Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

M. Cabanel's portraits of women of the great world are conventionally painted, and with the coldness of manner which distinguishes him. One feels that if these fine creatures should speak they would utter nothing but the commonplaces which pass for conversation in the salons. The duchess of Vallambrosa—"the queen of the strand," as they call her at Cannes—Madame de Lavalette, the countess of Mercy-Argenteau, are all there, as if against their will and disdainful of the vulgar herd which is staring at them. To make amends, however, the duchess of Luynes is charming, surrounded and, as it were, adorned by her beautiful children. M. Cabanel is the recognized head of what may be called the official school. To get medals and crosses or the prize of Rome, to obtain commissions from government, it is now-a-days almost necessary to have been his pupil. Never had painter a more lofty position. Perhaps it is the opinion at the ministry of Fine Arts that Bonnat and Laurens will be so well paid by posthumous fame and the admiration of future generations that it is but fair to keep the balance between the masters even by rewarding M. Cabanel in his lifetime.

I have said that there are many portraits at the Exhibition, but I do not mean to complain of this. Indeed, we cannot too highly applaud the revival of this noble branch of art, to which we owe the Joconde of the Louvre and the Violin-player of the Sciarra Palace. Many a fair young girl unknown to fame, many a matron whose quiet life will pass unheeded by the world, will by her portrait enter into immortality. Torn, sooner or later, from the family roof and carried to a museum, there to be gazed upon by thousands of eyes, her smile or her reverie will recall for generations to come that sigh of Sénancour's: "O woman that I might have loved!"

It is doubtful if this regretful tribute to genius—which may perhaps some day be heard before the portraits of Henner, of Bonnat or of Madrazzo—will ever be inspired by those of M. Carolus Duran. This artist is the painter of elegant trifles and worldly vanities, of grand and striking toilettes, of blondes in violet and yellow and brunettes in gray and rose, for, like M. Worth the man-milliner, it pleases his fancy to attempt the reconciliation of the most inimical colors. For the rest, the future will no doubt owe him a debt of gratitude for the precious evidence which his pictures will furnish of the dress of the period. Indeed, without the help of certain of our portrait-painters future investigators would find themselves sadly at a loss in reconstructing the Paris of Napoleon III. and of the Third Republic. We are so much under the influence of the past that our artists scarcely have the sentiment of the civilization which surrounds them. Our colleges send us into the world, not Frenchmen, but Greeks and Romans, knowing nothing of modern life, and inspired by our classical studies with a profound contempt for the manners and usages of the present day. Our statues, bas-reliefs, medals and pictures represent the events of all ages except our own. The attempts in the direction of realism of these latest days, the paintings of Courbet and Manet, seem, by a sort of instinctive preference, to seek out the ugly, rather than to give us an exact reproduction of contemporaneous Nature. Some of our genre painters—Millet, for example, and Jules Breton—have, it is true, studied the actual and the modern, but their types are all taken from the rustic class, and it is safe to say that outside of portraiture neither the men nor the women of the world will leave a trace upon the art of the period.

Let us note, however, one exception to this statement. I refer to certain painters of military scenes who have chosen to call up the spectre of the Franco-German war—Édouard Detaille, Neuville, Boulanger. These have ventured to depict one side of modern life—and an important one, alas!—modern warfare, not by showing us those episodes of classical combat where half a dozen cavaliers, mounted upon their heavy historical horses, fight hand to hand for the possession of a flag, and trample under foot a wounded wretch whose very pose is traditional, but by giving us actual scenes witnessed during the autumn of 1870 and the winter of 1871—scenes often frightful, but always grandly effective and worthy of art. A sentiment of diplomatic propriety, with which the Germans were but little troubled at Philadelphia, has naturally kept these paintings out of the Champ de Mars, and banished them to Goupil's in the Rue Chaptal. We certainly do not complain of this, but we cannot help regretting that modern life should be so slightly represented in the art of an epoch indued with a life so intense. There are laurels yet to be won in the field of serious painting—triumphs such as Balzac, Thackeray and Tourgueneff have achieved in literature, and Gavarni in caricature, by the faithful representation of phases of modern life.

Since so many Frenchmen are converted by their early classical training not only into citizens of Rome or of Athens, but into veritable pagans, we naturally find the Exhibition full of gods and goddesses, of demigods and nymphs—the Truth of M. Jules Lefebvre, for instance, and his Vision, losing itself in the mists of morning; the Sarpedon of M. Lévy; M. Bouguereau's Flora and Zephyr and Meeting of Nymphs; the Naiads of Henner, etc. Amongst all these mythological tableaux one's attention is arrested by the striking productions of M. Gustave Moreau, a remarkable union of technical ability and poetical fancy—hallucinations of an opium-smoker who should be able to paint his visions with all the confidence and knowledge of a master. Paul de Saint-Victor, the eminent critic, has called these canvases "painted dreams;" and they cannot be better described. Hercules fighting the Hydra of Lerna, Salome, Jacob and the Angel, Moses exposed upon the Nile, are dazzling phantoms, which, eluding the literal text of history, recede to the depths of an unknown past. We do not think of discussing their accuracy: we are absorbed in admiration of this wondrous art, at once subtle and splendid, which makes us dream of lost civilizations and buried empires. Gustave Moreau is more than a painter: he is a magician and his pencil is an enchanter's wand.

For the rest, we have plenty of archæological painters, who painfully restore antiquity for us, following accurate authorities and examples. The curiosity to know the past, which has created a literature of its own, the researches of travellers and of learned men, the excavations made in Greece, in Asia Minor, in Africa, at Pompeii, have led many artists to search for new effects in this direction. Every one will recall the circuses and the Roman scenes of Gérôme. This year he exhibits hardly anything but modern Oriental subjects—Turkish baths, Bashi-Bazouks and lions—but his pupils have now taken the place which their master held in 1867. Hector Leroux, one of the thousand and one painters of this Neo-Grecian school, shows us a Toilette of Minerva Polias and A Miracle in the Temple of Vesta, his most celebrated work. Gustave Boulanger exhibits his Roman Baths, his Roman Comedians rehearsing their Rôles, and his Roman Promenades, which the wealthiest amateurs, MM. Aguado, André, Stebbins, contended for at the late Salons; M. Lecomte du Nouy his Pharoah slaying the Bearers of Evil Tidings and his Homer Begging; while M. Alma-Tadema completes the group with his best-known pictures, including The Studio of an Antique Painter, An Audience at the House of Agrippa, and The Vintage at Rome, which was also at Philadelphia. Americans will remember the young reddish-haired priestess of Ceres, so elegantly attired and coiffée, advancing with torch in hand and followed by flute-players. The details, which are multiplied almost to profusion, are all calculated to enhance the effect, and are distributed with exquisite art. The amount of research which this work suggests is almost incredible, and it was perhaps a more laborious undertaking to paint the Vintage at Rome than to write the Carthaginian romance of Gustave Flaubert. Alma-Tadema exhibits in the English gallery, and his contribution has raised the average of that section by a good third. If I have spoken of this painter in connection with the pupils of Gérôme, it is that, considering his place of birth (Dromvyp, Netherlands), I think that I have an equal right with the English to classify him according to my fancy.

But let us leave the remote antiquity in which the poet-painters of the Neo-Greek school delight to dwell, and come back to modern times. Passing through one of the central rooms, one is struck by the appearance of a great space of gilded wall hung with pictures considerable in number, but mostly quite diminutive in size. It needs no reference to the catalogue nor to the signature of these works to tell us the name of their author. If the singular talent which they display were not enough, the mise en scène would leave no doubt that this extraordinary piece of wall has the honor of supporting the exhibit of M. Meissonier. M. Meissonier holds a great position in contemporary art—a fact which is known to everybody, and to no one better than to M. Meissonier. But it was in 1867 rather than in 1878 that he ought to have gilded his wall. It was in the former year that he exhibited his 1814, his Reading at Diderot's and other incomparable works, which placed him beyond all dispute at the head of the French school. To-day he shows us but one considerable work, the Cuirassiers of 1805, and fifteen small pieces—very pretty things, but then he has taught his pupils to imitate him too well! They have so often and so skilfully counterfeited the art of their master that the dignity of his work seems lessened and its value diluted, as it were, until for the substance we are given the shadow, and the tableau is replaced by the tableautin. The same tendency to contraction is apparent in every country. Paintings are growing smaller, as if to keep in proportion with the small modern salons. That this is due to the great influence of M. Meissonier there is no doubt, but no diminution of his own fame accompanies the dwindling of his pictures.

And yet there are half a dozen painters at the Champ de Mars who lack nothing but the golden wall to make them the equals of the master. M. Detaille is absent, but we have M. Worms, with seven little chefs d'œuvre; M. Vibert, with his Departure of the Spanish Bride and Bridegroom, the Serenade, and the Toilette of the Madonna; M. Firmin Girard, with his Flower-Girl; M. Berne-Bellecour, in his famous Coup de Canon; MM. Fichel, Lesrel, Louis Leloir and others whom I have not space to mention, as exact and as minute in detail as their chef, and, moreover, almost as well paid by amateurs, especially Americans.

Landscape-painting mourns the loss of its greatest masters. Amongst all the painters, Death seems to have singled out the paysagistes by preference. Since the last Exhibition how many have gone! Chintreuil, Belly, Corot, Courbet, Daubigny, Millet, Diaz, are no more. A few canvases recall them—the Wave of Courbet, an admirable effect of snow by Daubigny, and four or five pictures by Corot—but one regrets that the illustrious dead have not had the honor of a room apart. The members of the jury have been careful to keep the best places for their own works, while the masterpieces of departed genius have been banished to the top of the walls or half hidden in corners. M. Cabanel and M. Bouguereau fill whole rooms with their pale compositions, and—Millet is absent!

Has the school of French landscape-painting survived these serious losses? We may reply with confidence that it has. This very year, in the Exposition of the Champs Élysées, the Haymaking of M. Bastien Lepage reveals a great painter. At the Champ de Mars there are admirable landscapes by living artists—Hanoteau, who with such masterly power of execution bends and crooks in every direction the knotted branches of his giant oaks; Émile Breton, painter of the melancholy scenes of winter; Harpignies, faithful interpreter of the varying aspects of the valley of the Allier under all the changes of day and season; Eugène Feyen and Feyen-Perrin, who delight us with the sea-coast of Brittany and its fisher-women and bathing-women; Van-Marcke, who is less than the successor, but more than the imitator, of Troyon; and finally, MM. Pelouse and Ségé, representatives of new forces and processes.

Americans are supposed in Paris to prefer highly-finished and elaborate work, like that of Gérôme, but I have seen in America examples of the painter who elaborates least of all, who lays on his colors in the boldest manner—in a word, the painter of general effect, Isabey. It is refreshing to meet again, here, his Wedding-Feast, a delightful repose to the eye, almost wearied with minute perfection of detail.

Before quitting the labyrinth of French art we must not forget a class of painters who have received a great deal of admiration, and who deserve it, whatever rank one may be disposed to assign to their special branch of art. I refer to the painters of still-life. There is Vollon, for instance, whose name suggests those wonderful representations of armor, of rich goldsmith's work, superb tapestries and damascened metal, to say nothing of the equally admirable counterfeits of warming-pans and saucepans, which delight the lover of nature-morte. We find here his famous kettle of red copper, sold at a price which might suggest that it was of solid gold. Amateurs and dealers pronounce Vollon the first of painters in his specialty, though there are some who profess a preference for his rival, Blaise-Desgoffes, of whom there are three examples in the Exposition; and though these are only Venetian glass, Gothic missals, jewel-boxes and the like, there are some of them worth thirty thousand francs at the very least: it will be understood that I speak of the paintings, and not of what they represent. Philippe Rousseau displays not less than a dozen pictures, and the names of their owners, Alexandre Dumas, the baroness de Rothschild, Barbedienne, Édouard Dubufe, etc., show how much he is the mode. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine cheeses more savory, fresher oysters, peaches and vegetables more inviting, and flowers—I had almost said more fragrant, so perfect is the illusion of reality.

But we must tear ourselves from these fascinating galleries, for should we write for ever we shall always be sure to forget some celebrity who deserves to be mentioned. We have said nothing of the scenes from fashionable life; nor of the dogs and horses which MM. Claude and J. Lewis Brown render so capitally; nor of the portraits of Pérignon, Édouard Dubufe and Cot; nor of the flowers of Mademoiselle Escallier. Three great names, Jules Dupré, Rosa Bonheur and Puvis de Chavannes, are absent—one knows not why.

Belgium is next in order—thrifty Belgium, where painting is a commercial industry and its products an important article of exportation. The Belgian display in the Champ de Mars is certainly a considerable one in point of numbers, which will not surprise us when we remember that there are at least twelve art-schools in the country—to say nothing of the great academies of Brussels and Antwerp—where hundreds of young men are daily drilled in the grammar and technique of art. But genius is the gift of Nature, not of schools. All that the latter can bestow is probably here, but we miss the imagination, the variety, the sentiment of the born artist, and it needs no very critical examination of these paintings to show us that the acquired dexterity of the academy, the mere business of the painter, is almost the only characteristic of the Belgian school.

There are some examples of "high art," such as The Pope and the Emperor of Germany at Canossa in 1077, by M. Cluysenaar, a composition as cold as it is vast; some illustrations of the national history by M. Wauters, who reminds us, in some respects, of the great French painter Laurens, though lacking his power; and there are the historico-religious pictures of M. Verlat. But much the best things in the Belgian collection are the numerous works of a painter whose aims are not so high, and who in Brussels seems like an exile from Paris. M. Alfred Stevens draws his inspiration from fashionable life; and no Parisian could surpass the execution of his velvets and laces and the thousand new stuffs which Fashion invents every year—gants de Suède, and faces too of a certain type, the pretty chiffonnées faces of girls of every rank in life. But the pretty faces are, after all, mere accessories in a picture where the principals are the hat and the dress and the parasol, upon which, as any one can see, the artist has bestowed all his loving care. Nothing of his, however, in the Exposition can compare with his Young Mother, which I saw last year in the Academy at Philadelphia.

Next after Stevens, in point of reputation, comes M. Willems, who really belongs to the French school of Gérôme, but who feels himself under obligation, in his character of Fleming, to paint nothing but what Terburg and Metzu painted two centuries before him. The man without a plumed hat and big boots and a great sword at his side has, for M. Willems, no existence. I would not say that he does not paint hat, boots and sword as well as the old Flemish masters themselves did, but while they drew from the life he paints at second hand, and the modern artist who passes his days in the vain effort to revivify the models of his predecessors will always rank below the masters whom he imitates, as M. Willems does, with so many others whom a false public taste encourages in a hopeless pursuit.

There are no landscapes in the Belgian section, if one may be allowed to except the marines of M. Clays, and yet Belgium can boast of at least one excellent paysagiste, M. César de Cock, who, unfortunately, is not represented in the Exposition.

French painters have often been blamed for neglecting the material around them, and for trespassing upon the domain of foreign artists by representing Russian peasants and Italian beggars or selecting subjects from Spain or Japan; but I have looked in vain through the various galleries for any evidence that other countries are a whit less obnoxious to this reproach than our own. Each nation forages in its neighbor's field. Is it too much to hope that modern art may free itself from the bondage of a senseless fashion, and may take to the study of the living types close at hand? Russia and America, for instance, have shown themselves capable of producing a literature distinctively national and characteristic: must they ever remain without a school of art as indigenous to the soil, and shall their painting never have its Tourgueneff and its Bret Harte? The law of development may require that the birth of a nation's art shall succeed that of its letters—though the history of the Renaissance would seem to contradict this theory—but whether this be so or not, it is certain that one does not imagine one's self in Moscow while perambulating the Russian salon in the Champ de Mars, where the best representative of the national art, M. Siemiradski, has chosen for the two paintings which have deservedly won a medal of honor subjects from ancient Rome—the one an amateur hesitating in his choice between two articles of equal value—namely, a chased cup and a female slave—and the other representing a soirée of Nero. The subject of this last is horrible. The tyrant, crowned with flowers and surrounded by women and freedmen, descends from his palace. Attached to long poles and besmeared with pitch, ready for the fatal flame, are the living bodies of wretched Christians which will illumine to-night the gardens of Cæsar. Living Torches is the title of the picture, which is one of the most successful paintings of the Exposition, and has given its author a high rank among contemporary artists.

The painters of the United States naturally feel the inspiration of the country of their sojourn, be it France or Italy or Germany, for most of them study abroad; but it is to be hoped that they will, after their return to their own beautiful land, find motives for grander and more picturesque studies than these hackneyed Old-World scenes of ours can afford. Mr. Bridgman has painted—and well painted too—the Obsequies of a Mummy upon the Nile, but why could he not as well have gratified us with some equally impressive scene from the life of the pioneers in the Far West, where wondrous landscape and romantic incident might so well combine to furnish a new sensation to the amateurs of London and Paris? Mr. Du Bois deserves our thanks for his View upon the Hudson, and so does Mr. J.B. Bristol for his upon Lake Champlain. The admiration which these two pictures have excited, amongst critics as well as the public, is evidence enough that these two painters, or Mr. Wyatt Eaton or Mr. Swain Gifford or Mr. Bolton Jones, may, if they so will, make American landscape the mode in Europe. Mr. J.M.L. Hamilton has, to say the least, damaged his prospects of success by a strangely inconsiderate choice of subject. Critics do not deny that his Woman in Black is firmly and solidly painted, but they are quite unanimous in the opinion—in which everybody agrees with them—that the composition is in the worst possible taste. I have a vague recollection of having seen this painting in Philadelphia, and Americans may recognize it by the general description of a woman smoking a cigarette and holding her knee with both hands. Altogether, it might have been tolerated in another age and country, which took no offence at the coarse manners of Dutch fairs and merrymakings, but we are not living in the time of the kermesses, and Mr. Hamilton, moreover, is not a Hollander, but a Philadelphian.

The contribution of Sweden, Norway and Denmark may be said to be, upon the whole, less important than that of the United States, and to show, perhaps, less ability in execution; but it has, upon the other hand, the charm of local interest, which the American collection lacks. It is refreshing to meet with these honest, simple little pictures of Scandinavian life, with its typical faces and figures, its costumes and interiors, all so little known to us, and so delightful from their novelty. Amongst the Danish painters we may note especially the names of Exner, Carl Bloch, Kroeger and Bache; and amongst the Swedes, those of Zetterstein, Ross and Hagborg, who follow very closely, in manner and composition, the German school of Düsseldorf.

Art is migratory. If she sojourns to-day in France, it is but as a guest who reposes a while ere she continues her unceasing journey. This reflection—with which we opened our rapid review of the Exhibition in the Champ de Mars—haunts us especially as we linger in the galleries devoted to Holland and Italy. Even in those favored lands, where Art once seemed to have fixed her eternal abode, the inspiration of genius is succeeded by the technical skill of the academician. There are excellent sea-pieces, by Mesdag and Gabriel in the Dutch gallery, but Italy, which has fairly crowded her allotted space with canvases, has nothing to challenge our admiration except a few pretty genre pictures. M. de Nittis—whom, by the way, we are apt to think of as a Parisian, but who is, it appears, Neapolitan—exhibits a dozen pictures quite as modern in conception as the latest scenes from the comedies of Henri Meilhac, and which will, one day, serve as valuable documents in the authentication of the manners and costume of the present epoch. Connoisseurs of the twenty-first century will curiously study our cavalcades in Hyde Park or upon the Brindisi road, the return from the races on the avenue of the Bois de Boulogne, and the hundred other incidents of our every-day life, certified by the signature of Nittis. Clear and brilliant, too, and full of movement and gayety, are the compositions of MM. Michetti, Mancini and Delleani (A Fête on the Grand Canal, The Return from the Fête of the Madonna, etc.); but the most remarkable of these little Italian masters is Pasini, the Orientalist. His Suburbs of Constantinople and his Promenade in the Garden of the Harem are pictures on which the eye may feast, so finely drawn are their diminutive figures, so wonderful is their variety of intense color—yellow, blue, green, rose—and so clear and transparent withal, startling and amusing us like a display of fireworks.