“A Flemish canvas, if there ever was one. Picture to yourself a good old soul, retired from business, his skin as wrinkled as the parchment of his books, ill clad, ill fed, and nevertheless the happiest man in the world: he is a bibliophile, and he is in the midst of old books! You could hardly believe how vividly this noble passion is expressed in that little picture. But where in the world did M. Meissonier come across all those delightful little rarities in books? You can almost smell the adorable odour of old bindings!”
The young artist—he was at that time only twenty-five—was awarded a third-class medal. The following year he obtained a second-class medal, and his painting, The Game of Chess, won him a brilliant triumph: it was purchased by M. Paul Périer. It was a material triumph not to be despised: the picture brought two thousand francs, which at that time was considerable. The moral triumph was even bigger, because Paul Périer was an experienced collector, who acquired only such works as were worthy to take their place in an assemblage where the biggest names of the period were represented by masterpieces.
Henceforth, success after success followed regularly. Each picture that he sent to the Salon won increasing distinction: A Smoker (they are a goodly number, the smokers and the readers that came from Meissonier’s brush!); A Young Man Playing the ’Cello; The Painter in his Studio; The Guard-House; The Young Man Looking at Sketches; The Game of Piquet; The Park at Saint-Cloud. This last picture was done in collaboration; Meissonier painted only the figures, the landscape was the work of Français.
This mounting success, which so quickly turned into glory, was legitimate. The artist had by this time all his resources admirably at command, and was fully imbued with his ideal.
He had learned to give to every face that profundity, to every scene that intensity of action, that constitutes his individual bigness. The arrangement of the milieu, the scrupulous devotion to realism that we noted in the opening lines of this study, the prodigious anxiety to give to every one of his personages such play of physiognomy, such expression, glance, and gesture as would best reveal their character and help us to know them better,—all these things combine and harmonize to produce an effect of remarkable power.
PLATE VI.—THE PLAYERS AT BOWLS
(In the Casa-Riera Collection)
This curious composition represents some Spanish soldiers playing bowls outside the city wall. The painting, which is hardly larger than the accompanying reproduction, is a little masterpiece of actuality, and the people in it move in a thoroughly faithful landscape, lit by the warm sunlight of Spain.
Those among Meissonier’s contemporaries who had assured taste and artistic insight were impressed by the number of qualities revealed in such limited space. Let us listen to Théophile Gautier: