FRENCH ART.
li
impressionist school, which exerted a deep and beneficial influence
in spite of its aberrations. Bastien-Lepage applied the prin¬
ciples of impressionism to his powerful pictures of peasant-life.
Puvis de Chavannes adopted the colouring of the primitive Italians
and represented an ideal humanity in a series of solemn and broadly
conceived mural paintings (Sorbonne, Pantheon, Amiens, Rouen,
Poitiers, Lyons, Marseilles). Moreau presented mystic legends in
a style of which the delicate colouring glows like a jewel (Muse'e
Moreau, Luxembourg).
A survey of the multiform activity of the Painting op To-Day
may be obtained in the course of visits to the Hotel de Ville, the
Sorbonne, the Mairies, the Luxembourg, the annual Salons, and the
smaller exhibitions. Here we give only a few hints. The academic
school, which seeks its end mainly by a conscientious study of form,
is represented by Laurens (historical paintings), Detaille (battle-
pieces), Cormon (frescoes in the Jardin des Plantes), Bonnat, Carolus
Duran, Humbert, Benjamin Constant, and others. In the sharpest
contrast to these stand the impressionists Degas, Monet, Pissarro,
Renoir, Raffaelli, and their friends, whose aim is to reproduce a
momentary effect (Salle Caillebotte at the Luxembourg, Galerie
Durand-Ruel). Other representatives of impressionism are Roll,
Gervex, Rochegrosse, and the brilliant colourist Besnard (Ecole de
Pharmacie). Cazin, Billotte, Pointelin, Menard, and others devote
themselves to producing melancholy twilight landscapes. Jules
Breton and Lhermitte are attractive delineators of rural life. Dagnan-
Bouveret and the younger masters, Cottet, Simon, and Wery, depict
the picturesque scenes of Brittany. Symbolism has also found
numerous disciples among the younger generation.
To go into the matter of the Graphic Arts would take us too
far afield. Be it enough to chronicle that recent activity in this
sphere has been both great and successful, not only in engraving
(Gaillard, Waltner, Patricot, etc.), which reproduces the ideas of
others, but still more notably in the original arts of etching in black
and white or in colours (Bracquemond, F. Rops, Legrand, Lepere,
Legros, Tissot, Raffaelli) and lithography (Fantin-Latour, Carriere;
the posters of Cheret).
The Sculpture of the 19th cent, runs , on the whole, a course
parallel with that of painting. Here also the antique style was at
first all-powerful. Canova, who made many visits to Paris, was the
master whom all admired and imitated. Few sculptors attained
anything higher than a frosty correctness. We may name Chaudet
(d. 1810; 'Paul and Virginia', in the Louvre), Lemot (d. 1827;
Henri IV. on the Pont Neuf), Dupaty (d. 1825 ; 'Death of Biblis',
in the Louvre), the exuberantly fertile Bosio (d. 1845), and Cortot
(d. 1843; 'The Messenger of Marathon'). To the academic school
also belongs the once very popular James Pradier (1792-1852),
known for his Graces at Versailles, his works on the Arc de l'Etoile
d»
Permalink: http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/mbm74
