The French Exhibition, opening at a busy time, received scantier
no- tice at our hands than its merits would have warranted. During its continuance, several works of its original stock have been removed,— among them, Brion's fine funeral in the Vosges, and most of Frere's charming domestic interiors; and others have replaced them. Antigna's " Wizard "—reading a charm to cure the bandaged foot of an old peasant- woman, who waits the event with expectant eyes and patiently clasped hands, while the master of the house turns aside to count out the wise man's fee—is excellent for truth and picturesque character. We have already mentioned Biard's impressive subject of "a Shipwrecked Crew rescued by Laplanders." Two later arrivals are in his most irresistibly risible vein —an English family landed at Calais, or some such place, and marching fiercely through the dire onset of commissionaires ; and a French family all abroad in London streets, the air dull with the "per- petual fog," and a file of policemen passing on, in straggling but rigid phalanx, heedless of the most energetic entreaty for guidance as to the route. Another later arrival is a dog by Rosa Bonheur; wonderfully true, with its eyes raised to the face of an (unseen) master, waiting his command, and the wag of the erect curving tail. M. Breton's " Hay- stacks on Fire at Mid-day" is a remarkable example of the generic French style ; every action and detail probable and well put, yet the whole somewhat deficient in animation. The peasants seem to take it cool with the casualty. Besides Mademoiselle Bonheur and her sister Juliette, two other ladies show how justly the fair half of humankind may begin to claim their own place in art : the " Girls Reading" to a priest in school, by Mademoiselle Henrietta Brown, rivals the best paint- ers of the same class of truth for pleasant closeness and naïveté of ob- servation; and Madame O'Connell's " Rachel in the Part of Diana" is a powerful rendering of the tragedian. Lambinet's landscapes are full of fine things ; the large one named "Before the Rain" especially ex- pressive of its subject, and marked by an excellent simplicity. Ziem has some powerful Venetian bits; and in the landscape of M. Daubigny, " Banks of the Ru at Orgivaux," painted in 1855, we fancy that some influence of the English Prxeraphaelite pictures sent to Pans last year may possibly be traceable. In animals, Troyon distinguishes himself by his wonted grand truth and knowledge of horned cattle ; Philippe Rous- seau by some free-and-easy rabbits; and Palizzi by picture after picture full of goata—animals which he knows thoroughly, and renders with the facility and precision of unmistakeable gusto. Ary Scheffer's "Three Maries " leaving the sepulchre after the angel has announced the resur- rection of Christ, is one of those works, chastely subdued and elaborated in feeling, wherein his enthusiasts perceive more intensity and less of the " ars Toe non Mat artem" than we profess to do.
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