When we reflect that Alexander had been dead some three hundred years, it will easily be understood that his body was in that half-putrid, half-mummified condition which is apparently so attractive to the artistic world in France.
Another marked characteristic of a French exhibition is the number of nude female figures. This is notoriously very objectionable to many English visitors, but for my part I would rather see a dozen nude nymphs than a decapitated figure or a putrid corpse. Many of these figures are done by young painters as a kind of supplement to their art education; and instead of being offended at their frequency, I am always glad to see so much laudable ambition. I only wish we had a few more similar efforts in our English exhibitions. The Hanging Committee would, of course, eliminate those which were objectionable either from want of technical skill or from any other cause, and the remainder might be allowed to hang on our walls and irritate Mrs. Grundy.
A third characteristic of a French exhibition is the general excellence of what are called rustic pictures. The peasants are real peasants, and not models dressed up as such.
There is almost always in this class of subjects an honest attempt to give a truthful version of nature. There is a completeness about them that is very charming.
The pictures of flowers, fruit, fish, and every thing coming under the head of nature morte, seem to me equally good. In fact, one hardly ever sees a bad still-life picture in a French exhibition. I suppose the jury is more strict about fruit, oysters, and copper kettles than about humanity, and particularly female humanity.
Pictures of animal life are, I think, less common than in English exhibitions. Dogs especially are seldom painted. This may be partly owing to the currish aspect of French dogs. Our bloodhounds, mastiffs, newfoundlands, deerhounds, and all the aristocracy of the canine race, are hardly ever seen in France; and it must be confessed that a stumpy-tailed mongrel or a clipped poodle is not a very tempting model. The French are not a doggy nation. A well-off Parisian will often keep a couple of ugly pointers, but it is always understood that “Stop” and “Komeer” are indispensable “pour la chasse,” and not to be regarded as pets or companions.
Finally, in every modern French exhibition the influence of Fortuny is very perceptible; I believe, however, that almost all the disciples of this school are Spaniards or Italians residing in Paris, and that the French artists who devote themselves to microscopic painting have the good taste to follow the lines of Meissonier rather than those of Fortuny.
We will now examine the Belgian pictures.
Belgian art is derived entirely from France. At the International Exhibition one passed from the French to the Belgian galleries without being aware of the change of nationality. I think, however, that the branch is at present in a healthier state than the parent stem. When I compare the recent mural paintings which have been executed in Belgium with similar work done in Paris, I am struck with the vast superiority of the Belgian. Again, in landscape the Belgians are far in advance of their neighbors. Comparisons are proverbially odious, so I will not incur odium by comparing English landscape with Belgian, but I should recommend those who think that we specially excel in this branch of the art to go and look at what the Belgians are doing. The great men of the Belgian school—the men whose names are familiar to every artistic circle in Europe—are declining in power even more rapidly than their colleagues in France, but there seems to me to be more hope about the younger men. The Belgian portrait-painters are, I think, inferior to the French as a rule, but there were one or two portraits in the Belgian galleries which attracted a great deal of attention from their unaffected simplicity, and in this respect contrasted very favorably with some more showy French work. The history pictures, again, were more careful and better drawn than analogous French work. There was less striving after effect and singularity, and much better composition. They reminded me more of what French painting used to be before the school became afflicted with what may be called “sentimental radicalism” in art.
I was glad to notice that Baron Leys, the painter of the strange mediæval pictures of the Antwerp town-hall, has not left a school of mediævalists behind him. The quaint ugliness of an old Flemish picture is interesting because it is real, but in these modern works the uncouth drawing and constrained stiff attitudes of the early Flemings are assumed, and therefore offensive. No doubt there are several excellent artists living who have studied under Leys, but they have all of them abandoned the affectation of their master.