever, namely, what we understand by cleverness as a distinct elementin treatment--and color. Color is very prominent nowadays in all writingabout art, though recently it has given place, in the fashion of theday, to "values" and the realistic representation of natural objects asthe painter's proper aim. What precisely is meant by color would bedifficult, perhaps, to define. A warmer general tone than is achieved bypainters mainly occupied with line and mass is possibly what is oftenestmeant by amateurs who profess themselves fond of color. At all events, the Louis Quinze painters, especially Watteau, Fragonard, and Pater--andBoucher has a great deal of the same feeling--were sensitive to thatvibration of atmosphere that blends local hues into the _ensemble_ thatproduces tone. The _ensemble_ of their tints is what we mean by color. Since the Venetians _this_ note had not appeared. They constitute, thus, a sort of romantic interregnum--still very classic, from an intellectualpoint of view--between the classicism of Lebrun and the still greaterseverity of David. Nothing in the evolution of French painting is moreinteresting than this reverberation of Tintoretto and Tiepolo. 

By cleverness, as exhibited by the Louis Quinze painters, I do not meanmere technical ability, but something more inclusive, something relatingquite as much to attitude of mind as to dexterity of treatment. Theyconceive as cleverly as they execute. There is a sense of confidence andcapability in the way they view, as well as in the way they handle, their light material. They know it thoroughly, and are thoroughly at onewith it. And they exploit it with a serene air of satisfaction, as ifit were the only material in the world worth handling. Indeed, it isexquisitely adapted to their talent. So little significance has it thatone may say it exists merely to be cleverly dealt with, to berepresented, distributed, compared, and generally utilized solely withreference to the display of the artist's jaunty skill. It is, one maysay, merely the raw material for the production of an effect, and aneffect demanding only what we mean by cleverness; no knowledge and loveof nature, no prolonged study, no acquaintance with the antique, forexample, no philosophy whatever--unless poco-curantism be called aphilosophy, which eminently it is not. To be adequate to therequirements--rarely very exacting in any case--made of one, never toshow stupidity, to have a great deal of taste and an instinctive feelingfor what is elegant and refined, to abhor pedantry and take gayety atonce lightly and seriously, and beyond this to take no thought, is to beclever; and in this sense the Louis Quinze painters are the first, asthey certainly are the typical, clever artists. 

In Louis Quinze art the subject is more than effaced to give free swingto technical cleverness; it is itself contributory to such cleverness, and really a part of it. The artists evidently look on life, as theypaint their pictures, as the web whereon to sketch exhibitions of skillin the composition of sensation-provoking combinations--combinations, thus, provoking sensations of the lightest and least substantial kind. When you stand before one of Fragonard's bewitching models, modishlymodified into a great--or rather a little--lady, you not only note thecolor--full of tone on the one hand and of variety on the other, besidesexhibiting the happiest selective quality in warm and yet delicate huesand tints; you not only, furthermore, observe the clever touch justpoised between suggestion and expression, coquettishly suppressing adetail here, and emphasizing a characteristic there; you feel, inaddition, that the entire object floats airily in an atmosphere ofcleverness; that it is but a bit, an example, a miniature type of anenvironment wholly attuned to the note of cleverness--of competence, facility, grace, elegance, and other abstract but not at all abstrusequalities, quite unrelated to what, in any profound sense, at least, isconcrete and vitally significant. Artificiality so permeated the LouisQuinze epoch, indeed, that one may say that nature itself wasartificial--that is to say, all the nature Louis Quinze painters had topaint; at least all they could have been called upon to think ofpainting. What a distinction is, after all, theirs! To have created outof nothing, or next to nothing, something charming, and enduringlycharming; something of a truly classic inspiration without dependenceat bottom on the real and the actual; something as little indebted tofacts and things as a fairy tale, and withal marked by such qualities ascolor and cleverness in so eminent a degree. 

The Louis Quinze painters may be said, indeed, to have had the romantictemperament with the classic inspiration. They have audacity rather thanfreedom, license modified by strict limitation to the lines within whichit is exercised. But there can be no doubt that this limitation is moreconspicuous in their charmingly irresponsible works than is, essentiallyspeaking, their irresponsibility itself. They never give theirimagination free play. Sportive and spontaneous as it appears, it isequally clear that its activities are bounded by conservatory confines. Watteau, born on the Flemish border, is almost an exception. Temperamentin him seems constantly on the verge of conquering tradition andenvironment. Now and then he seems to be on the point of emancipation, and one expects to come upon some work in which he has expressed himselfand attested his ideality. But one is as constantly disappointed. Hiscolor and his cleverness are always admirable and winning, but hisimport is perversely--almost bewitchingly--slight. What was he thinkingof? one asks, before his delightful canvases; and one's conclusioninevitably is, certainly as near nothing at all as can be consistentwith so much charm and so much real power. As to Watteau, one's lastthought is of what he would have been in a different æstheticatmosphere, in an atmosphere that would have stimulated his reallyromantic temperament to extra-traditional flights, instead of confiningit within the inexorable boundaries of classic custom; an atmospherefavorable to the free exercise of his adorable fancy, instead ofrigorously insistent on conforming this, so far as might be, tocustomary canons, and, at any rate, restricting its exercise to material_à la mode_. A little landscape in the La Caze collection in the Louvre, whose romantic and truly poetic feeling agreeably pierces through itselegance, is eloquent of such reflections. 

V

With Greuze and Chardin we are supposed to get into so different asphere of thought and feeling that the change has been called a "returnto nature"--that "return to nature" of which we hear so much inhistories of literature as well as of the plastic arts. The notion isnot quite sound. Chardin is a painter who seems to me, at least, tostand quite apart, quite alone, in the development of French painting, whereas there could not be a more marked instance of the inherence ofthe classic spirit in the French æsthetic nature than is furnished byGreuze. The first French painter of _genre_, in the full modern sense ofthe term, the first true interpreter of scenes from humble life--oflowly incident and familiar situations, of broken jars and paternalcurses, and buxom girls and precocious children--he certainly is. Thereis certainly nothing _régence_ about him. But the beginning and end ofGreuze's art is convention. He is less imaginative, less romantic, lessreal than the painting his replaced. That was at least a mirror of theideals, the spirit, the society, of the day. A Louis Quinze fan is agenuine and spontaneous product of a free and elastic æsthetic impulsebeside one of his stereotyped sentimentalities. 

The truth is, Greuze is as sentimental as a bullfinch, but he has hardlya natural note in his gamut. Nature is not only never his model, she isnever his inspiration. He is distinctively a literary painter; but thisdescription is not minute enough. His conventions are those not merelyof the _littérateur_, but of the extremely conventional _littérateur_. An artless platitude is really more artificial than a clever paradox; itdoesn't even cast a side-light on the natural material with which itdeals. Greuze's _genre_ is really a _genre_ of his own--his own and thatof kindred spirits since. It is as systematic and detached as the art ofPoussin. The forms it embodies merely have more natural, more familiarassociations. But compare one of his compositions with those of thelittle Dutch and Flemish masters, for truth, feeling, nature handledafter her own suggestions, instead of within limits and on lines imposedupon her from without. By the side of Van Ostade or Brauer, for example, one of Greuze's bits of humble life seems like an academic composition, quite out of touch with its subject, and, except for its art, absolutelylifeless and insipid. 

In a word, his choice of subjects, of _genre_, is really no disguise atall of his essential classicality. Both ideally and technically, in theway he conceives and the way he handles his subject, he is onlysuperficially romantic or real. His literature, so to speak, is asconventional as his composition. One may compare him to Hogarth, thoughboth as a moralist and a technician _a longo intervallo_, of course. Heis assuredly not to be depreciated. His scheme of color is clear if notrich, his handling is frank if not unctuous or subtly interesting, hiscomposition is careful and clever, and some of his heads are admirablypainted--painted with a genuine feeling for quality. But his merits aswell as his failings are decidedly academic, and as a romanticist he isreally masquerading. He is much nearer to Fragonard than he is toEdouard Frère even. 

Chardin, on the other hand, is the one distinguished exception to thegeneral character of French art in the artificial and intellectualeighteenth century. He is as natural as a Dutchman, and as modern asVollon. As you walk through the French galleries of the Louvre, of allthe canvases antedating our own era his are those toward which one feelsthe most sympathetic attraction, I think. You note at once hisindividuality, his independence of schools and traditions, his personalpoint of view, his preoccupation with the object as he perceives it. Nothing is more noteworthy in the history of French art, in the currentof which the subordination of the individual genius to the generalconsensus is so much the rule, than the occasional exception--now of asingle man, now of a group of men, destined to become in its turn aschool--the occasional accent or interruption of the smooth course ofslow development on the lines of academic precedent. Tyrannical asacademic precedent is (and nowhere has it been more tyrannical than inFrench painting) the general interest in æsthetic subjects which ageneral subscription to academic precedent implies is certainly to becredited with the force and genuineness of the occasional protestantagainst the very system that has been powerful enough to popularizeindefinitely the subject both of subscription and of revolt. Withoutsome such systematic propagandism of the æsthetic cultus as from thefirst the French Institute has been characterized by, it is verydoubtful if, in the complexity of modern society, the interest inæsthetics can ever be made wide enough, universal enough, to spreadbeyond those immediately and professionally concerned with it. Theimmense impetus given to this interest by a central organ of authority, that dignifies the subject with which it occupies itself and drawsattention to its value and its importance, has, _à priori_, the manifesteffect of leading persons to occupy themselves with it, also, whootherwise would never have had their attention drawn to it. It wouldscarcely be an exaggeration to say, in other words, that but for theInstitute there would not be a tithe of the number of names now on theroll of French artists. When art is in the air--and nothing so much asan academy produces this condition--the chances of the production ofeven an unacademic artist are immensely increased. 

So in the midst of the Mignardise of Louis Quinze painting it is onlysuperficially surprising to find a painter of the original force andflavor of Chardin. His wholesome and yet subtle variations from the art_à la mode_ of his epoch might have been painted in the Holland of hisday, or in our day anywhere that art so good as Chardin's can beproduced, so far as subject and moral and technical attitude areconcerned. They are, in quite accentuated contra-distinction from theworks of Greuze, thoroughly in the spirit of simplicity and directness. One notes in them at once that moral simplicity which predisposeseveryone to sympathetic appreciation. The special ideas of his time seemto pass him by unmoved. He has no community of interest with them. Whilehe was painting his still life and domestic genre, the whole fantasticwhirl of Louis Quinze society, with its æsthetic standards andaccomplishments--accomplishments and standards that imposed themselveseverywhere else--was in agitated movement around him without in theleast affecting his serene tranquillity, his almost sturdy composure. There can rarely have been such an instance as he affords of an artist'sselecting from his environment just those things his own genius needed, and rejecting just what would have hampered or distracted him. He is assane, as unsentimental, as truthful and unpretending as the most literaland unimaginative Dutchman of his time or before it; but he has alsothat feeling for style, and that instinct for avoiding the common andunclean which always seem to prevent French painters from "sinking withtheir subject, " as Dutch painters have been said to do. He seems neverto let himself go either in the direction of Greuze's literary andsentimental manipulation of his homely material, or in the direction ofsupine satisfaction with this material, unrelieved and unelevated by anindividual point of view, illustrated by the Brauers and Steens andOstades. One perceives that what he cared for was really art itself, forthe æsthetic aspect and significance of the life he painted. Affectionate as his interest in it evidently was, he as evidentlythought of its artistic potentialities, its capability of being treatedwith refinement and delicacy, and of being made to serve the ends ofbeauty equally well with the conventionally beautiful material of hisfan-painting contemporaries. He looked at the world very originallythrough and over those round, horn-bowed spectacles of his, with a veryshrewd and very kindly and sympathetic glance, too; quite untincturedwith prejudice or even predisposition. One can read his artisticisolation in his countenance with a very little exercise of fancy. 

VI

It is the fashion to think of David as the painter of the Revolution andthe Empire. Really he is Louis Seize. Historical critics say that he hadno fewer than four styles, but apart from obvious labels they would bepuzzled to tell to which of these styles any individual picture of hisbelongs. He was from the beginning extremely, perhaps absurdly, enamoured of the antique, and we usually associate addiction to theantique with the Revolutionary period. But perhaps politics are slowerthan the æsthetic movement; David's view of art and practice of paintingwere fixed unalterably under the reign of philosophism. Philosophism, asCarlyle calls it, is the ruling spirit of his work. Long before theRevolution--in 1774--he painted what is still his most characteristicpicture--"The Oath of the Horatii. " His art developed and grewsystematized under the Republic and the Empire; but Napoleon, whosegenius crystallized the elements of everything in all fields ofintellectual effort with which he occupied himself, did little butformally "consecrate, " in French phrase, the art of the painter of "TheOath of the Horatii" and the originator and designer of the "Fête" ofRobespierre's "Être Suprême. " Spite of David's subserviency and that ofothers, he left painting very much where he found it. And he found it ina state of reaction against the Louis Quinze standards. The break withthese, and with everything _régence_, came with Louis Seize, Chardinbeing a notable exception and standing quite apart from the generaldrift of the French æsthetic movement; and Greuze being only apseudo-romanticist, and his work a variant of, rather than reactionaryfrom, the artificiality of his day. Before painting could "return tonature, " before the idea and inspiration of true romanticism could beborn, a reaction in the direction of severity after the artificial yetirresponsible riot of the Louis Quinze painters was naturally andlogically inevitable. Painting was modified in the same measure withevery other expression in the general _recueillement_ that followed theextravagance in all social and intellectual fields of the Louis Quinzeepoch. But in becoming more chaste it did not become less classical. Indeed, so far as severity is a trait of classicality--and it is only anassociated not an essential trait of it--painting became more classical. It threw off its extravagances without swerving from the artificialcharacter of its inspiration. Art in general seemed content withsubstituting the straight line for the curve--a change from Louis Quinzeto Louis Seize that is very familiar even to persons who note thetransitions between the two epochs only in the respective furniture ofeach; a Louis Quinze chair or mirror, for example, having a flowingoutline, whereas a Louis Seize equivalent is more rigid and rectilinear. 

David is artificial, it is to be pointed out, only in his _ensemble_. Indetail he is real enough. And he always has an _ensemble_. Hiscompositions, as compositions, are admirable. They make a totalimpression, and with a vigor and vividness that belong to fewconstructed pictures. The canvas is always penetrated withDavid--illustrates as a whole, and with completeness and comparativeflawlessness, his point of view, his conception of the subject. This, ofcourse, is the academic point of view, the academic conception. But, asI say, his detail is surprisingly truthful and studied. Hispicture--which is always nevertheless a picture--is as inconceivable, astraditional in its inspiration, as factitious as you like; his figuresare always sapiently and often happily exact. His portraits areabsolutely vital characterizations. And in general his sculptural sense, his self-control, his perfect power of expressing what he deemed worthexpressing, are really what are noteworthy in his pictures, far morethan their monotonous coloration and the coldness and unreality of thepictures themselves, considered as moving, real, or significantcompositions. In admiration of these it is impossible for us nowadays togo as far as even the romanticist, though extremely catholic, Gautier. They leave us cold. We have a wholly different ideal, which in order tointerest us powerfully painting must illustrate--an ideal of morepertinence and appositeness to our own moods and manner of thought andfeeling. 

Ingres, a painter of considerably less force, I think, comes much nearerto doing this. He is more elastic, less devoted to system. Without beingas free, as sensitive to impressions as we like to see an artist of hispowers, he escapes pedantry. His subject is not "The Rape of theSabines, " but "The Apotheosis of Homer, " academic but not academicallyfatuitous. To follow the inspiration of the Vatican Stanze in theselection and treatment of ideal subjects is to be far more closely intouch with contemporary feeling as to what is legitimate and proper inimaginative painting, than to pictorialize an actual event with asystematic artificiality and conformity to abstractions that wouldsurely have made the sculptor of the Trajan column smile. Yet I wouldrather have "The Rape of the Sabines" within visiting distance than "TheApotheosis of Homer. " It is better, at least solider, painting. Thepainter, however dominated by his theory, is more the master of itsillustration than Ingres is of the justification of his admiration forRaphael. The "Homer" attempts more, but it is naturally not assuccessful in getting as effective a unity out of its greatercomplexity. It is in his less ambitious pictures that the genius ofIngres is unmistakably evident--his heads, his single figures, hisexquisite drawings almost in outline. His "Odalisque" of the Louvre isnot as forceful as David's portrait of Madame Récamier, but it is afiner thing. I should like the two to have changed subjects in thisinstance. His "Source" is beautifully drawn and modelled. In everythinghe did distinction is apparent. Inferior assuredly to David when heattempted the grand style, he had a truer feeling for the subtlerqualities of style itself. All his works are linearly beautifuldemonstrations of his sincerity--his sanity indeed--in proclaiming thatdrawing is "the probity of art. "

With a few contemporary painters and critics, whose specific penetrationis sometimes in curious contrast with their imperfect catholicity, hehas recently come into vogue again, after having been greatly neglectedsince the romantic outburst. But he belongs completely to the classicepoch. Neither he nor his refined and sympathetic pupil, Flandrin, didaught to pave the way for the modern movement. Intimations of theshifting point of view are discoverable rather in a painter of fardeeper poetic interest than either, spite of Ingres's refinement andFlandrin's elevation--in Prudhon. Prudhon is the link between the lastdays of the classic supremacy and the rise of romanticism. Like Claude, like Chardin, he stands somewhat apart; but he has distinctly theromantic inspiration, constrained and regularized by classic principlesof taste. He is the French Correggio in far more precise parallelismthan Lesueur is the French Raphael. With a grace and lambent color allhis own--a beautiful mother-of-pearl and opalescent tone underlying hisexquisite violets and graver hues; a color-scheme, on the one hand, anda sense of design in line and mass more suave and graceful than anythingsince the great Italians, on the other--he recalls the lovelychiaro-oscuro of the exquisite Parmesan as it is recalled in no othermodern painter. Occupying, as incontestably he does, his own niche inthe pantheon of painters, he nevertheless illustrates most distinctlyand unmistakably the slipping away of French painting from classicformulas as well as from classic extravagance, and the tendency to newideals of wider reach and greater tolerance--of more freedom, spontaneity, interest in "life and the world"--of a definitive breakwith the contracting and constricting forces of classicism. During itsnext period, and indeed down to the present day, French painting willpreserve the essence of its classic traditions, variously modified fromdecade to decade, but never losing the quality in virtue of which whatis French is always measurably the most classic thing going; but of thisnext period certainly Prudhon is the precursor, who, with all hisclassic serenity, presages its passion for "storms, clouds, effusion, and relief. "

II

ROMANTIC PAINTING

I

When we come to Scott after Fielding, says Mr. Stevenson, "we becomesuddenly conscious of the background. " The remark contains an admirablecharacterization of romanticism; as distinguished from classicism, romanticism is consciousness of the background. With Gros, Géricault, Paul Huet, Michel, Delacroix, French painting ceased to be abstract andimpersonal. Instead of continuing the classic detachment, it becameinterested, curious, and catholic. It broadened its range immensely, andcreated its effect by observing the relations of its objects to theirenvironment, of its figures to the landscape, of its subjects to theirsuggestions even in other spheres of thought; Delacroix, Marilhat, Decamps, Fromentin, in painting the aspect of Orientalism, suggested, one may almost say, its sociology. For the abstractions of classicism, its formula, its fastidious system of arriving at perfection byexclusions and sacrifices, it substituted an enthusiasm for the concreteand the actual; it revelled in natural phenomena. Gautier was nevermore definitely the exponent of romanticism than in saying "I am a manfor whom the visible world exists. " To lines and curves and masses andtheir relations in composition, succeeds as material for inspiration andreproduction the varied spectacle of the external world. With the earlyromanticists it may be said that for the first time the external world"swims into" the painter's "ken. " But, above all, in them the element ofpersonality first appears in French painting with anything like generalacceptance and as the characteristic of a group, a school, rather thanas an isolated exception here and there, such as Claude or Chardin. The"point of view" takes the place of conformity to a standard. The painterexpresses himself instead of endeavoring to realize an extraneous andimpersonal ideal. What he himself personally thinks, how he himselfpersonally feels, is what we read in his works. 

It is true that, rightly understood, the romantic epoch is a period ofevolution, and orderly evolution at that, if we look below the surface, rather than of systematic defiance and revolt. It is true that it recastrather than repudiated its inheritance of tradition. Nevertheless therehas never been a time when the individual felt himself so free, whenevery man of any original genius felt so keenly the exhilaration ofindependence, when the "schools" of painting exercised less tyrannyand, indeed, counted for so little. If it be exact to speak of the"romantic school" at all, it should be borne in mind that its adherentswere men of the most marked and diverse individualities ever groupedunder one standard. The impressionists, perhaps, apart, individuality isoften spoken of as the essential characteristic of the painters of thepresent day. But beside the outburst of individuality at the beginningof the romantic epoch, much of the painting of the present day seemsboth monotonous and eccentric--the variation of its essential monotony, that is to say, being somewhat labored and express in comparison withthe spontaneous multifariousness of the epoch of Delacroix and Decamps. In the decade between 1820 and 1830, at all events, notwithstanding thestrength of the academic tradition, painting was free from the thraldomof system, and the imagination of its practitioners was not challengedand circumscribed by the criticism that is based upon science. Not onlyin the painter's freedom in his choice of subject, but in his way oftreating it, in the way in which he "takes it, " is the revolution--or, as I should be inclined to say, rather, the evolution--shown. And aswhat we mean by personality is, in general, made up far more of emotionthan of mind--there being room for infinitely more variety in feelingthan in mental processes among intelligent agents--it is natural tofind the French romantic painters giving, by contrast with theirpredecessors, such free swing to personal feeling that we may almost sumup the origin of the romantic movement in French painting in saying thatit was an ebullition of emancipated emotion. And, to go a step farther, we may say that, as nothing is so essential to poetry as feeling, wemeet now for the first time with the poetic element as an inspiringmotive and controlling force. 

The romantic painters were, however, by no means merely emotional. Theywere mainly imaginative. And in painting, as in literature, the greatchange wrought by romanticism consisted in stimulating the imaginationinstead of merely satisfying the sense and the intellect. The main ideaceased to be as obviously accentuated, and its natural surroundings weregiven their natural place; there was less direct statement and moresuggestion; the artist's effort was expended rather upon perfecting the_ensemble_, noting relations, taking in a larger circle; a suggestedcomplexity of moral elements took the place of the old simplicity, whosemultifariousness was almost wholly pictorial. Instead of a landscape asa tapestry background to a Holy Family, and having no pertinence but anartistic one, we have Corot's "Orpheus. "

II

Géricault and Delacroix are the great names inscribed at the head of theromantic roll. They will remain there. And the distinction is theirs notas awarded by the historical estimate; it is personal. In the case ofGéricault perhaps one thinks a little of "the man and the moment"theory. He was, it is true, the first romantic painter--at any rate thefirst notable romantic painter. His struggles, his steadfastness, hissuccess--pathetically posthumous--have given him an honorable eminence. His example of force and freedom exerted an influence that has beentraced not only in the work of Delacroix, his immediate inheritor, butin that of the sculptor Rude, and even as far as that of Millet--to alloutward appearance so different in inspiration from that of his owntumultuous and dramatic genius. And as of late years we look on thestages of any evolution as less dependent on individuals than we usedto, doubtless just as Luther was confirmed and supported on his way tothe Council at Worms by the people calling on him from the house-topsnot to deny the truth, Géricault was sustained and stimulated in theface of official obloquy by a more or less considerable æstheticmovement of which he was really but the leader and exponent. But hisfame is not dependent upon his revolt against the Institute, hisinfluence upon his successors, or his incarnation of an æstheticmovement. It rests on his individual accomplishment, his personal value, the abiding interest of his pictures. "The Raft of the Medusa" willremain an admirable and moving creation, a masterpiece of dramatic vigorand vivid characterization, of wide and deep human interest and trulypanoramic grandeur, long after its contemporary interest and historicimportance have ceased to be thought of except by the æstheticantiquarian. "The Wounded Cuirassier" and the "Chasseur of the Guard"are not documents of æsthetic history, but noble expressions of artisticsapience and personal feeling. 

What, I think, is the notable thing about both Géricault and Delacroix, however, as exponents, as the initiators, of romanticism, is the way inwhich they restrained the impetuous temperament they share within theconfines of a truly classic reserve. Closely considered, they are notthe revolutionists they seemed to the official classicism of their day. Not only do they not base their true claims to enduring fame upon aspirit of revolt against official and academic art--a spirit essentiallynegative and nugatory, and never the inspiration of anything permanentlypuissant and attractive--but, compared with their successors of thepresent day, in whose works individual preference and predilection seemto have a swing whose very freedom and irresponsible audacity extortadmiration--compared with the confident temerariousness of what is knownas _modernité_, their self-possession and sobriety seem their mostnoteworthy characteristics. Compared with the "Bar at theFolies-Bergère, " either the "Raft of the Medusa" or the "Convulsionistsof Tangiers" is a classic production. And the difference is not at alldue to the forty years' accretion of Protestantism which Manetrepresents as compared with the early romanticists. It is due to acomplete difference in attitude. Géricault imbued himself with theinspiration of the Louvre. Delacroix is said always to have made asketch from the old masters or the antique a preliminary to his owndaily work. So far from flaunting tradition, they may be said to have, in their own view, restored it; so far from posing as apostles ofinnovation, they may almost be accused of "harking back"--of steepingthemselves in what to them seemed best and finest and most authoritativein art, instead of giving a free rein to their own unregulated emotionsand conceptions. 

Géricault died early and left but a meagre product. Delacroix is _parexcellence_ the representative of the romantic epoch. And both by themass and the quality of his work he forms a true connecting linkbetween the classic epoch and the modern--in somewhat the same way asPrudhon does, though more explicitly and on the other side of the lineof division. He represents culture--he knows art as well as he lovesnature. He has a feeling for what is beautiful as well as a knowledge ofwhat is true. He is pre-eminently and primarily a colorist--he is, infact, the introducer of color as a distinct element in French paintingafter the pale and bleak reaction from the Louis Quinze decorativeness. His color, too, is not merely the prismatic coloration of what hadtheretofore been mere chiaro-oscuro; it is original and personal to sucha degree that it has never been successfully imitated since his day. Withal, it is apparently simplicity itself. Its hues are apparently theprimary ones, in the main. It depends upon no subtleties and refinementsof tints for its effectiveness. It is significant that the absorbed andaffected Rossetti did not like it; it is too frank and clear and open, and shows too little evidence of the morbid brooding and hystericalforcing of an arbitrary and esoteric note dear to the Englishpre-Raphaelites. It attests a delight in color, not a fondness forcertain colors, hues, tints--a difference perfectly appreciable toeither an unsophisticated or an educated sense. It has a solidity andstrength of range and vibration combined with a subtle sensitiveness, and, as a result of the fusion of the two, a certain splendor thatrecalls Saracenic decoration. And with this mastery of color is united acombined firmness and expressiveness of design that makes Delacroixunique by emphasizing his truly classic subordination of informingenthusiasm to a severe and clearly perceived ideal--an ideal in a senseexterior to his purely personal expression. In a word, his chiefcharacteristic--and it is a supremely significant trait in therepresentative painter of romanticism--is a poetic imagination temperedand trained by culture and refinement. When his audacities andenthusiasms are thought of, the directions in his will for his tombshould be remembered too: "Il n'y sera placé ni emblème, ni buste, nistatue; mon tombeau sera copié très exactement sur l'antique, ouVignoles ou Palladio, avec des saillies très prononcées, contrairement àtout ce qui se fait aujourd'hui en architecture. " "Let there be neitheremblem, bust, nor statue on my tomb, which shall be copied veryscrupulously after the antique, either Vignola or Palladio, withprominent projections, contrary to everything done to-day inarchitecture. " In a sense all Delacroix is in these words. 

III

Delacroix's color deepens into an almost musical intensity occasionallyin Decamps, whose oriental landscapes and figures, far less importantintellectually, far less _magistrales_ in conception, have at times, onemay say perhaps without being too fanciful, a truly symphonic qualitythat renders them unique. "The Suicide" is like a chord on a violin. Butit is when we come to speak of the "Fontainebleau Group, " in especial, Ithink, that the æsthetic susceptibility characteristic of the latterhalf of the nineteenth century feels, to borrow M. Taine's introductionto his lectures on "The Ideal in Art, " that the subject is one only tobe treated in poetry. 

Of the noblest of all so-called "schools, " Millet is perhaps the mostpopular member. His popularity is in great part, certainly, due to hisliterary side, to the sentiment which pervades, which drenches, one maysay, all his later work--his work after he had, on overhearing himselfcharacterized as a painter of naked women, betaken himself to his truesubject, the French peasant. A literary, and a very powerful literaryside, Millet undoubtedly has; and instead of being a weakness in him itis a power. His sentimental appeal is far from being surplusage, but, asis not I think popularly appreciated, it is subordinate, and the factof its subordination gives it what potency it has. It is idle to denythis potency, for his portrayal of the French peasant in his variedaspects has probably been as efficient a characterization as that ofGeorge Sand herself. But, if a moral instead of an æsthetic effect hadbeen Millet's chief intention, we may be sure that it would have beenmade far less incisively than it has been. Compare, for example, hispeasant pictures with those of the almost purely literary painter JulesBreton, who has evidently chosen his field for its sentimental ratherthan its pictorial value, and whose work is, perhaps accordingly, bycontrast with Millet's, noticeably external and superficial even on theliterary side. When Millet ceased to deal in the Correggio manner withCorreggiesque subjects, and devoted himself to the material that wasreally native to him, to his own peasant genius--whatever he may havethought about it himself, he did so because he could treat this material_pictorially_ with more freedom and less artificiality, with more zestand enthusiasm, with a deeper sympathy and a more intimate knowledge ofits artistic characteristics, its pictorial potentialities. He is, Ithink, as a painter, a shade too much preoccupied with this material, heis a little too philosophical in regard to it, his pathetic struggle forexistence exaggerated his sentimental affiliations with it somewhat, hemade it too exclusively his subject, perhaps. We gain, it may be, at hisexpense. With his artistic gifts he might have been more fortunate, hadhis range been broader. But in the main it is his pictorial handling ofthis material, with which he was in such acute sympathy, thatdistinguishes his work, and that will preserve its fame long after itshumanitarian and sentimental appeal has ceased to be as potent as it nowis--at the same time that it has itself enforced this appeal in thesubordinating manner I have suggested. When he was asked his intention, in his picture of a maimed calf borne away on a litter by two men, hesaid it was simply to indicate the sense of weight in the muscularmovement and attitude of the bearers' arms. 

His great distinction, in fine, is artistic. His early painting ofconventional subjects is not without significance in its witness to thequality of his talent. Another may paint French peasants all his lifeand never make them permanently interesting, because he has not Millet'sadmirable instinct and equipment as a painter. He is a superb colorist, at times--always an enthusiastic one; there is something almostunregulated in his delight in color, in his fondness for glowing andresplendent tone. No one gets farther away from the academic grayness, the colorless chiaro-oscuro of the conventional painters. He runs hiskey up and loads his canvas, occasionally, in what one may call not somuch barbaric as uncultivated and elementary fashion. He cares so muchfor color that sometimes, when his effect is intended to be purelyatmospheric, as in the "Angélus, " he misses its justness and fitness, and so, in insisting on color, obtains from the color point of viewitself an infelicitous--a colored--result. Occasionally he bathes ascene in yellow mist that obscures all accentuations and play of values. But always his feeling for color betrays him a painter rather than amoralist. And in composition he is, I should say, even moredistinguished. His composition is almost always distinctly elegant. Evenin so simple a scheme as that of "The Sower, " the lines are as fine asthose of a Raphael. And the way in which balance is preserved, massesare distributed, and an organic play of parts related to each other andeach to the sum of them is secured, is in all of his large works sosalient an element of their admirable excellence, that, to those whoappreciate it, the dependence of his popularity upon the sentimentalsuggestion of the raw material with which he dealt seems almostgrotesque. In his line and mass and the relations of these incomposition, there is a severity, a restraint, a conformity totradition, however personally felt and individually modified, thatevince a strong classic strain in this most unacademic of painters. Millet was certainly an original genius, if there ever was one. In spiteof, and in open hostility to, the popular and conventional painting ofhis day, he followed his own bent and went his own way. Better, perhaps, than any other painter, he represents absolute emancipation from theprescribed, from routine and formulary. But it would be a signal mistaketo fail to see, in the most characteristic works of this most personalrepresentative of romanticism, that subordination of the individual whimand isolated point of view to what is accepted, proven, and universal, which is essentially what we mean by the classic attitude. One mayalmost go so far as to say, considering its reserve, its restraint andpoise, its sobriety and measure, its quiet and composure, itssubordination of individual feeling to a high sense of artistic decorum, that, romantic as it is, unacademic as it is, its most incontestableclaim to permanence is the truly classic spirit which, however modified, inspires and infiltrates it. Beside some of the later manifestations ofindividual genius in French painting, it is almost academic. 

In Corot, anyone, I suppose, can see this note, and it would besurplusage to insist upon it. He is the ideal classic-romantic painter, both in temperament and in practice. Millet's subject, not, I think, histreatment--possibly his wider range--makes him seem more deeply seriousthan Corot, but he is not essentially as nearly unique. He is unrivalledin his way, but Corot is unparalleled. Corot inherits the tradition ofClaude; his motive, like Claude's, is always an effect, and, likeClaude's, his means are light and air. But his effect is a shade moreimpalpable, and his means are at once simpler and more subtle. He getsfarther away from the phenomena which are the elements of his_ensemble_, farther than Claude, farther than anyone. His touch is aslight as the zephyr that stirs the diaphanous drapery of his trees. Beside it Claude's has a suspicion, at least, of unctuousness. It has apure, crisp, vibrant accent, quite without analogue in the technic oflandscape painting. Taking technic in its widest sense, one may speak ofCorot's shortcomings--not, I think, of his failures. It would bedifficult to mention a modern painter more uniformly successful inattaining his aim, in expressing what he wishes to express, in conveyinghis impression, communicating his sensations. 

That a painter of his power, a man of the very first rank, should havebeen content--even placidly content--to exercise it within a range by nomeans narrow, but plainly circumscribed, is certainly witnessof limitation. "Delacroix is an eagle, I am only a skylark, " he remarkedonce, with his characteristic cheeriness. His range is not, it is true, as circumscribed as is generally supposed outside of France. Outside ofFrance his figure-painting, for example, is almost unknown. We seechiefly variations of his green and gray arbored pastoral--now idyllic, now heroic, now full of freshness, the skylark quality, now of grave anddeep harmonies and wild, sweet notes of transitory suggestion. Of hisfigures we only know those shifting shapes that blend in such classicand charming manner with the glades and groves of his landscapes. Of his"Hagar in the Wilderness, " his "St. Jerome, " his "Flight into Egypt, "his "Democritus, " his "Baptism of Christ, " with its nine life-sizefigures, who, outside of France, has even heard? How many foreignersknow that he painted what are called architectural subjectsdelightfully, and even _genre_ with zest?

But compared with his landscape, in which he is unique, it is plain thathe excels nowhere else. The splendid display of his works in theCentenaire Exposition of the great World's Fair of 1889, was arevelation of his range of interest rather than of his range of power. It was impossible not to perceive that, surprising as were his essays inother fields to those who only knew him as a landscape painter, he wasessentially and integrally a painter of landscape, though a painter oflandscape who had taken his subject in a way and treated it in a mannerso personal as to be really unparalleled. Outside of landscape hisinterest was clearly not real. In his other works one notes a certain_débonnaire_ irresponsibility. He pursued nothing seriously butout-of-doors, its vaporous atmosphere, its crisp twigs and gracefulbranches, its misty distances and piquant accents, what Thoreau callsits inaudible panting. His true theme, lightly as he took it, absorbedhim; and no one of any sensitiveness can ever regret it. His powers, following the indication of his true temperament, his most genuineinspiration, are concentrated upon the very finest thing imaginable inlandscape painting; as, indeed, to produce as they have done the finestlandscape in the history of art, they must have been. 

There are, however, two things worth noting in Corot's landscape, beyondthe mere fact that, better even than Rousseau, he expresses the essenceof landscape, dwells habitually among its inspirations, and is itsmaster rather than its servant. One is the way in which he poetizes, soto speak, the simplest stretches of sward and clumps of trees, and longclear vistas across still ponds, with distances whose accents arepricked out with white houses and yellow cows and placid fishers andferrymen in red caps, seen in glimpses through curtains of sparse, feathery leafage--or peoples woodland openings with nymphs and fawns, silhouetted against the sunset glow, or dancing in the cool gray ofdusk. A man of no reading, having only the elements of an education inthe general sense of the term, his instinctive sense for what is refinedwas so delicate that we may say of his landscapes that, had the Greeksleft any they would have been like Corot's. And this classic andcultivated effect he secured not at all, or only very incidentally, through the force of association, by dotting his hillsides and vaporousdistances with bits of classic architecture, or by summing up hisfeeling for the Dawn in a graceful figure of Orpheus greeting withextended gesture the growing daylight, but by a subtle interpenetrationof sensuousness and severity resulting in precisely the sentiment fitlycharacterized by the epithet classic. The other trait peculiar toCorot's representation of nature and expression of himself is his color. No painter ever exhibited, I think, quite such a sense of refinement inso narrow a gamut. Green and gray, of course, predominate and set thekey, but he has an interestingly varied palette on the hither side ofsplendor whose subtleties are capable of giving exquisite pleasure. Never did anyone use tints with such positive force. Tints with Corothave the vigor and vibration of positive colors--his lilacs, violets, straw-colored hues, his almost Quakerish coquetry with drabs and slatesand pure clear browns, the freshness and bloom he imparted to his tones, the sweet and shrinking wild flowers with which as a spray he sprinkledhis humid dells and brook margins. But Corot's true distinction--whatgives him his unique position at the very head of landscape art, isneither his color, delicate and interesting as his color is, nor hisclassic serenity harmonizing with, instead of depending upon, the chanceassociations of architecture and mythology with which now and then hedecorates his landscapes; it is the blithe, the airy, the trulyspiritual way in which he gets farther away than anyone from both theactual pigment that is his instrument, and from the phenomena that arethe objects of his expression--his ethereality, in a word. He hascommunicated his sentiment almost without material, one may say, soethereally independent of their actual analogues is the interest of histrees and sky and stretch of sward. This sentiment, thus mysteriouslytriumphant over color or form, or other sensuous charm, whichnevertheless are only subtly subordinated, and by no manner of meanstreated lightly or inadequately, is as exalted as any that has in ourday been expressed in any manner. Indeed, where, outside of the veryhighest poetry of the century, can one get the same sense of elation, ofaspiring delight, of joy unmixed with regret--since "the splendor oftruth" which Plato defined beauty to be, is more animating and consolingthan the "weary weight of all this unintelligible world, " is depressingto a spirit of lofty seriousness and sanity?

 * * * * *

Dupré and Diaz are the decorative painters of the Fontainebleau group. They are, of modern painters, perhaps the nearest in spirit to the oldmasters, pictorially speaking. They are rarely in the grand style, though sometimes Dupré is restrained enough to emulate if not to achieveits sobriety. But they have the _bel air_, and belong to the aristocracyof the painting world. Diaz, especially, has almost invariably thepatrician touch. It lacks the exquisiteness of Monticelli's, in whichthere is that curiously elevated detachment from the material and thereal that the Italians--and the Provençal painter's inspiration andmethod, as well as his name and lineage, suggest an Italian rather thana French association--exhibit far oftener than the French. But Diaz hasa larger sweep, a saner method. He is never eccentric, and he has adignity that is Iberian, though he is French rather than Spanish on hisæsthetic side, and at times is as conservative as Rousseau--without, however, reaching Rousseau's lofty simplicity except in an occasionalhappy stroke. Both he and Dupré are primarily colorists. Dupré seesnature through a prism. Diaz's groups of dames and gallants have ajewel-like aspect; they leave the same impression as a tangle ofribbons, a bunch of exotic flowers, a heap of gems flung together withthe felicity of haphazard. In general, and when they are in mostcompletely characteristic mood, it is not the sentiment of nature thatone gets from the work of either painter. It is not even _their_sentiment of nature--the emotion aroused in their susceptibilities bynatural phenomena. What one gets is their personal feeling for color anddesign--their decorative quality, in a word. 

The decorative painter is he to whom what is called "subject, " even inits least restricted sense and with its least substantial suggestions, is comparatively indifferent. Nature supplies him with objects; she isnot in any intimate degree his subject. She is the medium through which, rather than the material of which, he creates his effects. It is herpotentialities of color and design that he seeks, or at any rate, of allher infinitely numerous traits, it is her hues and arabesques thatstrike him most forcibly. He is incurious as to her secrets and callsupon her aid to interpret his own, but he is so independent of her, ifhe be a decorative painter of the first rank--a Diaz or a Dupré--thathis rendering of her, his picture, would have an agreeable effect, owingto its design or color or both, if it were turned upside down. Decorative painting in this sense may easily be carried so far as toseem incongruous and inept, in spite of its superficial attractiveness. The peril that threatens it is whim and freak. Some of Monticelli's, some of Matthew Maris's pictures, illustrate the exaggeration of thedecorative impulse. After all, a painter must get his effect, whateverit be and however it may shun the literal and the exact, by renderingthings with pigments. And some of the decorative painters only escapethings by obtruding pigments, just as the _trompe-l'oeil_ or opticalillusion painters get away from pigments by obtruding things. It is thedistinction of Diaz and Dupré that they avoid this danger in mosttriumphant fashion. On the contrary, they help one to see the decorativeelement in nature, in "things, " to a degree hardly attained elsewheresince the days of the great Venetians. Their predilection for thedecorative element is held in leash by the classic tradition, with itsreserve, its measure, its inculcation of sobriety and its sense ofsecurity. Dupré paints Seine sunsets and the edge of the forest atFontainebleau, its "long mysterious reaches fed with moonlight, " in away that conveys the golden glow, the silvery gleam, the suave outlineof spreading leafage, and the massive density of mysterious boscage withthe force of an almost abstract acuteness. Does nature look like this?Who knows? But in this semblance, surely, she appeared to Dupré'simagination. And doubtless Diaz saw the mother-of-pearl tints in thecomplexion of his models, and is not to be accused of artificiality, but to be credited with a true sincerity of selection in juxtaposing hissoft corals and carnations and gleaming topaz, amethyst, and sapphirehues. The most exacting literalist can hardly accuse them of solecism intheir rendering of nature, true as it is that their decorative sense isso strong as to lead them to impose on nature their own sentimentinstead of yielding themselves to absorption in _hers_, and thus, inharmonious and sympathetic concert with her, like Claude and Corot, Rousseau and Daubigny, interpreting her subtle and supreme significance. 

 * * * * *

Rousseau carried the fundamental principle of the school farther thanthe others--with him interest, delight in, enthusiasm for nature becameabsorption in her. Whereas other men have loved nature, it has beenacutely remarked, Rousseau was in love with her. It was felicitously ofhim, rather than of Dupré or Corot, that the naif peasant inquired, "Whydo you paint the tree; the tree is there, is it not?" And never didnature more royally reward allegiance to her than in the sustenance andinspiration she furnished for Rousseau's genius. You feel the point ofview in his picture, but it is apparently that of nature herself as wellas his own. It is not the less personal for this. On the contrary, itis extremely personal, and few pictures are as individual, ascharacteristic. Occasionally Diaz approaches him, as I have said, butonly in the very happiest and exceptional moments, when the dignity ofnature as well as her charm seems specially to impress and impose itselfupon the less serious painter. But Rousseau's selection seemsinstinctive and not sought out. He knows the secret of nature'spictorial element. He is at one with her, adopts her suggestions socordially and works them out with such intimate sympathy andharmoniousness, that the two forces seem reciprocally to reinforce eachother, and the result gains many fold in power from their subtleco-operation. His landscapes have in this way a Wordsworthiandirectness, simplicity, and severity. They are not troubled and dramaticlike Turner's. They are not decorative like Dupré's, they have not thesolemn sentiment of Daubigny's, or the airy aspiration and fairy-likeblitheness of Corot's. But there is in them "all breathing humanpassion;" and at times, as in "Le Givre, " they rise to majesty and realgrandeur because they are impregnated with the sentiment, as well as arerecords of the phenomena, of nature, and one may say of Rousseau, paraphrasing Mr. Arnold's remark about Wordsworth, that nature seemsherself to take the brush out of his hand and to paint for him "with herown bare, sheer, penetrating power. " Rousseau, however, is French, andin virtue of his nativity exhibits always what Wordsworth's treatment ofnature exhibits only occasionally, namely, the Gallic gift of style. Itis rarely as felicitous as in Corot, in every detail of whose everywork, one may almost say, its informing, co-ordinating, elevatinginfluence is distinctly to be perceived; but it is always present as afactor, as a force dignifying and relieving from all touch, all taint ofthe commonness that is so often inseparably associated with art whoseabsorption in nature is listlessly unthinking instead of enthusiasticand alert. In Rousseau, too, in a word, we have the classic strain, asat least a psychological element, and note as one source of his powerhis reserve and restraint, his perfect self-possession. 

In Daubigny a similar attitude toward nature is obvious, but with asensible difference. Affection for, rather than absorption in her, ishis inspiration. Daubigny stands somewhat apart from the Fontainebleaugroup, with whom nevertheless he is popularly and properly associated, for though he painted Normandy mainly, he was spiritually of theBarbizon kindred. He stands, however, somewhat apart from Frenchpainting in general, I think. There is less style, more sentiment, morepoetry in his landscapes than in those of his countrymen who are to becompared with him. Beyond what is admirable in them there is somethingattaching as well. He drew and engraved a good deal, as well as painted. He did not concentrate his powers enough, perhaps, to make as signal anddefinite a mark as otherwise he might have done. He is a shadedesultory, and too spontaneous to be systematic. One must be systematicto reach the highest point, even in the least material spheres. Butnever have the grave and solemn aspects of landscape found a sweeter andserener spirit to interpret them. In some of his pictures there is atruly religious feeling. His frankness recalls Constable's, but it ismore distinguished in being more spiritual. He has not Diaz's elegance, nor Corot's witchery, nor Rousseau's power, but nature is moremysteriously, more mystically significant to him, and sets a deeperchord vibrating within him. He is a sensitive instrument on which sheplays, rather than a magician who wins her secrets, or an observer whosegeneralizing imagination she sets in motion. The design of some of hisimportant works, notably that of his last _Salon_ picture, is verydistinguished, and in one of his large canvases representing a road likethat from Barbizon through the level plain to Chailly, there is thespirit and sentiment of all the summer evenings that ever were. But hehas distinctly less power than the strict Fontainebleau group. He has, in force, less affinity with them than Troyon has, whose force is oftenmagnificent, and whose landscape is so sweet, often, and often so strongas well, that one wonders a little at his fondness for cattle--in spiteof the way in which he justifies it by being the first of cattlepainters. And neither Daubigny nor Troyon, nor, indeed, Rousseauhimself, often reaches in dramatic grandeur the lofty landscape ofMichel, who, with Paul Huet (the latter in a more strictly historicalsense) were so truly the forerunners and initiators of the romanticlandscape movement, both in sentiment and chronology, in spite of theirDutch tradition, as to make the common ascription of its debt toConstable, whose aid was so cordially welcomed in the famous Salon of1824, a little strained. 

IV

But quite aside from the group of poetic painters which stamped itsimpress so deeply upon the romantic movement at the outset, that to thisday it is Delacroix and Millet, Decamps and Corot whom we think of whenwe think of the movement itself, the classic tradition was preserved allthrough the period of greatest stress and least conformity by paintersof great distinction, who, working under the romantic inspiration andmore or less according to what may be called romantic methods, nevertheless possessed the classic temperament in so eminent a degreethat to us their work seems hardly less academic than that of theRevolution and the Empire. Not only Ingres, but Delaroche and AryScheffer, painted beside Géricault and Delacroix. Ary Scheffer was aneloquent partisan of romanticism, yet his "Dante and Beatrice" and his"Temptation of Christ" are admirable only from the academic point ofview. Delaroche's "Hemicycle" and his many historical tableaux aresurely in the classic vein, however free they may seem in subject andtreatment by contrast with the works of David and Ingres. They leave usequally cold, at all events, and in the same way--for the same reason. They betray the painter's preoccupation with art rather than withnature. They do, in truth, differ widely from the works which theysucceeded, but the difference is not temperamental. They suggest theFrench phrase, _plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose_. Gérôme, forexample, feels the exhilaration of the free air of romanticism fanninghis enthusiasm. He does not confine himself, as, born a decade or twoearlier, certainly he would have done, to classic subject. He followsDecamps and Marilhat to the Orient, which he paints with the utmostfreedom, so far as the choice of theme is concerned--descending even tothe _danse du ventre_ of a Turkish café. He paints historical pictureswith a realism unknown before his day. He is almost equally famous inthe higher class of _genre_ subjects. But throughout everything he doesit is easy to perceive the academic point of view, the classictemperament. David assuredly would never have chosen one of Gérôme'sthemes; but had he chosen it, he would have treated it in much the sameway. Allowance made for the difference in time, in general feeling ofthe æsthetic environment, the change in ideas as to what was fit subjectfor representation and fitting manner of treating the same subject, itis hardly an exaggeration to say that Ingres would have sincerelyapplauded Gérôme's "Cleopatra" issuing from the carpet roll beforeCæsar. And if he failed to perceive the noble dramatic power in such awork as the "Ave, Cæsar, morituri te salutant, " his failure wouldnowadays, at least among intelligent amateurs, be ascribed to anintolerance which it is one of the chief merits of the romantic movementto have adjudged absurd. 

It is a source of really æsthetic satisfaction to see everything that isattempted as well done as it is in the works of such painters asBouguereau and Cabanel. Of course the feeling that denies them largeimportance is a legitimate one. The very excellence of their technic, its perfect adaptedness to the motive it expresses, is, considering theinsignificance of the motive, subject for criticism; inevitably itpartakes of the futility of its subject-matter. Of course the personalvalue of the man, the mind, behind any plastic expression is, in asense, the measure of the expression itself. If it be a mind interestedin "pouncet-box" covers, in the pictorial setting forth of themes whoseillustration most intimately appeals to the less cultivated and morerudimentary appreciation of fine art--as indisputably the Madonnas andCharities and Oresteses and Bacchus Triumphs of M. Bouguereau do--onemay very well dispense himself from the duty of admiring itsproductions. Life is short, and more important things, things of moresignificant import, demand attention. The grounds on which the works ofBouguereau and Cabanel are admired are certainly insufficient. But theyare experts in their sphere. What they do could hardly be better done. If they appeal to a _bourgeois_, a philistine ideal of beauty, ofinterest, they do it with a perfection that is pleasing in itself. Noone else does it half so well. To minds to which they appeal at all, they appeal with the force of finality; for these they create as well asillustrate the type of what is admirable and lovely. It is as easy toaccount for their popularity as it is to perceive its transitoryquality. But not only is it a mark of limitation to refuse all interestto such a work as, for example, M. Cabanel's "Birth of Venus, " in thepainting of which a vast deal of technical expertness is enjoyablyevident, and which in every respect of motive and execution is far abovesimilar things done elsewhere than in France; it is a still greatererror to confound such painters as M. Cabanel and M. Bouguereau withother painters whose classic temperament has been subjected to theuniversal romantic influence equally with theirs, but whose productionis as different from theirs as is that of the thorough and pureromanticists, the truly poetic painters. 

The instinct of simplification is an intelligent and sound one. Itssatisfaction is a necessary preliminary to efficient action of any kind, and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism thisinstinct can only be satisfied intelligently and soundly by aconsideration of everything appealing to consideration, and not at allby heated and wilful, or superior and supercilious, exclusions. Catholicity of appreciation is the secret of critical felicity. Tofollow the line of least resistance, not to take into account thoseelements of a problem, those characteristics of a subject, to which, superficially and at first thought, one is insensitive, is to dispenseone's self from a great deal of particularly disagreeable industry, butthe result is only transitorily agreeable to the sincere intelligence. It is in criticism, I think, though no doubt in criticism alone, preferable to lose one's self in a maze of perplexity--distressing asthis is to the critic who appreciates the indispensability ofclairvoyance in criticism--rather than to reach swiftly and simply aconclusion which candor would have foreseen as the inevitable andunjudicial result of following one's own likes and whims, and one'scontentment with which must be alloyed with a haunting sense ofinsecurity. In criticism it is perhaps better to keep balancingcounter-considerations than to determine brutally by excluding a wholeset of them because of the difficulty of assigning them their trueweight. In this way, at least, one preserves the attitude of poise, andpoise is perhaps the one essential element of criticism. In a word, thatcatholicity of sensitiveness which may be called mere impressionism, behind which there is no body of doctrine at all, is more truly criticalthan intolerant depreciation or unreflecting enthusiasm. "The main thingto do, " says Mr. Arnold, in a significant passage, "is to get one's selfout of the way and let humanity judge. "

It is temptingly simple to deny all importance to painters who are notpoetic painters. And the temptation is especially seductive when theprosaic painters are paralleled by such a distinguished succession oftheir truly poetic brethren as are the painters of the romantic epochwho are possessed of the classic temperament. But real criticismimmediately suggests that prose has its place in painting as inliterature. In literature we do not insist even that the poets bepoetic. Poetic is not the epithet that would be applied, for instance, to French classic verse or the English verse of the eighteenth century, compared with the poetry, French or English, which we mean when we speakof poetry. Yet no one would think of denying the value of Dryden or evenof Boileau. No one would even insist that, distinctly prosaic as are thequalities of Boileau--and I should say his was a crucial instance--hewould have done better to abjure verse. And painting, in a wide sense, is just as legitimately the expression of ideas in form and color asliterature is the expression of ideas in words. It is perfectly plainthat Meissonier was not especially enamoured of beauty, as Corot, asTroyon, as Decamps was. But nothing could be less critical than to denyMeissouier's importance and the legitimate interest he has for everyeducated and intelligent person, in spite of his literalness and hisinsensitiveness to the element of beauty, and indeed to any trulypictorial significance whatever in the wide range of subjects that heessayed, with, in an honorable sense, such distinguished success. 

Especially in America, I think, where of recent years we have shown anAthenian sensitiveness to new impressions, the direct descendants of theclassic period of French painting have suffered from the popularity ofthe Fontainebleau group. Their legitimate attachment to art, instead ofthe Fontainebleau absorption in nature, has given them a falsereputation of artificiality. But the prose element in art has itsjustification as well as the poetic, and it is witness of a narrowculture to fail in appreciation of its admirable accomplishment. Theacademic wing of the French romantic painting is marked precisely by abreadth of culture that is itself a source of agreeable and elevatedinterest. The neo-Grec painters are thoroughly educated. They lack thepicturesque and unexpected note of their poetic brethren--they lack themoving and interpreting, the elevating and exquisite touch of these;nay, they lack the penetrating distinction that radiates even fromrusticity itself when it is inspired and transfigured as it appears insuch works as those of Millet and Rousseau. But their distinction is notless real for being the distinction of cultivation rather thanaltogether native and absolute. It is perhaps even more marked, morepervasive, more directly associated with the painter's aim and effect. One feels that they are familiar with the philosophy of art, its historyand practice, that they are articulate and eclectic, that for being lesspersonal and powerful their horizon is less limited, their purelyintellectual range, at all events, and in many cases their æstheticinterest, wider. They have more the cultivated man's bent forexperimentation, for variety. They care more scrupulously forperfection, for form. With a far inferior sense of reality and far lessfelicity in dealing with it, their sapient skill in dealing with theabstractions of art is more salient. To be blind to their successfulhandling of line and mass and movement, is to neglect a source ofrefined pleasure. To lament their lack of poetry is to miss theiradmirable rhetoric; to regret their imperfect feeling for decorativenessis to miss their delightful decorum. 

V

As one has, however, so often occasion to note in France--where in everyfield of intellectual effort the influence of schools and groups andmovements is so great that almost every individuality, no matter howstrenuous, falls naturally and intimately into association with some oneof them--there is every now and then an exception that escapes thesecategories and stands quite by itself. In modern painting suchexceptions, and widely different from each other as the poles, areCouture and Puvis de Chavannes. Better than in either the trueromanticists with the classic strain, or the academic romanticists withthe classic temperament, the blending of the classic and romanticinspirations is illustrated in Couture. The two are in him, indeed, actually fused. In Puvis de Chavannes they appear in a wholly novelcombination; his classicism is absolutely unacademic, his romanticismunreal beyond the verge of mysticism, and so preoccupied with visionsthat he may almost be called a man for whom the actual world does _not_exist--in the converse of Gautier's phrase. His distinction is whollypersonal. He lives evidently on an exceedingly high plane--dwellshabitually in the delectable uplands of the intellect. The fact that hiswork is almost wholly decorative is not at all accidental. His talent, his genius if one chooses, requires large spaces, vast dimensions. Therehas been a great deal of rather profitless discussion as to whether heexpressly imitates the _primitifs_ or reproduces them sympathetically. But really he does neither; he deals with their subjects occasionally, but always in a completely modern, as well as a thoroughly personal, way. His color is as original as his general treatment and composition. He had no schooling, in the École des Beaux Arts sense. A brief periodin Henri Scheffer's studio, three months under Couture, after he hadbegun life in an altogether different field of effort, yielded him allthe explicit instruction he ever had. His real study was done in Italy, in the presence of the old masters of Florence. With this equipment herevolutionized modern decoration, established, at any rate, a newconvention for it. His convention is a little definite, a little bald. One may discuss it apart from his own handling of it, even. It is ashade too express, too confident, too little careless both of traditionand of the typical qualities that secure permanence. In other hands onecan easily imagine how insipid it might become. It has too little body, its scheme is too timorous, too vaporous to be handled by another. Puvisde Chavannes will probably have few successful imitators. But one mustimmediately add that if he does not found a school, his own work is, perhaps for that reason, at all events in spite of it, among the mostimportant of the day. Quite unperturbed by current discussions, whichare certainly of the noisiest by which the current of artisticdevelopment was ever deflected, he has kept on his way, and has finallywon all suffrages for an æsthetic expression that is really antagonisticto the general æsthetic spirit of his time. 

Puvis de Chavannes is, perhaps, the most interesting figure in Frenchpainting to-day. Couture is little more than a name. It is curious toconsider why. Twenty years ago he was still an important figure. He hadbeen an unusually successful teacher. Many American painters ofdistinction, especially, were at one time his pupils--Hunt, La Farge, George Butler. He theorized as much, as well--perhaps even betterthan--he painted. His "Entretiens d'atelier" are as good in their way ashis "Baptism of the Prince Imperial. " He had a very distinguishedtalent, but he was too distinctly clever--clever to the point ofsophistication. In this respect he was distinctly a man of thenineteenth century. His great work, "Romains de la Décadence, " createdas fine an effect at the Centenary Exhibition of the Paris World's Fairin 1889 as it does in the Louvre, whence it was then transferred, but itwas distinctly a decorative effect--the effect of a fine panel in thegeneral mass of color and design; it made a fine centre. It remains hisgreatest performance, the performance upon which chiefly his fame willdepend, though as painting it lacks the quality and breadth of "LeFauconnier, " perhaps the most interesting of his works to paintersthemselves, and of the "Day-Dreams" of the New York Metropolitan Museumof Art. Its permanent interest perhaps will be the historical one, dueto the definiteness with which it assigns Couture his position in theevolution of French painting. It shows, as everything of Couture shows, the absence of any pictorial feeling so profound and personal as to makean impression strong enough to endure indefinitely. And it has not, onthe other hand, the interest of reality--that faithful and enthusiasticrendering of the external world which gives importance to and fixes thecharacter of the French painting of the present day. 

Had Regnault lived, he would have more adequately--or should I say moreplausibly?--marked the transition from romanticism to realism. Temperamentally he was clearly a thorough romanticist--far more so, forinstance, than his friend Fortuny, whose intellectual reserve is alwaysconspicuous. He essayed the most vehement kind of subjects, even in theclassical field, where he treated them with truly romantic truculence. He was himself always, moreover, and ideally cared as little for natureas a fairy-story teller. In this sense he was more romantic than theromanticists. His "Automedon, " his portrait of General Prim, even his"Salome, " are wilful in a degree that is either superb or superficial, as one looks at them; but at any rate they are romantic _à outrance_. Atthe same time it was unmistakably the aspect of things rather than theirsignificance, rather than his view of them, that appealed to him. He wasfarther away from the classic inspiration than any other romanticist ofhis fellows; and at the same time he cared for the external world moreon its own account and less for its suggestions, than any painter ofequal force before Courbet and Bastien-Lepage. The very fact that he wasnot, intellectually speaking, wholly _dans son assiette_, as the Frenchsay, shows that he was a genius of a transitional moment. One's finalthought of him is that he died young, and one thinks so not so muchbecause of the dramatic tragedy of his taking off by possibly the lastPrussian bullet fired in the war of 1870-71, as because of theessentially experimental character of his painting. Undoubtedly he wouldhave done great things. And undoubtedly they would have been differentfrom those that he did; probably in the direction--already indicated inhis most dignified performance--of giving more consistency, more vividdefiniteness, more reality, even, to his already striking conceptions. 

III

REALISTIC PAINTING

I

To an intelligence fully and acutely alive, its own time must, I think, be more interesting than any other. The sentimental, the scholastic, thespeculative temperament may look before or after with longing or regret;but that sanity of mind which is practical and productive must find itsmost agreeable sensations in the data to which it is intimately andinexorably related. The light upon Greek literature and art for which westudy Greek history, the light upon Roman history for which we studyLatin literature and art, are admirable to us in very exact proportionas we study them for our ends. To every man and every nation that reallybreathes, true vitality of soul depends upon saying to one's self, withan emotion of equivalent intensity to the emotion of patriotismcelebrated in Scott's familiar lines, This is my own, my native era andenvironment. Culture is impossible apart from cosmopolitanism, butself-respect is more indispensable even than culture. French art aloneat the present time possesses absolute self-respect. It possesses thisquality in an eminent, in even an excessive degree; but it possesses it, and in virtue of it is endued with a preservative quality that saves itfrom the emptiness of imitation and the enervation of dilettantism. Ithas, in consequence, escaped that recrudescence of the primitive andinchoate known in England and among ourselves as pre-Raphaelitism. Ithas escaped also that almost abject worship of classic models whichWinckelmann and Canova made universal in Germany and Italy--not to speakof its echoes elsewhere. It has always stood on its own feet, and, however lacking in the higher qualities of imaginative initiative, onthe one hand, and however addicted to the academic and the traditionalon the other, has always both respected its æsthetic heritage andcontributed something of its own thereto. 

Why should not one feel the same quick interest, the same instinctivepride in his time as in his country? Is not sympathy with what ismodern, instant, actual, and apposite a fair parallel of patriotism?Neglect of other times in the "heir of all the ages" is analogous tochauvinism, and indicative of as ill-judged an attitude as that ofprovincial blindness to other contemporary points of view and systems ofphilosophy than one's own. Culture is equally hostile to both, and inart culture is as important a factor as it is in less special fields ofactivity and endeavor. But in art, as elsewhere, culture is a means toan actual, present end, and the pre-Raphaelite sentiment that dictatesmere reproduction of what was once a genuine expression is as sterile asservile imitation of exotic modes of thought, dress, and demeanor isuniversally felt to be. The past--the antique, the renaissance, theclassic, and romantic ideals are to be used, not adopted; in the spiritof Goethe, at once the most original of modern men and the mostsaturated with culture, exhibited in his famous saying: "Nothing do Icall my own which having inherited I have not reconquered for myself. "

It would indeed be a singular thing were the field of æsthetics the onlyone uninvaded by the scientific spirit of the time. The one forceespecially characteristic of our era is, I suppose, the scientificspirit. It is at any rate everywhere manifest, and it possesses the bestintellects of the century. _A priori_ one may argue about its hostility, essential or other, to the artistic, the constructive spirit; but to doso is at the most to beat the air, to waste one's breath, to Ruskinize, in a word. Interest in life and the world, instead of speculation orself-expression, is the "note" of the day. The individual has witheredterribly. He is supplanted by the type. Materialism has its positivegospel; it is not at all the formulated expression of Goethe's "spiritthat denies. " Nature has acquired new dignity. She cannot be studied tooclosely, nor too long. The secret of the universe is now pursued throughobservation, as formerly it was through fasting and prayer. Nothing issacred nowadays because everything receives respect. If absolute beautyis now smiled at as a chimera, it is because beauty is perceivedeverywhere. Whatever is may not be right--the maxim has too much of an_ex cathedra_ sound--but whatever is is interesting. Our attitude is atonce humbler and more curious. The sense of the immensity, theimmeasurableness of things, is more intimate and profound. What one maydo is more modestly conceived; what might be done, more justlyappreciated. There is less confidence and more aspiration. The artist'seye is "on the object" in more concentrated gaze than ever heretofore. If his sentiment, his poetry, is no longer "inevitable, " as Wordsworthcomplained Goethe's was not, it is more reverent, at any rate morecircumspect. If he is less exalted he is more receptive--he is morealive to impressions for being less of a philosopher. If he scoutsauthority, if even he accepts somewhat weakly the thraldom of dissentfrom traditional standards and canons, it is because he is convincedthat the material with which he has to deal is superior to all canonsand standards. If he esteems truth more than beauty, it is because whathe thinks truth is more beautiful in his eyes than the stereotypedbeauty he is adjured to attain. In any case, the distinction of therealistic painters--like that of the realists in literature, where, also, it need not be said, France has been in the lead--is measurably tohave got rid of solecisms; to have made, indeed, obvious solecisms, andsolecisms of conception as well as of execution, a little ridiculous. Itis, to be sure, equally ridiculous to subject romantic productions torealistic standards, to blind one's self to the sentiment that saturatessuch romantic works as Scott's and Dumas's, or Géricault's and Diaz's, and is wholly apposite to its own time and point of view. The greatdifficulty with a principle is that it is universal, and that when wedeal with facts of any kind whatever, universality is an impossibleideal. Scott and Géricault are, nowadays, in what we have come to deemessentials, distinctly old-fashioned. It might be well to try andimitate them, if imitation had any salt in it, which it has not; or ifit were possible to do what they did with their different inspiration, which it is not. Mr. Stevenson is, I think, an example of the danger ofessaying this latter in literature, just as a dozen eminent painters ofless talent--for no one has so much talent as Mr. Stevenson--areexamples in painting. But there are a thousand things, not only in thetechnic of the romanticists but in their whole attitude toward their artand their material, that are nowadays impossible to sincere andspontaneous artists. Details which have no importance whatever in the_ensemble_ of the romantic artist are essential to the realist. Art doesnot stand still. Its canons change. There is a constant evolution in itsstandards, its requirements. A conventional background is no more anerror in French classic painting than in tapestry; a perfunctory schemeof pure chiaro-oscuro is no blemish in one of Diaz's splendid forestlandscapes; such phenomena in a work of Raffaelli or Pointelin wouldjar, because, measured by the standards to which modern men must, through the very force of evolution itself, subscribe, they can butappear solecisms. In a different set of circumstances, under a differentinspiration, and with a different artistic attitude, solecisms theycertainly are not. But, as Thackeray makes Ethel Newcome say, "We belongto our belongings. " Our circumstances, inspiration, artistic attitude, are involuntary and possess us as our other belongings do. 

In Gautier's saying, for instance, "I am a man for whom the visibleworld exists, " which I have quoted as expressing the key-note of theromantic epoch, it is to be noted that the visible world is taken as aspectacle simply--significant, suggestive or merely stimulant, inaccordance with individual bent. Gautier and the romanticists generallyhad little concern for its structure. To many of them it was indeedrather a canvas than a spectacle even--just as to many, if not to most, of the realists it is its structure rather than its significance thataltogether appeals; the romanticists in general sketched their ideas andimpressions upon it, as the naturalists have in the main studied itsaspects and constitution, careless of the import of these, pictoriallyor otherwise. Indeed one is tempted often to inquire of the latter, Whyso much interest in what apparently seems to you of so little import?Are we never to have your skill, your observation, your amassing of"documents" turned to any account? Where is the realistic tragedy, comedy, epic, composition of any sort? Courbet's "Cantonniers, " Manet's"Bar, " or Bastien-Lepage's "Joan of Arc, " perhaps. But what isindisputable is, that we are irretrievably committed to the presentgeneral æsthetic attitude and inspiration, and must share not only theromanticists' impatience with academic formulæ and conventions, but therealists' devotion to life and the world as they actually exist. Thefuture may be different, but we are living in the present, and what isimportant is, after all, to live. It is also so difficult that not totake the line of least resistance is fatuity. 

II

It is at least an approximation to ascribe the primacy of realism toCourbet, though ascriptions of the kind are at best approximations. Notonly was he the first, or among the first, to feel the interest andimportance of the actual world as it is and for what it is rather thanfor what it suggests, but his feeling in this direction is intenser thanthat of anyone else. Manet was preoccupied with the values of objectsand spaces. Bastien-Lepage, while painting these with the mostscrupulous fidelity, was nevertheless always attentive to thesignificance and import of what he painted. Courbet was a purepantheist. He was possessed by the material, the physical, the actual. He never varies it a hair's-breadth. He never lifts it a fraction of adegree. But by his very absorption in it he dignifies it immensely. Heillustrates magnificently its possibilities. He brings out into theplainest possible view its inherent, integral, æsthetic quality, independent of any extraneity. No painter ever succeeded so well with solittle art, one is tempted to say. Beside his, the love of nature whichwe ascribe to the ordinary realist is a superficial emotion. He had the_sentiment_ of reality in the highest degree; he had it intensely. If hedid not represent nature with the searching subtlety of later painters, he is certainly the forerunner of naturalism. He has absolutely noideality. He is blind to all intimations of immortality, all unearthlyvoices. 

Yet it would be wholly an error to suppose him a mere literalist. No oneis farther removed from the painstaking, grubbing imitators of detail sojustly denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Whistler. He has the generalizingfaculty in very distinguished degree, and in very large measure. Everytrait of his talent, indeed, is large, manly; but for a certainqualification--which must be made--one might add, Olympian. Thisqualification perhaps may be not unfairly described as earthiness--neveran agreeable trait, and one to which probably is due the depreciation ofCourbet that is so popular even among appreciative critics. It is easyto characterize Courbet as brutal and material, but what is easy isgenerally not exact. What one glibly stigmatizes as brutality andgrossness may, after all, be something of a particularly strong savor, enjoyed by the painter himself with a gusto too sterling and instinctiveto be justifiably neglected, much less contemned. The first thing to doin estimating an artist's accomplishment, which is to place one's selfat his point of view, is, in Courbet's case, unusually difficult. We areall dreamers, more or less--in more or less desultory fashion--and canall appreciate that prismatic turn of what is real and actual into aposition wherein it catches glints of the imagination. The imaginationis a universal touchstone. The sense of reality is a special, anindividual faculty. When one is poetizing in an amateur, a dilettanteway, as most of us poetize, a picture of Courbet, which seems to flauntand challenge the imagination in virtue of its defiant reality, itsinsistence on the value and significance of the prosaic and the actual, appears coarse and crude. It is not, however. It is very far from that. It is rather elemental than elementary--in itself a prodigiousdistinction. No modern painter has felt more intensely and reproducedmore vigorously the sap that runs through and vivifies the various formsof natural phenomena. To censure his shortcomings, to regret hisimaginative incompleteness, is to miss him altogether. 

It is easy to say he had all the coarseness without the sentiment of theFrench peasantry, whence he sprang; that his political radicalismattests a lack of the serenity of spirit indispensable to the sincereartist; that he had no conception of the beautiful, the exquisite--thefact remains that he triumphs over all his deficiencies, and in verysplendid fashion. He is, in truth, of all the realists for whom hediscovered the way, and set the pace, as it were, one of the twonaturalistic painters who have shown in any high degree the supremeartistic faculty--that of generalization. However impressive Manet'spicture may be; however brilliant Monet's endeavor to reproduce sunlightmay seem; however refined and elegant Degas's delicate selection ofpictorial material--for broad and masterful generalization, for enduingwhat he painted with an interest deeper than its surface and underlyingits aspect, Courbet has but one rival among realistic painters. I mean, of course, Bastien-Lepage. 

There is an important difference between the two. In Courbet thesentiment of reality dominates the realism of the technic; inBastien-Lepage the technic is realistically carried infinitely farther, but the sentiment quite transcends realism. Imagine Courbet essaying a"Jeanne d'Arc!" Bastien-Lepage painting Courbet's "Cantonniers" wouldnot have stopped, as Courbet has done, with expressing their vitality, their actual interest, but at the same time that he represented them infar greater technical completeness he would also have occupied himselfwith their psychology. He is indeed quite as distinctly a psychologistas he is a painter. His favorite problem, aside from that of technicalperfection, which perhaps equally haunted him, is the rendering of thatresigned, bewildered, semi-hypnotic, vaguely and yet intensely longingspiritual expression to be noted by those who have the eyes to see it inthe faces and attitudes now of the peasant laborer, now of the citypariah. All his peasant women are potentially Jeannes d'Arc--"LesFoins, " "Tired, " "Petite Fauvette, " for example. The "note" is stillmore evident in the "London Bootblack" and the "London Flower-girl, " inwhich the outcast "East End" spiritlessness of the British capital iscaught and fixed with a Zola-like veracity and vigor. Such a phase asthis is not so much pictorial or poetic, as psychological. Bastien-Lepage's happiness in rendering it is a proof of the exceedingquickness and sureness of his observation; but his preoccupation with itis equally strong proof of his interest in the things of the mind aswell as in those of the senses. This is his great distinction, I think. He beats the realist on his own ground (except perhaps Monet and hisfollowers--I remember no attempt of his to paint sunlight), but he isimaginative as well. He is not, on the other hand, to be in anywiseassociated with the romanticists. Degas's acid characterization of him, as "the Bouguereau of the modern movement, " is only just, if we rememberwhat very radical and fundamental changes the "modern movement" impliesin general attitude as well as in special expression. I should beinclined, rather, to apply the analogy to M. Dagnan-Bouveret, thoughhere, too, with many reserves looking mainly to the difference betweentrue and vapid sentiment. 

It is interesting to note, however, the almost exclusively intellectualcharacter of this imaginative side of Bastien-Lepage. He does not viewhis material with any apparent sympathy, such as one notes, or at allevents divines, in Millet. Both were French peasants; but whereasMillet's interest in his fellows is instinctive and absorbing, Bastien-Lepage's is curious and detached. If his pictures ever succeedin moving us, it is impersonally, in virtue of the camera-like scrutinyhe brings to bear on his subject, and the effectiveness with which herenders it, and of the reflections which we institute of ourselves, andwhich he fails to stimulate by even the faintest trace of a loving touchor the betrayal of any sympathetic losing of himself in his theme. Youfeel just the least intimation of the _doctrinaire_, the systematicaloofness of the spectator. In moral attitude as well as in technicalexpression he no more assimilates the various phases of his material, toreproduce them afterward in new and original combination, than heexpresses the essence of landscape in general, as the Fontainebleaupainters do even in their most photographic moments. Both his figuresand his landscapes are clearly portraits--typical and not merelyindividual, to be sure, but somehow not exactly creations. His skies arethe least successful portions of his pictures, I think; one mustgeneralize easily to make skies effective, and perhaps it is notfanciful to note the frequency of high horizons in his work. 

The fact remains that Bastien-Lepage stands at the head of the modernmovement in many ways. His friend, M. André Theuriet, has shown, in abrochure published some years ago, that he was himself as interesting ashis pictures. He took his art very seriously, and spoke of it with adignity rather uncommon in the atmosphere of the studios, where there isapt to be more enthusiasm than reflection. I recall vividly theimpatience with which he once spoke to me of painting "to show what youcan do. " His own standard was always the particular ideal he had formed, never within the reach of his ascertained powers. And whatever he did, one may say, illustrates the sincerity and elevation of this remark, whether one's mood incline one to care most for this psychologicalside--undoubtedly the more nearly unique side--of his work, or for suchexquisite things as his "Forge" or the portrait of Mme Sarah Bernhardt. Incontestably he has the true tradition, and stands in the line of thegreat painters. And he owes his permanent place among them not less tohis perception that painting has a moral and significant, as well as arepresentative and decorative sanction, than to his perfect harmony withhis own time in his way of illustrating this--to his happy fusion ofaspect admirably rendered with profound and stimulating suggestion. 

III

Of the realistic landscape painters, the strict impressionists apart, none is more eminent than M. Cazin, whose work is full of interest, andif at times it leaves one a little cold, this is perhaps an affair ofthe beholder's temperament rather than of M. Cazin's. He is a thoroughlyoriginal painter, and, what is more at the present day, an imaginativeone. He sees in his own way the nature that we all see, and paints itnot literally but personally. But his landscapes invariably attest, above all, an attentive study of the phenomena of light and air, andtheir truthfulness is the more marked for the personality theyillustrate. The impression they make is of a very clairvoyant andenthusiastic observation exercised by an artist who takes more pleasurein appreciation than in expression, whose pleasure in his expression issubordinate to his interest in the external world, and in large measureconfined to the delight every artist has in technical felicity when hecan attain it. Their skies are beautifully observed--graduated in valuewith delicate verisimilitude from the horizon up, and wind-swept, ordrenched with mist, or ringing clear, as the motive may dictate. Allobjects take their places with a precision that, nevertheless, is innowise pedantic, and is perfectly free. Cazin's palette is, moreover, athoroughly individual one. It is very pure, and if its range is notgreat, it is at any rate not grayed into insipidity and ineffectualness, but is as positive as if it were more vivid. A distinct air of elegance, a true sense of style, is noteworthy in many of his pictures; not onlyin the important ones, but occasionally when the theme is so slight asto need hardly any composition whatever--the mere placing of a tree, itsoutline, its relation to a bank or a roadway, are often unmistakablydistinguished. Cazin is not exclusively a landscape painter, and thoughthe landscape element in all his works is a dominant one, even in his"Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert, " and his "Judith Setting out forHolofernes's Camp" (in which latter one can hardly identify the heroineat all), the fact that he is not a landscape painter, pure and simple, like Harpignies and Pointelin, perhaps accounts for his inferiority tothem in landscape sentiment. In France it is generally assumed that todevote one's self exclusively to any one branch of painting is to betraylimitations, and there are few painters who would not resent beingcalled landscapists. Something, perhaps, is lost in this way. Itwitnesses a greater pride in accomplishment than in instinctive bent. But however that may be, Cazin never penetrates to the sentiment ofnature that one feels in such a work as Harpignies's "Moonrise, " forexample, or in almost any of Pointelin's grave and impressivelandscapes. Hardly less truthful, I should say, though perhaps lessintimately and elaborately real (a romanticist would say lesssuperficially real) than Cazin's, the work of both these painters ismore pictorial. They have a quicker sense for the beautiful, I think. They feel very certainly much more deeply the suggestiveness of a scene. They are not so _débonnaires_ in the presence of their problems. In asense, for that reason, they understand them better. There is verylittle feeling of the desert, the illimitable space, where, according toBalzac, God is and man is not, in the "Hagar and Ishmael;" indeed thereseems to have been no attempt on the part of the painter to express any. True as his sand-heap is, you feel somehow that there may be akitchen-garden or the entrance to a coal-mine on the other side of it, or a little farther along. And the landscape of the "Judith, " fine asits sweep is, and admirable as are the cool tone and clear distance ofthe picture, might really be that of the "south meadow" of someparticular "farm" or other. 

The contrast which Guillaumet presents to Fromentin affords a verystriking illustration of the growth of the realistic spirit in recentyears. Fromentin is so admirable a painter that I can hardly fancy anyappreciative person wishing him different. His devoted admirer andbiographer, M. Louis Gonse, admits, and indeed expressly records, Fromentin's own lament over the insufficiency of his studies. Fond as hewas of horses, for instance, he does not know them as a draughtsman withthe science of such a conventional painter in many other respects asSchreyer. But it is not in the slightly amateurish nature of histechnical equipment--realized perfectly by himself, of course, as thefirst critic of the technic of painting among all who have ventured uponthe subject--that his painting differs from Guillaumet's. It is hiswhole point of view. His Africa is that of the critic, the_littérateur_, the _raffiné_. Guillaumet's is Africa itself. You feelbefore Guillaumet's Luxembourg canvases, as in looking over theslightest of his vivid memoranda, that you are getting in an acute andconcentrated form the sensations which the actual scenes and typesrendered by the painter would stimulate in you, supposing, of course, that you were sufficiently sensitive. Fromentin, in comparison, isoccupied in picture-making--giving you a beautifully colored and highlyintelligent pictorial report as against Guillaumet's actualreproduction. There is no question as to which of the two painters hasthe greater personal interest; but it is just as certain that forabiding value and enduring charm personal interest must either beextremely great or else yield to the interest inherent in the materialdealt with, an interest that Guillaumet brings out with a felicity and apuissance that are wholly extraordinary, and that nowadays meet with areadier and more sympathetic recognition that even such delicatepersonal charm as that of Fromentin. 

IV

So thoroughly has the spirit of realism fastened upon the artisticeffort of the present that temperaments least inclined toward interestin the actual feel its influences, and show the effects of these. Themost recalcitrant illustrate this technically, however rigorously theymay preserve their point of view. They paint at least morecircumspectly, however they may think and feel. An historical painterlike Jean Paul Laurens, interested as he is in the memorable moments anddramatic incidents of the past, and exhibiting as he does, first of all, a sense of what is ideally forceful and heroic, is nevertheless clearlyconcerned for the realistic value of his representation far more than ageneration ago he would have been. When Luminais paints a scene fromGaulish legend, he is not quite, but nearly, as careful to make itpictorially real as he is to have it dramatically effective. M. FrançoisFlameng, expanding his book illustration into a mammoth canvascommemorative of the Vendean insurrection, is almost daintily fastidiousabout the naturalistic aspect of his abundant detail. M. Benjamin-Constant's artificially conceived seraglio scenes are asrealistically rendered as is indicated by a recent caricature depictingan astonished sneak-thief, foiled in an attempted rape of the jewels ina sultana's diadem, painted with such deceptive illusoriness by M. Benjamin-Constant's clever brush. The military painters, Detaille, DeNeuville, Berne-Bellecour, do not differ from Vernet more by paintingincidents instead of phases of warfare, by substituting the touch ofdramatic _genre_ for epic conceptions, than they do by the scrupulouslynaturalistic rendering that in them supplants the old academicsymbolism. Their dragoons and _fantassins_ are not merely more real inwhat they do, but in how they look. Vernet's look like tin soldiers bycomparison; certainly like soldiers _de convenance_. Aimé Morotevidently used instantaneous photography, and his magnificent cavalrycharges suggest not only carnage, but Muybridge as well. 

The great portrait-painters of the day--Carolus-Duran, Bonnat, Ribot--are realists to the core. They are very far from being purelyportrait-painters of course, and their realism shows itself withsplendid distinction in other works. Few painters of the nude haveanything to their credit as fine as the figure M. Carolus-Duranexhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1889. Ribot's "Saint Sebastian" isone of the most powerful pictures of modern French art. Bonnat's"Christ" became at once famous. Each picture is painted with a vigor andpoint of realistic detail that are peculiar to our own time; paintedto-day, Bonnat's fine and sculptural "Fellah Woman and Child, " of theMetropolitan Museum, would be accented in a dozen ways in which now itis not. But it is perhaps in portraiture that the eminence of thesepainters is most explicit. They are at the head of contemporaryportraitists, at all events. And their portraits are almost defiantlyreal, void often of arrangement, and as little artificial as the veryfrequently prosaic atmosphere appertaining to their sometimes very starksubjects suggests. A portrait by Bonnat blinks nothing in the subject;its aim and accomplishment are the rendering of the character in a vividfashion--including the reproduction of cobalt cravats and creasedtrousers even--which would have mightily embarrassed Van Dyck orVelasquez. Ribot reproduces Ribera often, but he deals with fewerexternals, fewer effects, taken in the widest sense. Carolus-Duran, the"swell" portrait-painter of the day, artificial as he may be in thequality of his mind, nevertheless seeks and attains, first of all, thesense of an even exaggerated life-likeness in his charming sitters. They are, first of all, people; the pictorial element takes care ofitself; sometimes even--so overmastering is the realistic tendency--theplush of the chair, the silk of the robe, the cut of the coat, seems, toan observer who thinks of the old traditions of Titian, of Raphael, ofMoroni, unduly emphasized, even for realism. 

V

One element of modernity is a certain order of eclecticism. It is notthe eclecticism of the Bolognese painters, for example, illustrating thereally hopeless attempt to combine the supposed and superficialexcellences, always dissociated from the essence, of different points ofview. It is a free choice of attitude, rather, due to the release of theindividual from the thraldom of conformity that ruled even during theromantic epoch. Hence a great deal of admirable work, of which onehardly thinks whether it is realistic or not, side by side with the moreemphatic expressions of the realistic spirit. And this work is of alldegrees of realism, never, however, getting very far away from thenaturalistic basis on which more and more everyone is coming to insistas the necessary and only solid pedestal of any flight of fancy. Baudryis perhaps the nearest of the really great men to the Bolognese orderof eclecticism. I suppose he must be classed among the really great men, so many painters of intelligence place him there, though I must myselfplead the laic privilege of a slight scepticism as to whether time willapprove their enthusiasm. He is certainly very effective, and incertainly his own way, idle as it is to say that his drafts on the greatItalians are no greater than those of Raphael on the antique frescos. Hehad a great love of color and a native instinct for it; with perhapsmore appreciation than invention, his imagination has something verypersonal in the zealous enthusiasm with which he exercised it, though Ithink it must be admitted that his reflections of Tiepolo, Titian, Tintoretto and his attenuated expansions of Michael Angelo's condensedgrandiosity, recall the eclecticism of the Carracci far more than thatof Raphael. But his manner is the modern manner, and it is altogethermore effective, more "fetching, " to use a modern term, than anythingpurely academic can be. Élie Delaunay, another master of decoration, is, on the other hand, as real as the most rigorous literalist could ask ofa painter of decorative works. Chartran, who has an individual charmthat both Baudry and Delaunay lack, inferior as he is to them in sweepand power, is perhaps in this respect midway between the two. Clairinis, like Mazerolles, a pure _fantaisiste_. Dubufe _fils_, whose atleast equally famous father ranks in a somewhat similar category withCouture, shows a distinct advance upon him in reality of rendering, asthe term would be understood at present. 

In other departments of painting the note of realism is naturally stillmore universally apparent; but as in the work of the painters ofdecoration it is often most noticeable as an undertone, indicating apoint of departure rather than an aim. Bonvin is a realist only asChardin, as Van der Meer of Delft, as Nicholas Maes were, before thejargon of realism had been thought of. He is, first of all, an exquisiteartist, in love with the beautiful in reality, finding in it thehumblest material, and expressing it with the gentlest, sweetest, æsthetic severity and composure imaginable. The most fastidious criticneeds but a touch of human feeling to convert any characterization ofthis most refined and elevated of painters into pure panegyric. Vollon'stouch is felicity itself, and it is evident that he takes more pleasurein exercising and exploiting it than in its successful imitation, striking as its imitative quality is. Gervex and Duez are very much morethan impressionists, both in theory and practice. There is nothingpolemic in either. Painters extol in the heartiest way the color, thecreative coloration of Gervex's "Rolla, " quite aside from its dramaticforce or its truth of aspect. Personal feeling is clearly theinspiration of every work of Duez, not the demonstration of a theory oftreating light and atmosphere. The same may be said of Roll at his best, as in his superb rendering of what may be called the modern painter'sconception of the myth of Europa. Compared with Paul Veronese'sadmirable classic, that violates all the unities (which Veronese, nevertheless, may readily be pardoned by all but literalists andtheorists for neglecting), this splendid nude girl in _plein air_, flecked with splotches of sunlight filtered through a sieve of leafage, with her realistic taurine companion, and their environment ofveridically rendered out-of-doors, may stand for an illustrativedefinition of modernity; but what you feel most of all is Roll. It isten chances to one that he has never even been to Venice or thought ofVeronese. He has not always been so successful; as when in his "Work" heearned Degas's acute comment: "A crowd is made with five persons, notwith fifty. " ("Il y a cinquante figures, mais je ne vois pas la foule;on fait une foule avec cinq, et non pas avec cinquante. ") But he hasalways been someone. Compare with him L'Hermitte, a painter whoillustrates sometimes the possibility of being an artificial realist. His "Vintage" at the Metropolitan Museum, his "Harvesters" at theLuxembourg, are excellently real and true in detail, but in idea andgeneral expression they might compete for the prix de Rome. The same ismeasurably true of Lerolle, whose pictures are more sympathetic--sometimesthey are _very_ sympathetic--but on the whole display less power. Butin each instance the advocate _à outrance_ of realism may justly, Ithink, maintain that a painter with a natural predisposition toward theinsipidity of the academic has been saved from it by the inherent sanityand robustness of the realistic method. Jean Béraud, even, owes somethingto the way in which his verisimilitude of method has reinforced hisartistic powers. His delightful Parisiennes--modistes' messengers crossingwet glistening pavements against a background of gray mist accented withposter-bedizened kiosks and regularly recurring horse-chestnut trees;_élégantes_ at prayer, in somewhat distracted mood, on _prie-dieus_in the vacant and vapid Paris churches; seated at café tables on the busy, leisurely boulevards, or posing _tout bonnement_ for the reproductionof the most fascinating feminine _ensemble_ in the world--owe theircharm (I may say again their "fetchingness") to the faithfulness with whichtheir portraitist has studied, and the fidelity with which he hasreproduced, their differing types, more than to any personal expressionof his own view of them. Fancy Béraud's masterpiece, the SalleGraffard--that admirable characterization of crankdom embodied in asocialist reunion--painted by an academic painter. How absolutely it wouldlose its pith, its force, its significance, even its true distinction. Andhis "Magdalen at the Pharisee's House, " which is almost equallyimpressive--far more impressive of course in a literary and, I think, legitimate, sense--owes even its literary effectiveness to its significantrealism. 

What the illustrators of the present day owe to the naturalistic method, it is almost superfluous to point out. "Illustrators" in France are, ingeneral, painters as well, some of them very eminent painters. Daumier, who passed in general for a contributor to illustrated journals, evensuch journals as _Le Petit Journal pour Rire_, was not only a genius ofthe first rank, but a painter of the first class. Monvel and Monténardat present are masterly painters. But in their illustration as well asin their painting, they show a notable change from the illustration ofthe days of Daumier and Doré. The difference between the elegant (orperhaps rather the handsome) drawings of Bida, an artist of the utmostdistinction, and that of the illustrators of the present day who arecomparable with him--their name is not legion--is a special attestationof the influence of the realistic ideal in a sphere wherein, ifanywhere, one may say, realism reigns legitimately, but wherein also theconventional is especially to be expected. One cannot indeed be quitesure that the temptations of the conventional are resisted by theultra-realistic illustrators of our own time, Rossi, Beaumont, AlbertLynch, Myrbach. They have certainly a very handy way of expressingthemselves; one would be justified in suspecting the labor-saving, theart-sparing kodak, behind many of their most unimpeachable successes. But the attitude taken is quite other than it used to be, and the changethat has come over French æsthetic activity in general can be noted invery sharp definition by comparing a book illustrated twenty years agoby Albert Lynch, with, for example, Maupassant's "Pierre et Jean, " thedistinguished realism of whose text is adequately paralleled--and theimplied eulogy is by no means trivial--by the pictorical commentary, soto speak, which this first of modern illustrators has supplied. And aneven more striking illustration of the evolution of realistic thoughtand feeling, as well as of rendering, is furnished by the succession ofForain to Grévin, as an illustrator of the follies of the day, thecharacteristic traits of the Parisian seamy side, morally speaking. Grévin is as conventional as Murger, in philosophy, and--thoughinfinitely cleverer--as "Mars" in drawing. Forain, with the pencil of arealism truly Japanese, illustrates with sympathetic incisiveness thepitiless pessimism of Flaubert, Goncourt, and Maupassant as well. 

VI

But to go back a little and consider the puissant individualities, thegreat men who have really given its direction to and, as it were, setthe pace of, the realistic movement, and for whom, in order moreconveniently to consider impressionism pure and simple by itself, I haveventured to disturb the chronological sequence of evolution in Frenchpainting--a sequence that, even if one care more for ideas than forchronology, it is more temerarious to vary from in things French than inany others. To go back in a word to Manet; the painter of whom M. HenriHoussaye has remarked: "Manet sowed, M. Bastien-Lepage has reaped. "

Manet was certainly one of the most noteworthy painters that France orany other country has produced. His is the great, the very rare, meritof having conceived a new point of view. That he did not illustrate thisin its completeness, that he was a sign-post, as Albert Wolff very aptlysaid, rather an exemplar, is nothing. He was totally unheralded, and hewas in his way superb. No one before him had essayed--no one before himhad ever thought of--the immense project of breaking, not relatively butabsolutely, with the conventional. Looking for the first time at one ofhis pictures, one says that customary notions, ordinary brushes, traditional processes of even the highest authenticity, have been thrownto the winds. Hence, indeed, the scandal which he caused from the firstand which went on increasing, until, owing to the acceptance, withmodifications, of his point of view by the most virile and vigorouspainters of the day, he became, as he has become, in a sense the head ofthe corner. Manet's great distinction is to have discovered that thesense of reality is achieved with a thousand-fold greater intensity bygetting as near as possible to the _actual_, rather than resting contentwith the _relative_, value of every detail. Everyone who has paintedsince Manet has either followed him in this effort or has appearedjejune. 

Take as an illustration of the contrary practice such a masterpiece inits way as Gérôme's "Éminence Grise. " In this picture, skilfully andsatisfactorily composed, the relative values of all the colors areadmirably, even beautifully, observed. The correspondence of the gamutof values to that of the light and dark scale of such an actual scene isperfect. Before Manet, one could have said that this is all that isrequired or can be secured, arguing that exact _imitation_ of localtints and general tone is impossible, owing to the difference betweennature's highest light and lowest dark, and the potentialities of thepalette. In other words, one might have said, that inasmuch as you cansqueeze absolute white and absolute black out of no tubes, the thing todo is first to determine the scale of your picture and then make everynote in it bear the same relation to every other that the correspondingnote in nature bears to its fellows in its own corresponding butdifferent scale. This is what Gérôme has done in the "Éminence Grise"--ascene, it will be remembered, on a staircase in a palace interior. Manetinquires what would happen to this house of cards shored up intoverisimilitude by mere _correspondence_, if Gérôme had been asked to cuta window in his staircase and admit the light of out-of-doors into hiscorrespondent but artificial scene. The whole thing would have to bedone over again. The scale of the picture running from the highestpalette white to the lowest palette dark, and yet the key of an actualinterior scene being much nearer middle-tint than the tint of an actualout-of-doors scene, it would be impossible to paint with anyverisimilitude the illumination of a window from the outside, theresources of the palette having already been exhausted, every objecthaving been given a local value solely with relation, so far as truth ofrepresentation is concerned, to the values of every other object, and noeffort being made to get the precise value of the object as it wouldappear under analogous circumstances in nature. 

It may be replied, and I confess I think with excellent reason, thatGérôme's picture has no window in it, and therefore that to ask of himto paint a picture as he would if he were painting a different picture, is pedantry. The old masters are still admirable, though they onlyobserved a correspondence to the actual scale of natural values, andwere not concerned with imitation of it. But it is to be observed that, successful as their practice is, it is successful in virtue of theunconscious co-operation of the beholder's imagination. And nowadays notonly is the exercise of the imagination become for better or worse alittle old-fashioned, but the one thing that is insisted on as astarting-point and basis, at the very least, is the sense of reality. And it is impossible to exaggerate the way in which the sense of realityhas been intensified by Manet's insistence upon getting as near aspossible to the individual values of objects as they are seen innature--in spite of his abandonment of the practice of painting on aparallel scale. Things now drop into their true place, look as theyreally do, and count as they count in nature, because the painter is nolonger content with giving us change for nature, but tries his best togive us nature itself. Perspective acquires its actual significance, solids have substance and bulk as well as surfaces, distance isperceived as it is in nature, by the actual interposition of atmosphere, chiaro-oscuro is abolished--the ways in which reality is secured beingin fact legion the moment real instead of relative values are studied. Something is lost, very likely--an artist cannot be so intenselypreoccupied with reality as, since Manet, it has been incumbent onpainters to be, without missing a whole range of qualities that are soprecious as rightly perhaps to be considered indispensable. Untilreality becomes in its turn an effect unconsciously attained, thepainter's imagination will be held more or less in abeyance. And perhapswe are justified in thinking that nothing can quite atone for itsabsence. Meantime, however, it must be acknowledged that Manet firstgave us this sense of reality in a measure comparable with that whichsuccessively Balzac, Flaubert, Zola gave to the readers of theirbooks--a sense of actuality and vividness beside which the traditionarypractice seemed absolutely fanciful and mechanical. 

Applying Manet's method, his invention, his discovery, to the paintingof out-of-doors, the _plein air_ school immediately began to producelandscapes of astonishing reality by confining their effort to thosevalues which it is in the power of pigments to imitate. The possiblescale of mere correspondence being of course from one to one hundred, they secured greater truth by painting between twenty and eighty, we maysay. Hence the grayness of the most successful French landscapes of thepresent day--those of Bastien-Lepage's backgrounds, of Cazin's pictures. Sunlight being unpaintable, they confined themselves to therepresentation of what they could represent. In the interest of truth, of reality, they narrowed the gamut of their modulations, they attemptedless, upheld by the certainty of accomplishing more. For a time Frenchlandscape was pitched in a minor key. Suddenly Claude Monet appeared. Impressionism, as it is now understood, and as Manet had not succeededin popularizing it, won instant recognition. Monet's discovery was thatlight is the most important factor in the painting of out-of-doors. Hepushed up the key of landscape painting to the highest power. Heattacked the fascinating, but of course demonstrably insolvable, problemof painting sunlight, not illusorily, as Fortuny had done by relying oncontrasts of light and dark correspondent in scale, but positively andrealistically. He realized as nearly as possible the effect ofsunlight--that is to say, he did as well and no better in this respectthan Fortuny had done--but he created a much greater illusion of asunlit landscape than anyone had ever done before him, by painting thoseparts of his picture not in sunlight with the exact truth that inpainting objects in shadow the palette can compass. 

Nothing is more simple. Take a landscape with a cloudy sky, which meansdiffused light in the old sense of the term, and observe the effect uponit of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is the effect where considerableportions of the scene are suddenly thrown into marked shadow, as well asothers illuminated with intense light? Is the absolute value of theparts in shadow lowered or raised? Raised, of course, by reflectedlight. Formerly, to get the contrast between sunlight and shadow inproper scale, the painter would have painted the shadows darker thanthey were before the sun appeared. Relatively they are darker, sincetheir value, though heightened, is raised infinitely less than the valueof the parts in sunlight. Absolutely, their value is raisedconsiderably. If, therefore, they are painted lighter than they werebefore the sun appeared, they in themselves seem truer. The part ofMonet's picture that is in shadow is measurably true, far truer than itwould have been if painted under the old theory of correspondence, andhad been unnaturally darkened to express the relation of contrastbetween shadow and sunlight. Scale has been lost. What has been gained?Simply truth of impressionistic effect. Why? Because we know and judgeand appreciate and feel the measure of truth with which objects inshadow are represented; we are insensibly more familiar with them innature than with objects directly sun-illuminated, the value as well asthe definition of which are far vaguer to us on account of theirblending and infinite heightening by a luminosity absolutelyoverpowering. In a word, in sunlit landscapes objects in shadow are whatcustomarily and unconsciously we see and note and know, and the illusionis greater if the relation between them and the objects in sunlight, whose value habitually we do not note, be neglected or falsified. Add tothis source of illusion the success of Monet in giving a juster value tothe sunlit half of his picture than had even been systematicallyattempted before his time, and his astonishing _trompe-l'oeil_ is, Ithink, explained. Each part is truer than ever before, and unless onehave a specially developed sense of _ensemble_ in this very specialmatter of values in and affected by sunlight, one gets from Monet animpression of actuality so much greater than he has ever got before, that he may be pardoned for feeling, and even for enthusiasticallyproclaiming, that in Monet realism finds its apogee. To sum up: Thefirst realists painted _relative_ values; Manet and his derivativespainted _absolute_ values, but in a wisely limited gamut; Monet paints_absolute values in a very wide range, plus sunlight, as nearly as hecan get it_--as nearly as pigment can be got to represent it. Perforcehe loses scale, and therefore artistic completeness, but he secures anincomparably vivid effect of reality, of nature--and of nature in hergayest, most inspiring manifestation, illuminated directly andindirectly, and everywhere vibrant and palpitating with the light of allour physical seeing. 

Monet is so subtle in his own way, so superbly successful within his ownlimits, that it is time wasted to quarrel with the convention-steepedphilistine who refuses to comprehend even his point of view, who judgesthe pictures he sees by the pictures he has seen. He has not onlydiscovered a new way of looking at nature, but he has justified it in athousand particulars. Concentrated as his attention has been upon theeffects of light and atmosphere, he has reproduced an infinity ofnature's moods that are charming in proportion to their transitoriness, and whose fleeting beauties he has caught and permanently fixed. Rousseau made the most careful studies, and then combined them in hisstudio. Courbet made his sketch, more or less perfect, face to face withhis subject, and elaborated it afterward away from it. Corot painted hispicture from nature, but put the Corot into it in his studio. Monet'spractice is in comparison drastically thorough. After thirty minutes, hesays--why thirty instead of forty or twenty, I do not know; thesemysteries are Eleusinian to the mere amateur--the light changes; hemust stop and return the next day at the same hour. The result isimmensely real, and in Monet's hands immensely varied. One may say asmuch, having regard to their differing degrees of success, of Pissaro, who influenced him, and of Caillebotte, Renoir, Sisley, and the rest ofthe impressionists who followed him. 

He is himself the prominent representative of the school, however, andthe fact that one representative of it is enough to consider, iseloquent of profound criticism of it. For decorative purposes a hole inone's wall, an additional window through which one may only looksatisfactorily during a period of thirty minutes, has its drawbacks. Awalk in the country or in a city park is after all preferable to anyonewho can really appreciate a Monet--that is, anyone who can feel theillusion of nature which it is his sole aim to produce. After all, whatone asks of art is something different from imitative illusion. Itsessence is illusion, I think, but illusion taken in a different sensefrom optical illusion--_trompe-l'oeil_. Its function is to make dreamsseem real, not to recall reality. Monet is enduringly admirable mainlyto the painter who envies and endeavors to imitate his wonderful powerof technical expression--the thing that occupies most the consciousattention of the true painter. To others he must remain a littleunsatisfactory, because he is not only not a dreamer, but because hedoes nothing with his material except to show it as it is--a greatservice surely, but largely excluding the exercise of that architectonicfaculty, personally directed, which is the very life of every trulyæsthetic production. 

VII

In fine, the impressionist has his own conventions; no school can escapethem, from the very nature of the case and the definition of the term. The conventions of the impressionists, indeed, are particularly salient. Can anyone doubt it who sees an exhibition of their works? In the samenumber of classic, or romantic, or merely realistic pictures, is thereanything quite equalling the monotony that strikes one in a display ofcanvasses by Claude Monet and his fellows and followers? But the defectof impressionism is not mainly its technical conventionality. It is, asI think everyone except its thick-and-thin advocates must feel, thatpursued _à outrance_ it lacks a seriousness commensurate with itsclaims--that it exhibits indeed a kind of undertone of frivolity that isall the nearer to the absolutely comic for the earnestness, so to speak, of its unconsciousness. The reason is, partly no doubt, to be ascribedto its _débonnaire_ self-satisfaction, its disposition to "lightly runamuck at an august thing, " the traditions of centuries namely, to itsbumptiousness, in a word. But chiefly, I think, the reason is to befound in its lack of anything properly to be called a philosophy. Thisis surely a fatal flaw in any system, because it involves acontradiction in terms; and to say that to have no philosophy is thephilosophy of the impressionists, is merely a word-juggling bit ofquestion-begging. A theory of technic is not a philosophy, howeversystematic it may be. It is a mechanical, not an intellectual, point ofview. It is not a way of looking at things, but of rendering them. Itexpresses no idea and sees no relations; its claims on one's interestare exhausted when once its right to its method is admitted. The remarkonce made of a typically literal person--that he cared so much for factsthat he disliked to think they had any relations--is intimatelyapplicable to the whole impressionist school. Technically, of course, the impressionist's relations are extremely just--not exquisite, butexquisitely just. But merely to get just values is not to occupy one'sself with values ideally, emotionally, personally. It is merely torecord facts. Certainly any impressionist rendering of the light andshade and color relations of objects seems eloquent beside anytraditional and conventional rendering of them; but it is because eachobject is so carefully observed, so truly painted, that its relation toevery other is spontaneously satisfactory; and this is a very differentthing from the result of truly pictorial rendering with its constructiveappeal, its sense of _ensemble_, its presentation of an idea by means ofthe convergence and interdependence of objects focussed to a common andcentral effect. To this impressionism is absolutely insensitive. It isthe acme of detachment, of indifference. 

Turgénieff, according to Mr. George Moore, complained of Zola's GervaiseCoupeau, that Zola explained how she felt, never what she thought. "Qu'est que ça me fait si elle suait sous les bras, ou au milieu dudos?" he asked, with most pertinent penetration. He is quite right. Really we only care for facts when they explain truths. The desultoryagglomeration of never so definitely rendered details necessarily leavesthe civilized appreciation cold. What distinguishes the civilized fromthe savage appreciation is the passion for order. The tendency to order, said Sénancour, should form "an essential part of our inclinations, ofour instinct, like the tendencies to self-preservation and toreproduction. " The two latter tendencies the savage possesses ascompletely as the civilized man, but he does not share the civilizedman's instinct for correlation. And in this sense, I think, a certainsavagery is justly to be ascribed to the impressionist. His productionshave many attractions and many merits--merits and attractions that thetraditional painting has not. But they are really only by a kind ofautomatic inadvertence, pictures. They are not truly pictorial. 

And a picture should be something more than even pictorial. To bepermanently attaching it should give at least a hint of the painter'sphilosophy--his point of view, his attitude toward his material. In thegreat pictures you can not only discover this attitude, but the attitudeof the painter toward life and the world in general. Everyone has asdistinct an idea of the philosophy of Raphael as of the qualities of hisdesigns. The impressionist not only does not show you what he thinks, hedoes not even show you how he feels, except by betraying a fondness forviolets and diffused light, and by exhibiting the temper of the radicaland the rioter. The order of a blithe, idyllic landscape by Corot, ofone of Delacroix's pieces of concentric coloration, of an example ofIngres's purity of outline, shows not only temperament, but the positionof the painter in regard to the whole intellectual world so far as hetouches it at all. What does a canvas of Claude Monet show in thisrespect? It is more truthful but not less impersonal than a photograph. 

Degas is the only other painter usually classed with theimpressionists, of whom this may not be said. But Degas is hardly animpressionist at all. He is one of the most personal painters, if notthe most personal painter, of the day. He is as original as Puvis deChavannes. What allies him with the impressionists is his fondness forfleeting aspects, his caring for nothing beyond aspect--for the look ofthings and their transitory look. He is an enthusiastic admirer ofIngres--who, one would say, is the antithesis of impressionism. He neverpaints from nature. His studies are made with the utmost care, but theyare arranged, composed, combined by his own sense of what ispictorial--by, at any rate, his own idea of the effects he wishes tocreate. He cares absolutely nothing for what ordinarily we understand bythe real, the actual, so far as its reality is concerned; he seesnothing else, to be sure, and is probably very sceptical about anythingbut colors and shapes and their decorative arrangement; but he sees whathe likes in reality and follows this out with an inerrancy soscrupulous, and even affectionate, as to convey the idea that in hisresult he himself counts for almost nothing. This at least may be saidof him, that he shows what, given genius, can be got out of theimpressionist method artistically and practically employed to the end ofillustrating a personal point of view. A mere amateur can hardlydistinguish between a Caillebotte and a Sisley, for example, buteveryone identifies a Degas as immediately and as certainly as he does aWhistler. His work is perfectly sincere and admirably intelligent. Ithas neither the pose nor the irresponsibility of the impressionists. Hisartistic apotheosis of the ballet-girl is merely the result of his happydiscovery of something delightfully, and in a very true sense naturally, decorative in material that is in the highest degree artificial. Hisimpulse is as genuine and spontaneous as if the substance upon which itis exercised were not the acme of the exotic, and already arranged withthe most elaborate conventionality. Nothing indeed could be more opposedto the elementary crudity of impressionism than his distinction andrefinement, which may be said to be carried to a really _fin de siècle_degree. 

VIII

Whatever the painting of the future is to be, it is certain not to bethe painting of Monet. For the present, no doubt, Monet is the last wordin painting. To belittle him is not only whimsical, but ridiculous. Hehas plainly worked a revolution in his art. He has taken it out of thevicious circle of conformity to, departure from, and return toabstractions and the so-called ideal. No one hereafter who attempts therepresentation of nature--and for as far ahead as we can see with anyconfidence, the representation of nature, the pantheistic ideal if onechooses, will increasingly intrench itself as the painter's true aim--noone who seriously attempts to realize this aim of now universal appealwill be able to dispense with Monet's aid. He must perforce follow thelines laid down for him by this astonishing naturalist. Any other coursemust result in solecism, and if anything future is certain, it iscertain that the future will be not only inhospitable to, but absolutelyintolerant of, solecism. Henceforth the basis of things is bound to besolid and not superficial, real and not fantastic. But--whether thefuture is to commit itself wholly to prose, or is to preserve in newconditions the essence of the poetry that, in one form or another, haspersisted since plastic art began--for the superstructure to be erectedon the sound basis of just values and true impressions it is justifiablyeasy to predict a greater interest and a more real dignity than any suchpreoccupation with the basis of technic as Monet's can possibly have. And though, even as one says it, one has the feeling that the future ispregnant with some genius who will out-Monet Monet, and that paintingwill in some now inconceivable way have to submit hereafter to a stillmore rigorous standard than it does at present--I have heard the claimsof binocular vision urged--at the same time the true "child of nature"may console himself with the reflection that accuracy and competence arebut the accidents, at most the necessary phenomena, of what really andessentially constitutes fine art of any kind--namely, the expression ofa personal conception of what is not only true but beautiful as well. InFrance less than anywhere else is it likely that even such a powerfulforce as modern realism will long dominate the constructive, thearchitectonic faculty, which is part of the very fibre of the Frenchgenius. The exposition and illustration of a theory believed in with afervency to be found only among a people with whom the intelligence isthe chief element and object of experiment and exercise, are a naturalconcomitant of mental energy and activity. But no theory holds them longin bondage. At the least, it speedily gives place to another formulationof the mutinous freedom its very acceptance creates. And the conformitythat each of them in succession imposes on mediocrity is always variedand relieved by the frequent incarnations in masterful personalities ofthe natural national traits--of which, I think, the architectonic spiritis one of the most conspicuous. Painting will again become creative, constructive, personally expressive. Its basis having been establishedas scientifically impeccable, its superstructure will exhibit thetaste, the elegance, the imaginative freedom, exhibited within thelimits of a cultivated sense of propriety, that are an integral part ofthe French painter's patrimony. 

IV

CLASSIC SCULPTURE

I

French sculpture naturally follows very much the same course asFrench painting. Its beginnings, however, are Gothic, and theRenaissance emancipated rather than created it. Italy, over which theGothic wave passed with less disturbing effect than anywhere else, andwhere the Pisans were doing pure sculpture when everywhere farther northsculpture was mainly decorative and rigidly architectural, had a potentinfluence. But the modern phases of French sculpture have a closerrelationship with the Chartres Cathedral than modern French painting haswith its earliest practice; and Claux Sluters, the Burgundian Flemingwho modelled the wonderful Moses Well and the tombs of Jean Sans Peurand Phillippe le Hardi at Dijon, among his other anachronisticmasterpieces, exerted considerably greater influence upon his successorsthan the Touraine school of painting and the Clouets did upon theirs. 

These works are a curious compromise between the Gothic and the modernspirits. Sluters was plainly a modern temperament working with Gothicmaterial and amid Gothic ideas. In itself his sculpture is hardlydecorative, as we apply the epithet to modern work. It is just off theline of rigidity, of insistence in every detail of its right and titleto individuality apart from every other sculptured detail. The prophetsin the niches of the beautiful Dijon Well, the monks under the arcadesof the beautiful Burgundian tombs, have little relation with each otheras elements of a decorative sculptural composition. They are in the samestyle, that is all. Each of them is in interest quite independent of theother. Compared with one of the Pisans' pulpits they form a congeriesrather than a composition. Compared with Goujon's "Fountain of theInnocents" their motive is not decorative at all. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah asserts his individuality in a way the more sociable prophetsof the Sistine Chapel would hesitate to do. They have a little the airof hermits--of artistic anchorites, one may say. 

They are Gothic, too, not only in being thus sculpturally undecorativeand uncomposed, but in being beautifully subordinate to the architecturewhich it is their unmistakable ancillary function to decorate in themost delightful way imaginable--in being in a word architecturallydecorative. The marriage of the two arts is, Gothically, not on equalterms. It never occurred, of course, to the Gothic architect that itshould be. His _ensemble_ was always one of which the chief, theoverwhelming, one may almost say the sole, interest is structural. Heeven imposed the condition that the sculpture which decorated hisstructure should be itself architecturally structural. One figure of theportals of Chartres is almost as like another as one pillar of theinterior is like its fellows; for the reason--eminently satisfactory tothe architect--that it discharges an identical function. 

Emancipation from this thraldom of the architect is Sluters's greatdistinction, however. He is modern in this sense, without going sofar--without going anything like so far--as the modern sculptor whodivorces his work from that of the architect with whom he is called uponto combine to the end of an _ensemble_ that shall be equally agreeableto the sense satisfied by form and that satisfied by structure. Hisfigures, subordinate as they are to the general architectural purposeand function of what they decorate, are not only not purely structuralin their expression, stiff as they still are from the point of view ofabsolutely free sculpture; they are, moreover, not merely unrelated toeach other in any essential sense, such as that in which the figures ofthe Pisans and of Goujon are related; they are on the contrary each andall wonderfully accentuated and individualized. Every ecclesiastic onthe Dijon tombs is a character study. Every figure on the Well has apsychologic as well as a sculptural interest. Poised between Gothictradition and modern feeling, between a reverend and august æstheticconventionality and the dawn of free activity, Sluters is one of themost interesting and stimulating figures in the whole history ofsculpture. And the force of his characterizations, the vividness of hisconceptions, and the combined power and delicacy of his modelling givehim the added importance of one of the heroes of his art in any time orcountry. There is something extremely Flemish in his sense ofpersonality. A similar interest in humanity as such, in the individualapart from the type, is noticeable in the pictures of the Van Eycks, ofMemling, of Quentin Matsys, and Roger Van der Weyden, wherein all ideaof beauty, of composition, of universal appeal is subordinated as it isin no other art--in that of Holland no more than in that of Italy--tothe representation in the most definite, precise, and powerful way ofsome intensely human personality. There is the same extraordinaryconcreteness in one of Matsys's apostles and one of Sluters's prophets. 

Michel Colombe, the pupil of Claux and Anthoniet and the sculptor of themonument of François II. , Duke of Brittany, at Nantes, the relief of"St. George and the Dragon" for the Château of Gaillon, now in theLouvre, and the Fontaine de Beaune, at Tours, and Jean Juste, whosenoble masterpiece, the Tomb of Louis XII. And Anne of Brittany, is thefinest ornament of the Cathedral of St. Denis, bridge the distance andmark the transition to Goujon, Cousin, and Germain Pilon far moresuavely than the school of Fontainebleau did the change from that ofTours to Poussin. Cousin, though the monument of Admiral Chabot is atruly marvellous work, witnessing a practical sculptor's hand, is reallyto be classed among painters. And Germain Pilon's compromise withItalian decorativeness, graceful and fertile sculptor as his many worksshow him to have been, resulted in a lack of personal force that hascaused him to be thought on the one hand "seriously injured by thebastard sentiment proper to the school of Fontainebleau, " as Mrs. Pattison somewhat sternly remarks, and on the other to be reprehended byGermain Brice in 1718, for evincing _quelque reste du goûtgothique_--some reminiscence of Gothic taste. Jean Goujon is really thefirst modern French sculptor. 

II

He remains, too, one of the very finest, even in a competitionconstantly growing more exacting since his day. He had a very particulartalent, and it was exhibited in manifold ways. He is as fine in reliefas in the round. His decorative quality is as eminent as his purelysculptural side. Compared with his Italian contemporaries he is at oncefull of feeling and severe. He has nothing of Pilon's chameleon-likeimitativeness. He does not, on the other hand, break with the traditionsof the best models known to him--and, undoubtedly he knew the best. Hisworks cover and line the Louvre, and anyone who visits Paris may get aperfect conception of his genius--certainly anyone who in additionvisits Rouen and beholds the lovely tracery of his earliest sculpture onthe portal of St. Maclou. He was eminently the sculptor of an educatedclass, and appealed to a cultivated appreciation. Coming as he did atthe acme of the French Renaissance, when France was borrowing withintelligent selection whatever it considered valuable from Italy, hepleased the dilettanti. There is something distinctly "swell" in hiswork. He does not perhaps express any overmastering personal feeling, nor does he stamp the impress of French national character on his workwith any particular emphasis. He is too well-bred and too cultivated, hehas too much _aplomb_. But his works show both more personal feeling andmore national character than the works of his contemporaries elsewhere. For line he has a very intimate instinct, and of mass, in the sculptor'sas well as the painter's sense, he has a native comprehension. Comparehis "Diana" of the Louvre with Cellini's in the adjoining room from thepoint of view of pure sculpture. Goujon's group is superb in every way. Cellini's figure is tormented and distorted by an impulse of decadentthough decorative æstheticism. Goujon's caryatides and figures of theInnocents Fountain are equally sculptural in their way--by no meansarabesques, as is so much of Renaissance relief, and the modern reliefthat imitates it. Everything in fine that Goujon did is unified with therest of his work and identifiable by the mark of style. 

III

What do we mean by style? Something, at all events, very different frommanner, in spite of Mr. Hamerton's insistence upon the contrary. Is thequality in virtue of which--as Mr. Dobson paraphrases Gautier--

 "The bust outlives the throne, The coin Tiberius"

the specific personality of the artist who carved the bust or chiselledthe coin that have thus outlived all personality connected with them?Not that personality is not of the essence of enduring art. It is, onthe contrary, the condition of any vital art whatever. But what givesthe object, once personally conceived and expressed, its currency, itsuniversality, its eternal interest--speaking to strangers with familiarvividness, and to posterity as to contemporaries--is something asidefrom its personal feeling. And it is this something and not specificpersonality that style is. Style is the invisible wind through whoseinfluence "the lion on the flag" of the Persian poet "moves andmarches. " The lion of personality may be painted never so deftly, withnever so much expression, individual feeling, picturesqueness, energy, charm; it will not move and march save through the rhythmic, wavinginfluence of style. 

Nor is style necessarily the grand style, as Arnold seems to imply, incalling it "a peculiar recasting and heightening, under a certaincondition of spiritual excitement, of what a man has to say in such amanner as to add dignity and distinction to it. " Perhaps the mostexplicit examples of pure style owe their production to spiritualcoolness; and, in any event, the word "peculiar" in a definition begsthe question. Buffon is at once juster and more definite in saying:"Style is nothing other than the order and movement which we put intoour thoughts. " It is singular that this simple and lucid utterance ofBuffon should have been so little noticed by those who have written inEnglish on style. In general English writers have apparentlymisconceived, in very curious fashion, Buffon's other remark, "le stylec'est l'homme;" by which aphorism Buffon merely meant that a man'sindividual manner depends on his temperament, his character, and whichhe, of course, was very far from suspecting would ever be taken for adefinition. 

Following Buffon's idea of "order and movement, " we may say, perhaps, that style results from the preservation in every part of some sense ofthe form of the whole. It implies a sense of relations as well as ofstatement. It is not mere expression of a thought in a manner peculiarto the artist (in words, color, marble, what not), but it is suchexpression penetrated with both reminiscence and anticipation. It is, indeed, on the contrary, very nearly the reverse of what we mean byexpression, which is mainly a matter of personal energy. Style meanscorrectness, precision, that feeling for the _ensemble_ on which aninharmonious detail jars. Expression results from a sense of the valueof the detail. If Walt Whitman, for example, were what his admirers'defective sense of style fancies him, he would be expressive. If Frenchacademic art had as little expression as its censors assert, it wouldstill illustrate style--the quality which modifies the native andapposite form of the concrete individual thing with reference to whathas preceded and what is to follow it; the quality, in a word, whoseeffort is to harmonize the object with its environment. When thisenvironment is heightened, and universal instead of logical andparticular, we have the "grand style;" but we have the grand stylegenerally in poetry, and to be sure of style at all prose--such prose asGoujon's, which in no wise emulates Michael Angelo's poetry--mayjustifiably neglect in some degree the specific personality that tendsto make it poetic and individual. 

IV

After Goujon, Clodion is the great name in French sculpture, until wecome to Houdon, who may almost be assigned to the nineteenth century. There were throughout the eighteenth century honorable artists, sculptors of distinction beyond contest. But sculpture is such anabstract art itself that the sculpture which partook of theartificiality of the eighteenth century has less interest for us, lessthat is concrete and appealing than even the painting of the epoch. Itderived its canons and its practice from Puget--the French Bernini, whowith less grace and less dilettante extravagance than his Italianexemplar had more force and solidity. With less cleverness, lesscharm--for Bernini, spite of the disesteem in which his juxtaposition toMichael Angelo and his apparent unconsciousness of the attitude suchjuxtaposition should have imposed upon him, cause him to be held, has agreat deal of charm and is extraordinarily clever--he is more sincere, more thorough-going, more respectable. Coysevox is chiefly Pugetexaggerated, and his pupil, Coustou, who comes down to nearly the middleof the eighteenth century, contributed nothing to French sculpturaltradition. 

But Clodion is a distinct break. He is as different from Coysevox andCoustou as Watteau is from Lebrun. He is the essence of what we mean byLouis Quinze. His work is clever beyond characterization. It has inperfection what sculptors mean by color--that is to say a certain warmthof feeling, a certain _insouciance_, a brave carelessness forsculpturesque traditions, a free play of fancy, both in the conceptionand execution of his subjects. Like the Louis Quinze painters, he hashis thoughtless, irresponsible, involuntary side, and like them--likethe best of them, that is to say, like Watteau--he is never quite asgood as he could be. He seems not so much concerned at expressing hisideal as at pleasing, and pleasing people of too frivolous anappreciation to call forth what is best in him. He devoted himselfalmost altogether to terra-cotta, which is equivalent to saying that theexquisite and not the impressive was his aim. Thoroughly classic, so faras the avoidance of everything naturalistic is concerned, he is yet aslittle severe and correct as the painters of his day. He spent nineyears in Rome, but though enamoured in the most sympathetic degree ofthe antique, it was the statuettes and figurines, the gay and social, the elegant and decorative side of antique sculpture that exclusively hedelighted in. His work is Tanagra Gallicized. It is not the group of"The Deluge, " or the "Entry of the French into Munich, " or "Hercules inRepose, " for which he was esteemed by contemporaries or is prized byposterity. He is admirable where he is inimitable--that is to say, inthe delightful decoration of which he was so prodigal. It is not in hiscompositions essaying what is usually meant by sculptural effect, but inhis vases, clocks, pendants, volutes, little reliefs of nymphs ridingdolphins over favoring breakers and amid hospitable foam, his toilettesof Venus, his façade ornamentations, his applied sculpture, in a word, that his true talent lies. After him it is natural that we should have areversion to quasi-severity and imitation of the antique--just as Davidsucceeded to the Louis Quinze pictorial riot--and that the Frenchcontemporaries of Canova and Thorwaldsen, those literal, thoughenthusiastic illustrators of Winckelmann's theories, should be Pradierand Etex and the so-called Greek school. Pradier's Greek inspiration hassomething Swiss about it, one may say--he was a Genevan--though hisfigures were simple and largely treated. He had a keen sense for thefeminine element--the _ewig Weibliche_--and expressed it plasticallywith a zest approaching gusto. Yet his statues are women rather thanstatues, and, more than that, are handsome rather than beautiful. Etex, it is to be feared, will be chiefly remembered as the unfortunatelysuccessful rival of Rude in the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile decoration. 

V

Having in each case more or less relation with, but really whollyoutside of and superior to all "schools" whatever--except the school ofnature, which permits as much freedom as it exacts fidelity--is thesuccession of the greatest of French sculptors since the Renaissance anddown to the present day: Houdon, David d'Angers, Rude, Carpeaux, andBarye. Houdon is one of the finest examples of the union of vigor withgrace. He will be known chiefly as a portraitist, but such a masterpieceas his "Diana" shows how admirable he was in the sphere of purelyimaginative theme and treatment. Classic, and even conventionallyclassic as it is, both in subject and in the way the subject ishandled--compared for example with M. Falguière's "Nymph Hunting, " whichis simply a realistic Diana--it is designed and modelled with as muchpersonal freedom and feeling as if Houdon had been stimulated by theambition of novel accomplishment, instead of that of rendering withtruth and grace a time-honored and traditional sculptural motive. Itstreatment is beautifully educated and its effect refined, chaste, andelevated in an extraordinary degree. No master ever steered so near thereef of "clock-tops, " one may say, and avoided it so surely andtriumphantly. The figure is light as air and wholly effortless at thesame time. There has rarely been such a distinguished success incircumventing the great difficulty of sculpture--which is to rob marbleor metal of its specific gravity and make it appear light and buoyant, just as the difficulty of the painter is to give weight and substance tohis fictions. But Houdon's admirable busts of Molière, Diderot, Washington, Franklin, and Mirabeau, his unequalled statue of Voltaire inthe _foyer_ of the Français and his San Bruno in Santa Maria degliAngeli at Rome are the works on which his fame will chiefly rest, and, owing to their masterly combination of strength with style, restsecurely. 

To see the work of David d'Angers, one must go to Angers itself and toPère-Lachaise. The Louvre is lamentably lacking in anything trulyrepresentative of this most eminent of all portraitists in sculpture, Ithink, not excepting even Houdon, if one may reckon the mass as well asthe excellence of his remarkable production and the way in which itwitnesses that portraiture is just what he was born to do. The"Philopoemen" of the Louvre is a fine work, even impressively large andsimple. But it is the competent work of a member of a school and leavesone a little cold. Its academic quality quite overshadows whateverpersonal feeling one may by searching find in the severity of itstreatment and the way in which a classic motive has been followed outnaturally and genuinely instead of perfunctorily. It gives no intimationof the faculty that produced the splendid gallery of medallionsaccentuated by an occasional bust and statue, of David's celebratedcontemporaries and quasi-contemporaries in every field of distinction. It is impossible to overestimate the interest and value, the truth andthe art of these. Whether the subject be intractable or not seems tohave made no difference to David. He invariably produced a work of artat the same time that he expressed the character of its motive withuncompromising fidelity. His portraits, moreover, are pure sculpture. There is nothing of the cameo-cutter's art about them. They are modellednot carved. The outline is no more important than it is in nature, sofar as it is employed to the end of identification. It is useddecoratively. There are surprising effects of fore-shortening, exhibiting superb, and as it were unconscious ease in handlingrelief--that most difficult of illusions in respect of having no law (atleast no law that it is worth the sculptor's while to try to discover)of correspondence to reality. Forms and masses have a definition and afirmness wholly remarkable in their independence of the usual lowrelief's reliance on pictorial and purely linear design. They do notblend picturesquely with the background, and do not depend on theirsuggestiveness for their character. They are always realized, executed--sculpture in a word whose suggestiveness, quite as potent asthat of feebler executants, begins only when actual representation hasbeen triumphantly achieved instead of impotently and skilfully avoided. 

Of Rude's genius one's first thought is of its robustness, itsoriginality. Everything he did is stamped with the impress of hispersonality. At the same time it is equally evident that Rude's owntemperament took its color from the transitional epoch in which helived, and of which he was _par excellence_ the sculptor. He was thetrue inheritor of his Burgundian traditions. His strongest side was thatwhich allies him with his artistic ancestor, Claux Sluters. But helived in an era of general culture and æstheticism, and all hisnaturalistic tendencies were complicated with theory. He accepted theantique not merely as a stimulus, but as a model. He was not only asculptor but a teacher, and the formulation of his didacticismcomplicated considerably the free exercise of his expression. At thelast, as is perhaps natural, he reverted to precedent and formulary, andin his "Hebe and the Eagle of Jupiter" and his "L'Amour Dominateur duMonde, " is more at variance than anywhere else with his native instinct, which was, to cite the admirable phrase of M. De Fourcaud, _extériorisernos idées et nos âmes_. But throughout his life he halted a littlebetween two opinions--the current admiration of the classic, and his owninstinctive feeling for nature unsystematized and unsophisticated. His"Jeanne d'Arc" is an instance. In spite of the violation of tradition, which at the time it was thought to be, it seems to-day to our eyes toerr on the side of the conventional. It is surely intellectual, classic, even factitious in conception as well as in execution. In some of itsaccessories it is even modish. It illustrates not merely the abstractturn of conceiving a subject which Rude always shared with the greatclassicists of his art, but also the arbitrariness of treatment againstwhich he always protested. Without at all knowing it, he was in a veryintimate sense an eclectic in many of his works. He believed in forminga complete mental conception of every composition before even posing amodel, as he used to tell his students, but in complicated compositionsthis was impossible, and he had small talent for artificial composition. Furthermore, he often distrusted--quite without reason, but after thefatal manner of the rustic--his own intuitions. But one mentions thesequalifications of his genius and accomplishment only because both hisgenius and accomplishment are so distinguished as to make one wish theywere more nearly perfect than they are. It is really idle to wish thatRude had neglected the philosophy of his art, with which he was so muchoccupied, and had devoted himself exclusively to treating sculpturalsubjects in the manner of a nineteenth century successor of Sluters andAnthoniet. He might have been a greater sculptor than he was, but he issufficiently great as he is. If his "Mercury" is an essay inconventional sculpture, his "Petit Pêcheur" is frank and free sculpturalhandling of natural material. His work at Lille and in Belgium, hisreclining figure of Cavaignac in the cemetery of Montmartre, his noblefigures of Gaspard Monge at Beaune, of Marshal Bertrand, and of Ney, areall cast in the heroic mould, full of character, and in no wisedependent on speculative theory. Few sculptors have displayed anythinglike his variety and range, which extends, for example, from the"Baptism of Christ" to a statue of "Louis XIII. Enfant, " and includesportraits, groups, compositions in relief, and heroic statues. In allhis successful work one cannot fail to note the force and fire of theman's personality, and perhaps what one thinks of chiefly in connectionwith him is the misfortune which we owe to the vacillation of M. Thiersof having but one instead of four groups by him on the piers of the Arcde Triomphe de l'Étoile. Carpeaux used to say that he never passed the"Chant du Départ" without taking off his hat. One can understand hisfeeling. No one can have any appreciation of what sculpture is withoutperceiving that this magnificent group easily and serenely takes itsrank among the masterpieces of sculpture of all time. It is, in thefirst place, the incarnation of an abstraction, the spirit of patriotismroused to the highest pitch of warlike intensity and self-sacrifice, andin the second this abstract motive is expressed in the most elaborateand comprehensive completeness--with a combined intricacy of detail andsingleness of effect which must be the despair of any but a master insculpture. 

VI

Carpeaux perhaps never did anything that quite equals the masterpiece ofhis master Rude. But the essential quality of the "Chant du Départ" heassimilated so absolutely and so naturally that he made it in a way hisown. He carried it farther, indeed. If he never rose to the grandeur ofthis superb group, and he certainly did not, he nevertheless showed inevery one of his works that he was possessed by its inspiration evenmore completely than was Rude himself. His passion was therepresentation of life, the vital and vivifying force in its utmostexuberance, and in its every variety, so far as his experience couldenable him to render it. He was infatuated with movement, with theattestation in form of nervous energy, of the quick translation ofthought and emotion into interpreting attitude. His figures are, beyondall others, so thoroughly alive as to seem conscious of the fact and joyof pure existence. They are animated, one may almost say inspired, withthe delight of muscular activity, the sensation of exercising thefunctions with which nature endows them. And accompanying this suprememotive and effect is a delightful grace and winningness of which fewsculptors have the secret, and which suggest more than any one elseClodion's decorative loveliness. An even greater charm of sprite-like, fairy attractiveness, of caressing and bewitching fascination, a morepenetrating and seductive engagingness plays about Carpeaux's "Flora, " Ithink, than is characteristic even of Clodion's figures and reliefs. Carpeaux is at all events nearer to us, and if he has not the classicdetachment of Clodion he substitutes for it a quality of closerattachment and more intimate appeal. He is at his best perhaps in the"Danse" of the Nouvel Opéra façade, wherein his elfin-like grace andexuberant vitality animate a group carefully, and even classicallycomposed, exhibiting skill and restraint as well as movement and fancy. Possibly his temperament gives itself too free a rein in the group ofthe Luxembourg Gardens, in which he has been accused by his own admirersof sacrificing taste to turbulence and securing expressiveness at theexpense of saner and more truly sculptural aims. But fancy theLuxembourg Gardens without "The Four Quarters of the World supportingthe Earth. " Parisian censure of his exuberance is very apt to display aconventional standard of criticism in the critic rather than tosubstantiate its charge. 

Barye's place in the history of art is more nearly unique, perhaps, thanthat of any of the great artists. He was certainly one of the greatestof sculptors, and he had either the good luck or the mischance to dohis work in a field almost wholly unexploited before him. He has in hisway no rivals, and in his way he is so admirable that the scope of hiswork does not even hint at his exclusion from rivalry with the verygreatest of his predecessors. A perception of the truth of this apparentparadox is the nearest one may come, I think, to the secret of hisexcellence. No matter what you do, if you do it well enough, that is, with enough elevation, enough spiritual distinction, enoughtransmutation of the elementary necessity of technical perfection intotrue significance--you succeed. And this is not the sense in whichmotive in art is currently belittled. It is rather the suggestion ofMrs. Browning's lines:

 "Better far Pursue a frivolous trade by serious means Than a sublime art frivolously. "

Nothing could be more misleading than to fancy Barye a kind of modernCellini. Less than any sculptor of modern times is he a decorativeartist. The small scale of his works is in great part due to his lack ofopportunity to produce larger ones. Nowadays one does what one can, eventhe greatest artists; and Barye had no Lorenzo de'Medici for a patron, but, instead, a frowning Institute, which confined him to such work as, in the main, he did. He did it _con amore_ it need not be added, andthus lifted it at once out of the customary category of such work. Hisbronzes were never _articles de Paris_, and their excellence transcendsthe function of teaching our sculptors and amateurs the lesson that"household" is as dignified a province as monumental, art. His groupsare not essentially "clock-tops, " and the work of perhaps the greatestartist, in the line from Jean Goujon to Carpeaux can hardly be used topoint the moral that "clock-tops" ought to be good. Cellini's "Perseus"is really more of a "parlor ornament" than Barye's smallest figure. 

Why is he so obviously great as well as so obviously extraordinary? oneconstantly asks himself in the presence of his bronzes. Perhaps becausehe expresses with such concreteness, such definiteness and vigor amotive so purely an abstraction. The illustration in intimateelaboration of elemental force, strength, passion, seems to have beenhis aim, and in everyone of his wonderfully varied groups he attains itsuperbly--not giving the beholder a symbol of it merely; in no degreedepending upon association or convention, but exhibiting its veryessence with a combined scientific explicitness and poetic energy towhich antique art alone, one may almost say, has furnished a parallel. For this, fauna served him as well as the human figure, though, couldhe have studied man with the facility which the Jardin des Plantesafforded him of observing the lower animals, he might have used themedium of the human figure more frequently than he did. When he did, hewas hardly less successful; and the four splendid groups that decoratethe Pavillons Denon and Richelieu of the Louvre are in the very frontrank of the heroic sculpture of the modern world. 

V

ACADEMIC SCULPTURE

I

From Barye to the Institute is a long way. Nothing could be moreinterhostile than his sculpture and that of the professors at the Écoledes Beaux-Arts. And in considering the French sculpture of the presentday we may say that, aside from the great names alreadymentioned--Houdon, David d'Angers, Rude, Carpeaux, and Barye--and apartfrom the new movement represented by Rodin and Dalou, it is representedby the Institute, and that the Institute has reverted to the Italianinspiration. The influence of Canova and the example of Pradier and Etexwere not lasting. Indeed, Greek sculpture has perished so completelythat it sometimes seems to live only in its legend. With the modernFrench school, the academic school, it is quite supplanted by thesculpture of the Renaissance. And this is not unreasonable. TheRenaissance sculpture is modern; its masters did finely and perfectlywhat since their time has been done imperfectly, but essentially itsartistic spirit is the modern artistic spirit, full of personality, full of expression, careless of the type. Nowadays we patronize a littlethe ideal. You may hear very intelligent critics in Paris--who in Parisis not an intelligent critic?--speak disparagingly of the Greek want ofexpression; of the lack of passion, of vivid interest, of significancein a word, in Greek sculpture of the Periclean epoch. The conception ofabsolute beauty having been discovered to be an abstraction, thetradition of the purely ideal has gone with it. The caryatids of theErechtheum, the horsemen of the Parthenon frieze, the reliefs of theNike Apteros balustrade are admired certainly; but they are hardlysympathetically admired; there is a tendency to relegate them to thelimbo of subjects for æsthetic lectures. And yet no one can havecarefully examined the brilliant productions of modern French sculpturewithout being struck by this apparent paradox: that, whereas all itscanons are drawn from a study of the Renaissance, its chiefcharacteristic is, at bottom, a lack of expression, a carefulness forthe type. The explanation is this: in the course of time, which "at lastmakes all things even, " the individuality, the romanticism of theRenaissance has itself become the type, is now itself become"classical, " and the modern attitude toward it, however sympatheticcompared with the modern attitude toward the antique, is to a noteworthydegree factitious and artificial. And in art everything depends uponthe attitude of mind. It is this which prevents Ingres from being trulyRaphaelesque, and Pradier from being really classical. If, therefore, itcan justly be said of modern French sculpture that its sympathy for theRenaissance sculpture obscures its vision of the ideal, it is clearly tobe charged with the same absence of individual significance with whichits thick-and-thin partisans reproach the antique. The circumstancethat, like the Renaissance sculpture, it deals far more largely inpictorial expression than the antique does, is, if it deals in themafter the Renaissance fashion and not after a fashion of its own, quitebeside the essential fact. There is really nothing in common between anacademic French sculptor of the present day and an Italian sculptor ofthe fifteenth century, except the possession of what is called themodern spirit. But the modern spirit manifests itself in an enormousgamut, and the differences of its manifestations are as great in theirway, and so far as our interest in them is concerned, as the differencebetween their inspiration and the mediæval or the antique inspiration. 

II

Chapu, who died a year or two ago, is perhaps the only eminent sculptorof the time whose inspiration is clearly the antique, and when I addthat his work appears to me for this reason none the less original, itwill be immediately perceived that I share imperfectly the Frenchobjection to the antique. Indeed, nowadays to have the antiqueinspiration is to be original _ex vi termini_; nothing is fartherremoved from contemporary conventions. But this is true in a much moreintegral sense. The pre-eminent fact of Greek sculpture, for example, is, from one point of view, the directness with which it concerns itselfwith the ideal--the slight temporary or personal element with which itis alloyed. When one calls an artist or a work Greek, this is what isreally meant; it is the sense in which Raphael is Greek. Chapu is Greekin this way, and thus individualized among his contemporaries, not onlyby having a different inspiration from them, but by depending for hisinterest on no convention fixed or fleeting and on no indirect supportof accentuated personal characteristics. Perhaps the antiquary of athousand years from now, to whom the traits which to us distinguish soclearly the work of certain sculptors who seem to have nothing incommon will betray only their common inspiration, will be even less at aloss than ourselves to find traces of a common origin in such apparentlydifferent works as Chapu's "Mercury" and his "Jeunesse" of the Regnaultmonument. He will by no means confound these with the classicalproductions of M. Millet or M. Cavelier, we may be sure. And this, Irepeat, because their purely Greek spirit, the subordination in theirconception and execution of the personal element, the direct way inwhich the sculptor looks at the ideal, the type, not only distinguishthem among contemporary works, which are so largely personalexpressions, but give them an eminent individuality as well. Like theGreek sculpture, they are plainly the production of culture, which inrestraining wilfulness, however happily inspired, and imposing measureand poise, nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the facultiesthemselves. The skeptic who may very plausibly inquire the distinctionbetween that vague entity, "the ideal, " and the personal idea of theartist concerned with it, can be shown this distinction better than itcan be expressed in words. He will appreciate it very readily, to returnto Chapu, by contrasting the "Jeanne d'Arc" at the Luxembourg Gallerywith such different treatment of the same theme as M. Bastien-Lepage'spicture, now in the New York Metropolitan Museum, illustrates. Contraryto his almost invariable practice of neglecting even design in favor ofimpersonal natural representation, Bastien-Lepage's "Jeanne d'Arc" isthe creature of wilful originality, a sort of embodied protest againstconventionalism in historical painting; she is the illustration of atheory, she is this and that systematically and not spontaneously; thepredominance of the painter's personality is plain in every detail ofhis creation. Chapu's "Maid" is the ideal, more or less perfectlyexpressed; she is everybody's "Maid, " more or less adequately embodied. The statue is the antipodes of the conventional much more so, even, toour modern sense, than that of Rude; it suggests no competition withthat at Versailles or the many other characterless conceptions thatabound. It is full of expression--arrested just before it ceases to besuggestive; of individuality restrained on the hither side ofpeculiarity. The "Maid" is hearing her "voices" as distinctly asBastien-Lepage's figure is, but the fact is not forced upon the sense, but is rather disclosed to the mind with great delicacy and the dignitybecoming sculpture. No one could, of course, mistake this work for anantique--an error that might possibly be made, supposing the conditionsfavorable, in the case of Chapu's "Mercury;" but it presents, nevertheless, an excellent illustration of a modern working naturallyand freely in the antique spirit. It is as affecting, as full of directappeal, as a modern work essays to be; but its appeal is to the sense ofbeauty, to the imagination, and its effect is wrought in virtue of itsart and not of its reality. No, individuality is no more inconsistentwith the antique spirit than it is with eccentricity, with theextravagances of personal expression. Is there more individuality in athirteenth-century grotesque than in the "Faun" of the Capitol? Forsculpture especially, art is eminently, as it has been termed, "thediscipline of genius, " and it is only after the sculptor's genius hassubmitted to the discipline of culture that it evinces an individualitywhich really counts, which is really thrown out in relief on thebackground of crude personality. And if there be no question ofperfection, but only of the artist's attitude, one has but to askhimself the real meaning of the epithet Shakespearian to be assured ofthe harmony between individuality and the most impersonal practice. 

Nevertheless, this attitude and this perfection, characteristic as theyare of Chapu's work, have their peril. When the quickening impulse, ofwhose expression they are after all but conditions, fails, they suddenlyappear so misplaced as to render insignificant what would otherwise haveseemed "respectable" enough work. Everywhere else of greatdistinction--even in the execution of so perfunctory a task as acommission for a figure of "Mechanical Art" in the Tribunal deCommerce--at the great Triennial Exposition of 1883 Chapu was simplyinsignificant. There was never a more striking illustration of thenecessity of constant renewal of inspiration, of the constant danger oflapse into the perfunctory and the hackneyed, which threatens an artistof precisely Chapu's qualities. Another of equal eminence escapes thisperil; there is not the same interdependence of form and "content" to bedisturbed by failure in the latter; or, better still, the merits of formare not so distinguished as to require imperatively a correspondingexcellence of intention. In fact, it is because of the exceptionalposition that he occupies in deriving from the antique, instead ofshowing the academic devotion to Renaissance romanticism whichcharacterizes the general movement of academic French sculpture, that inany consideration of this sculpture Chapu's work makes a more vividimpression than that of his contemporaries, and thus naturally takes aforemost place. 

III

M. Paul Dubois, for example, in the characteristics just alluded to, presents the greatest possible contrast to Chapu; but he will never, wemay be sure, give us a work that could be called insignificant. Hiswork will always express himself, and his is a personality of verypositive idiosyncrasy. M. Dubois, indeed, is probably the strongest ofthe Academic group of French sculptors of the day. The tomb of GeneralLamoricière at Nantes has remained until recently one of the very finestachievements of sculpture in modern times. There is in effect nothingmarkedly superior in the Cathedral of St. Denis, which is a great dealto say--much more, indeed, than the glories of the Italian Renaissance, which lead us out of mere momentum to forget the French, permit one toappreciate. Indeed, the sculpture of M. Dubois seems positively to havebut one defect, a defect which from one point of view is certainly aquality, the defect of impeccability. It is at any rate impeccable; toseek in it a blemish, or, within its own limitations, a distinctshortcoming, is to lose one's pains. As workmanship, and workmanship ofthe subtler kind, in which every detail of surface and structure isperceived to have been intelligently felt (though rarelyenthusiastically rendered), it is not merely satisfactory, but visiblyand beautifully perfect. But in the category in which M. Dubois is to beplaced that is very little; it is always delightful, but it is notespecially complimentary to M. Dubois, to occupy one's self with it. Onthe other hand, by impeccability is certainly not here meant the meresuccess of expressing what one has to express--the impeccability ofCanova and his successors, for example. The difficulty is with M. Dubois's ideal, with what he so perfectly expresses. In the lastanalysis this is not his ideal more than ours. And this, indeed, is whatmakes his work so flawless in our eyes, so impeccable. It seems as if ofwhat he attempts he attains the type itself; everyone must recognize itsjustness. 

The reader will say at once here that I am cavilling at M. Dubois forwhat I praised in Chapu. But let us distinguish. The two artists belongto wholly different categories. Chapu's inspiration is the antiquespirit. M. Dubois, is, like all academic French sculptors, except Chapuindeed, absolutely and integrally a romanticist, completely enamoured ofthe Renaissance. The two are so distinct as to be contradictory. Themoment M. Dubois gives us the _type_ in a "Florentine Minstrel, " to theexclusion of the personal and the particular, he fails inimaginativeness and falls back on the conventional. The _type_ of a"Florentine Minstrel" is infallibly a convention. M. Dubois, not beingoccupied directly with the ideal, is bound to carry his subject and itsidiosyncrasies much farther than the observer could have foreseen. Torest content with expressing gracefully and powerfully the notion commonto all connoisseurs is to fall short of what one justly exacts of theromantic artist. Indeed, in exchange for this one would accept veryfaulty work in this category with resignation. Whatever we may say orthink, however we may admire or approve, in romantic art the qualitythat charms, that fascinates, is not adequacy but unexpectedness. Inaddition to the understanding, the instinct demands satisfaction. Thevirtues of "Charity" and "Faith" and the ideas of "Military Courage" and"Meditation" could not be more adequately illustrated than by thefigures which guard the solemn dignity of General Lamoricière's sleep. There is a certain force, a breadth of view in the general conception, something in the way in which the sculptor has taken his task, closelyallied to real grandeur. The confident and even careless dependence uponthe unaided value of its motive, making hardly any appeal to the fancyon the one hand, and seeking no poignant effect on the other, endues thework with the poise and purity of effortless strength. It conveys to themind a clear impression of manliness, of qualities morally refreshing. 

But such work educates us so inexorably, teaches us to be so exacting!After enjoying it to its and our utmost, we demand still something else, something more moving, more stirring, something more directly appealingto our impulse and instinct. Even in his free and charming little "St. John Baptist" of the Luxembourg, and his admirable bust of Baudry onefeels like asking for more freedom still, for more "swing. " Duboiscertainly is the last artist who needs to be on his guard against"letting himself go. " Why is it that in varying so agreeably Renaissancethemes--compare the "Military Courage" and Michael Angelo's "Pensiero, "or the "Charity" and the same group in Della Quercia's fountain atSienna--it is restraint, rather than audacity, that governs him? Is itcaution or perversity? In a word, imaginativeness is what permanentlyinterests and attaches, the imaginativeness to which in sculpture theordinary conventions of form are mere conditions, and the ordinaryconventions of idea mere material. One can hardly apply generalities ofthe kind to M. Dubois without saying too much, but it is neverthelesstrue that one may illustrate the grand style and yet fail of beingintimately and acutely sympathetic; and M. Dubois, to whose largeness oftreatment and nobility of conception no one will deny something trulysuggestive of the grand style, does thus fail. It is not that he doesnot possess charm, and charm in no mean proportion to his largeness andnobility, but for the elevation of these into the realm of magic, intothe upper air of spontaneous spiritual activity, his imagination has, for the romantic imagination which it is, a trifle too muchself-possession--too much sanity, if one chooses. He has the ambitions, the faculties, of a lyric poet, and he gives us too frequentlyrecitative. 

IV

It is agreeable in many ways to turn from the rounded and completeimpeccability of M. Dubois to the fancy of M. Saint-Marceaux. More thanany of his rivals, M. Saint-Marceaux possesses the charm ofunexpectedness. He is not perhaps to be called an original genius, andhis work will probably leave French sculpture very nearly where it foundit. Indeed, one readily perceives that he is not free from the trammelsof contemporary convention. But how easily he wears them, and if no"severe pains and birth-throes" accompany the evolution of hisconceptions, how graceful these conceptions are! They are perhaps of theCanova family; the "Harlequin, " for instance, which has had such aprodigious success, is essentially Milanese sculpture; essentially eventhe "Genius Guarding the Secret of the Tomb" is a fantastic rather thanan original work. But how the manner, the treatment, triumphs over theCanova insipidity! It is not only Milanese sculpture better done, theexecution beautifully sapient and truthful instead of cheaply imitative, the idea broadly enforced by the details instead of frittered away amongthem; it is Milanese sculpture essentially elevated and dignified. Loosely speaking, the mere _article de vertu_ becomes a true work ofart. And this transformation, or rather this development of a germ ofnot too great intrinsic importance, is brought about in the work ofSaint-Marceaux by the presence of an element utterly foreign to theCanova sculpture and its succession--the element of character. If to theclever workmanship of the Italians he merely opposed workmanship of asuperior kind as well as quality--thoroughly artistic workmanship, thatis to say--his sculpture would be far less interesting than it is. Hedoes, indeed, noticeably do this; there is a felicity entirelydelightful, almost magical, in every detail of his work. But when onecompares it with the sculpture of M. Dubois, it is not of this that onethinks so much as of a certain individual character with which M. Saint-Marceaux always contrives to endue it. This is not always in itsnature sculptural, it must be admitted, and it approaches perhaps toonear the character of _genre_ to have the enduring interest that purelysculptural qualities possess. But it is always individual, piquant, andcharming, and in it consists M. Saint-Marceaux's claim upon us as anartist. No one else, even given his powers of workmanship, that is tosay as perfectly equipped as he, could have treated so thoroughlyconventional a _genre_ subject as the "Harlequin" as he has treated it. The mask is certainly one of the stock properties of the subject, butnotice how it is used to confer upon the whole work a character ofmysterious witchery. It is as a whole, if you choose, an _article deParis_, with the distinction of being seriously treated; the modellingand the movement admirable as far as they go, but well within the boundsof that anatomically artistic expression which is the _raison d'être_ ofsculpture and its choice of the human form as its material. But thecharacter saves it from this category; what one may almost call itspsychological interest redeems its superficial triviality. 

M. Saint-Marceaux is always successful in this way. One has only to lookat the eyes of his figures to be convinced how subtle is his art ofexpressing character. Here he swings quite clear of all convention andmanifests his genius positively and directly. The unfathomable secret ofthe tomb is in the spiritual expression of the guarding genius, and theelaborately complex movement concentrated upon the urn and directlyinspired by the ephebes of the Sistine ceiling is a mere blind. The sameis true of the portrait heads which within his range M. Saint Marceauxdoes better than almost anyone. M. Renan's "Confessions" hardly conveyas distinct a notion of character as his bust exhibited at the Triennialof 1883. Many of the sculptors' anonymous heads, so to speak, arehardly less remarkable. Long after the sharp edge of one's interest inthe striking pose of his "Harlequin" and the fine movement and bizarrefeatures of his "Genius" has worn away, their curious spiritualinterest, the individual _cachet_ of their character, will sustain them. And so integrally true is this of all the productions of M. Saint-Marceaux's talent, that it is quite as perceptible in works whereit is not accentuated and emphasized as it is in those of which I havebeen speaking; it is a quality that will bear refining, that is evenbetter indeed in its more subtle manifestations. The figure of theLuxembourg Gallery, the young Dante reading Virgil, is an example; agirl's head, the forehead swathed in a turban, first exhibited someyears ago, is another. The charm of these is more penetrating, thoughthey are by no means either as popular or as "important" works as the"Genius of the Tomb" or the "Harlequin. " In the time to come M. Saint-Marceaux will probably rely more and more on their quality ofgrave and yet alert distinction, and less on striking and eccentricvariations of themes from Michael Angelo like the "Genius, " andillustrations like the "Harlequin" of the artistic potentialities of theCanova sculpture. 

With considerably less force than M. Dubois and decidedly less piquancythan M. Saint-Marceaux, M. Antonin Mercié has perhaps greaterrefinement than either. His outline is a trifle softer, his sentimentmore gracious, more suave. His work is difficult to characterizesatisfactorily, and the fact may of course proceed from its lack offorce, as well as from the well-understood difficulty of translatinginto epithets anything so essentially elusive as suavity and grace ofform. At one epoch in any examination of academic French sculpture thatof M. Mercié seems the most interesting; it is so free from exaggerationof any kind on the one hand, it realizes its idea so satisfactorily onthe other, and this idea is so agreeable, so refined, and at the sametime so dignified. The "David" is an early work now in the Luxembourggallery, reproductions of which are very popular, and the reader mayjudge how well it justifies these remarks. Being an early work, onecannot perhaps insist on its originality; in France, a young sculptormust be original at his peril; his education is so complete, he musthave known and studied the beauties of classic sculpture so thoroughly, that not to be impressed by them so profoundly as to display hisappreciativeness in his first work is apt to argue a certaininsensitiveness. And every one cannot have creative genius. What anumber of admirable works we should be compelled to forego if creativegenius were demanded of an artist of the present day when the bestminds of the time are occupied with other things than art! One is apt toforget that in our day the minds that correspond with the artisticmiracles of the Renaissance are absorbed in quite different departmentsof effort. M. Mercié's "David" would perhaps never have existed but forDonatello's. As far as plastic motive is concerned, it may withoutinjustice be called a variant of that admirable creation, and from everypoint of view except that of dramatic grace it is markedly inferior toits inspiration; as an embodiment of triumphant youth, of the divineease with which mere force is overcome, it has only a superficialresemblance to the original. 

But if with M. Mercié "David" was simply a classic theme to be treated, which is exactly what it of course was not with Donatello, it isundeniable that he has expressed himself very distinctly in histreatment. A less sensitive artist would have vulgarized instead ofmerely varying the conception, whereas one can easily see in M. Mercié'shandling of it the ease, science, and felicitous movement that havesince expressed themselves more markedly, more positively, but hardlymore unmistakably, in the sculptor's maturer works. Of these the chiefis perhaps the "Gloria Victis, " which now decorates the SquareMontholon; and its identity of authorship with the "David" is apparentin spite of its structural complexity and its far greater importanceboth in subject and execution. Its subject is the most inspiring that aFrench sculptor since the events of 1870-71 (so lightly considered bythose who only see the theatric side of French character) could treat. Its general interest, too, is hardly inferior; there is somethinggenerally ennobling in the celebration of the virtues of the bravedefeated that surpasses the commonplace of pæans. M. Mercié was, in thissense, more fortunate than the sculptor to whom the Berlinese owe thebronze commemoration of their victory. Perhaps to call his treatmententirely worthy of the theme, is to forget the import of such works asthe tombs of the Medici Chapel at Florence. There is a region into whoseprecincts the dramatic quality penetrates only to play an insufficientpart. But in modern art to do more than merely to keep such truths inmind, to insist on satisfactory plastic illustrations of them, is notonly to prepare disappointment for one's self, but to risk misjudgingadmirable and elevated effort; and to regret the fact that France hadonly M. Mercié and not Michael Angelo to celebrate her "Gloria Victis"is to commit both of these errors. After all, the subjects aredifferent, and the events of 1870-71 had compensations for France whichthe downfall of Florentine liberty was without; so that, indeed, a noteof unmixed melancholy, however lofty its strain, would have been adiscord which M. Mercié has certainly avoided. He has avoided it inrather a marked way, it is true. His monument is dramatic and stirringrather than inwardly moving. It is rhetorical rather than truly poetic;and the admirable quality of its rhetoric, its complete freedom fromvulgar or sentimental alloy--its immense superiority to Anglo-Saxonrhetoric, in fine--does not conceal the truth that it is rhetoric, thatit is prose and not poetry after all. Mercié's "Gloria Victis" is veryfine; I know nothing so fine in modern sculpture outside of France. Butthen there is not very much that is fine at all in modern sculptureoutside of France; and modern French sculpture, and M. Mercié along withit as one of its most eminent ornaments, have made it impossible tospeak of them in a relative way. The antique and the Renaissancesculpture alone furnish their fit association, and like the Renaissanceand the antique sculpture they demand a positive and absolute, and not acomparative criticism. 

V

Well, then, speaking thus absolutely and positively, the cardinal defectof the Institute sculpture--and the refined and distinguished work of M. Mercié better perhaps than almost any other assists us to see this--isits over-carefulness for style. This is indeed the explanation of what Imentioned at the outset as the chief characteristic of this sculpture, the academic inelasticity, namely, with which it essays to reproduce theRenaissance romanticism. But for the fondness for style integral in theFrench mind and character, it would perceive the contradiction betweenthis romanticism and any canons except such as are purely intuitive andindefinable. In comparison with the Renaissance sculptors, the Frenchacademic sculptors of the present day are certainly too exclusivedevotees of Buffon's "order and movement, " and too little occupied withthe thought itself--too little individual. In comparison with theantique, this is less apparent, but I fancy not less real. We are soaccustomed to think of the antique as the pure and simple embodiment ofstyle, as a sublimation, so to speak of the individual into styleitself, that in this respect we are scarcely fair judges of the antique. In any case we know very little of it; we can hardly speak of it exceptby periods. But it is plain that the Greek is so superior to anysubsequent sculpture in this one respect of style that we rarely thinkof its other qualities. Our judgment is inevitably a comparative one, and inevitably a comparative judgment fixes our attention on the Greeksupremacy of style. Indeed, in looking at the antique the thoughtitself is often alien to us, and the order and movement, being morenearly universal perhaps, are all that occupy us. A family tombstonelying in the cemetery at Athens, and half buried in the dust which blowsfrom the Piræus roadway, has more style than M. Mercié's "Quand-Même"group for Belfort, which has been the subject of innumerable encomiums, and which has only style and no individuality whatever to commend it. And the Athenian tombstone was probably furnished to order by themarble-cutting artist of the period, corresponding to those whose signsone sees at the entrances of our own large cemeteries. Still we may besure that the ordinary Athenian citizen who adjudged prizes betweenÆschylus and Sophocles, and to whom Pericles addressed the oration whichonly exceptional culture nowadays thoroughly appreciates, found plentyof individuality in the decoration of the Parthenon, and was perfectlyconscious of the difference between Phidias and his pupils. Even now, ifone takes the pains to think of it, the difference between such works asthe so-called "Genius" of the Vatican and the Athenian marbles, orbetween the Niobe group at Florence and the Venus torso at Naples, forexample, seems markedly individual enough, though the element of styleis still to our eyes the most prominent quality in each. Indeed, if onereally reflects upon the subject, it will not seem exaggeration to saythat to anyone who has studied both with any thoroughness it would bemore difficult to individualize the mass of modern French sculpture thaneven that of the best Greek epoch--the epoch when style was mostperfect, when its reign was, as it sometimes appears to us, mostabsolute. And if we consider the Renaissance sculpture, its complexityis so great, its individuality is so pronounced, that one is apt to losesight of the important part which style really plays in it. In a work byDonatello we see first of all his thought; in a Madonna of Mino's it isthe idea that charms us; the Delia Robbia frieze at Pistoja is pure_genre_. 

But modern academic French sculpture feels the weight of De Musset'shandicap--it is born too late into a world too old. French art ingeneral feels this, I think, and painting suffers from it equally withsculpture. Culture, the Institute, oppress individuality. But whereasCorot and Millet have triumphed over the Institute there are--therewere, at least, till yesterday--hardly any Millets and Corots ofsculpture whose triumph is as yet assured. The tendency, the weight ofauthority, the verdict of criticism, always conservative in France, areall the other way. At the École des Beaux-Arts one learns, negatively, not to be ridiculous. This is a great deal; it is more than can belearned anywhere else nowadays--witness German, Italian, above allEnglish exhibitions. Positively one learns the importance of style; andif it were not for academic French sculpture, one would say that thiswas something the importance of which could not be exaggerated. But inacademic French sculpture it is exaggerated, and, what is fatal, onelearns to exaggerate it in the schools. The traditions of Houdon arenoticeably forgotten. Not that Houdon's art is not eminentlycharacterized by style; the "San Bruno" at Rome is in point of style anantique. But compare his "Voltaire" in the foyer of the ComédieFrançaise with Chapu's "Berryer" of the Palais de Justice, to take oneof the very finest portrait-statues of the present day. Chapu's statueis more than irreproachable, it is elevated and noble, it is in thegrand style; but it is plain that its impressiveness is due to the factthat the subject is conceived as the Orator in general and handled withalmost a single eye to style. The personal interest that accentuatesevery detail of the "Voltaire"--the physiognomy, the pose, the righthand, are marvellously characteristic--simply is not sought for inChapu's work. Of this quality there is more in Houdon's bust of Molière, whom of course Houdon never saw, than in almost any production of themodern school. Chapu's works, and such exceptions as the heads of Baudryand Renan already mentioned, apart, one perceives that the modernschool has made too many statues of the République, too many "Ledas" and"Susannahs" and "Quand-Mêmes" and "Gloria Victis. " And its penchant forRenaissance canons only emphasizes the absolute commonplace of many ofthese. 

On the other hand, if Houdon's felicitous harmony of style andindividual force are forgotten, there is hardly any recognizedsuccession to the imaginative freedom, the _verve_, the triumphantpersonal fertility of Rude and Carpeaux. At least, such as there is hasnot preserved the dignity and in many instances scarcely the decorum ofthose splendid artists. Much of the sculpture which figures at theyearly Salons is, to be sure, the absolute negation of style; its maincharacteristic is indeed eccentricity; its main virtues, sincerity(which in art, of course, is only a very elementary virtue) and goodmodelling (which in sculpture is equally elementary). Occasionally inthe midst of this display of fantasticality there is a work of promiseor even of positive interest. The observer who has not a weak side forthe graceful conceits, invariably daintily presented and beautifullymodelled, of M. Moreau-Vauthier for example, must be hard to please;they are of the very essence of the _article de Paris_, and onlyabnormal primness can refuse to recognize the truth that the _articlede Paris_ has its art side. M. Moreau-Vauthier is not perhaps a modernCellini; he has certainly never produced anything that could be classedwith the "Perseus" of the Loggia de' Lanzi, or even with theFontainebleau "Diana;" but he does more than anyone else to keep alivethe tradition of Florentine preciosity, and about everything he doesthere is something delightful. 

Still the fantastic has not made much headway in the Institute, and itis so foreign to the French genius, which never tolerates it after ithas ceased to be novel, that it probably never will. It is a greattribute to French "catholicity of mind and largeness of temper" thatCarpeaux's "La Danse" remains in its position on the façade of the GrandOpéra. French sentiment regarding it was doubtless accurately expressedby the fanatic who tried to ink it indelibly after it was first exposed. This vandal was right from his point of view--the point of view ofstyle. Almost the one work of absolute spontaneity among the hundredswhich without and within decorate M. Garnier's edifice, it is thus adistinct jar in the general harmony; it distinctly mars the "order andmovement" of M. Garnier's thought, which is fundamentally opposed tospontaneity. But imagine the devotion to style of a _milieu_ in which aperson who would throw ink on a confessedly fine work of art isactuated by an impersonal dislike of incongruity! Dislike of theincongruous is almost a French passion, and, like all qualities, it hasits defect, the defect of tolerating the conventional. It is throughthis tolerance, for example, that one of the freest of French critics ofart, a true Voltairian, Stendhal, was led actually to find Guido's idealof beauty higher than Raphael's, and to miss entirely the grandeur ofTintoretto. Critical opinion in France has not changed radically sinceStendhal's day. 

VI

The French sculptor may draw his inspiration from the sources oforiginality itself, his audience will measure the result by conventions. It is this fact undoubtedly that is largely responsible for theover-carefulness for style already remarked. Hence the work of M. Aimé-Millet and of Professors Guillaume and Cavelier, and the fact thatthey are professors. Hence also the election of M. Falguière to succeedto the chair of the Beaux-Arts left vacant by the death of Jouffroy someyears ago. All of these have done admirable work. Professor Guillaume'sGracchi group at the Luxembourg is alone enough to atone for a mass ofproductions of which the "Castalian Fount" of a recent Salon is thecold and correct representative. Cavalier's "Gluck, " destined for theOpéra, is spirited, even if a trifle galvanic. Millet's "Apollo, " whichcrowns the main gable of the Opéra, stands out among its author's otherworks as a miracle of grace and rhythmic movement. M. Falguière'sadmirers, and they are numerous, will object to the association heremade. Falguière's range has always been a wide one, and everything hehas done has undoubtedly merited a generous portion of the prodigiousencomiums it has invariably obtained. Yet, estimating it in any otherway than by energy, variety, and mass, it is impossible to praise ithighly with precision. It is too plainly the work of an artist who cando one thing as well as another, and of which cleverness is, after all, the spiritual standard. Bartholdi, who also should not be forgotten inany sketch of French sculpture, would, I am sure, have acquitted himselfmore satisfactorily than Falguière did in the colossal groups of theTrocadéro and the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile. To acquit himselfsatisfactorily is Bartholdi's specialty. These two groups are thelargest and most important that a sculptor can have to do. The crowningof the Arc de Triomphe at least was a splendid opportunity. Neither ofthem had any distinction of outline, of mass, of relation, or of idea. Both were conventional to the last degree. That on the Arc had even itsludicrous details, such as occur only from artistic absent-mindedness ina work conceived and executed in a fatigued and hackneyed spirit. The"Saint Vincent de Paul" of the Panthéon, which justly passes for thesculptor's _chef-d'oeuvre_ is in idea a work of large humanity. M. Falguière is behind no one in ability to conceive a subject of this kindwith propriety, and his subject here is inspiring if ever a subject was. The "Petit Martyr" of the Luxembourg has a real charm, but it too iscontent with too little, as one finds out in seeing it often; and it isin no sense a large work, scarcely larger than the tiresomely popular"Running Boy" of the same museum, which nevertheless in its day markedan epoch in modelling. Indeed, so slight is the spiritual hold that M. Falguière has on one, that it really seems as if he were at his best insuch a frankly carnal production as his since variously modified "NymphHunting" of the Triennial Exposition of 1883. The idea is nothing ornext to nothing, but the surface _faire_ is superb. 

M. Barrias, M. Delaplanche, and M. Le Feuvre have each of them quite asmuch spontaneity as M. Falguière, though the work of neither is asimportant in mass and variety. M. Delaplanche is always satisfactory, and beyond this there is something large about what he does that confersdignity even in the absence of quick interest. His proportions aresimple, his outline flowing, and the agreeable ease of his compositionsmakes up to a degree for any lack of sympathetic sentiment or impressivesignificance: witness his excellent "Maternal Instruction, " of thelittle park in front of Sainte Clothilde. M. Le Feuvre's qualities arevery nearly the reverse of these: he has a fondness for integrity quitehostile in his case to simplicity. In his very frank appeal to one'ssusceptibility he is a little careless of sculptural considerations, which he is prone to sacrifice to pictorial ends. The result is amannerism that in the end ceases to impress, and even becomesdisagreeable. As nearly as may be in a French sculptor it borders onsentimentality, and finally the swaying attitudes of his figures becomelimp, and the startled-fawn eyes of his maidens and youths appear lesstouching than lackadaisical. But his being himself too conscious of itshould not obscure the fact that he has a way of his own. M. Barrias isan artist of considerably greater powers than either M. Le Feuvre or M. Delaplanche; but one has a vague perception that his powers are limited, and that to desire in his case what one so sincerely wishes in the caseof M. Dubois, namely, that he would "let himself go, " would be unwise. Happily, when he is at his best there is no temptation to form such awish. The "Premières Funérailles" is a superb work--"the chef-d'oeuvreof our modern sculpture, " a French critic enthusiastically terms it. Itis hardly that; it has hardly enough spiritual distinction--not quiteenough of either elegance or elevation--to merit such sweeping praise. But it may be justly termed, I think, the most completely representativeof the masterpieces of that sculpture. Its triumph over the prodigiousdifficulties of elaborate composition "in the round"--difficulties towhich M. Barrias succumbed in the "Spartacus" of the TuileriesGardens--and its success in subordinating the details of a group to theend of enforcing a single motive, preserving the while their individualinterest, are complete. Nothing superior in this respect has been donesince John of Bologna's "Rape of the Sabines. "

VII

M. Emmanuel Frémiet occupies a place by himself. There have been but twomodern sculptors who have shown an equally pronounced genius forrepresenting animals--namely, Barye, of course, and Barye's clever butnot great pupil, Cain. The tigress in the Central Park, perhaps the bestbronze there (the competition is not exacting), and the best also of theseveral variations of the theme of which, at one time, the sculptorapparently could not tire, familiarizes Americans with the talent ofCain. In this association Rouillard, whose horse in the TrocadéroGardens is an animated and elegant work, ought to be mentioned, but itis hardly as good as the neighboring elephant of Frémiet as mere animalrepresentation (the _genre_ exists and has excellences and defects ofits own), while in more purely artistic worth it is quite eclipsed byits rival. Still if _fauna_ is interesting in and of itself, which noone who knows Barye's work would controvert, it is still moreinteresting when, to put it brutally, something is done with it. In hisambitious and colossal work at the Trocadéro, M. Frémiet does in factuse his _fauna_ freely as artistic material, though at first sight it isits zoölogical interest that appears paramount. The same is true of theelephant near by, in which it seems as if he had designedly attacked thedifficult problem of rendering embodied awkwardness decorative. Stillmore conspicuous, of course, is the artistic interest, the fancy, thehumor, the sportive grace of his Luxembourg group of a young satyrfeeding honey to a brace of bear's cubs, because he here concernshimself more directly with his idea and gives his genius freer play. Andeveryone will remember the sensation caused by his impressivelyrepulsive "Gorilla Carrying off a Woman. " But it is when he leaves thiskind of thing entirely, and, wholly forgetful of his studies at theJardin des Plantes, devotes himself to purely monumental work, that heis at his best. And in saying this I do not at all mean to insist on thesuperiority of monumental sculpture to the sculpture of _fauna_; it issuperior, and Barye himself cannot make one content with the exclusiveconsecration of admirable talent to picturesque anatomy illustratingdistinctly unintellectual passions. M. Frémiet, in ecstasy over hispicturesque anatomy at the Jardin des Plantes, would scout this; but itis nevertheless true that in such works as the "Âge de la pierre, "which, if it may be called a monumental clock-top, is neverthelesscertainly monumental; his "Louis d'Orléans, " in the quadrangle of therestored Château de Pierrefonds; his "Jeanne d'Arc" (the later statue isnot, I think, essentially different from the earlier one); and his"Torch-bearer" of the Middle Ages, in the new Hôtel de Ville of Paris, not only is his subject a subject of loftier and more enduring interestthan his elephants and deer and bears, but his own genius finds a morecongenial medium of expression. In other words, any one who has seen his"Torch-bearer" or his "Louis d'Orléans" must conclude that M. Frémiet islosing his time at the Jardin des Plantes. In monumental works of thesort he displays a commanding dignity that borders closely upon thegrand style itself. The "Jeanne d'Arc" is indeed criticised for lack ofstyle. The horse is fine, as always with M. Frémiet; the action of bothhorse and rider is noble, and the homogeneity of the two, so to speak, is admirably achieved. But the character of the Maid is not perfectlysatisfactory to _à priori_ critics, to critics who have more or lesshard and fast notions about the immiscibility of the heroic and thefamiliar. The "Jeanne d'Arc" is of course a heroic statue, illustratingone of the most puissant of profane legends; and it is unquestionablyfamiliar and, if one chooses, defiantly unpretentious. Perhaps the Maidas M. Frémiet represents her could never have accomplishedlegend-producing deeds. Certainly she is the Maid neither of Chapu, norof Bastien-Lepage, nor of the current convention. She is, rather, pretty, sympathetically childlike, _mignonne_; but M. Frémiet'sconception is an original and a gracious one, and even the criticaddicted to formulæ has only to forget its title to become thoroughly inlove with it; beside this merit _à priori_ shortcomings count verylittle. But the other two works just mentioned are open to no objectionof this kind or of any other, and in the category to which they belongthey are splendid works. Since Donatello and Verrocchio nothing of thekind has been done which surpasses them; and it is only M. Frémiet'spenchant for animal sculpture, and his fondness for exercising hislighter fancy in comparatively trivial _objets de vertu_, that obscurein any degree his fine talent for illustrating the grand style withnatural ease and large simplicity. 

VIII

I have already mentioned the most representative among those who have"arrived" of the school of academic French sculpture as it existsto-day, though it would be easy to extend the list with Antonin Carlès, whose "Jeunesse" of the World's Fair of 1889 is a very gracefulembodiment of adolescence; Suchetet, whose "Byblis" of the sameexhibition caused his early death to be deplored; Adrien Gaudez, Etcheto, Idrac, and, of course, many others of distinction. There is nolooseness in characterizing this as a "school;" it has its own qualitiesand its corresponding defects. It stands by itself--apart from the Greeksculpture and from its inspiration, the Renaissance, and from the morerecent traditions of Houdon, or of Rude and Carpeaux. It is a thoroughlylegitimate and unaffected expression of national thought and feeling atthe present time, at once splendid and simple. The moment of triumph inany intellectual movement is, however, always a dangerous one. Aslack-water period of intellectual slothfulness nearly always ensues. Ideas which have previously been struggling to get a hearing havebecome accepted ideas that have almost the force of axioms; no onethinks of their justification, of their basis in real truth and fact;they take their place in the great category of conventions. The mindfeels no longer the exhilaration of discovery, the stimulus of freshperception; the sense becomes jaded, enthusiasm impossible. Dealing withthe same material and guided by the same principles, its productionbecomes inevitably hackneyed, artificial, lifeless; the _Zeit-Geist_, the Time-Spirit, is really a kind of Sisyphus, and the essence of lifeis movement. This law of perpetual renewal, of the periodical quickeningof the human spirit, explains the barrenness of the inheritance of thegreatest men; shows why originality is a necessary element ofperfection; why Phidias, Praxiteles, Donatello, Michael Angelo (not togo outside of our subject), had no successors. Once a thing is done itis done for all time, and the study of perfection itself avails only asa stimulus to perfection in other combinations. In fact, the more nearlyperfect the model the greater the necessity for an absolute break withit in order to secure anything like an equivalent in living force; in_its_ direction at least everything vital has been done. So its lack oforiginal force, its over-carefulness for style, its inevitablesensitiveness to the criticism that is based on convention, make theweak side of the French academic sculpture of the present day, fine andtriumphant as it is. That the national thought and feeling are not alittle conventional, and have the academic rather than a spontaneousinspiration, has, however, lately been distinctly felt as a misfortuneand a limitation by a few sculptors whose work may be called thebeginning of a new movement out of which, whatever may be its ownlimitations, nothing but good can come to French sculpture and of whichthe protagonists are Auguste Rodin and Jules Dalou. 

VI

THE NEW MOVEMENT IN SCULPTURE

I

Side by side with the academic current in French art has moved of recentyears a naturalist and romantic impulse whose manifestations have beenalways vigorous though occasionally exaggerated. In any of the greatdepartments of activity nationally pursued--as art has been pursued inFrance since Francis I. --there are always these rival currents, of whichnow one and now the other constantly affects the ebb and flow of thetide of thought and feeling. The classic and romantic duel of 1830, therise of the naturalist opposition to Hugo and romanticism in our ownday, are familiar instances of this phenomenon in literature. The revoltof Géricault and Delacroix against David and Ingres are equally wellknown in the field of painting. Of recent years the foundation of theperiodical _L'Art_ and its rivalry with the conservative _Gazette desBeaux Arts_ mark with the same definiteness, and an articulateprecision, the same conflict between truth, as new eyes see it, andtradition. Never, perhaps, since the early Renaissance, however, hasnature asserted her supremacy over convention in such unmistakable, suchinsistent, and, one may say, I think, such intolerant fashion as she isdoing at the present moment. Sculpture, in virtue of the defiantpalpability of its material, is the most impalpable of the plastic arts, and therefore it feels less quickly than the rest, perhaps, the impressof the influences of the epoch and their classifying canons. Naturalimitation shows first in sculpture, and subsists in it longest. Butconvention once its conqueror, the return to nature is here most tardy, because, owing to the impalpable, the elusive quality of sculpture, though natural standards may everywhere else be in vogue, no one thinksof applying them to so specialized an expression. Its variation dependstherefore more completely on the individual artist himself. NiccolòPisano, for example, died when Giotto was two years old, but, at theother end of the historic line of modern art, it has taken years sinceDelacroix to furnish recognition for Auguste Rodin. The stronghold ofthe Institute had been mined many times by revolutionary painters beforeDalou took the grand medal of the Salon. 

Owing to the relative and in fact polemic position which these twoartists occupy, the movement which they represent, and of which as yetthey themselves form a chief part, a little obscures their respectivepersonalities, which are nevertheless, in sculpture, by far the mostpositive and puissant of the present epoch. M. Rodin's work, especially, is so novel that one's first impression in its presence is of itsimplied criticism of the Institute. One thinks first of its attitude, its point of view, its end, aim, and means, and of the utter contrast ofthese with those of the accepted contemporary masters in his art--ofDubois and Chapu, Mercié and Saint-Marceaux. One judges generally, andinstinctively avoids personal and direct impressions. The first thoughtis not, Are the "Saint Jean" and the "Bourgeois de Calais" successfulworks of art? But, _Can_ they be successful if the accepted masterpiecesof modern sculpture are not to be set down as insipid? One is a littlebewildered. It is easy to see and to estimate the admirable traits andthe shortcomings of M. Dubois's delightful and impressive reminiscencesof the Renaissance, of M. Mercié's refined and graceful compositions. They are of their time and place. They embody, in distinguished mannerand in an accentuated degree, the general inspiration. Their spiritualcharacteristics are traditional and universal, and technically, withoutperhaps often passing beyond it, they exhaust cleverness. You may enjoyor resent their classic and exemplary excellences, as you feel yourtaste to have suffered from the lack or the superabundance of academicinfluences; I cannot fancy an American insensitive to their charm. Butit is plain that their perfection is a very different thing from thecharacteristics of a strenuous artistic personality seeking expression. If these latter when encountered are seen to be evidently of anextremely high order, contemporary criticism, at all events, should feelat once the wisdom of beginning with the endeavor to appreciate, insteadof making the degree of its own familiarity with them the test of theirmerit. 

French æsthetic authority, which did this in the instances of Barye, ofDelacroix, of Millet, of Manet, of Puvis de Chavannes, did it also formany years in the instance of M. Rodin. It owes its defeat in thecontest with him--for like the recalcitrants in the other contests, M. Rodin has definitively triumphed--to the unwise attempt to define him interms heretofore applicable enough to sculptors, but wholly inapplicableto him. It failed to see that the thing to define in his work was theman himself, his temperament, his genius. Taken by themselves andconsidered as characteristics of the Institute sculptors, the obvioustraits of this work might, that is to say, be adjudged eccentric andempty. Fancy Professor Guillaume suddenly subordinating academicdisposition of line and mass to true structural expression! One wouldsimply feel the loss of his accustomed style and harmony. With M. Rodin, who deals with nature directly, through the immediate force of his ownpowerful temperament, to feel the absence of the Institute training andtraditions is absurd. The question in his case is simply whether or nohe is a great artistic personality, an extraordinary and powerfultemperament, or whether he is merely a turbulent and capriciousprotestant against the measure and taste of the Institute. But this isreally no longer a question, however it may have been a few years ago;and when his Dante portal for the new Palais des Arts Décoratifs shallhave been finished, and the public had an opportunity to see what thesculptor's friend and only serious rival, M. Dalou, calls "one of themost, if not the most original and astonishing pieces of sculpture ofthe nineteenth century, " it will be recognized that M. Rodin, so farfrom being amenable to the current canon, has brought the canon itselfto judgment. 

How and why, people will perceive in proportion to their receptivity. Candor and intelligence will suffice to appreciate that the secret of M. Rodin's art is structural expression, and that it is this and not anysuperficial eccentricity of execution that definitely distinguishes himfrom the Institute. Just as his imagination, his temperament, hisspiritual energy and ardor individualize the positive originality of hismotive, so the expressiveness of his treatment sets him aside from allas well as from each of the Institute sculptors in what may be broadlycalled technical attitude. No sculptor has ever carried expressionfurther. The sculpture of the present day has certainly not occupieditself much with it. The Institute is perhaps a little afraid of it. Itabhors the _baroque_ rightly enough, but very likely it fails to seethat the expression of such sculpture as M. Rodin's no more resemblesthe contortions of the Dresden Museum giants than it does the composureof M. Delaplanche. The _baroque_ is only violent instead of placidcommonplace, and is as conventional as any professor of sculpture coulddesire. Expression means individual character completely exhibitedrather than conventionally suggested. It is certainly not too much tosay that in the sculpture of the present day the sense of individualcharacter is conveyed mainly by convention. The physiognomy has usurpedthe place of the physique, the gesture of the form, the pose of thesubstance. And face, gesture, form are, when they are not brutallynaturalistic and so not art at all, not individual and native, buttypical and classic. Very much of the best modern sculpture might reallyhave been treated like those antique figurines of which the bodies weremade by wholesale, being supplied with individual heads when the timecame for using them. 

This has been measurably true since the disappearance of the classicdress and the concealment of the body by modern costume. The nudes ofthe early Renaissance, in painting still more than in sculpture, aredifferentiated by the faces. The rest of the figure is generallyconventionalized as thoroughly as the face itself is in Byzantine andthe hands in Giottesque painting. Giotto could draw admirably, it neednot be said. He did draw as well as the contemporary feeling for thehuman figure demanded. When the Renaissance reached its climax and thestudy of the antique led artists to look beneath drapery and interestthemselves in the form, expression made an immense step forward. Colorwas indeed almost lost sight of in the new interest, not to reappeartill the Venetians. But owing to the lack of visible nudity, to the lackof the classic gymnasia, to the concealments of modern attire, theknowledge of and interest in the form remained, within certain limits, an esoteric affair. The general feeling, even where, as in the Italy ofthe _quattro_ and _cinque centi_, everyone was a connoisseur, did nothold the artist to expression in his anatomy as the general Greekfeeling did. Everyone was a connoisseur of art alone, not of nature aswell. Consequently, in spite of such an enthusiastic genius asDonatello, who probably more than any other modern has most nearlyapproached the Greeks--not in spiritual attitude, for he was eminentlyof his time, but in his attitude toward nature--the human form in arthas for the most part remained, not conventionalized as in the Byzantineand Gothic times, but thoroughly conventional. Michael Angelo himselfcertainly may be charged with lending the immense weight of his majesticgenius to perpetuate the conventional. It is not his distortion ofnature, as pre-Raphaelite limitedness glibly asserts, but hiscarelessness of her prodigious potentialities, that marks one side ofhis colossal accomplishment. Just as the lover of architecture asarchitecture will protest that Michael Angelo's was meretricious, however inspiring, so M. Rodin declares his sculpture unsatisfactory, however poetically impressive. "He used to do a little anatomyevenings, " he said to me, "and used his chisel next day without a model. He repeats endlessly his one type--the youth of the Sistine ceiling. Anyparticular felicity of expression you are apt to find him borrowing fromDonatello--such as, for instance, the movement of the arm of the'David, ' which is borrowed from Donatello's 'St. John Baptist. '" Mostpeople to whom Michael Angelo's creations appear celestial in theirmajesty at once and in their winningness would deny this. But it isworth citing both because M. Rodin strikes so many crude apprehensionsas a French Michael Angelo, whereas he is so radically removed from himin point of view and in practice that the unquestionable spiritualanalogy between them is rather like that between kindred spirits workingin different arts, and because, also, it shows not only what M. Rodin isnot, but what he is. The grandiose does not run away with him. Hisimagination is occupied largely in following out nature's suggestions. His sentiment does not so drench and saturate his work as to float itbodily out of the realm of natural into that of supernal beauty, thereto crystallize in decorative and puissant visions appearing out of thevoid and only superficially related to their corresponding naturalforms. Standing before the Medicean tombs the modern susceptibilityreceives perhaps the most poignant, one may almost say the mostintolerable, impression to be obtained from any plastic work by the handof man; but it is a totally different impression from that left by thesculptures of the Parthenon pediments, not only because the sentiment iswholly different, but because in the great Florentine's work it is sooverwhelming as wholly to dominate purely natural expression, naturalcharacter, natural beauty. In the Medici Chapel the soul is exalted; inthe British Museum the mind is enraptured. The object itself seems todisappear in the one case, and to reveal itself in the other. 

I do not mean to compare M. Rodin with the Greeks--from whom insentiment and imagination he is, of course, as totally removed as whatis intensely modern must be from the antique--any more than I mean tocontrast him with Michael Angelo, except for the purposes of clearerunderstanding of his general æsthetic attitude. Association of anythingcontemporary with what is classic, and especially with what is greatestin the classic, is always a perilous proceeding. Very little time is aptto play havoc with such classification. I mean only to indicate that theresemblance to Michael Angelo, found by so many persons in such works asthe Dante doors, is only of the loosest kind--as one might, throughtheir common lusciousness, compare peaches with pomegranates--and thatto the discerning eye, or the eye at all experienced in observingsculpture, M. Rodin's sculpture is far more closely related to that ofDonatello and the Greeks. It, too, reveals rather than constructsbeauty, and by the expression of character rather than by the suggestionof sentiment. 

An illustration of M. Rodin's affinity with the antique is an incidentwhich he related to me of his work upon his superb "Âge d'Airain. " Hewas in Naples; he saw nature in freer inadvertence than she allowselsewhere; he had the best of models. Under these favoring circumstanceshe spent three months on a leg of his statue; "which is equivalent tosaying that I had at last absolutely mastered it, " said he. One day inthe Museo Nazionale he noticed in an antique the result of all his studyand research. Nature, in other words, is M. Rodin's _material_ in thesame special sense in which it was the antique material, and in which, since Michael Angelo and the high Renaissance, it has been for the mostpart only the sculptor's _means_. It need not be said that thepersonality of the artist may be as strenuous in the one case as in theother; unless, indeed, we maintain, as perhaps we may, thatindividuality is more apt to atrophy in the latter instance; for as onegets farther and farther away from nature he is in more danger fromconventionality than from caprice. And this is in fact what has happenedsince the high Renaissance, the long line of conventionalities beingcontinued, sometimes punctuated here and there as by Clodion or Houdon, David, Rude, or Barye, sometimes rising into great dignity andrefinement of style and intelligence, as in the contemporary sculptureof the Institute, but in general almost purely decorative orsentimental, and, so far as natural expression is concerned, confiningitself to psychological rather than physical character. 

What is it, for instance, that distinguishes a group like M. Dubois's"Charity" from the _genre_ sentiment or incident of some German orItalian "professor?" Qualities of style, of refined taste, of elegance, of true intelligence. Its artistic interest is purely decorative andsentimental. Really what its average admirer sees in it is the samemoral appeal that delights the simple admirers of German or Italiantreatment of a similar theme. It is simply infinitely higher bred. Itscharacter is developed no further. Its significance as form is notinsisted on. The parts are not impressively differentiated, and theirmysterious mutual relations and correspondences are not dwelt on. Thephysical character, with its beauties, its salient traits of every kind, appealing so strongly to the sculptor to whom nature appears plastic aswell as suggestive, is wholly neglected in favor of the psychologicalsuggestion. And the individual character, the _cachet_ of the whole, theartistic essence and _ensemble_, that is to say, M. Dubois has, afterthe manner of most modern sculpture, conveyed in a language ofconvention, which since the time of the Siennese fountain, at allevents, has been classical. 

The literary artist does not proceed in this way. He does not contenthimself with telling us, for example, that one of his characters is agood man or a bad man, an able, a selfish, a tall, a blonde, or a stupidman, as the case may be. He takes every means to express his character, and to do it, according to M. Taine's definition of a work of art, morecompletely than it appears in nature. He recognizes its complexity andenforces the sense of reality by a thousand expedients of what one mayalmost call contrasting masses, derivative movements, and balancingplanes. He distinguishes every possible detail that plays any structuralpart, and, in short, instead of giving us the mere symbol of theSunday-school books, shows us a concrete organism at once characteristicand complex. Judged with this strictness, which in literary art iselementary, how much of the best modern sculpture is abstract, symbolic, purely typical. What insipid fragments most of the really eminentInstitute statues would make were their heads knocked off by some bandof modern barbarian invaders. In the event of such an irruption, wouldthere be any torsos left from which future Poussins could learn all theyshould know of the human form? Would there be any _disjecta membra_ fromwhich skilled anatomists could reconstruct the lost _ensemble_, or atany rate make a shrewd guess at it? Would anything survive mutilationwith the serene confidence in its fragmentary but everywhere penetratinginterest which seems to pervade the most fractured fraction of a Greekrelief on the Athenian acropolis? Yes, there would be the débris ofAuguste Rodin's sculpture. 

In our day the human figure has never been so well understood. Back ofsuch expressive modelling as we note in the "Saint Jean, " in the "Adam"and "Eve, " in the "Calaisiens, " in a dozen figures of the Dante doors, is a knowledge of anatomy such as even in the purely scientificprofession of surgery can proceed only from an immense fondness fornature, an insatiable curiosity as to her secrets, an inexhaustibledelight in her manifestations. From the point of view of such knowledgeand such handling of it, it is no wonder that the representations ofnature which issue from the Institute seem superficial. One canunderstand that from this point of view very delightful sculpture, veryrefined, very graceful, very perfectly understood within its limits, mayappear like _baudruche_--inflated gold-beater's skin, that is to say, ofwhich toy animals are made in France, and which has thus passed intostudio _argot_ as the figure for whatever lacks structure and substance. Ask M. Rodin the explanation of a movement, an attitude, in one of hisworks which strikes your convention-steeped sense as strange, and hewill account for it just as an anatomical demonstrator would--pointingout its necessary derivation from some disposition of another part ofthe figure, and not at all dwelling on its grace or its other purelydecorative felicity. Its artistic function in his eyes is to aid inexpressing fully and completely the whole of which it forms a part, notto constitute a harmonious detail merely agreeable to the easilysatisfied eye. But then the whole will look anatomical rather thanartistic. There is the point exactly. Will it? I remember speculatingabout this in conversation with M. Rodin himself. "Isn't there danger, "I said, "of getting too fond of nature, of dissecting with so muchenthusiasm that the pleasure of discovery may obscure one's feeling forpure beauty, of losing the artistic in the purely scientific interest, of becoming pedantic, of imitating rather than constructing, of missingart in avoiding the artificial?" I had some difficulty in making myselfunderstood; this perpetual see-saw of nature and art which enshroudsæsthetic dialectics as in a Scotch mist seems curiously factitious tothe truly imaginative mind. But I shall always remember his reply, whenhe finally made me out, as one of the finest severings conceivable of aGordian knot of this kind. "Oh, yes, " said he; "there is, no doubt, sucha danger for a mediocre artist. "

M. Rodin is, whatever one may think of him, certainly not a mediocreartist. The instinct of self-preservation may incline the Institute toassert that he obtrudes his anatomy. But prejudice itself can blind noone of intelligence to his immense imaginative power, to his poetic"possession. " His work precisely illustrates what I take to have been, at the best epochs, the relations of nature to such art as is looselyto be called imitative art--what assuredly were those relations in themind of the Greek artist. Nature supplies the parts and suggests theircardinal relations. Insufficient study of her leaves these superficialand insipid. Inartistic absorption in her leaves them lifeless. Theimagination which has itself conceived the whole, the idea, fuses themin its own heat into a new creation which is "imitative" only in thesense that its elements are not inventions. The art of sculpture hasretraced its steps far enough to make pure invention, as of Gothicgriffins and Romanesque symbology, unsatisfactory to everyone. But, savein M. Rodin's sculpture, it has not fully renewed the old alliance withnature on the old terms--Donatello's terms; the terms which exact themost tribute from nature, which insist on her according her completestsignificance, her closest secrets, her faculty of expressing characteras well as of suggesting sentiment. Very beautiful works are producedwithout her aid to this extent. We may be sure of this without asking M. Rodin to admit it. He would not do his own work so well were he preparedto; as Millet pointed out when asked to write a criticism of some otherpainter's canvas, in estimating the production of his fellows an artistis inevitably handicapped by the feeling that he would have done it verydifferently himself. It is easy not to share M. Rodin's gloomyvaticinations as to French sculpture based on the continued triumph ofthe Institute style and suavity. The Institute sculpture is too good foranyone not himself engaged in the struggle to avoid being impressedchiefly by its qualities to the neglect of its defects. At the same timeit is clear that no art can long survive in undiminished vigor that doesnot from time to time renew its vitality by resteeping itself in theinfluences of nature. And so M. Rodin's service to French sculpturebecomes, at the present moment, especially signal and salutary becauseFrench sculpture, however refined and delightful, shows, just now, veryplainly the tendency toward the conventional which has always proved sodangerous, and because M. Rodin's work is a conspicuous, a shiningexample of the return to nature on the part not of a mere realist, naturalist, or other variety of "mediocre artist, " but of a profoundlypoetic and imaginative temperament. 

This is why, one immediately perceives in studying his works, Rodin'streatment, while exhausting every contributary detail to the end ofcomplete expression, is never permitted to fritter away its energyeither in the mystifications of optical illusion, or in the infantineidealization of what is essentially subordinate and ancillary. This iswhy he devotes three months to the study of a leg, for example--not tocopy, but to "possess" it. Indeed, no sculptor of our time has made sucha sincere and, in general, successful, effort to sink the sense of thematerial in the conception, the actual object in the artistic idea. Oneloses all sense of bronze or marble, as the case may be, not onlybecause the artistic significance is so overmastering that one isexclusively occupied in apprehending it, but because there are none ofthose superficial graces, those felicities of surface modelling, which, however they may delight, infallibly distract as well. Such excellenceshave assuredly their place. When the motive is conventional or otherwiseinsipid, or even when its character is distinctly light without beingtrivial, they are legitimately enough agreeable. And because, in ourday, sculptural motives have generally been of this order we have becomeaccustomed to look for such excellences, and, very justly, to miss themwhen they are absent. Grace of pose, suavity of outline, pleasingdisposition of mass, smooth, round deltoids and osseous articulations, and perpetually changing planes of flesh and free play of muscularmovement, are excellences which, in the best of academic Frenchsculpture, are sensuously delightful in a high degree. But theyinvariably rivet our attention on the successful way in which thesculptor has used his bronze or marble to decorative ends, and when theyare accentuated so as to dominate the idea they invariably enfeeble itsexpression. With M. Rodin one does not think of his material at all; onedoes not reflect whether he used it well or ill, caused it to loseweight and immobility to the eye or not, because all his superficialmodelling appears as an inevitable deduction from the way in which hehas conceived his larger subject, and not as "handling" at all. Inreality, of course, it is the acme of sensitive handling. The point is anice one. His practice is a dangerous one. It would be fatal to a lessstrenuous temperament. To leave, in a manner and so far as obviousinsistence on it goes, "handling" to take care of itself, is to incurthe peril of careless, clumsy, and even brutal, modelling, which, so farfrom dissembling its existence behind the prominence of the idea, reallyemphasizes itself unduly because of its imperfect and undevelopedcharacter. Detail that is neglected really acquires a greater prominencethan detail that is carried too far, because it is sensuouslydisagreeable. But when an artist like M. Rodin conceives his spiritualsubject so largely and with so much intensity that mere sensuousagreeableness seems too insignificant to him even to be treated withcontempt, he treats his detail solely with reference to its centripetaland organic value, which immediately becomes immensely enhanced, and thedetail itself, dropping thus into its proper place, takes on a beautywholly transcending the ordinary agreeable aspect of sculptural detail. And the _ensemble_, of course, is in this way enforced as it can be inno other, and we get an idea of Victor Hugo or St. John Baptist sopowerfully and yet so subtly suggested, that the abstraction seemsactually all that we see in looking at the concrete bust or statue. Objections to M. Rodin's "handling" as eccentric or capricious, appearto the sympathetic beholder of one of his majestic works the very acmeof misappreciation, and their real excuse--which is, as I have said, thefact that such "handling" is as unfamiliar as the motives itaccompanies--singularly poor and feeble. 

As for the common nature of these motives, the character of thepersonality which appears in their varied presentments, it is almostidle to speak in the absence of the work itself, so eloquent is this atonce and so untranslatable. But it may be said approximately that M. Rodin's temperament is in the first place deeply romantic. Everythingthe Institute likes repels him. He has the poetic conception of art andits mission, and in poetry any authoritative and codifying consensusseems to him paradoxical. Style, in his view, unless it is somethingwholly uncharacterizable, is a vague and impalpable spirit breathingthrough the work of some strongly marked individuality, or else it isformalism. He delights in the fantasticality of the Gothic. The westfaçade of Rouen inspires him more than all the formulæ of Palladianproportions. He detests systematization. He reads Shakespeare, Schiller, Dante almost exclusively. He sees visions and dreams dreams. The awfulin the natural forces, moral and material, seems his element. Hebelieves in freedom, in the absolute emancipation of every faculty. Asfor study, study nature. If then you fail in restraint and measure youare a "mediocre artist, " whom no artificial system devised to securemeasure and restraint could have rescued from essential insignificance. No poet or landscape painter ever delighted more in the infinitelyvaried suggestiveness and exuberance of nature, or ever felt theformality of much that passes for art as more chill and drear. Hence inall his works we have the sense, first of all, of an overmasteringsincerity; then of a prodigious wealth of fancy; then of a marvellousacquaintance with his material. His imagination has all the vivacity andtumultuousness of Rubens's, but its images, if not better understood, which would perhaps be impossible, are more compact and their evolutionmore orderly. And they are furthermore one and all vivified by a whollyremarkable feeling for beauty. In spite of all his knowledge of theexternal world, no artist of our time is more completely mastered bysentiment. In the very circumstance of being free from such conventionsas the cameo relief, the picturesque costume details, the goldsmith'swork characteristic of the Renaissance, now so much in vogue, M. Rodin'sthings acquire a certain largeness and loftiness as well as simplicityand sincerity of sentiment. The same model posed for the "Saint Jean"that posed for a dozen things turned out of the academic studios, butcompared with the result in the latter cases, that in the former is evenmore remarkable for sentiment than for its structural sapience andgeneral physical interest. How perfectly insignificant beside its moralimpressiveness are the graceful works whose sentiment does not resultfrom the expression of the form, but is conveyed in some convention ofpose, of gesture, of physiognomy! It is like the contrast between agreat and a graceful actor. The one interests you by his intelligentmastery of convention, by the tact and taste with which he employs invoice, carriage, facial expression, gesture, diction, the severalconventions according to which ideas and emotions are habituallyconveyed to your comprehension. Salvini, Coquelin, Got, pass immediatelyoutside the realm of conventions. Their language, their medium ofcommunication, is as new as what it expresses. They are inventive aswell as intelligent. Their effect is prodigiously heightened because inthis way, the warp as well as the woof of their art being expressive andoriginal, the artistic result is greatly fortified. Given the samemodel, M. Rodin's result is in like manner expressly and originallyenforced far beyond the result toward which the academic French schoolemploys the labels of the Renaissance as conventionally as itspredecessor at the beginning of the century employed those of theantique. "Formerly we used to do Greek, " says M. Rodin, with no smalljustice; "now we do Italian. That is all the difference there is. " And Icannot better conclude this imperfect notice of the work of a greatmaster, in characterizing which such epithets as majestic, Miltonic, grandiose suggest themselves first of all, than by calling attention tothe range which it covers, and to the fact that, even into the domainwhich one would have called consecrate to the imitators of the antiqueand the Renaissance, M. Rodin's informing sentiment and sense of beautypenetrate with their habitual distinction; and that the little child'shead entitled "Alsace, " that considerable portion of his workrepresented by "The Wave and the Shore, " for example, and a small idealfemale figure, which the manufacturer might covet for reproduction, butwhich, as Bastien-Lepage said to me, is "a definition of the essence ofart, " are really as noble as his more majestic works are beautiful. 

II

Aubé is another sculptor of acknowledged eminence who ranges himselfwith M. Rodin in his opposition to the Institute. His figures of"Bailly" and "Dante" are very fine, full of a most impressive dignity inthe _ensemble_, and marked by the most vigorous kind of modelling. Onemay easily like his "Gambetta" less. But for years Rodin's only eminentfellow sculptor was Dalou. Perhaps his protestantism has been lesspronounced than M. Rodin's. It was certainly long more successful inwinning both the connoisseur and the public. The state itself, which isnow and then even more conservative than the Institute, has charged himwith important works, and the Salon has given him its highest medal. Andhe was thus recognized long before M. Rodin's works had risen out of theturmoil of critical contention to their present envied if not cordiallyapproved eminence. But for being less energetic, less absorbed, lessintense than M. Rodin's, M. Dalou's enthusiasm for nature involves ascarcely less uncompromising dislike of convention. He had no success atthe École des Beaux Arts. Unlike Rodin, he entered those precincts andworked long within them, but never sympathetically or felicitously. Therigor of academic precept was from the first excessively distasteful tohis essentially and eminently romantic nature. He chafed incessantly. The training doubtless stood him in good stead when he found himselfdriven by hard necessity into commercial sculpture, into that class ofwork which is on a very high plane for its kind in Paris, but for whichthe manufacturer rather than the designer receives the credit. But heprobably felt no gratitude to it for this, persuaded that but for itsdespotic prevalence there would have been a clearer field for hisspontaneous and agreeable effort to win distinction in. He greatlypreferred at this time the artistic anarchy of England, whither hebetook himself after the Commune--not altogether upon compulsion, but byprudence perhaps; for like Rodin, his birth, his training, hisdisposition, his ideas, have always been as liberal and popular inpolitics as in art, and in France a man of any sincerity and dignity ofcharacter has profound political convictions, even though his professionbe purely æsthetic. In England he was very successful both at theAcademy and with the amateurs of the aristocracy, of many of whom hemade portraits, besides finding ready purchasers among them for hisimaginative works. The list of these latter begins, if we except somedelightful decoration for one of the Champs-Élysées palaces, with astatue called "La Brodeuse, " which won for him a medal at the Salon of1870. Since then his production has been prodigious in view of itsoriginality, of its lack of the powerful momentum extraneously suppliedto the productive force that follows convention and keeps in the beatentrack. 

His numerous peasant subjects at one time led to comparison of him withMillet, but the likeness is of the most superficial kind. There is nospiritual kinship whatever between him and Millet. Dalou models theMarquis de Dreux-Brézé with as much zest as he does his "Boulonnaiseallaitant son enfant;" his touch is as sympathetic in his Rubens-like"Silenus" as in his naturalistic "Berceuse. " Furthermore, there isabsolutely no note of melancholy in his realism--which, at the presenttime, is a point well worth noting. His vivacity excludes the pathetic. Traces of Carpeaux's influence are plain in his way of conceiving suchsubjects as Carpeaux would have handled. No one could have come soclosely into contact with that vigorous individuality without in somedegree undergoing its impress, without learning to look for the alertand elegant aspects of his model, whatever it might be. But withCarpeaux's distinction Dalou has more poise. He is considerably fartheraway from the rococo. His ideal is equally to be summarized in the wordLife, but he cares more for its essence, so to speak, than for itsphenomena, or at all events manages to make it felt rather than seen. One perceives that humanity interests him on the moral side, that he isinterested in its significance as well as its form. Accordingly with himthe movement illustrates the form, which is in its turn trulyexpressive, whereas occasionally, so bitter was his disgust with thepedantry of the schools, with Carpeaux the form is used to exhibitmovement. Then, too, M. Dalou has a certain nobility which Carpeaux'svivacity is a shade too animated to reach. Motive and treatment blend ina larger sweep. The graver substance follows the planes and lines of astatelier if less brilliant style. It _has_, in a word, more style. 

I can find no exacter epithet, on the whole, for Dalou's largedistinction, and conscious yet sober freedom, than the word Venetian. There is some subtle phrenotype that associates him with the greatcolorists. His work is, in fact, full of color, if one may trench on thejargon of the studios. It has the sumptuousness of Titian and PaulVeronese. Its motives are cast in the same ample mould. Many of hisfigures breathe the same air of high-born ease and well-being, of sereneand not too intellectual composure. There is an aristocratic tinctureeven in his peasants--a kind of native distinction inseparable from histouch. And in his women there is a certain gracious sweetness, a certainexquisite and elusive refinement elsewhere caught only by Tintoretto, but illustrated by Tintoretto with such penetrating intensity as toleave perhaps the most nearly indelible impression that the sensitiveamateur carries away with him from Venice. The female figures in thecolossal group which should have been placed in the Place de laRépublique, but was relegated by official stupidity to the Place desNations, are examples of this patrician charm in carriage, in form, infeature, in expression. They have not the witchery, the touch ofBohemian sprightliness that make such figures as Carpeaux's "Flora" soenchanting, but they are at once sweeter and more distinguished. Thesense for the exquisite which this betrays excludes all dross from M. Dalou's rich magnificence. Even the "Silenus" group illustratesexuberance without excess: I spoke of it just now as Rubens-like, but itis only because it recalls Rubens's superb strength and riotous fancy;it is in reality a Rubens-like motive purged in the execution of allFlemish grossness. There is even in Dalou's fantasticality of this sorta measure and distinction which temper animation into resemblance tosuch delicate blitheness as is illustrated by the Bargello "Bacchus" ofJacopo Sansovino. Sansovino afterward, by the way, amid theartificiality of Venice, whither he went, wholly lost his individualforce, as M. Dalou, owing to his love of nature, is less likely to do. But his sketch for a monument to Victor Hugo, and perhaps still more hismemorial of Delacroix in the Luxembourg Gardens, point warningly in thisdirection, and it would perhaps be easier than he supposes to permit hisextraordinary decorative facility to lead him on to execute worksunpenetrated by personal feeling, and recalling less the acme of theRenaissance than the period just afterward, when original effort hadexhausted itself and the movement of art was due mainly tomomentum--when, as in France at the present moment, the enormous mass ofartistic production really forced pedantry upon culture, and preventedany but the most strenuous personalities from being genuine, because ofthe immensely increased authoritativeness of what had become classic. 

Certainly M. Dalou is far more nearly in the current of contemporary artthan his friend Rodin, who stands with his master Barye rather defiantlyapart from the regular evolution of French sculpture, whereas one caneasily trace the derivation of M. Dalou and his relations to the presentand the immediate past of his art in his country. His work certainly hasits Fragonard, its Clodion, its Carpeaux side. Like every temperamentthat is strongly attracted by the decorative as well as the significantand the expressive, pure style in and for itself has its fascinations, its temptations for him. Of course it does not succeed in getting thecomplete possession of him that it has of the Institute. And there is, as I have suggested, an important difference, disclosed in the fact thatM. Dalou uses his faculty for style in a personal rather than in theconventional way. His decoration is distinctly Dalou, and notarrangements after classic formulæ. It is full of zest, of ardor, ofaudacity. So that if his work has what one may call its national side, it is because the author's temperament is thoroughly national at bottom, and not because this temperament is feeble or has been academicallyrepressed. But the manifest fitness with which it takes its place in thecategory of French sculpture shows the moral difference between it andthe work of M. Rodin. Morally speaking, it is mainly--not altogether, but mainly--rhetorical, whereas M. Rodin's is distinctly poetic. It isdelightful rhetoric and it has many poetic strains--such as the charm ofpenetrating distinction I have mentioned. But with the passions in theirsimplest and last analysis he hardly occupies himself at all. Such awork as "La République, " the magnificent bas-relief of the Hôtel deVille in Paris, is a triumph of allegorical rhetoric, very noble, not alittle moving, prodigious in its wealth of imaginative material, composed from the centre and not arranged with artificial felicity, fullof suggestiveness, full of power, abounding in definite sculpturalqualities, both moral and technical; it again is Rubens-like in itsexuberance, but of firmer texture, more closely condensed. But anythingapproaching the _kind_ of impressiveness of the Dante portal itcertainly does not essay. It is in quite a different sphere. Itsexaltation is, if not deliberate, admirably self-possessed. To find ittheatrical would be simply a mark of our absurd Anglo-Saxon preferencefor reserve and repression in circumstances naturally suggestingexpansion and elation--a preference surely born of timorousness andessentially very subtly theatrical itself. It is simply not deeply, intensely poetic, but, rather, a splendid piece of rhetoric, as I say. 

So, too, is the famous Mirabeau relief, which is perhaps M. Dalou'smasterpiece, and which represents his national side as completely as thegroup for the Place des Nations does those of his qualities I haveendeavored to indicate by calling them Venetian. Observe the rarefidelity which has contributed its weight of sincerity to this admirablerelief. Every prominent head of the many members of the Assembly, whonevertheless rally behind Mirabeau with a fine pell-mell freedom ofartistic effect, is a portrait. The effect is like that of similar worksdesigned and executed with the large leisure of an age very differentfrom the competition and struggling hurry of our own. In every respectthis work is as French as it is individual. It is penetrated with asense of the dignity of French history. It is as far as possible removedfrom the cheap _genre_ effect such a scheme in less skilful hands mighteasily have had. Mirabeau's gesture, in fact his entire presence, issuperb, but the marquis is as fine in his way as the tribune in his. Thebeholder assists at the climax of a great crisis, unfolded to him in theimpartial spirit of true art, quite without partisanship, and thoughmanifestly stimulated by sympathy with the nobler cause, even moreacutely conscious of the grandeur of the struggle and the distinction ofthose on all sides engaged in it, and acquiring from these a kind ofelation, of exaltation such as the Frenchman experiences only when hemay give expression to his artistic and his patriotic instincts at thesame moment. 

The distinctly national qualities of this masterpiece, and theirharmonious association with the individual characteristics of M. Dalou, his love of nature, his native distinction, his charm, and his power, inthemselves bear eminent witness to the vitality of modern Frenchsculpture, in spite of all the influences which tend to petrify it withsystem and convention. M. Rodin stands so wholly apart that it would beunsafe perhaps to argue confidently from his impressive works thepotentiality of periodical renewal in an art over which the Institutepresides with still so little challenge of its title. But it isdifferent with M. Dalou. Extraordinary as his talent is, itsunquestioned and universal recognition is probably in great measure dueto the preparedness of the environment to appreciate extraordinary workof the kind, to the high degree which French popular æsthetic education, in a word, has reached. And one's last word about contemporary Frenchsculpture--even in closing a consideration of the works of suchprotestants as Rodin and Dalou--must be a recognition of the immenseservice of the Institute in education of this kind. Let some countrywithout an institute, around which what æsthetic feeling the age permitsmay crystallize, however sharply, give us a Rodin and a Dalou!