solid half-clad Muses, or whatever they are, and showing the Château of Chambord on the right. This is a commonplace piece of work, but it is fair to judge it as a cartoon for tapestry (it is to be executed at the Gobelins), in which material its rather strong and harsh coloring will seem more in place. The two best official decorative pictures in which figures are introduced are two examples of those decorations for provincial or district Mairies on which the French government, to its honor, spends money so liberally: M. Roussel's "Maternité" (Old Salon), for the Salle de Mariage at Charenton, a pretty group of mother and children, rather inspired by M. Bouguereau, and the allegorical painting, "La Vie," by M. Prouvé (New Salon), for the staircase of the Mairie of Issy-les-Moulineaux, an allegory of life expressed by figures which are realistic in design, but kept, like the landscape, sufficiently flat and conventional in treatment to remove them into the plane of decoration. This method of conveying an allegorical meaning in decorative painting, through figures which are realistic in conception though not in execution, is rather a favorite one for the decoration of Mairies and other such public buildings, and reminds one of the fact that in France the Department of "Beaux Arts" is also that of "Instruction Publique." It is evidently intended that the allegory should be "understanded of the people;" this is humane if not exactly intellectual art; "emollit mores," let us hope. For the Sorbonne, on the other hand, M. Dubufe has been encouraged to convey decorative allegory through the old and time-honored medium of classically draped and undraped figures, in a work which cuts across one of the galleries at the New Salon, and which, being a ceiling, is treated in bright colors, and with the figures mostly seated on clouds. The work bears the really fine motto, "Et Scientia quoque Poesis erit," but the painting is not equal to the intellectual situation thus defined, nor is its story, if one may so call it, to be apprehended without the help of the catalogue description; besides which it has the defect that there is a distinctly right and wrong way up to it, which should always be avoided in a ceiling painting, otherwise the spectator from below does not know which way to regard it.' M. Marioton's ceiling painting in the Old Salon, "L'Art évoquant la Beauté," though it is a design de sotto in sú, with "Art" astride a fore-shortened horse flying up into the clouds (a kind of performance which is somewhat out of date), still has this merit, that it is distinctly a ceiling design, and looks out of place on a wall. A ceiling painting ought always to be so designed that it may be looked at in any direction; that is to say, if there should be ceiling paintings at all-which is perhaps a point open to discussion. Decorative landscape painting is almost a French institution; at least, we hardly recognize such a thing in England. It means landscape treated in a flat conventional manner as to color and aërial effect, and sometimes also designed on rather rigid and formal lines. This element of conventional design may or may not be present. There are fine examples of both types this year. In the Old Salon there is M. Laurens's "Le Lauraguais," a landscape of rolling hills, with oxen ploughing in the foreground, perfectly free in its lines, but painted in a somewhat flat conventional manner, as if intended for fresco rather than oil. One result is that the first hill (middle distance), owing to the want of aërial perspective, does not seem to recede sufficiently, and produces the impression of what architects would call the "elevation" of a hill. Yet, in spite of this drawback, it is a grand and impressive work, one of the finest paintings of the year. The New Salon contains a fine example, M. Lerolle's "Douce Journée," of a landscape of decorative composi 1 It is odd that even so consummate a decorative artist as M. Puvis de Chavannes overlooked this in the only ceiling painting he has ever designed (exhibited in Paris three or four years ago), when he painted the figures standing on the ground just as he would have painted them on a wall. tion; the distant hills, the lake, and the lawn foreground form a series of nearly parallel horizontal lines, crossed by the perfectly parallel vertical lines of the leafless stems of tall trees, which, however, leave a wider opening in the centre, where three figures seated on the grass make an incident in the composition. It may be fairly said that we have here the sentiment of landscape combined with a sufficiently decorative effect. And yet a healthy scepticism retains its hold on the mind. Ought there to be such a thing as "decorative landscape"?-as Falstaff says, "a question to be asked." painter in his way, who has made both his own technique and his own line of subject, has pursued his hobby of moral processions of allegorical figures too far; or in this case it is an immoral procession, the foremost figure in the descent "Vers l'Abîme" being evidently intended as a personification of vice, and a rather remarkable conception as such; it is a figure that makes its mark on the memory; but as to the crowd of figures stumbling and sliding down the declivity after her, and painted as if they were made of brown paper, "that way madness lies." M. Gerôme, one of the painters who never troubles himself to paint up to Salon scale, confident, no doubt, that people will look for his works however modest in scale, has not added greatly to his reputation by his two biblical subjects, the "Entry into Jerusalem" Of the leading pictures of the year other than those already mentioned, in the Old Salon M. Gervais perhaps takes the first place with his "La Folie de Titania," touching her love for him of the ass's head. Here are indeed "conscientious nudes," splendid in drawing and color, good to look at; but where does Shakespeare come in? To quote Sir John again: "And these are not fairies? I was three or four times in the thought, they were not fairies," being indeed exceedingly solid flesh-andblood young women, with none of the glamour of the "Midsummer Night's Dream" about them. Still, if there is no poetry, it is first-rate painting. So also is Mme. Demont-Breton's "A l'Eau," a masterly painting of a young fishwife striding along towards the sea with an infant in her arms, and dragging an unwilling little naked urchin by the hand. This is a real "picture," complete in itself; a moment of human action and energy seized and faithfully recorded; one may notice, too, how admirably the lines of the whole group compose in a decorative sense, without the slightest appearance of artificial arrangement. Compared with such a work there is but a poor sentimentality Erckmann-Chatrian stories. about M. Bouguereau's "Compassion," symbolized by a group in which a man leans his head against the body of the crucified Saviour with an expression of sympathy; a picture which appeals much to the public sentiment (as it was intended to do), but it is weak and affected. M. Henri Martin, a remarkable and the "Flight into Egypt;" the former, representing the scene as without the city walls, is rather a new reading of the story, but it has not the marked individuality of M. Gerôme at his best, and one cannot help feeling that the white ass and foal were the principal object with the painter. M. Raphael Collin is disappointing; his "Biblis" is only a small and rather commonplace nude study. M. Henner and M. Roybet, in their very different ways, are exactly as usual. Among the battle pictures, fewer and less prominent than usual, one deserves notice for its reality, M. Sergent's "Ordre de Charger;" there is none of the ordinary fanfarronade about it; a line of cavalry on an eminence on the right are seen in various attitudes of impatience, trying to keep line and control their horses, while an aide-de-camp. on foot, struggles breathlessly uphill through the long grass with the order; it reminds one of a bit out of one of the It is more difficult to select from the works of the New Salon in a short article, as, while there are few remarkable paintings, there is a more general level of interest. M. Carolus-Duran aims at producing an effect of versatility, exhibiting some of his portraits of fashionably-clad ladies, painted with have not the quality of beauty either of line or sentiment, without which a work of this kind has little claim to attention. Among works of solid merit are M. l'Hermitte's "La Fin de la Journée," a hayfield scene with figures, painted in a broad style, in which every detail, though sufficiently indicated, is subordinated to the total effect; and two pictures of somewhat similar class, and perhaps even better, by M. Verstraëte, "Sur la Digue" and "Verger en Zèlande." Among works which may be regarded as experiments in special effects, some of those of M. Picard are worth notice, especially for their powerful and original effect of color; a Russian artist, M. Botkine, has struck out a line of his own in some curious flat single-figure subjects, which look as if designed as cartoons for embroidery; and a whole room is given up to a special exhibition of the delicate and charming illustrative designs of M. Boutet de Monvel. On the whole it must be said that, though there are no works at the New Salon equal to those of M.M. Gervais and Laurens and Mme. Demont-Breton at the other exhibition, there is a considerably larger proportion of pictures which are worth serious attention. his usual force, two still-life subjects, year, for his figures "En Plein Air" and three or four landscapes, and is successful in all; the landscapes are rather slight, but show real feeling for landscape effect. For the exhibition generally, one may say that it includes a good deal of good work of no special tendency, mingled with a number of groups of paintings by artists each of whom seems to be following a special aim of his own, sometimes to the verge of eccentricity. Among these latter, M. la Touche continues the same experiments in warm and glowing schemes of color expended on subjects of a semilegendary character-the recipe is beginning to pall a little now; and M. Carrière, who is again hung opposite to him, as if his cold greys were to be a foil to M. la Touche's chromography, again paints a picture of things seen through a mist; last year it was the box tier of a theatre, this year it is the Crucifixion-nothing is sacred from a painter with a hobby; nor is there any thing worth remark in M. Carrière's conception of the subject; it is a new trick of effect, that is all. Among the figure pictures of more serious interest is M. Ménard's "Automne," a rich warm landscape, with two nude figures in the foreground, rather deficient in severity of design for a decorative picture, which this professes to be; but M. Ménard has a very fine feeling for color, as he shows also in his small but grandly built landscape "Les Troupeau," with great masses of warmtinted cloud hanging above it; a work which in sentiment and color reminds one of G. F. Watts. M. Durst, in "Au Bord de l'Etang," shows a finely painted and well drawn study of a nude figure, with broken sunlight falling on her through the branches of the trees, a picture painted in a broad full manner, and perhaps the best nude study of the year after M. Gervais's "Titania." M. Sonnier, in "L'Heure du Bain" and "Inquiète," gives us bright studies of the nude figure in full sunlight, a field of art in which M. Aublet, who might generally be regarded facile princeps at the New Salon in this class of subject, is not at his best this as The portrait of the year is no doubt that by M. Benjamin-Constant, at the Old Salon, representing the Duc d'Aumale seated on a bench in a park, amid an expanse of warmly lit foliage. The figure seems a little stiff in attitude; as a whole, however, the picture is a fine and, in a sense, a pathetic one; there is about it an impression of melancholy which one cannot but think intentional; it might be entitled "Fin d'une Dynastie." There are some powerful portraits of the realistic order, among which M. Bonnat's half-length very truculent-looking member of the French Academy is pre-eminent for force and vigor. M. Glaize contributes a hardly painted half-length of M. Saint-Saëns, which assuredly does not convey any impression of the eminent musician's genius; and M. Jules Lefebvre two superb costume portraits, as of a we may call them, in which the interest lies all in the dress, and the faces are expressionless and, as flesh painting, hard and bloodless in effect. There are other more or less good portraits, but portraiture is not strong this year. Nor is there any really great landscape, unless we accept as such M. Laurens's decorative landscape before referred to; but nevertheless landscape is the most satisfactory department of the Old Salon, as far as painting is concerned; a diligent search discovered a good many things of no ordinary merit, and which one could study with pleasure and profit. M. Harpignies only exhibits two rather small works this year, which are not very prominently hung; but one of these, "Solitude," a scene by a stream in a mellow evening light, is a noble work both in sentiment and style, built up in a grand, solid manner in which no detail is allowed to obtrude upon or weaken the general effect aimed at; there is an indefinable suggestion of an "old master" about it; and though it is nothing like so important or so grand a work as his large landscape "On the Loire" last year, I for one felt that work, though grandly composed, to be deficient in what Constable called "God's daylight," which is not the case with this smaller one. Among the more prominent landscapes at the Old Salon, the most remarkable is M. Quignon's "Pommiers en Fleurs," in which, as usual with this painter, the composition and materials are the simplest possible-merely a country lane with a line of trees, and cornfields on each side, the whole studied and worked out with the greatest care, and showing that rare quality of balance in landscape style in which realism is attained without losing breadth. One involuntarily compares this in one's mind with such an English work as Mr. Davis's "Summer" or "Elderberries" (for it has been exhibited under both titles), and while there is a delicacy of effect in the English painter's work (especially in the distance) which we do not find in the French example, the latter undoubtedly shows a grander and masculine style. The French more seem to be succeeding especially at present in this class of landscape subjects composed of very simple materials. The next best picture after those already named is perhaps M. Guéry's "Les Coquelicots, Champagne," a wide expanse of field with a riot of poppies in the foreground, and a little stretch of rising distance to close the scene. These are pictures which are powerful enough to assert themselves anywhere; there are, however, a good many landscapes, some of the realistic, some of the more romantic cast, which are found to have very fine qualities when one can isolate them sufficiently from their violent surroundings; but the fact is that good landscapes which are quiet and unobtrusive in style are absolutely killed at the Salon; no class of good work suffers so much in this respect; and there would be much more chance of the quality of the less prominent French landscapes being fairly appreciated if they were classed together in certain galleries reserved for landscape. The New Salon, as already mentioned, contains a good many small landscapes of great interest, also some larger ones, including Mr. Davis's principal Academy picture of last year, and a fine work by M. Courtens, "Derniers Rayons." It is amusing to observe again, in the State purchases of landscape, the influence of the connection of "Instruction Publique" with Art; all the landscapes purchased are those of which the interest is mainly topographical-accurate representations of different places in the French dominions. The general failure of the French in sea painting is perhaps not surprising, considering their national and constitutional dislike to the sea. Their sea paintings appear to be evolved out of their inner consciousness, with some astonishing results in the present salons; witness the awful affair of Madame Morin, "En Danger," where the sea looks like a wobble of blankets and treacle; or M. Dauphin's picture in the New Salon, with a large steamer on the side of a wave in a position which proves that the painter has never heard of such a thing as the "angle of stabil ity." Even M. Tattegrain, a painter of the most versatile powers, fails in his "Sauvetage en Plein Mer;" his sea drives before the gale, undoubtedly, but it is in an eminently French manner. Let M. Tattegrain force himself to take the disagreeable experience of a trip across the channel in half a gale of wind; he will suffer, no doubt, but he will gain some new experience as to the movement and appearance of the sea in rough weather, which will be permanently valuable. On the other hand, a class of work in which the French are easily ahead of us is all that which is comprised under the general term "Still Life." They devote larger canvasses to this kind of thing than it is perhaps altogether worth; but they attain perfection, as they do in their best landscapes, in the crux of realism with out littleness or niggling. Such a work as M. Chrétien's "A l'Office" is a triumph of brilliant realization of the color and texture and form of a medley of articles-fruit, metal and glass dishes, and all the other details that go to make up an orthodox "still-life" picture; but it is all painted in a broad style and with a full brush, so that the execution becomes an element of interest as well as the result. Whatever one may feel as to the shortcomings or iniquities of the pictures at the Palais de l'Industrie, the mood changes when we descend into the sculpture court. It is perhaps because sculpture is an art appealing so little to the popular mind that the French sculptors have not been under the same temptation as the painters to sink their art to the level of popular taste; at all events they have not done so. There are occasional works which partake of the sensational, which are too violent in action for sculpture, such as M. Soulés' "Bacchante à la Chèvre," and M. Charpentier's "Etoile Filante," a quasi-floating figure balanced on one hip by a support which the spectator is supposed to ignore; a subject really only fit for a relief. But on the whole, what a number of fine and dignified works are here, expressing too a number of fine and poetic ideas, for it is one of the characteristics of French sculpture that there is not only so much good modelling but so many suggestive ideas underlying the subjects. It would be impossible here even to name all the works that are worth recognition. It may be said that there is no special new tendency discernible in the collection considered as a whole, and as representative of French sculpture of the day. What strikes one more particularly is its general high level of excellence, and the fact that it is superior to the sculpture exhibitions of several years back-perhaps superior to any since 1889, the last Exhibition year, in which year the Salon sculpture was exceptionally fine. A few special works may be referred to. One's first thought always, on coming into the sculpture court, is, "What has Falguière got here?" Happily he has returned from the error of his ways in devoting his powers to sculpturing portrait statues in "their coats, their hosen, their hats, and their other garments," and gives us a nude figure representing Poetry seated astride of a winged horse. We have seen finer heads on M. Falguière's figures than this one carries, but we are thankful at all events to have him back again in the regions of ideal art. M. Mercié exhibits a sepulchral monument to Madame Carvalho, a female figure in low relief on a stele, with the hands joined; a work in his finest and gravest style, which one may contrast with the very genre character of M. Verlet's monument to Maupassant for the Parc Monceau, where a modern young lady, of heroic if not colossal scale, sits with widespread skirts at the base of a stele (probably intended ultimately to carry a portrait bust) in a reflecting attitude, with a just-closed volume in her hands. If the French young lady of to-day is supposed to be specially devoted to Maupassant (which I take leave to doubt), he would certainly give her plenty to think of which she had perhaps better not think of; as for the artistic question, this is a clever and piquant but not very sculpturesque work, which would pass muster better if the figure were smaller, only life-size; |