ART.
FRENCH PICT17RES IN THE EXHIBITION OF 1889.
[FIRST NOTICE.]
THE number of pictures in the Exhibition by French artists, to say nothing of the foreign contributions, consisting of seventeen rooms full downstairs by living painters, not to speak of a mixed collection of pictures from Versailles, the Louvre, and Luxembourg, as well as much modern work upstairs, is so vast that the visitor is doubtful where to commence, and is bewildered by numbers before he has fairly begun to collect and classify his thoughts. We can say for ourselves that we went through the whole of the rooms, both French and foreign, but much of. the work shown scarcely calls for or repays careful examination. It appears to us that whoever has had the arrangement of the French downstairs section, has so managed that in each room there should be well represented at least one artist of mark, and this necessitates going through the whole.
In the present article we propose to give some account of the French painters' work, and in a second to compare and classify the foreign schools here so amply represented. In the first room, the curious, clever, exaggerated work of M. Besnard cannot fail to arrest, if not to satisfy the spectator ; he is one of those who in striving to depart from the beaten track in search of originality, has rather lost himself in a haze of that blue mistiness so dear to Mr. Whistler, with whom he has in common a taste for lamps and pyrotechnic displays. A former winner of the "Grand Prix de Rome," he still shows through all his exaggeration the effects of academic training, and in versatility vies with Pro- fessor Herkomer. John Lewis Brown, a poorish painter of sporting subjects, is to the fore in this room. The popularity of his work here is a proof of the Anglomaniac tendencies of the French sporting public, and, as in the case of the jockeys, his English name has stood him in good stead. ' A portrait of "Gyp," the authoress of "Petit Bob" and " Autour du Divorce," walking by the sea in a most elegant toilette, by M. Aublet, is a clever picture, and exactly realises what we should imagine the graceful and amusing authoress to be from her works.
M. Bonnat, in the second room, is strongly represented by his well-known portrait of Victor Hugo, as well as by two recent portraits,—" Cardinal Lavigerie," in all the glories of full ecclesiastical vestments, and "M. Pasteur," of whom there are at least half-a-dozen portraits in the exhibition. M. Bonnat is always dignified in his treatment of his subject, but he is also apt to be heavy in his handling, and the black brush-work which he uses to emphasise the heads of his sitters, becomes rather monotonous after a time. If M. Bonnat, by preference, adopts a black and bituminous scale of colour, M. Cazin delights in grey. Grey figures, in grey, and melancholy landscapes, predominate in the third room, which M. Cazin shares with the effervescent Carolus Duran, who shines upon the horizon of Parisian society in his triple capacity of elegant, fencer, and painter. He especially affects the lady-sitter, but a small head of Pasteur by him is dignified and grave enough. Of the three celebrities in this room, we should assign the first place to M. Bouguerean. Painting is not an exact science, and it is impossible to judge pictures by a scale of points ; but a complete mastery of the anatomy of the human figure is an indispensable requisite, though, unfortunately, by no means common among the artists of the day, who, in their overwhelming eagerness for originality, are only too apt to reject accuracy of drawing and mere representation of in- tricacies of form as commonplace. M. Bouguereau draws and understands the human figure better than any painter now living ; by a lifelong course of study from models, he has attained such knowledge and skill, that it is mere child's-play to him, when planning his compositions, to produce drawings of the nude figure rivalling those of the old masters, in any position, without any model whatever. His manner of paint- ing is excessively smooth, and in that, as well as in his scheme of colour, he more forcibly recalls our own President than any one else. It is his great power of drawing alone that saves his work from a charge of insipidity to which, from the over- smooth evenness of its execution, and the unreality of its colour, it is otherwise very open. Is it necessary for the highest ideal that wax should take the place of flesh and blood We cannot think so. Could not as much beauty and as much grace be given with truer indications of the tissues and the current of life under them, and yet with no disagree- able suggestiveness? Till we are disposed to put Carlo Dolce on a level with Correggio, we must decline to accept M. Bouguereau's and Sir Frederick Leighton's versions of the ideal humanity of the healthy old world of Greece, in which the perfection of animal health and strength lay at the root of beauty. That was certainly no world of wax.
The contrast is violent betwixt art such as M. Bouguerean's and that of M. Guibert in ROOM IV., who, following the example of greater masters, has set his undoubted talent the task of rendering a great carcass of beef pictorial. We do not know whether he is quite as successful as Rembrandt in the effort. M. Benjamin Constant seems rather out of his element in an immense allegorical composition, in which French legal and scholastic authorities sit in their berettas and robes side by side with Minerva and .ZEsculapins ; we like better his well-known prisoners drinking in the desert under the charge of most truculent-looking Spahis. From Spahis the transition is easy to Detaille's interesting soldier-canvases in the same room. The French never seem tired of military subjects; and in no country, not even in Germany, where one would have fancied it would be so, do battle-pictures occupy such an important position as a branch of the arts. It is true that in the past, as well as in the present, France has pro- duced the best painters in this line. The late De Neuville had more dramatic power ; and certainly in his " Dernieres Cartonches " (to be seen upstairs) he seems to have attained the maximum of tragedy ; a picture such as that cannot fail to give the most indifferent spectator a greater idea of the horrors of war than volumes of writing. If, how- ever, De Neuville was the dramatist, Detaille is the historian. An irreproachable draughtsman, he seems to live and delight only in soldiers. The two capital pictures here of the Russian Army must prove highly interesting to English visitors. Splendid fellows, too, they must be. The Ataman Cossacks, in light-blue and silver, all mounted on chest- nuts, advancing towards the spectators against a sunset sky lighting the flat Russian country, are brilliantly executed. The rifle battalion of the Imperial Guard, in their loose green. bashliks and furred schubkas, dancing in the camp at Isacho Zelo, the Russian Aldershot, is a capital picture, and for poetry in war we have here the well-known "Rove." The nature of the sleeping figures is wonderful, and we ask ourselves whether M. Detaille has had some French line regiment photographed asleep during "lea grands naanceuvres." These are pictures to which we have no pendant in England; the circumstances that produce them may be regrettable, but they certainly prove- an agreeable variety from the everlasting young lady with black stockings, and baby in perambulator, from which we suffer in our exhibitions. On the other hand, we may congratulate ourselves on the absence in our exhibitions of work of the character of M. Gervex's "masked nude figure" and "Rolla." His "Council of the Salon" and "Operation in the Hospital" are less objectionable; but in all this clever painter's work there is a brutal Zolaesque spirit which, though strongly en evidence in France, has fortunately not yet obtained mach of a foothold, in England.
In Room XVLI. Aime Morot's vast "Cuirassiers de Reichcr- hofen " covers a wall,—surely the most wonderful piece of action ever painted; panorama-like, it is true, as is natural from the size and subject ; but the thundering movement of horses and men is seized in a manner so stirringly vivid, that one cannot help feeling that the wounded pride of the French must receive consolation from this setting forward of duty done and glory in defeat. M. Roll's great picture of "Work," the toil and moil going on in a vast stoneyard, possesses interest of a totally different kind; if M. Morot's picture is an apotheosis of the grandeur of war, this is that of industry and peace. M. Roll might find some sympathetic subjects in our city of which our own artists make little use, and where activity and industry unequalled in any other country are to be found.. M. Rochegrosse's "Death of Caesar," in Room XI., lacks the dignity of GerOme's rendering of the subject, and irre- sistibly recalls a kill with foxhounds. This painter deals with blood-and-thunder on a very large scale even for France, and his works are proportionately disagreeable, in spite of a. surprising amount of cleverness. In Room IX., M. Mourel paints some very quaint little boys, and he is evidently trying t follow up the Miss Kate Greenaway line, which has had a remarkable success over here. In one direction, at any rate, French art is following the English lead. Lefebre and Benner, in these last two rooms, are neither of them seen at their best.
Previous page
