The following year, in 1870, The Alsatian Woman was exhibited at the Salon. It was a personification of his native land, Alsace, that he loved so dearly, and that he represented in this picture in the form of a vigorous peasant woman with a jovial face, who carries a basket filled with apples, symbolic of abundance and happiness. At that time, the storm had not burst over that ill-fated land; and there was nothing to cause him to foresee it; the Alsatian woman is laughing and untroubled, unaware of her terrible destiny.
What a contrast was afforded by his next work, Alsace, which the misfortunes of France inspired the ardently French and Alsatian soul of the artist to produce! What emotion emanates from the woman clad in mourning, whose features bear the traces of the grief she has suffered and of the mutilation that has taken place! Nevertheless, ravaged as it is by sorrow, her face still radiates a serene pride and an unquenchable hope: the hope of a triumphal revenge and of the return of France. Henner, alas, died without having seen the fulfilment of the miracle awaited by him with so much fervour. It is easy to imagine the success which greeted this picture at the Salon of 1871. Stirred to their inmost soul, the visitors piously took off their hats and felt a wave of the artist's patriotic fire pass through them. Gambetta desired to see the painting, was delighted with it, and promptly purchased it.
After the war, Henner continued, as previously, to pass his annual vacations at Bernwiller; he could not bring himself to dispense wholly with his native air; and yet what sadness was now entailed in returning home, and how changed and wretched he found it under the suspicious and harassing administration of the conquerors! None the less he could still revisit the companions of his childhood, his brothers and his nephews, whom he delighted to receive at all hours in the pretty little brick house that he had had built on the family property.
In 1872 he exhibited The Idyll; it proved to be the biggest success that he had yet achieved. Two nymphs are beside a fountain, as night descends; one of the two is playing on a flute, the other with one hand resting on her hip, as she leans with her other on the fountain rim, listening. Both are nude, with that warm, vibrant nudity that awakens memories of the flesh of Giorgione's women, in his Rural Concert, and both are enveloped in the waves of their tawny tresses.
This magnificent painting earned Henner a medal of honour which was bestowed upon him by acclamation. It is at present in the Museum of the Luxembourg, where it forms one of the most valued treasures.
To 1874 belong The Good Samaritan, also now in the Luxembourg, and The Magdalen in the Desert, which belongs to the museum of Toulouse. These two pictures, following such a long succession of successful canvases, earned Henner the Legion of Honour. The modest artist was profoundly touched by this distinction, which nevertheless he so well merited.
PLATE VII.--A NAIAD
(Luxembourg Museum)
This is one of the most beautiful of Henner's paintings. What grace there is in the outstretched body, what suppleness and vigour in those long and slender limbs, how much beauty in the face, and what a voluptuous abandonment throughout that white and amber body in its entirety! The luminous and profound landscape give an admirable impression of a warm and peaceful twilight.
