From the Salon of 1870; now in the Luxembourg. The story of the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves is here treated as a pretext for a forcible effect of light and shade, though it is also a novel and dramatic presentation of the scene.
The youngest of the group proper was Charles François Daubigny, who was born in Paris in 1817, and died there in 1878. He was the son of a well-known miniature painter, and passed his youth in the country, where he imbibed the love for simple nature which he afterwards rendered with less of fervor than Rousseau, with less poetry than either Corot or Dupré; but, in his way, with as much or more of truth. His task was easier. In the progress which landscape painting had made, there were hosts of younger painters, each adding a particle of truth, each making an advance in technical skill and daring, and Daubigny profited by it all. Corot, it is true, had never been afflicted with the preoccupation of combining the freshness of nature with the patine with which ages had embrowned the old gallery pictures; but Daubigny, looking at nature with a more literal eye than Corot, ran a gamut of color greater than he. It was Daubigny who said of Corot, in envious admiration: "He puts nothing on the canvas, and everything is there." His own more prosaic nature took delight in enregistering a greater number of facts. Floating quietly down the rivers of France in a house-boat, he diligently reproduced the sedgy banks, the low-lying distances the poplars and clumps of trees lining the shore, and reflected in the waters. He painted the "Springtime," now in the Louvre, with lush grass growing thick around the apple trees in blossom; with tender greens, soft, fleecy clouds, and the moist, humid atmosphere of France; without preoccupation of rich color, of "brown sauce," of "low tone," of the thousand and one conventions which have enfeebled the work of men stronger than he. Thus he fills a middle place between the men who made an honest effort at painting nature as they saw and felt it, but could not altogether rid themselves of their early education, and the lawless band who, with the purple banner of impressionism, now riot joyously in the fields, with brave show of gleaming color, and fearless attempt to enlist science in their ranks.
SERVANT AT THE FOUNTAIN. FROM A PAINTING BY FRANÇOIS SAINT BONVIN.
From the Salon of 1863; now in the Luxembourg galleries. A quiet scene, essentially French from the type of the woman to the "fountain" of red copper so often seen in French kitchens, it recalls the work of the old Holland masters, and proves that, in our day, and with material near at hand, one can be thoroughly modern, and yet claim kinship with the great painters of the past.
It is to these latter that the future must look, and it can do so with confidence. In all the license which runs ahead of progress there is less danger than resides in stagnation. The men of 1830, who by ungrateful youths are now derided, had their turn at derision, and extravagances were committed in their name, according to the beliefs of their time. They carried their work, however, to its full completion, and it remains the greatest achievement of this century in painting, the greatest in landscape art of all time. What the next century may bring is undoubtedly foreshadowed in the work of impressionistic tendency. It has the merit of being a new direction, one as yet hardly opened before us, but more hopeful, despite certain excesses, than it would be to see the men of our time settle down to an imitation of the works, however great, of those men of 1830. The immediate effect of their example was and can still be seen in the works of men too numerous to be enregistered here.
AN UNHAPPY FAMILY. FROM A PAINTING BY NICOLAS FRANÇOIS OCTAVE TASSAERT.
In the Luxembourg catalogue, to which museum the picture came from the Salon of 1850, is printed a long quotation from Lamennais's "Les Paroles d'un Croyant" (The Words of a Believer), an emphatic work, of great popularity about the time that the picture was painted. The women represented, having fallen into poverty, are suffering from cold and hunger, the obvious end of the tragedy being explained by these words, "Shortly after there were seen two forms, luminous like souls, which took their flight towards Heaven." The picture, like much of Tassaert's work, affords an instance of misguided and morbid talent.