The Present State of the Fine Arts in France. By
P. G. Hamerton. (Seeley and Co.)—It would not be easy to find a writer equally The Present State of the Fine Arts in France. By P. G. Hamerton. (Seeley and Co.)—It would not be easy to find a writer equally
well qualified to write on this subject with Mr. Hamerton. An artist himself of no mean powers, a critic with much insight and well-balanced judgment, he has also had all the opportunities that are afforded by a long-continued residence in France,—a very different matter from the brief visits that can be paid to annual exhibitions. We venture to say that much is to be found in this volume which will be new even to those whose business it is to have an acquaintance with the subject. Artists whose work is very seldom, if ever, seen outside the borders of their own country, receive a careful and well-informed estimate. The change in French art of every kind has, Mr. Hamerton remarks, been very great during the last quarter of a century. From being bound by very severe restrictions, it has now gained an almost unlimited freedom ; "the invasion of realism," as our author puts it in his concluding paragraph, " has destroyed all authority whatever." In landscape-painting, for instance, artists endeavour to give the colours of Nature as they see them, not according to a convention with which we may com- pare Sir George Beaumont's once-famous dictum, that there never should be a landscape without a brown tree. It is no small help to Mr. Hamerton that he is really continuing in this work a subject which he first took up many years ago. Indeed, he tells us that his very first essay in art-criticism was an essay on the Salon of 1863. Since that time he has watched events, and he now gives us his impression with no common authority. Among the chapters we may especially note " Impressionism," " The Survival of Classical Sentiment" (in which we may find proofs, if we want them, that Mr. Hamerton can be pungent on occasion), and " The Rustic School." It is this last that is probably best known to the average Englishman of all the varieties of French art. Sculpture, architecture (which has in France an original development), and engraving are separately treated. There are twelve large plates, of which seven are etchings. "The Vault of Steel," an incident in the early days of the Revolution, after Mons. J. P. Laurens (not an etching) ; " The Pavanne," etched by P. A.
Masse, after Toudouze ; "A Monk's Fun," etched by Ben Damman, after Gamier, may be mentioned. The vignettes are more than sixty in number, and are of great and varied interest.
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