THE FISHERMAN’S DAUGHTER
to be joined in wedlock, turn, or on which—from the very position of the picture—their eyes are forced to rest. Directly over the official desk—directly over the entrance door—is the third decoration of the suite. In the frailest tone, if this word may be employed, in the most mysterious medium, he has painted a winter scene. To the left a little row of skeleton trees range in nude, chaste bareness; in the far distance is the lonely outline of a ruined tower. Close together—at the top of a long line of stone steps—are seated a man and woman. Age has claimed them; they are old. But the woman still leans upon the man. What this fresco portrays of union, of inseparableness, of devotion, is not easy to express in words. There is no hint of melancholy in this winter scene, in this study of old age which Besnard has seen fit to accentuate, which he has chosen for his principal panel, and on which the newly married couple must meditate. It is the beautiful apotheosis of wedded love daringly looking beyond youth to the serene beauty of life’s decline. The frescoes were done in 1898. They are drawn at once with freedom and precision, and are excellent examples of the best modern mural art.
The subject painted on the arch of the Amphithéatre de Chimie, La Sorbonne, is highly imaginative. Besnard has called it “La Vie renaissante de la Mort.” It consists of three large panels. In the centre panel, thrown on a bank of yellow herbage, is the body of a woman, at her breast a nursing infant. From the other breast a stream of milk flows forth, gaining in dimensions until it swells to a river of life. Around her mouth cluster a horde of butterflies, the disseminators of germs. A serpent, symbolising generation, makes his way slowly toward the woman. The right panel represents figures of Adam and Eve. Adam carries the young and lovely figure of the mother of life downward toward a river flowing past the portals of Eden. Her hand is outstretched toward the golden apples of an overhanging tree. Together the couple descend toward the river which supposedly carries on its breast the débris of plants and offscum of the earth, and loses itself in the earth again. At the left a mighty chasm charged with fire represents a crucible purifying and revivifying and reconstructing. Thus Besnard has chosen to symbolise the forces of nature—Water, Air, Earth, Fire. The principles of organic chemistry—creatures of flora, fauna and animal life under the solar influence.
SUNSET, ALGERIA