1
FRENUH ART.
spheric effects of the fondly noted, though often simple motives of
one's native land. Theodore Rousseau (d. 1867) is par excellence the
great painter of trees; Jules Dupre (d. 1889) depicted nature in her
stormy moods; CharlesDaubigny (d. 1878) loved to paint the peace¬
ful banks of the Oise; Narcisse Diaz (d. 1876) revelled in rustling
forest glades threaded by glittering beams of sunlight. The greatest
poet of this group, generally known as the School op Barwson,
is Jean Baptiste Corot (d. 1875). No other painter either before
or since has regarded nature with such an intimate and genial gaze.
In his pictures the meadows rustle, the birds twitter, the bees
hum, and the sunbeams glance and play. Lovely nymphs dance in
morning dew to the music of soft-breathing flutes. Other members
of the Barbison group are Constant Troyon (d. 1865), vying with
Rosa Bonlieur (A. 1899) as the greatest of the French animal-paint¬
ers, and Jean Francois Millet (d. 1875), the vigorous painter of
peasant-life, who incarnates so powerfully the spirit of the text 'in
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread'.
Under the Second Empire a number of new tendencies made
themselves felt. The historical painters, such as Sylvestre and Lu¬
minals, tickled the jaded palates of their contemporaries with scenes
of horror like 'Nero and Locusta'. Hamon, Gerome, and the other
'Neo-Greeks' painted genre-scenes in antique costume, which al¬
lowed them to display their masterly treatment of the nude.
Cabanel (d. 1889), the more talented Baudry (d. 1886; decoration
of the Opera House) and Delaunay (d. 1891), and the still living
Henner and Lefebvre sought for fame in the most finished portrayal
of the female form divine. Contemporary military life was illustrated
by De Neuvills (d. 1885) and Regnault, the latter of whom fell in
the Franco-German war (1871). The great popular favourites were,
however, Ernest Meissonier (1813-91) and Alfred Stevens (born 1828)
of Belgium , two painters of the fine and minute who can be con¬
fidently ranked with the Dutch masters of the 17th century. The
former loved to depict the heroes of his tiny canvases in the more
brilliant costume of by-gone days; the latter gave a faithful picture
of the dress and manners of the fashionable women of his own time.
An important event for the development of art in the following
period was the appearance of Gustave Courbet (1819-77), who
revealed an extraordinary power of realism in his 'Burial of Ornans'
and other scenes of common life, as well as pre-eminent colouristic
talents in his great 'Studio', but who nevertheless did not possess
one spark of poetry.
Between 1870 and 1890 four artists are specially prominent:
Edouard Manet (1833-83), Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-84), Pierre
Puvis de Chavannes (1824-98), and Gustave Moreau (1826-98).
Manet made a skilful combination of what he learned from Velaz¬
quez and from the Japanese, and in his vigorous portraits and
sketches of Paris life became the most zealous protagonist of the
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