The Modern Art of Painting in France

THE French nation has led the world in many movements tending to establish exalted ideals and to uplift mankind ; but at no time in its history have its aims and efforts been more noble or more fruitful of good than during the first ages of its monarchical organization. The arts which in those ages took form in France, while they show the technical imperfections that pertain to early developments, manifest as no subsequent arts do the finest traits of French genius. The miniatures of the missals and Psalters and the sculptures of the Gothic monuments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are characterized by a beauty of design and sentiment unequaled by any produced by the modern school.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, under the influence of Italian painting on the one hand, and that of the more realistic art of Flanders on the other, French painting, which was still confined mainly to manuscript illuminations, developed in technical points, but hardly made progress in sentiment and expression. The full-page designs of this period are often extremely beautiful, and they sometimes exhibit charmingly the various aspects of mediæval life and landscape : but the deeper spirit which gave essential value to the Gothic art is sensibly wanting.

The sixteenth century is a confused time in the history of French painting, during which the national genius languishes, and a hybrid art, made up largely of elements derived from the decadent art of Italy, comes into vogue. The so-called Renaissance movement in France did not lead to important developments in painting. The inspiration of the foreign school established by an ostentatious prince at Fontainebleau was not a noble inspiration ; and its influence upon native art could not have been salutary even had the native genius of the time been stronger than it was. The names of Cousin and Clouet, though honorable when their surrounding circumstances are considered, would not reflect much credit on a really great school. The pseudo-classicism of the succeeding age led only farther away from the lines in which the national genius could find fit expression. The borrowed Raphaelesque sentiment and the academic mannerism of Le Sueur could bear no healthy fruit, and neither Poussin’s genuine feeling for landscape nor Claude’s love for warm pervading light, hampered as both these men were by artificial principles, could avail to turn the artistic activities of the time into fruitful channels. Even less productive of good were the bombastic affectations of Le Brun and Mignard.

The French art of the seventeenth century was deplorably lacking in native character and the inspiration of genius. The prevailing ideas were opposed to fine artistic growth ; and the misdirected efforts of Louis XIV. to foster the fine arts by liberal patronage and the establishment of academies were necessarily futile. Patronage prompted by motives like his can only mislead the artist and retard progress ; and academies are powerless when high artistic impulses and apprehensions are wanting. The least admirable traits of French character find expression in the arts of this time, and their technical treatment naturally corresponds with the impelling motives of the artists. Inelegant form, extravagant action, gaudy color, and coarse feeling mark the typical works produced.

The art of Watteau exhibits more genuine qualities. His frank and masterly rendering of the upper-class society life of the beginning of the eighteenth century bears kinship with the work of the truest masters of painting. As a colorist Watteau is more subtle than Rubens ; he approaches the great Venetians. Hence his best works have a charm which commends them notwithstanding the frequent coarseness of their subjects. Had his ideals been more exalted and his surroundings more favorable, he might have produced works of higher excellence. As it was, he achieved enough to entitle him to an honorable place on the list of the best French painters of modern times. His merits were not, however, sustained by his contemporaries nor by his immediate followers : no school of high character arose from his inspiration. But French art of the eighteenth century shows one important sign of health and promise, — that of concerning itself largely with real life. The field which Watteau opened engaged the interest of many other artists of the time, and though no strong work was done, the sophistications of the pseudo - classicists on the one hand, and the extravagances of the school of Le Brun on the other, no longer held the popular regard.

But the conditions were not yet ripe for a healthy naturalist school. The painters of real life either concerned themselves, like Watteau, with the frivolity and vulgarity of the manners of the wealthy and idle classes, or else they sought inspiration from the lowest phases of life among the poor. The few artists who, like Greuze, attempted to treat better subjects made little general impression. There were no men of genius among them; none who could appreciate the essential beauty of real life, and set it forth with sincerity and grace. Little, therefore, had yet been gained. No intelligent and elevated public sentiment existed to prompt and guide the artist in noble lines of effort. The few who took any interest in what were considered the higher forms of art were imbued with the conventional notions of the then widely authoritative academic schools ; and hence, in the latter part of the century, the reaction of David was, in the higher artistic circles, readily welcomed. The art of David and his followers was but the result of a final effort to establish those supposed classic principles which had been evolved in the academies of Italy, and more recently formulated in the writings of Winckelmann. David, though honest, conscientious, and of strong will, was a pedantic enthusiast without genius. Not only did his conviction that the only worthy ambition for a painter was to treat heroic subjects in what he regarded as the classic manner prevent the true development of such moderate talents as he had, but his strong influence on the artistic thought of his contemporaries enabled him so far to make his principles prevail as to paralyze the best powers of men more highly endowed by nature than himself. Until about the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century the despotic authority of David ruled the ideas of the leading painters of France with a rod of iron.

But the vigorous modern French genius could not long continue to be bound by these arbitrary and inadequate ideas. The strong feeling for nature and the so-called romantic interests which were awakening in men like Gros and Géricault soon began to assert themselves, and to force the intrenchments of the school founded on academic affectations. David and his strict followers ignored color. It was a part of their creed that full coloring, the coloring of nature, was not consistent with high art. A severe chiaroscuro, with but slight and sober tinting, was, they thought, most fitting in the treatment of heroic themes. Against this arbitrary theory Gros and Géricault, after studying the works of the masters of color in the Louvre, were early Impelled to protest. The docile pupils of David had ignored these works ; but those students who had the boldness to make use of them were thereby rendered sensible of the monotony and falsity of the theories in respect to color of the master who had for a quarter of a century held the position of dictator of artistic aims and methods.

The disaffection quickly extended to the other prescribed qualities of design. Conventional form and scientific anatomy were seen to be inadequate to the ends that were now sought, while artificial pose and studied gesture seemed as much opposed to true expression as was the arbitrary theory which had proscribed color. The more natural drawing, the richer color, and the solid impasto which finally characterized the art of Géricault strongly appealed to his contemporaries, and largely revolutionized their practice. But while freeing themselves from the conventions of David the French figure painters of the early part of our century failed to appreciate the qualities which give to painting its finest character. In so far as they sought guidance front the works of the masters of the older schools they lacked discrimination. They did not draw their inspiration from the most instructive sources. Rubens and Rembrandt, whom they chiefly studied, are indeed great painters ; but their qualities are associated with defects which students are not apt to recognize as such. They are not, therefore, the safest masters to take as models. The art of Rubens and Rembrandt, however, seems to have won the attention of these independent students more fully than the superior art of Titian and Veronese. Still there was much for men bred in the school of David to learn from masters like these; and under their stimulus they made such progress as men without the highest gifts and best guidance could. But this progress is not worth following, because it was largely unsound and intrinsically unimportant. The history of so-called historical figure painting in the nineteenth century is not of great significance, because it has not been practiced by men of commanding genius and discernment. The painting of Géricault, of Ingres, of Delaroche and Delacroix, notwithstanding many solid merits, is not painting in which a people so distinctly gifted with artistic, aptitudes as are the French ought to take much pride. Yet we should not blame these painters and their associates for producing work of no higher character. They were weighted with a mass of false artistic traditions on the one hand, and were surrounded by many unfavorable influences on the other. Under such conditions it would be impossible even for men of genius to develop a true art. The fine arts are never independent of surrounding influences : a fine artistic milieu is always essential to excellence of artistic production. But the artistic milieu of the French school of historic figure painting contained little that could quicken genius or stimulate high endeavor. Great art requires great ideals, and great ideals suitable for expression in the fine arts were at this time lacking. Religious themes had little hold on the popular imagination ; hence the treatment of religious subjects was rarely sincere. The affected though skillful designs by Flandrin which disfigure the nave of St.Germain - des - Prés are, I believe, fair examples of the best religious art that the century has produced in France. Classic motives had more attraction as affording opportunity for the display of the nude body ; but such subjects were naturally misapprehended by men bred in an artificial and pedantic society. The most potent themes for painting were those derived from the prevailing ideas of military glory ; and the strongest art of the school is that which deals with battles as the most moving realities of the time. But modern warfare offers little material for beautiful art ; and the numerous battle scenes and subjects connected with battles that have been produced are too largely characterized by a morbid display of horrors. The Pestiférés de Jaffa, by Gros, for instance, is but a conspicuous early example of the predilection for the repulsive which has been so marked in the modern French school. Subjects of this kind are sometimes defended on the ground that they stir the emotions, and have a salutary influence tending to diminish the evils which they illustrate. It may be admitted that this is to some extent a legitimate function of art; but it is not its primal function, and it is one that may be carried too far. It may, in fact, be said that appeal to the emotions through the harrowing and the horrible has, in France, been carried much too far.

This expression of the horrible has been less conspicuous in the works of those artists of the school who have held more or less closely to the so-called classic aims ; yet they have done little more than others to advance the art of painting on true and elevated lines. The stricter would-be classicists, spurning the life about them and the purely natural altogether, have attempted to create ideal works out of materials drawn from the realm of fancy. Without discernment of the elements in real life which furnished materials to the genius of the artists of classic times, but deriving their notions of design from the Roman and Renaissance sources, they have dreamed their pseudoclassic dreams, and embodied them with academic formality. Neither they nor the so-called romanticists have succeeded in creating exalted types of beauty ; and the treatment of the nude is with the one inane, as in the work of Ingres, and with the other it is apt to be coarse in sentiment. It inclines most commonly to coarseness. Consider, for example, the so-called masterpiece of Couture, the Decadence of Rome, in the gallery of the Luxembourg. This picture bears a superficial resemblance to the art of Veronese, by which it was apparently inspired; and yet how inferior it is, in every quality of conception and of treatment, to the work of the Venetian master ! It affords an instructive illustration of how a modern Frenchman, of real artistic talent, can misunderstand and misinterpret the matchless art of Venice. Couture’s very choice of subject implies a coarseness of feeling that is foreign to the nature of Veronese. He chooses for his theme a degrading orgy, whose exhausted participants give him material for the exhibition of semi-nude bodies in the various attitudes of spent energy. The picture is, in fact, an apotheosis of debauch. Compare its coarse sensuousness with the noble expression of robust bodily beauty in the works of Veronese. In broad qualities of design and color this picture has the kind of strength which readily appeals to a superficial artistic sense ; but it lacks those selected and subtle beauties which distinguish Venetian art. These Couture does not perceive. Where the art of Veronese manifests a noble imagination and a keen joy in refined and trained vision, that of Couture shows only the more obvious qualities of things, those which the average eye appreciates. In contemplating this work the spectator is not lifted, instructed, and entranced by beauty, as he is in regarding the work of Caliari. In point of color the inferiority is strongly marked. In place of the Venetian iridescence of pure hues, Couture’s color is fouled everywhere by the bituminous ground into which it is laid. A certain harmony of tone is cheaply got by this recently much-favored method of painting into a fresh ground of asphaltum ; but it is not the kind of harmony which a fine colorist seeks. Such a method is inevitably destructive of color as the Venetians understood and rendered it.

It is but just to say that the technical qualities which this school has chiefly sought have been in great measure attained. Correct drawing, free movement, vigorous color, agreeable tone, — these may be said to be characteristic of the works of French painters since 1840, and it is by them that they have demonstrated their superiority and have won their popularity. But these qualities, important as they are, and essential to the highest art, do not constitute the chief end of painting. A fine apprehension of beauty and exercise of the higher powers of design are needful to pictorial greatness ; and these the modern French artists do not appear to possess in a high degree. Thus, while on the whole this school deserves honor for having broken with false traditions and conventions, we are obliged at the same time to recognize that even Delacroix, its strongest master, has failed to attain the highest excellence and to express the best traits of French genius.

The new developments in landscape and genre which arose in the early part of the century are those which reflect the most credit on the modern French school; for though in landscape no individual genius comparable to the English Turner has arisen, and though the general grace of composition which distinguishes the best works of the early English watercolor school is rare in France, yet the modern French landscape and figure painters have developed and maintained a higher average of technical excellence than the painters of other countries.

The impulse which led to the formation of the new French school of landscape painting was derived from England. Before the end of the first quarter of the present century the French had shown no special interest in a natural treatment of landscape subject. But when, in the year 1824, some landscapes by Constable were exhibited in Paris, they not only were promptly appreciated, but they furnished an inspiration which led at once to a revolutionary movement. Constable’s vigorous revolt against the conventional artistic pedantry of an influential class of his contemporaries was timely. The eyes of connoisseurs were becoming more and more insensitive to those visual facts of nature upon which true representative art, however much an expression of the creative imagination it be, finds its only solid basis; and the landscape painting which was most approved in high circles had already become largely a process based upon the arbitrary rules of the studio. Constable was not waging the contest against convention in England single-handed. Turner and Girtin were also in the field. But Girtin was cut off early by death, and Turner was not merely a naturalist, he was also a great designer; and his powers of design were in some measure appreciated by those who were incapable of appreciating his truth to nature. But Constable was so unqualified a protestant that his art appeared, to the conventional critics, wholly devoid of merit. Constable was not a genius of high order, but he had genuine gifts, and a love for some of the familiar phases of nature which was as ardent as his contempt for the false conventions of art was severe. Perceiving the hopelessly false principles of the more pretentious contemporary production, he yet failed to recognize duly the fundamental principles exemplified in works of good art. He turned his back upon past art altogether; and in supposing that an artist’s best powers could be sufficiently developed by independent and exclusive recourse to nature he made a deplorable mistake. His eye was quick for the superficial aspects of landscape effect, but of the finer elements of a subject he had no sufficient appreciation. His frank and facile style is perhaps adequate to his purposes, but it betrays a lack of training and a marked weakness of draughtsmanship. He had an exaggerated notion of the function of chiaroscuro, and his saying, “ There is nothing beautiful but light and shade make it so, and if these are subtly rendered even an old crushed hat becomes worthy of art,” well illustrates his imperfect artistic apprehensions. The root of truth in this saying is indeed important. A just expression of the broad and subtle relations of light and shade is certainly essential in developed painting, and a student may undoubtedly, for special discipline, often with profit study the effects of light and shade in even such an object as an old crushed hat. But chiaroscuro is only one element of beauty, and, except when associated with fine conditions of form and color, it has not, by the greatest painters, been considered to render a subject worthy of their art. With such limitations, however, as his genius imposed, Constable attempted to paint truly the English landscape in those phases which appealed to him ; and the fresh, sketchy, and unconventional character of his work took strong hold of the French connoisseurs who saw it at the Paris exhibition of 1824.

I am not familiar with the art of Paul Huet, who is said to have been the first French painter to work on the lines laid down by Constable ; but the works of such well-known men as Corot, Rousseau, Troyon, Diaz, Daubigny, and Jules Dupré exhibit in different ways the earlier results of Constable’s influence. The great merit of this art consists in the truth and feeling with which it seeks to render, and often admirably succeeds in rendering, those visual qualities of landscape which artists appreciate, — those mainly, it may almost be said exclusively, of chiaroscuro and color. The qualities of line and specific form, which are no less important elements of visual effect, they largely ignore. The impressions which these artists seek to express are thus incomplete, though they often are charming.

Few of these naturalistic landscape painters of France were influenced by traditional art practice any more than Constable was. They were for the most part independent students of nature, with little artistic choice of subject. Any bit of open country supplied all that they required for motive. Take, for instance, the picture by Daubigny entitled Écluse dans la Vallée d'Oplevoz, figured in Mrs. Stranahan’s History of French Painting. There is not a fine form nor a graceful line in either the broken ground or the vegetation of which it is composed. It is a commonplace scene, with no noteworthy pictorial interest, and it is rendered, apparently, with literal exactness as regards the more obvious characteristics of such a scene. It is not, indeed, devoid of all elements of pleasing composition ; the arches and parallel lines of the masonry are agreeably carried out by the cattle ranged beneath them, and the rigidity of the leading features is offset by the not ungraceful figure of the peasant woman who drives the cows. Such pleasant relationships and contrasts are not uncommon in the works of the French landscape painters; but the composition in these works rarely goes beyond what almost every ordinary subject exhibits, a total disregard of which would bespeak an entire lack of appreciation of the most elementary principles of design. The French artists are by nature highly gifted with faculties of design, but few of them now appear to cultivate these faculties. The reaction from authoritative and conventional design seems to have carried this naturalist school to the extreme of ignoring design altogether. The idyllic grace of composition sometimes suggested by Corot is quite uncommon. What composition contemporary French painters do occasionally show is rather, as in the case of Daubigny, inherent in the subject than derived from the exercise of the higher artistic powers. In short, these painters do not appear to recognize the fact that the true function of a landscape painter is not so much to portray, in whatever manner, any given natural scene or effect as to express some imaginative and creative power of his own which the visual elements of nature excite into activity. They limit themselves, for the most part, to unselecting though generally forceful portrayal of things as they are. But within their range the stronger men of the school have produced work of great excellence. They have taught the modern artistic world to appreciate the values of tone and mass; and by the single pursuit of these qualities they have made their art superior to other modern art as regards unit and breadth. If they have not yet attained the highest expression of landscape effect, it is in great measure because they have not yet recognized the limitations of the artist’s means which make the full rendering of the chiaroscuro of nature impossible. Frenchmen talk about values without appearing to understand that the values of nature can be given in painting to only a very limited extent; and that the strong chiaroscuro of which they are so fond is incompatible with the finer gradations of light and color that characterize the best painting. Contemporary French chiaroscuro is apt to be theatrical in character. It is strikingly effective, but it is rarely subtle and suggestive. In enthusiastic pursuit of one or two excellences, Frenchmen have turned their backs on others equally important. When a man of well-rounded genius shall arise among the landscape painters of France, we may expect to see a form of art that will far surpass anything that the school has yet accomplished.

Some of the most vigorous and excellent productions of the French school are those oi the artists who combine figures and animals with landscape subject. No more healthy naturalism has yet appeared than that which the animal painting of Mademoiselle Rosa Bonheur exhibits. It is naturalism pure and simple, not of a high order, but true in feeling. Her work is no merely sketchy rendering of general effect; it is as complete and expressive in drawing as it is conceivable that such work should be. In those wonderful oxen of the picture called Labourage Nivernais, in the Luxembourg, every trait peculiar to these creatures is made with supreme mastery. But her treatment of the landscape is less admirable. She regards it as background simply, and shows little appreciation of its own character and beauty beyond what is necessary for her limited purpose. She is acutely discerning, however, with regard to everything that is essential to the completeness of her main subject, and remarkably faithful in the rendering of important details. The freshly ploughed ground in this picture, for instance, is worthy of attentive study.

Troyon has a stronger artistic sense and more appreciation of the landscape itself. He has less interest in the animals as such, and more sensitiveness to their beauty in relation to their surroundings. Troyon is a good composer, and he is an aide master of chiaroscuro as it is understood in the modern French school.

Of the artists who represent the department of genre M. Houssaye says :¹ “ Les peintres de genre sont en grand nombre et montrent une habileté extrême; c’est à peu près tout ce qu’il y a à dire d'eux.” This remark is just: with few exceptions nothing is more striking in the works of the French painters of genre, from those of Decamps to those of Meissonier and Gérôme, than the uniform exhibition of cleverness, and the general absence of anything more. The most noteworthy exceptions are the works of Édouard Frère and Jean Francois Millet. The pure sentiment of these artists does honor to the modern school, and in faithfully illustrating, from respectively different yet kindred points of view, the common life of the French peasantry they have done a real service, and enlarged the domain of realistic design. The field opened by these men is by no means exhausted, though both were diligent and prolific workers. The more graceful aspects of the life that is associated with the cottages and cornfields of France have many charms that still await noble artistic interpretation. The technical shortcomings of Millet’s art leave much to be desired in nearly all that he has done ; but the most accomplished technique will, of course, he insufficient in such absence of deeper motive as is felt in the majority of the works of painters who concern themselves with rustic life. The showy art of Jules Breton is wholly inadequate.

Another vigorous department of contemporary art in France is that of portraiture. But in this department, as in others, high achievement is largely defeated by the prevailing French love for the emphatic, and even the violent, in pictorial treatment. No quality of painting, especially of portrait painting, is more essential to high merit than a pervading quietness of execution. Emphasis and animation have their place and value, to be sure,—the best painting is never wanting in these qualities ; but nothing is more noticeable in the works of the greatest artists than the quietness of manner by which they accomplish their ends. In the most admired French portrait art of the present time an excess of what is called chic is apt to vulgarize the general effect, and to debar the works of men of really strong executive powers from the highest category. Portrait art of the dignity and beauty of that of Velasquez and Vandyck, or of Gainsborough and Reynolds, has not yet been produced in France. Whether the imaginative power requisite for such art now exists among contemporary French painters may be a question, but there can hardly be any regarding their natural executive capacity. It needs only a more refined training. Could they but enough appreciate refinement, and free themselves from ungraceful and theatrical modes of conception which go along with this predilection for chic, such men as Bonnat, Carolus Duran, and Paul Dubois might achieve much higher results than they have as yet.

The few representatives of the academic school who still exist — deriving a considerable prestige from the Ecole des Beaux Arts, whose main teaching continues to be conducted on the longestablished academic lines — produce little that is noteworthy, and exert a constantly diminishing influence. Such art does not result from true inspiration. It is little more than a display of academic conventionalities and artificial elegances, and it cannot fail to become obsolete so soon as the government support is withdrawn.

At the present time the more exemplary phases of French art seem not to be in the ascendant. Imagination is inactive, and the study of nature is not proceeding on elevated lines, while realism has become morbid and vulgar. What M. Houssaye justly calls the “ odieuses tendances contemporaines ” ² are strongly marked in the majority of canvases that annually crowd the walls of the Salons, and they are swiftly impelling the school along a precipitous pathway of degradation. Unless the better sentiment of the French people shall soon assert itself so as to give a healthier turn to artistic activity, the condition of the school will become hopeless for many a year. For instance, on the line in one of the larger rooms of the Salon of 1886 was an enormous picture representing the carcass of a hog cut up through the middle, as we see hogs displayed in butchers’ shops, and surrounded by a group of physicians in the act of examining the flesh for trichinæ. A little farther along on the same line appeared another canvas on which was depicted, in life size, a living hog. In an adjoining room was a picture, several metres in length, portraying a disheveled maniac in a squalid apartment ; and these were not by any means the least elevating subjects of the exhibition.

Passing from this class of themes, the next most conspicuous are those which in one way or another treat the nude body. Never since the time of the later Greco-Roman art has the nude figure been so much represented as it is in the French school of to-day, and the more incapacity to appreciate and exhibit beauty the French painters show, the greater, just now, seems to be their predilection for the nude. The human form, in its normal perfection, is undoubtedly the noblest and most beautiful of objects, and artists of a high order of genius may, perhaps, even under the conditions of our modern life, study the unclothed body with profit and represent it with noble charm. But artists of no move than average powers are incompetent to render it finely, and it is presumption for such to attempt it. Of the vast numbers of nude subjects annually displayed in Paris, very few, if any, are treated in a manner to justify their existence, while of the most of them it may assuredly be said that they are not only devoid of beauty, but that they bespeak an ignoble coarseness of sentiment. Correct drawing, strong modeling, and natural color are indeed seldom wanting in works of this class. The French training is thorough in these particulars when dealing with the figure, but it is a capital and deplorable defect of this training that it seldom inculcates an appreciation of anything more than technical correctness and force. In the disciplinary work of the studio the exact reproduction of the model is the one thing enforced. A discriminating study of nature with a view to its beauty, guided by a comprehensive and appreciative familiarity with the supreme achievements of the older schools of art, examples of which are so readily accessible, is rarely manifest. The higher training of the artistic taste and feelings finds little place in the curriculum of the Parisian atelier of the day.

Of that recent phase of French art known as impressionism, it should be said that as a disciplinary movement it may have its use, but regarded as a final and sufficient form of art it is a mistake that is destined to be short-lived. Impressionism was set on foot by Corot. It was, in fact, inherent in the aims and methods of Constable. The ignoring of specific form and the suppression of details in seeking to attain an emphatic expression of the total effect of chiaroscuro and color, already spoken of, have marked the French treatment of landscape since the beginning of the naturalistic movement. But the contemporary impressionists carry the principle much further than did their forerunners, and err more shortsightedly in making an end of that which should be only a means. It is an elementary axiom that in our visual impressions of nature three principal elements are concerned, those of form, color, and light and shade. While a painter may often, for the sake of special discipline, study any one of these by itself, he is hardly justified in excluding any of them when his aim is to produce a finished picture. To set up this incomplete impressionist conception and treatment of things as a finality is arbitrary and reprehensible. A true painter seeks a balanced interpretation of all the elements of a subject which tell upon the eye. The English pre-Raphaelites lost this balance by the over-elaboration of sharply defined details. The impressionist reaction may prove a good remedy for this defect, but, being equally wide of the mark in an opposite direction, it is not itself any more satisfactory as an ultimate principle. We get the fullest and truest illustration of the fundamental principles of painting yet reached in the art of Venice only. The works of Titian, the central master of the Venetian school, will for a long time to come afford the best instruction as regards the artistic rendering of visual impressions. The Venetian masters did not, it is true, learn to deal satisfactorily with the chiaroscuro of the open landscape. The modern interest in landscape was but awakening in their day, and time was needed to teach that out-of-door light is different from that of the studio. But as yet modern students of landscape painting cannot, I believe, do better than to master the Venetian system, and apply it to the exigencies of this class of subjects.³

The foregoing summary of the course and character of the art of painting in France shows, I think, that, judged by the highest standards, and regarding the essential ends of expression, the modern school, with all its merits, has failed thus far to fulfill the promise of the earlier ages. The springs of inspiration are exhausted, because the light of the spirit no longer guides the imagination in its conceptions of forms of beauty. The brilliant technique which finds so ready applause is not altogether sound, being to a great extent an outgrowth of the prevailing motives ; and even if it were sound it would not suffice to give to the works of the school a value equal to that which the older art of the country derived from its higher purpose and expression. The qualities of the modern school are not those fundamental ones which make the art of a nation truly great.

A school should not, of course, be judged by any arbitrary standards, and in the case of this school it is not necessary even to apply those of foreign developments. Its own best achievements in times past furnish, as we see, sufficient standards. To these it may be reasonably held, unless we are to suppose that the national genius has radically changed and become incapable of rising to its former level. If this be not the case, it would seem inconceivable that the people which in the Middle Ages invented Gothic architecture should not, if it would, produce better art than that for which it is now famous. In saying that the French school is not doing itself justice, I do not mean to imply that any other existing school is superior to it. In fact, while much that is excellent, and in some cases superior to the work of the French, is accomplished in other countries, there is hardly anything elsewhere that can be called a school. Contemporary painters almost everywhere are now imitating the French. The artistic influence of Paris is practically universal. French paintings go to all parts of the world ; and the great Parisian ateliers for students are crowded with young men of all nationalities.

The question of the results of this influence is a grave one, which may, however, be safely left to the judgment of thoughtful people, when once they take it fairly into consideration. As yet such questions are not enough examined. In matters of art, as in matters of fashion, there is a great deal of thoughtless acceptance of whatever comes from Paris. This question bears not merely upon the character of contemporary artistic production, but also upon the ideas now generally inculcated; determining whether they be broad and liberal or narrow and doctrinaire. The doctrinaire element is considerable in contemporary French teaching. I once, in Paris, ventured to suggest that more study, in the Louvre, of the works of the Florentine and Venetian masters might be useful to art students in general. I was told, in reply, that the works of those masters were now considered obsolete. Young Americans go to Paris, and readily assimilate the ideas, aims, and methods in vogue; while they fail to gain any serviceable knowledge of the great works of the older art preserved there, access to which constitutes the chief advantage of going abroad. If thorough practice in drawing and painting from the living model be all that is wanted, it is a waste of time and money to cross the Atlantic. What is valuable in the Parisian discipline might just as well be had in New York or Boston. Models may be found anywhere, and it needs only the same persistent practice, under such guidance and criticism as many men in every community of art students are competent to afford, to insure results as good as may be reached abroad. But that discipline of the artistic sense which study of great masterpieces affords cannot be had in America, and is not acquired by the majority of students who go to Paris, because it is not appreciated by the contemporary painters and those who direct instruction there.

It is to be regretted that students and amateurs at home find so little help toward suitable preparation for foreign study. Of the large numbers of youths who go annually from all parts of this country to pursue courses in fine arts in Paris, the greater part have small conception of their meaning. They are without that preliminary knowledge which should give them a basis of judgment as to what may be most profitably studied in Europe. In the Parisian school they meet with few enlightening and broadening influences. Nearly everything beyond the range and routine of the uniform technical drill is ignored.

Charles H. Moore.