With the rise of the plein-air school, at all events, the movement becomes self-conscious. For the essential principle at the root of the plein-air treatment was that you must see your peasant in his surroundings; and that means that you must get your impulse or inspiration from the present sight of him in his present place-in other words, you must get an impression of him as and where he stands at the moment. You must not, as Millet did, think of his character or his past history; you must not take him chiefly as an intellectual idea, but as you best may by lying in wait for the impression which he makes upon your sensibilities. The plein-air school is not well represented in this exhibition-not, at any rate, in the French section. There are some half-a-dozen pictures, by Bastien Lepage, in the centenary portion, no one large, or suggestive of the place which Bastien really holds in the history of art. Les 'pommiers gêlés' is his best picture here. A petrified example of this school by Mr. Weldon Hawkins-who seems to have changed his nationality to become a Frenchman-has been taken from the Luxembourg to hang just outside Room No. 22.* On the other hand, the English plein-airists are too well known to need special mention here. In changed forms that movement' has many representatives among French artists,† for it very early combined its methods with those of the painters who had set forth to make new discoveries in the territory of light and shade. ‡ It is evident that the tendency of the revolt of painting against literary influence must, on the whole, be in the direction of impressionism, because, if the artist do not work under the stimulus of some suggestion from outside-outside the domain of his art, we mean-he must cultivate the keenness of sensibility which will receive a suggestion from everything presented to his eye. If he Dagnan Bouveret began as a most distinct plein-airist, as we see by his early work, 'Bretonnes au pardon,' in Room 2. †M. Darien is essentially a plein-airist. But his best picture in the exhibition is a half-interior, 'Les halles' (Room 16). We are careful not to use the ambiguous word chiaroscuro, which would be totally misleading in this connexion. Ruskin uses the word chiaroscuro, without doubt, in the most scientific signification, i.e. as simply the light and shade which give effects of form, of atmosphere and distance either in nature or in a picture. But the common use of chiaroscuro is more artificial-to signify the arrangement of light and shade in a picture calculated to produce a certain decorative effect. VOL. CXCII. NO. CCCXCIII. have a great and creative imagination, this mere external stimulus may be again overshadowed by that creative faculty. But with the majority of painters such will not be the case. Wherefore the movement of modern art must in a sense also make towards realism. A sort of offshoot of the plein-air movement was the study of what one may paralogistically call the plein-air interior, which was an attempt to see the affairs of everyday life in a more picturesque way than people had done hitherto. This, and the mere reaction against the heaviness and oiliness of the foregoing masters, produced not only a nicer understanding of the realities of light and shade, but it more particularly encouraged in the new school attempts to show the condition either of a room or of a landscape flooded with light. A class of pictures came into vogue from which almost all idea of shade seems to be excluded. This fashion of painting was, no doubt, in the sum an affectation; and this special school, both in the conceit of its revolt from the past, and in the novelty of its methods, is not unfairly characterised by Delacroix. "The cachet,' he writes, of the young school is, first of all, their self'assurance, and, secondly, their eternal blue and their light, 'which looks as if it had been made of flour (qui semble 'faite de la farine).' Not the less must the effect of this new method have been very impressive, and far from unpleasing, when it was first put in practice. And, as a fact, this love of white and floury light has become altogether characteristic of French painting, and has penetrated into many examples thereof not otherwise revolutionary. It may be seen in its extremest form in a picture in the Luxembourg Gallery, by Alfred de Richemont a picture which, though it is in our sense of the word so 'unliterary,' happens to have a literary interest, for it is taken from Zola's novel 'Le rêve.' It is an effect of white dawn in a white room, where a lamp still sheds some light. There are plentiful examples of this lumière faite de la farine in the exhibition: the best part of a wall taken up by M. Montenard; the graceful, over-sweet nymphs of Raphael Collin dancing on the sea-shore ('Au bord de la mer,' Room 16). These are extreme cases. Even pictures such as Gervex's immense canvas on the prize-giving at the Exhibition of 1889 show the invasion of the lumière farinée; contrast, as such, this example with Roybet's large historical * Room 5. * canvas in Room 11. M. Rochegrosse is another partial adherent of this school. A dozen years and more ago, under the realistic influence perhaps of M. Zola, the favourite kind of pictures for displaying these effects of vivid white light were scenes at hospital bedsides. Few of this particular class have survived into the period represented in the present collection. The picture of M. de Richemont's, which was taken as a kind of ensample of the flour-light school, has an effect of lamplight mingling with daylight. And pictures of that kind form a distinct subsection of the light-effect' genre. Then there are others which deal with lamplight only, or with firelight and lamplight, and so forth. There is nothing in itself new in the attempting such effects. It is the general light tone of the pictures, rarely in any part much below that of ultramarine blue, which differentiates all this class of work from pictures of artificial light by the foregoing masters, who had inherited such a different scheme from Rembrandt.t Taking it all through, this school of the light effects, whether out of doors or indoors, is distinguished, as Delacroix says, by its excessive use of ultramarine, and also by the monotony and recurrence of its colour schemes, the smallness of its palette. Almost all the landscapes of this class are white, pink, and purple; the lamplit interiors are yellow and blue; and there is a third subsection which delights in evening effects, and in such all the landscape is flooded (not illegitimately, of course, but with a monotonous persistence) in a blue mist. These evening scenes, however, though they may be legitimately connected with the flour-light painting, are also a sub-class of the older plein-air school; they hold of both influences. It is not strong and not varied, the Not so much in his ugly 'Death of Gratian' and 'La course au bonheur,' exhibited here, as in the much more pleasing' Chevalier aux fleurs' in the Luxembourg. M. Chartran's Saint François d'Assise au labour' (Room 11) is a special variety of the same genre, showing the blue or purple mist peculiarity spoken of below. + MM. Friant in No. 800 (Fiançailles'), Vollet in No. 1893 ('Au crépuscule'), and Breanté No. 284 (Le matin '), may be cited as characteristic examples of the modern way of treating artificial light. We notice, but to place in a rather different category, those who, like Degas in many of his pictures, like Dannat or C. Bergès (Flamencas, Room 5), have presented violent action (generally dancing) under artificial light. Compare Nos. 32 (Room 7) and 700, 701 (Room 11). whole of this kind of painting. But it has produced some beautiful work; and the effect of it upon the spirit-if a man should let his mind wander among and rest with the best works in this kind that he has seen-is immensely peaceful and reposing.† Further, out of the undistinguished body of this school have sprung some painters of marked originality, each of whom has made an art of his own. One such is M. Besnard, notable above all for his love of prismatic colouring, and a palette from which all sombre tints, all blacks and browns, seem to have been inexorably driven; so that horses which we should call black and bright bay become for M. Besnard purple and pink. In such a case as his 'Poneys (sic) au soleil' or Marché aux chevaux Arabes,' Nos. 156 and 162 of this exhibition, we see the painter in his extravagance. But he is a master in vivid effects of light, such effects as were undreamt of by the painters of an earlier age, and find no correspondence in the pictures painted in this country. Along with these effects of light we have sometimes an extraordinary movement; as in the portrait of Madame Rejane (known only as Portrait de théâtre'‡), which is familiar to most Englishmen from having been exhibited in this country. We may be sure that this prismatic painting will, in a short time if it has not already-come to constitute a new school, and a recognisable genre. We see all kinds of painters showing a leaning that way, and swerving from the path which they seemed to have traced out for themselves. One such is Mr. Alexander Harrison, the American painter of sea pictures. A few years ago Mr. Harrison's forte lay in his drawing of the shapes of waves. Of late he has given himself up-not with very happy results-to the most brilliant contrasts of colour in calm water.§ It naturally lends itself also to a symbolic or allegorical art, which oftentimes is sufficiently feeble; compare Allegre's Marseille.' De Richemont has several pictures of this kind in the Exhibition, Nos. 1604, 1606, &c. Howbeit Martin's pictures are likewise symbolical or allegorical; and they are far from being feeble. Jeannot's Vieux ménage' (No. 1057) and Tanzi's' St. Cloud' (No. 1802) may be cited as further instances of the types we have been describing. No. 158. Another painter who has a similar, but perhaps more original, taste for prismatic colours is Mr. Blair Bruce, whose pictures are the best in the Canadian section. Notice especially his Childhood of 3 In the various types of paintings which we have been of late trying to describe-in the white walls and beds of the hospital pictures, where the black figures are introduced only for their effect of contrast, in the pink and purple landscapes; in the lamplights shining on a white book or on blonde hair; in the changing rainbow effects of M. Besnard, and even in the blue misty evening pictures where some fire is generally found burning withal-the primal impulse in every case has been essentially the same: to realise the great stir to the senses, and through them to the imagination caused by sudden effects of light.* And we maintain that they are all the historical and the logical outcome of that movement which produced the plein-air school. This statement will, it is certain, be questioned, because, in this age of revolutions, it is common for children to disown their parents. There is another school which seems to have an intention quite different from any of these artificers of light and colour, and that is the Fresco school, which must always be associated with the name and work of Puvis de Chavannes. The work of Puvis is ill represented in this exhibition; and, indeed, it can never be rightly represented in any collection of easel pictures. Puvis can only be studied properly in his frescoes, as those in the Hôtel de Ville or the Panthéon. Even when he has been studied, it is difficult to characterise his art; though it is easy to tell the visible elements whereof it is composed-an excessive simplicity, the laying on of colour in the broadest possible masses, and the use of very light and transparent tones. That within certain limits this mural art is very effective cannot be denied. It always stands out in marked contrast to the other frescoes by which it is surrounded, and with as notable a superiority to them in the simplicity of its decorative effects. But it might be argued that in this respect a mere arrangement of colour, without any attempt at representation, would have the same advantage. For mere colour is all that is needed to complete the effects of architecture. It is, we confess, only in its influence upon the painting of posters that the art of De Chavannes seemed to us to have conferred notable obligations on mankind. Had Puvis not gone first, such admirable designers of affiches' as Lautrec and Berthon Vulcan.' E. Claus, of the Belgian section, affords another instance; compare his 'Passage des vaches,' No. 49. * Sudden, in that the spectator is suddenly introduced to them: that is the intention of the picture in every case, |