My Fine Art Story Book: Volume Five

My Fine Art Story Book

Volume Five

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Stories of Artists and Fine Art Pieces for the Young Reader Compiled by Marlene Peterson

Libraries of Hope

My Fine Art Story Book Volume Five

Copyright © 2022 by Libraries of Hope, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher. International rights and foreign translations available only through permission of the publisher.

Book Design and Layout: Krystal D’Abarno

Cover Image: The Gleaners, by Jean-Francois Millet (1857). In public domain, source Wikimedia Commons.

Lester, Katherine Morris. (1927). Great Pictures and Their Stories, Volumes 1-8. New York: Mentzer Bush & Co.

Carpenter, Flora L. (1918). Stories Pictures Tell, Volumes 1-8. Chicago: Rand McNally.

Bacon, Dolores. (1913). Pictures That Every Child Should Know. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company.

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Tobias and the An gel Lorrain

Claude Lorrain

1600-1682, France

Of all the contrasts between the early and later lives of great artists, Claude Lorrain gives us the most complete.

He was born to make pastry. His family may have been all pastry cooks, because people of Lorrain were famous for that work; anyway as a little chap he was apprenticed to one. His parents were poor, lived in the Duchy of Lorrain and from that political division the artist was named.

The town in which he was born was Chamagne, and his real name was Gellée. As a pastry cook’s apprentice he served his time, and then, without any thought of becoming anything else in the world, he set off with several other pastry cooks to go to Rome, where their talents were to be well rewarded.

But how strangely things fall out! In Rome he was engaged to make tarts for Agostine Tassi, a landscape painter. His work was not simply to furnish his master with desserts, but to do general housekeeping, and it fell to his lot to clean Tassi’s paint brushes. So far as we know, this was the first introduction of Claude Lorrain to art other than culinary.

From cleaning brushes it was but a step to trying to use them upon canvas, and Tassi being a good-natured man, began to give Lorrain instruction, till the pastry cook became his master’s assistant in the studio. This led to a larger and larger life for the young Frenchman, and he copied great masters, did original things, and finally in his twenty-fifth year returned to France a full-fledged artist. He remained there two years, and then went back to Italy, where he lived till he died. The visit to France turned out fortunately because on his way back he fell in with one of the original twelve members of the French Academy, Charles Errard, who became the first director of the Academy in Rome. A warm friendship sprang up between the men, and Errard was very helpful to the young artist. Nevertheless, Lorrain did not gain much fame till about his fortieth year, when he was noticed by Cardinal Bentivoglio, and was given certain commissions by him. He grew in Bentivoglio’s favour so much that the Cardinal introduced him to the pope. The Catholic Church set the fashions in art, politics, and history of all sorts at that time, so that Lorrain could not have had better luck than to become its favourite. The pope was Urban VIII., whose main business was to hold the power of the Church and make it stronger if he could, so that he was continually building fortresses and other fortifications, and he had use for artists and decorators. Lorrain’s fame outlasted the life of Urban VIII., and he became a favourite in turn with each of the three succeeding popes. All this time he was doing fine work in Italy and for Italy, besides receiving orders for pictures from France, Holland, Germany, Spain, and England, for his fame had reached throughout the world. Besides leaving many paintings behind him when he died, he left half a hundred etchings; also a more precise record of his work than most artists have left. He executed two hundred sketches in pen or pencil, washed in with brown or India ink, the high lights being brought out with touches of white. On the backs of them the artist noted the date on which the sketch was developed into a picture, and for whom the

Acis and Galatea

latter was intended. The story is that his popularity produced many imitators, and that he adopted this means to establish the identity of his own work and distinguish it from the many copies made. These sketches were collected in a volume by Lorrain and called “Liber Veritatis,” and for more than a hundred years the Dukes of Westminster have owned this.

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This picture [Acis and Galatea] in the Dresden Gallery is a scene from the mythical story of a goddess who fell in love with the youthful son of a faun and a naiad. Thus she excited the jealous fury of the cyclops, Polythemus, who is seen in the picture herding his flock of sheep upon the high cliff at the right. Soon he will rise and hurl a rock upon Acis, crushing the life out of him, so that there will be nothing left for Galatea to do but to turn him into the River Acis, but meanwhile the lovers are unconscious and happy. Venus is reposing near them on the waves and Cupid is closer still, while the sea in the background seems to be stirred with a fresh morning breeze.

The Halt During the Chase Watteau

Jean Antoine Watteau

1684-1721, France

Watteau’s father was a tiler in a Flemish town—Valenciennes. He meant that his son should be a carpenter, but that son tramped from Valenciennes to Paris with the purpose of becoming a great painter. He did more, he became a “school” of painting, all by himself.

There is no sadder story among artists than that of this lowly born genius. He was not good to look upon, being the very opposite of all that he loved, having no grace or charm in appearance. He had a drooping mouth, red and bony hands, and a narrow chest with stooping shoulders. Because of a strange sensitiveness he lived all his life apart from those he would have been happy with, for he mistrusted his own ugliness, and thought he might be a burden to others.

Such a man has painted the gayest, gladdest, most delicate and exquisite pictures imaginable.

He entered Paris as a young man, without friends, without money or connections of any kind, and after wandering forlornly, about the great city, he found employment with a dealer who made hundreds of saints for out-of-town churches.

It is said that for this first employer Watteau made dozens and dozens of pictures of St. Nicholas; and when we think of the beautiful figures he was going to make, pictures that should delight all the world,

there seems something tragic in the monotony and commonplaceness of that first work he was forced by poverty to do. Certainly St. Nicholas brought one man bread and butter, even if he forgot him at Christmas time.

After that hard apprenticeship, Watteau’s condition became slightly better. He had been employed near the Pont Notre Dame, at three francs a week, but now in the studio of a scene painter, Gillot, he did work of coarse effect, very different from that exquisite school of art which he was to bring into being. After Gillot’s came the studio of Claude Audran, the conservator of the Luxembourg, and with him Watteau did decorative work. In reality he had no master, learned from nobody, grovelled in poverty, and at first, forced a living from the meanest sources. With this in mind, it remains a wonder that he should paint as no other ever could, scenes of exquisite beauty and grace; scenes of high life, courtiers and great ladies assembled in lovely landscapes, doing elegant and charming things, dressed in unrivalled gowns and costumes. Until Watteau went to the Luxembourg he had seen absolutely nothing of refined or gracious living. He had come from country scenes, and in Paris had lived among workmen and bird-fanciers, flower sellers, hucksters and the like. This is very likely the secret of his peculiar art. Watteau would have been a wonderful artist under any circumstances, no matter what sort of pictures he had painted; but circumstances gave his imagination a turn toward the exquisite in colour and composition. Doubtless when he first looked down from the palace windows of the Luxembourg and saw gorgeous women and handsome men languishing and coquetting and revelling in a life of ease and beauty, he was transported. He must have thought himself in fairyland, and the impulse to paint, to idealise the loveliness that he saw, must have been greater in him than it would have been in one who had lived so long among such scenes that they had become familiar with them. After Watteau there were artists who tried to do the kind of work he had done, but no one ever succeeded. Watteau clothed all his shep-

Les Plaisirs du Bal

herdesses in fine silken gowns, with a plait in the back, falling from the shoulders, and to-day we have a fashion known as the “Watteau back”—gowns made with this shoulder-plait. He put filmy laces or softest silks upon his dairy maids, as upon his court ladies, dressing his figures exquisitely, and in the loveliest colours. He had suffered from poverty and from miserable sights, so when he came to paint pictures, he determined to reproduce only the loveliest objects.

At that time French fashions were very unusual, and it was quite the thing for ladies to hold a sort of reception while at their toilet. A description of one of these affairs was written by Madame de Grignon to her daughter: “Nothing can be more delightful than to assist at the toilet of Madame la Duchesse (de Bourgoyne), and to watch her arrange her hair. I was present the other day. She rose at half past twelve, put on her dressing gown, and set to work to eat a méringue. She ate the powder and greased her hair. The whole formed an excellent breakfast and charming coiffure.” Watteau has caught the spirit of this strange airy, artificial, incongruous existence. His ladies seem to be eating méringues and powdering their hair and living on a diet of the combination. One hardly knows which is toilet and which is real life in looking at his paintings.

He quarreled with Audran at the Luxembourg, and having sold his first picture, he went back to his Valenciennes home, to see his former acquaintances, no doubt being a little vain of his performance.

After that he painted another picture which sold well enough to keep him from poverty for a time, and on his return to Paris he was warmly greeted by a celebrated and influential artist, Crozat. Watteau tried for a prize, and though his picture came second it had been seen by the Academy committee.

His greatness was acknowledged, and he was immediately admitted to the Academy and granted a pension by the crown, with which he was able to go to Italy, the Mecca of all artists the world over.

From Italy he went to London, but there the fogs and unsuitable

climate made his disease much worse and he hurried back to France, where he went to live with a friend who was a picture dealer. It was then that he painted a sign for this friend, Gersaint, a sign so wonderful that it is reckoned in the history of Watteau’s paintings.

Soon he grew so sensitive over his illness, that he did not wish to remain near his dearest friends, but one of them, the Abbe Haranger, insisted upon looking after his welfare, and got lodgings for him at Nogent, where he could have country air and peace.

Watteau died very soon after going to Nogent in July, 1721, and he left nine thousand livres to his parents, and his paintings to his best friends, the Abbe, Gersaint, Monsieur Henin, and Monsieur Julienne. He is called the “first French painter” and so he was—though he was Flemish, by birth.

aThis exquisite picture [Fête Champêtre] displays nearly all the characteristics of Watteau’s painting. He was said to paint with “honey and gold,” and his method was certainly remarkable. His clear, delicate colours were put upon a canvas first daubed with oil, and he never cleaned his palette. His “oil-pot was full of dust and dirt and mixed with the washings of his brush.” One would think that only the most slovenly results could come from such habits of work, but the artist made a colour which no one could copy, and that was a sort of creamy, opalescent white. This was original with Watteau, and most beautiful.

In this “Fête Champêtre,” which is now in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, he paints an elegant group of ladies and gentlemen indulging in an open air dance of some sort. One couple are doing steps facing one another, to the music of a set of pipes, while the rest flirt and talk, decorously, round about. There is no boisterous rusticity here; all is dainty and refined.

Fête Champêtre by Watteau

Reading the Bible Greuze

Jean Baptiste Greuze

1725-1805, France

Jean Baptiste Greuze was born at Tournus, France, in 1725. When, as a small boy, he began to show decided talent for drawing, his father was very much disappointed. He wanted his boy to pursue some more profitable profession, for, as he said, it was only the few who won fame and wealth as artists; the rest starved. However, the boy persevered and finally was permitted to study with an artist friend of the family. This artist became much interested in him, and when, some months later, he moved to Paris, he persuaded the father to allow Greuze to go with him. Here the study was continued, Greuze receiving special instruction in the painting of heads. His greatest delight was in painting heads of children and of old men, and “Greuze heads” soon became famous. Then, too, he painted many pictures from the Bible, and at one time he was ambitious to become a historical painter. It was then he went to Rome to study the paintings of the famous masters there. His first painting to bring him fame was “Reading the Bible.”

Filial Piety by

Madame Lebrun and Her Daughter

Vigée-Lebrun

Madame Vigée-Lebrun

1755-1842, France

Probably we think we know just how we look and yet I wonder how many of us could tell it to an artist so plainly that he would be able to paint our portrait. Perhaps at best all we could tell him would be that his picture did not look like us, though without knowing why. But it is true that many great artists have painted their own portraits, and very good likenesses they are, too. In some ways it ought to be easy, for as they are their own models they can sit for their pictures as often and as long as they wish.

Madame Lebrun had been planning for some time perhaps to paint a portrait of herself. Then, just as she was all ready and seated in front of a long mirror, the door had opened suddenly and in had come her little daughter. With a hop and a jump she had thrown herself into her mother’s arms. Then with her arms still about her mother’s neck, she had happened to think of the mirror, and half turning there she had seen herself held close in her mother’s embrace. Madame Lebrun realized at once what a lovely picture it would make, and so she began to paint it.

How much they resemble each other! The little girl’s name was Jeanne Julie Louise Lebrun, and she must have been very lovely indeed. Her mother tells us, “She was charming in every respect. Her large blue

eyes sparkling with spirit, her slightly tip-tilted nose, her pretty mouth, magnificent teeth, a dazzling fresh complexion, all went to make up one of the sweetest faces to be seen.”

She did not care to draw and paint as her mother did, but she loved to write stories.

How proud of her lovely mother she seems to be! And indeed she ought to look proud, and happy too, for perhaps there never was a little girl more petted and loved. Imagine how proud she must have felt that her mother was such a great artist, and painted beautiful pictures which every one admired and which, with her pleasant ways, made her one of the most beloved women in France.

The light in the picture seems to come from a window at the lefthand side and to fall directly upon the faces of the mother and child. So interested are we in them we do not realize that there is no landscape background, only a suggestion of a curtain or screen against which the two faces stand out clearly. The mother is dressed in white, the daughter in a blue which matches her merry blue eyes.

To us these two can never grow sad or old, and we are glad Madame Lebrun looked in her mirror and gave us this beautiful picture.

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Madame Lebrun began to draw and paint when she was not as old as the little daughter we see in the picture. Her father was her teacher. One day when she was only seven years old she surprised him by drawing a picture of a man with a long beard, which was so good that he said, “You will be a great painter, my child, if ever there has been one.” She always remembered this, and when she was sent away to the convent to school she drew just as much and as often as she could. Her notebooks were full of drawings which were so well done they were kept in the convent to show to visitors.

After she returned home she began to paint in earnest. Her father

had many artist friends, and when they came to the house she loved to sit quietly in a corner and listen to their talk about great pictures and artists. It was not very long before she was painting pictures which brought her great praise and honor. About this time her father died, and later on her mother married again. The stepfather was a rich man, be he was very stingy, and insisted upon her giving him all the money she earned. By this time her fame had spread over the country, and people came from far and near to have her paint their portraits.

She married a man who was a picture dealer and who, although she had not known it, was a reckless gambler. She was obliged to give him most of the money she earned to pay his debts. After a time she left him, taking her lovely little daughter with her. She had a studio of her own where she could work, and entertain her friends, and there she lived and worked happily with her little daughter.

One evening Madame Lebrun went to the theater and when the curtain went up, there on a large easel on the stage was one of her paintings. When the people saw it they all stood up and waved and cheered while they looked toward the artist, who was seated in a box. Madame Lebrun was so surprised she almost forgot to smile and bow to them.

The king and queen sent for her to come and paint their portraits. Day after day the royal carriage would come to take her to the palace to paint the queen, Marie Antoinette, and her children. Those were happy days for her.

A very short time after this picture was painted the dreadful French Revolution broke out. The poor people of France, who had been treated very badly by the rich, rebelled and tried to kill or drive away all the rich people. Madame Lebrun had always been friends with the rich people, so it was not safe for her to stay in Paris, either.

One evening she dressed her little daughter in a ragged dress and bonnet to make her look like a poor peasant child. She herself wore an old dress, with a handkerchief over her head to hide her face like a veil.

They slipped quietly out of the house and into an omnibus that was waiting for them and drove as quickly as possible through the crowded streets, out of the city. No one recognized them, and they went to Italy, where they traveled about the country for many years. Mother and daughter were very popular and were entertained royally wherever they went. But Madame Lebrun never laid aside her painting. Even when she was eighty years old she painted a beautiful portrait of her little niece, who must have reminded her of the little daughter in this picture.

ille d ’Avray Corot

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

1796-1875, France

About three hundred years before Corot’s time there was a Fontainebleau school of artists, made up of the pathetic Andrea del Sarto, the wonderful Leonardo da Vinci, and Cellini. These painters had been summoned from their Italian homes by Francis I., to decorate the Palace of Fontainebleau. The second great group of painters who had studios in the forest and beside the stream were Rousseau, Dupre, Diaz, and Daubigny; Troyon, Van Marcke, Jacque; then Millet, the painter of peasants.

Corot was born in Paris and received what education the ordinary school at Rouen could give him. He was intended by his parents for something besides art, as it would seem that every artist in the world was intended. Corot was to grow up and become a respectable draper; at any rate a draper.

The young chap did as his father wished, until he was twenty-six years old, and dreary years those must have been to him. He did not get on well with his master, nor did the world treat him very well. He found neither riches nor the fame that was his due till he was an old man of seventy. At that age he had become as rich a man as he might have been had he remained a sensible draper. Best of all, Corot loved to paint clouds and dewy nights, pale

moons and early day, and of all amusements in the world, he preferred the theatre. There he would sit; gay or sad as the play might make him, weeping or laughing and as interested as a little child.

After he had anything to give away, Corot was the most madly generous of men. It was he who gave a pension to the widow of his brother artist, Millet, on which she lived all the rest of her days. He gave money to his brother painters and to all who went to him for aid; and he always gave gaily, freely, as if giving were the greatest joy, outside of the theatre, a man could have. Everyone who knew him loved him, and there was no note of sadness in his daily life, though there seems to be one in his poetical pictures. Because of his generous ways he was known as “Père Corot.’’ He sang as he worked, and loved his fellowmen all the time; but most of all, he loved his sister. “Rousseau is an eagle,” he used to say in speaking of his fellow artist. “As for me, I am only a lark, putting forth some little songs in my gray clouds.”

It has been noted that most great landscape painters have been city-bred, a remarkable fact. Constable and Gainsborough were born and bred in the country, but they are exceptions to the rule. Corot’s parents were Parisians of the purest dye, having been courtdressmakers to Napoleon I.; and when Corot finally determined to leave the draper’s shop and become a painter, his father said: “You shall have a yearly allowance of 1,200 francs, and if you can live on that, you can do as you please.” When his son was made a member of the Legion of Honour, after twenty-three years of earnest work, his father thought the matter over, and presently doubled the allowance, “for Camille seems to have some talent after all,” he remarked as an excuse for his generosity.

It is told that when he first went to study in Italy, Corot longed to transfer the moving scenes before him to canvas; but people moved too quickly for him, so he methodically set about learning how to do with a few strokes what he would otherwise have laboured over. So he reduced his sketching to such a science that he became able to sketch

Recollection of Mortefontaine

a ballet in full movement; and it is remarked that this practice trained him for presenting the tremulousness of leaves of trees, which he did so exquisitely.

One learns something of this painter of early dawn and soft evening from a letter he wrote to his friend Dupré:

One gets up at three in the morning, before the sun; one goes and sits at the foot of a tree; one watches and waits. One sees nothing much at first. Nature resembles a whitish canvas on which are sketched scarcely the profiles of some masses; everything is perfumed, and shines in the fresh breath of dawn. Bing! the sun grows bright but has not yet torn aside the veil behind which lie concealed the meadows, the dale, and hills of the horizon. The vapours of night still creep, like silvery flakes over the numbed-green vegetation. Bing! bing!—a first ray of sunlight—a second ray of sunlight—the little flowers seem to wake up joyously. They all have their drop of dew which trembles—the chilly leaves are stirred with the breath of morning—in the foliage the birds sing unseen—all the flowers seem to be saying their prayers. Loves on butterfly wings frolic over the meadows and make the tall plants wave—one sees nothing—yet everything is there—the landscape is entirely behind the veil of mist, which mounts, mounts, sucked up by the sun; and as it rises, reveals the river, plated with silver, the meadow, the trees, cottages, the receding distance—one distinguishes at last everything that one had divined at first.

In all the world there can hardly be a more exquisite story of daybreak than this; and so beautiful was the mood into which Corot fell at eventime, as he himself describes it, that it would be a mistake to leave it out. This is his story of the night:

Nature drowses—the fresh air, however, sighs among the leaves

—the dew decks the velvety grass with pearls. The nymphs fly—hide themselves—and desire to be seen. Bing! a star in the sky which pricks its image on the pool. Charming star— whose brilliance is increased by the quivering of the water, thou watchest me—thou smilest to me with half-closed eye! Bing!—a second star appears in the water, a second eye opens. Be the harbingers of welcome, fresh and charming stars. Bing! Bing! Bing!—three, six, twenty stars. All the stars in the sky are keeping tryst in this happy pool. Everything darkens, the pool alone sparkles. There is a swarm of stars—all yields to illusion. The sun being gone to bed, the inner sun of the soul, the sun of art awakens. Bon! there is my picture done!

In writing those letters, Corot made literature as well as pictures. That little word “bing!” appears also in his paintings, as little leaves or bits of tree-trunk, some small detail which, high-lightened, accents the whole.

oThere could hardly be a more charming painting than this which hangs in the Louvre [Dance of the Nymphs]. It is of a half-shut-in landscape of tall trees, their branches mingling; and all the atmospheric effects that belong to Corot’s work can here be seen.

On the open greensward is a group of nymphs dancing gaily, while over all the scene is the veil of fairy-land or of something quite mysterious. At the back and side, satyrs can be seen watching the nymphs. There is here less of the blur of leaves than that seen in later pictures, but the same soft effect is found, and the little “bings” are the accents of light placed upon a leaf, a nymph’s shoulder, or a tree-trunk. This picture was painted in 1851, when Corot had not yet developed that style which was to mark all his later work.

Dance of the Nymphs

Going to Market Troyon

Constant Troyon

1810-1865, France

Early misty morning finds many French farmers on their way to market. It is a long, long road from the farm to the market, and the patient cows and sheep never hurry.

The two women of our picture [Going to Market] have risen early. With their sheep, cows, and vegetables they have started on the long road to town.

The morning still slumbers. All is quiet and still. Only the muffled patter of little feet, and the occasional bark of a playful dog is heard. The drowsy trees are bathed in the misty atmosphere of dawn. The early morning light sends a soft glow down the long road. It lights up the backs of the woolly sheep. It lights up the backs of the cows. It lays long shadows on the narrow country road.

See the gray hazy sky of early morning! See the misty edges of the trees! See the long shadows! By and by, as the sun rises, the shadows will become shorter and shorter. The trees will awaken. The sky will be aglow with the light of day.

In the midst of the group comes the patient little donkey, laden with baskets of produce. Such a little fellow! Such a big load! And there on his back sits the little farmer woman. She will have a long ride to market! The older woman follows, keeping a watchful eye on the flock.

See the figures of the two women!

See the silhouettes they make against the morning sky. The “far” woman is gray in the distance. The “near” woman is in dark red color. The artist thinks this is the most important part of his picture!

See the curved branch of the tree at the left. It curves like the peasant woman’s back. It curves down to the light woolly backs of the sheep.

On the other side are the cows, the light shines here also. It shines brightest on the big basket. Here the artist has placed the light basket next the dark red color of the peasant woman’s dress. This makes a sharp contrast. A sharp contrast helps to make the most important part of a picture. So in our picture, the little peasant woman sitting on the donkey is the “center of interest.” The light all about her makes the edges of her dark figure very clear against the early morning sky. Thus, you see, the artist thought very carefully about the pattern of “dark” and “light” in his picture.

Have you noticed that the artist has only drawn two or three sheep?

Of course you know there are many more!

Look closely. You will find that you really do not see the sheep. You see only the light play over their rounded woolly backs.

See the soft hazy coloring of red and green! Each hue is repeated again and again in many different tones. The dark rich red of the peasant woman is repeated in the cows, the light color of the little roof, and the still lighter glow in the road. The green changing into grays is repeated in grass, house, and distant trees.

It is by repeating his color again and again over his picture that the artist makes his color-pattern. An artist always gives much thought to placing his colors in the color-pattern.

Although this artist is first of all an animal painter, he liked to paint the early morning just as it appeared, with its mysterious light and shadow, and the forms of his beloved cattle, silhouetted against it.

The Sheepfold Jacque

Charles Émile Jacque

1813-1864, France

This painter has a long French name. Do you think you can pronounce it, Charles Émile Jacque?

Charles Émile Jacque was a painter of sheep, pigs, and poultry. He raised sheep, pigs, and poultry on his little farm in France. He lived on this little farm so he could always be near them. Here he studied them as much as he liked.

He lived near another great French painter. This was Millet. Both artists painted peasants. Jacque, however, became famous for his paintings of sheep, pigs, and poultry, while Millet was called “the painter of peasants.”

He and Millet were very good friends. They often spent the long evenings together, talking about their pictures and their many ideas in art.

Jacque was not only a painter, but he was a successful business man as well. Everything he touched turned to gold! He was a man of great energy and force, and every business venture was a success.

At one time he bought many pictures of other artists, kept them for a time, and then sold them at a handsome profit. This business he carried on for years.

He bought houses and lands. He painted pictures, and occasion-

ally wrote a book. He once wrote a book on the history of the hen, and illustrated it with his own drawings. His special hobby, however, was his sheep, pigs, and poultry. His picturing of these barnyard animals was remarkable. The paintings for which he has become famous are largely of sheep, going to pasture, grazing, returning at even, or secure in the sheepfold.

Though his pictures are small, they are always painted in a big, bold way. Fortunately the artist lived to see his work appreciated. He received many, many medals and honors during the latter part of his life.

His mind was a great storehouse of art knowledge, and of the interesting experiences of a lifetime. In later years after he had grown to be an old man, he entertained his friends with stories of his life. He used to laugh about his many experiences in business. He talked about his pictures. He talked about his farmyard animals, his sheep, pigs, and poultry. But he liked best of all to tell about his many interesting visits with his great and good friend, Millet. c

Barn Yard by Jacque

The Angelus Millet

Jean-François Millet

1814-1875, France

Two great artists painted peasants and little else. One was the artist of whom we shall speak, and the other was Jules Breton. One was realistic, the other idealistic. Both did wonderful work, but Millet painted the peasant, worn, patient steadfast, overwhelmed with toil; Breton, a peasant full of energy, grace, vitality, and joy.

Millet painted peasants as he knew them, and hardly any one could have known them better, for he was himself peasant-born. His youth was hard, and the scenes of his childhood were such as in after life he became famous by painting. Millet lived in the department of Manche, in the village of Gruchy, near Cherbourg. Manche juts into the sea, at the English Channel, and whichever way Millet looked he must have seen the sea. His old grandmother looked after the household affairs, while his father and mother worked in the fields and Millet must have seen them hundreds of times, standing at evening, with bowed heads, listening to the Angelus bell. He toiled, too, as did other lads in his position. His grandmother was a religious old woman, and nearly all the pictures he ever saw in his boyhood were those in the Bible, which he copied again and again, drawing them upon the stone walls in white chalk.

The old grandmother watched him, never doubting that her boy

would become an artist. It was she who had named him—François, after her favourite saint, Francis, and it was she, who, beside the evening fire, would tell him legends of St. Francis. It was she alone who had time and strength left, after the day’s work, to teach him the little he learned as a boy and to fix in his mind pictures of home. His father and mother were worn, like pack-horses, after their day in the fields. The mother very likely had to hitch herself up with the donkey, or the big dog, after the fashion of these people, as she helped draw loads about the field. Who can look for Breton’s ideal stage peasants from Millet who knew the truth as he saw it every day?

Many years after his life in the Gruchy home, Millet painted the portrait of the grandmother whom he had loved so much that he cried out: “I wish to paint her soul!” No one could desire a better reward than such a tribute.

Millet had an uncle who was a priest and he did what he could to give the boy a start in learning. He taught him to read Virgil and the Latin Testament; and all his life those two books were Millet’s favourites. Besides drawing pictures on the walls of his home, he drew them on his sabots. Pity some one did not preserve those old wooden shoes! He did his share of the farm work, doing his drawing on rainy days. When he was about eighteen years old, coming from mass one day, he was impressed with the figure of an old man going along the road, and taking some charcoal from his pocket he drew the picture of him on a stone wall. The villagers passing, at once knew the likeness; they were pleased and told Millet so. Old Millet, the father, also was delighted for he, too, had wished to be an artist, but fate had been against him. Seeing the wonderful things his son could do, he decided that he should become what he himself had wished to be, and that he should go to Cherbourg to study.

François set off with his father, carrying a lot of sketches to show, and upon telling the master in Cherbourg what he wanted and showing the sketches, he was encouraged to stay and begin study in earnest. So

back the old father went, with the news to the mother and grandmother and the priest uncle, that François had begun his career. He stayed in Cherbourg studying till his father died, when he thought it right to go home and do the work his father had always done. He returned, but the women-folk would not agree to his staying. “You go back at once,” said the grandmother, “and stick to your art. We shall manage the farm.”

She sewed up in his belt all the money she had saved, and started him off again, for he had then been studying only two months. Now he remained till he was twenty-three, a fine, strapping, broad- shouldered country fellow. He had long fair hair and piercing dark blue eyes. All the time he was with Delaroche he was dissatisfied with his work—and with his master’s, which seemed to Millet artificial, untrue. He knew nothing of the classical figures the master painted and wished him to paint, for his heart and mind were back in Gruchy among the scenes that bore a meaning for him. He wished to study elsewhere, and by this time he had done so well that one of the artists with whom he had studied went to the mayor of Millet’s home town, and begged him to furnish through the town-council money enough to send Millet to Paris. This was done, and Millet began to hope.

He was very shy and afraid of seeming awkward and out of place. The night he got to Paris was snowy, full of confusion and strange things to him, and an awful loneliness overwhelmed him. The next morning he set out to find the Louvre, but would not ask his way for fear of seeming absurd to some one, so that he rambled about alone, looking for the great gallery till he found it unaided. He spent most of the days that followed gazing in ecstasy at the pictures.

He liked Angelo, Titian, and Rubens best. He had come to Paris to enter a studio, but he put off his entrance from day to day, for his shyness was painful and he feared above all things to be laughed at by city students. At last one day, he got up enough courage to apply to Delaroche, whose studio he had decided to enter if he could, as he liked his work best. The students in that studio were full of curiosity about the

new chap, with his peasant air, his bushy hair and great frame, so sturdy and awkward. They at once nicknamed him “the man of the woods,” and they nagged at him and laughed at the idea that he could learn to paint, till one day, exasperated nearly to death, he shook his fist at them. From that moment he heard no more from them, for they were certain that if he could not paint he could use his fists a good deal better than any of them. Delaroche liked the peasant but did not understand him very well, and Millet was not too fond of his painting, so after two years he and a friend withdrew from that studio and set up one for themselves. Thus eight years passed, the friends living from hand to mouth, doing all sorts of things: sign-painting, advertisements, and the like; and Millet, in the midst of his poverty, got married. He went home, returning to Paris with his wife, and after starving regularly, he became desperate enough to paint a single picture as he wished. It seemed at the time the maddest kind of thing to do. Who would see ugly, toil-worn peasants upon his salon walls? Paris wanted dainty, aesthetic art, and an Academy artist would have scoffed at the idea; but the Millets were starving anyway, so why not starve doing at least what one chose. So Millet painted his first wonderful peasant picture “The Winnower,” and just as the family were starving he sold it—for $100. He had done at last the right thing, in doing as he pleased. This was a sign to him that there was after all a place for truth and emotion in art. But the Millets must change their place of living, and go to some place where the money made would not at once be eaten up. Jacque—the friend with whom Millet had set up shop, and who also became famous, later—advised them to go to a little place he knew about, which had a name ending in “zon.” It was near the forest of Fontainebleau, he said and they could live there very cheaply, and it was quiet and decent. The Millets got into a rumbling old cart and started in search of the place which ended in “zon” near the forest of Fontainebleau. Jacque had also decided to take his family there and they all went together. When they got to Fontainebleau they got down

from the car and went a-foot through the forest.

They arrived tired and hungry toward evening, and went to Ganne’s Inn, where there were Rousseau, Diaz, and other artists who like themselves had come in search of a nice, clean, picturesque place in which to starve, if they had to. Those who were just sitting down to supper welcomed the newcomers, for they had been there long enough to form a colony and fraternity ways. One of these was to take a certain great pipe from the wall, and ask the newcomer to smoke; and according to the way he blew his “rings” he was pronounced a “colourist’’ or “classicist.” The two friends blew the smoke, and at once the other artists were able to place Jacque. He was a colourist; but what were they to say about Millet who blew rings after his own fashion. “Oh, well!” he cried. “Don’t trouble about it. Just put me down in a class of my own!” “A good answer!” Diaz answered. “And he looks strong and big enough to hold his own in it!” Thus the newcomers took their places in the life of Barbizon—the place whose name ended in “zon,” and Millet’s real work began. His first wife lived only two years, but he married again. All this time he was following his conscience in the matter of his work, and selling almost nothing. In a letter to a friend he tells how dreadfully poor they are, although his new wife was the most devoted helpful woman imaginable, known far and near as “Mère Millet.” The artist wrote to Sensier, his friend, who aided him: “I have received the hundred francs. They came just at the right time. Neither my wife nor I had tasted food in twenty-four hours. It is a blessing that the little ones, at any rate, have not been in want.”

The revolution of 1848 had come before Millet went to Barbizon, and he like other men had to go to war. Then the cholera appeared, and these things interrupted his work; and after such troubles people did not begin buying pictures at once. Rousseau was famous now, but Millet lived by the hardest toil until one day he sold the “Woodcutter” to Rousseau himself, for four hundred francs. Rousseau had been very poor, and it grieved him to see the trials and want of his friend, so he

pretended that he was buying the picture for an American. That picture was later sold at the Hartmann sale for 133,000 francs. Millet was now forty years old, and had not yet been recognised as a wonderful man by any but his brother artists. He was truly “in a class of his own.” He had learned to love Barbizon, and cried: “Better a thatched cottage here than a palace in Paris!” and we have the picture in our minds of Millet followed patiently and lovingly by “Mère Millet” in the peasant dress which she always wore, that she might be ready at a moment’s notice to pose for his figures. Then there were his little children and his sunny, simple, fraternal surroundings, which make his life the most picturesque of all artists.

His paintings had the simplest stories with seldom more than two or three figures in them. It was said that he needed only a field and a peasant to make a great picture. When he painted the “Man With a Hoe,” he did it so truthfully, in a way to make the story so well understood by all who looked upon it, that he was called a socialist. No one was so much surprised as Millet by that name. “I never dreamed of being a leader in any cause,” he said. “I am a peasant—only a peasant.’’

At forty he was in about the same condition as he had been on that evening ten or twelve years before, when he had entered Barbizon carrying his two little daughters upon his shoulders, his wife following with the servant and a basket of food, to settle themselves down to hardship made sweet by kind comradeship and hope. Now a change came. Millet painted “The Angelus.” He was dreadfully poor at that time and sold the picture cheaply, but it laid the foundation of his fame and fortune. He had worked upon the canvas till he said he could hear the sound of the bell. Although its first purchaser paid very little for it, it has since been sold for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

At last, having struggled through his worst days, without recognition, and with nine little children to feed and clothe, he was given the white cross of the Legion of Honour; and as if to make up for the days of his starvation, he was nearly feasted to death in Paris. He was placed

upon the hanging committee of the Salon, and took a dignified place among artists. He and Mère Millet travelled a little, but always he returned to Barbizon, till the war came and he had to move to Normandy to work. Afterward he returned to Barbizon, to the scenes and the old friends he loved so well, and there he died. He had come back ill and tired with the long struggle, and he instructed his friends to give him a simple funeral. This was done. They carried his coffin, while his wife and children walked beside him to the cemetery, and he was buried near the little church of Chailly, whose spire is seen in “The Angelus,” and where Rousseau, whom he loved, had already been laid. There in Barbizon, to-day, may be seen Rousseau’s cottage and Millet’s studio. “The peasants sow and reap and glean as in the days of Millet; Troyon’s oxen and sheep are still standing in the meadow; Jacque’s poultry are feeding in the barnyard. The leaves on Rousseau’s grand old trees are trembling in the forest; Corot’s misty morning is as fresh and soft as ever; while Diaz’s ruddy sunsets still penetrate the branches; and the peasant pauses daily as the Angelus from the Chailly church calls him to silent prayer.”

Petit Poste de Grand’Garde

Ernest Meissonier

1815-1891, France

This artist was born at Lyons. His father was a salesman and an art-training seemed impossible for the young man because the Meissoniers were poor people. Nevertheless, he was so persevering that while still a young man he got to Paris and began to paint in the Louvre. He was but nineteen at that time, and his fate seemed so hard and bitter that later in life he refused to talk of those days.

He sat for many days in the Louvre, by Daubigny’s side, painting pictures for which we are told he received a dollar a yard. We can think of nothing more discouraging to a genius than having to paint by the yard. It is said that his poverty permitted him to sleep only every other night, because he must work unceasingly, and someone declares that he lived at one time on ten cents a week. This is a frightful picture of poverty and distress.

Meissonier’s first paying enterprise was the painting of bon-bon boxes and the decorating of fans, and he tried to sell illustrations for children’s stories, but for these he found no market. A brilliant compiler of Meissonier’s life has written that “his first illustrations in some unknown journal were scenes from the life of ‘The Old Bachelor.’ In the first picture he is represented making his toilet before the mirror, his wig spread out on the table; in the second, dining with two friends; in

the third, on his death-bed, surrounded by greedy relations and in the fifth, the servants ransacking the death chamber for the property.’’ This was very likely a vision of his own possible fate, for Meissonier must have been at that time a lonely and unhappy man.

There are many stories of his first exhibited work, which Caffin declares was the “Visit to the Burgomaster,” but Mrs. Bolton, who is almost always correct in her statements, tells us that it was called “The Visitor,” and that it sold for twenty dollars. At the end of a six years struggle in Paris, his pictures were selling for no more.

Until this artist’s time people had been used only to great canvases, and had grown to look for fine work, only in much space, but here was an artist who could paint exquisitely a whole interior on a space said to be no “larger than his thumb nail.” His work was called “microscopic,” which meant that he gave great attention to details, painting very slowly.

During the Italian war of 1859, and in the German war of 1870, this wonderful artist was on the staff of Napoleon III. During the siege of Paris he held the rank of colonel, and he lost no chance to learn details of battles which he might use later, in making great pictures. Thus he gained the knowledge and inspiration to paint his picture “Friedland,” which was bought by A. T. Stewart and is now in the Metropolitan Museum. He, himself, wrote of that picture: “I did not intend to paint a battle—I wanted to paint Napoleon at the zenith of his glory; I wanted to paint the love, the adoration of the soldiers for the great captain in whom they had faith, and for whom they were ready to die… It seemed to me I did not have colours sufficiently dazzling. No shade should be on the imperial face… The battle already commenced, was necessary to add to the enthusiasm of the soldiers, and make the subject stand forth, but not to diminish it by saddening details. All such shadows I have avoided, and presented nothing but a dismounted cannon, and some growing wheat which should never ripen. “This was enough.

“The men and the Emperor are in the presence of each other. The soldiers cry to him that they are his, and the impressive chief, whose imperial will directs the masses that move around, salutes his devoted army. He and they plainly comprehend each other and absolute confidence is expressed in every face.”

It is said that when he painted the “Retreat from Moscow,” Meissonier obtained the coat which Napoleon had worn at the time, and had it copied, “crease for crease and button for button.” He painted the picture mostly out of doors in midwinter when the ground was covered with snow, and he writes: “Sometimes I sat at my easel for five or six hours together, endeavouring to seize the exact aspect of the winter atmosphere. My servant placed a hot foot-stove under my feet, which he renewed from time to time, but I used to get half-frozen and terribly tired.”

So attentive was he to truthfulness in detail that he had a wooden horse made in imitation of the white charger of the Emperor; and seating himself on this, he studied his own figure in a mirror.

One time an admirer said to him, “I envy you; you can afford to own as many Meissonier pictures as you please! ‘’

“Oh no, I can’t,” the distinguished artist replied. “That would ruin me. They are a good deal too dear for me.”

In his maturity he became very rich, and his homes were dreams of beauty, filled with rare possessions... Yet it was said that “this man who lives in a palace is as moderate as a soldier on the march. This artist, whose canvases are valued by the half-million, is as generous as a nabob. He will give to a charity sale a picture worth the price of a house. Praised as he is by all he has less conceit in his nature than a wholesale painter.”

On the 31st of January in his country house at Poissy, this great man, whose life reads like a romance, died, after a short illness. His funeral services were held in the Madeleine, and he was buried at Poissy, near Versailles, a great military procession following him to the grave.

The Horse Fair Bonheur

Rosa Bonheur

1822-1899, France

Rosa Bonheur’s father was an artist, and when any one asked her who taught her to draw, she always said, “My father taught me.” Her mother could play the piano very well indeed, but Rosa did not care so much for that study. When Rosa was sent to school she had to walk some distance through the woods to the schoolhouse. Sometimes she would stop and smooth the dust in the road with her hand, and then draw pictures in it. She used a stick to draw with. Even then she liked to draw pictures of animals best of all. Often she had such good times drawing that she even forgot to go to school.

Her father thought he could make a better living in Paris, so the family moved to that great city. The first place they lived was up several flights of stairs and across the street from a butcher’s shop. This shop had for a sign a wild boar rudely carved out of wood. Rosa missed her old pets so much, and this wild boar looked so much like her little pet pig in the country, that she used to stop to pat the wooden boar every time she passed that way.

A man who lived in the same house with the Bonheur family kept a small school for boys. Rosa’s two brothers went to this school, and after a while the teacher said Rosa might go too. She was the only girl in the school, but she did not mind that at all. The boys were glad to have

her with them, for she knew more games than they and played just like one of them.

Her father did not do so well with this painting as he had hoped, so they moved into a cheaper house. It was here that Rosa’s mother died. The little sister, Juliette, was then sent to her grandmother, and Rosa went to live with an aunt. The aunt sent her to school and it was at this time that she used to stop on the way to the schoolhouse to draw pictures in the dust on the road. So she did not get along very well with her aunt and the teacher and was delighted when her father told her she might come home.

All the children loved animals, and there are a great many stories told about those that were kept in their house. Rosa’s brother Isidore had a little lamb which he would carry down six flights of stairs every morning, so that it might nibble the green grass and be out in the fresh air. It became a great pet, and all the children drew its picture in ever so many different positions. Besides the lamb, they had a parrot, a monkey, two dogs, rabbits, and birds. Their father let the children keep these pets in a room fitted up especially for them.

Rosa’s father was teaching in a private school at this time, and was away from home all day; but when he came home at night Rosa would show him what she had been doing while he was gone. Once she had been painting cherries, and her father came in while she was working on them. He praised her very much, and helped her finish the painting.

In the evening Rosa and her two brothers and her father used to put their easels in different parts of the big room and draw and paint until it was quite late. They would all much rather do this than anything else in the world, and it was the only time their father had in which to help them.

Later the father got a position in another private school, earning enough to send his three children there as pupils and to give them everything they needed at home.

Rosa did not behave very well in school. She liked to cut queer figures out of paper, figures that looked like some of the teachers or pupils. Then she would fasten them to a string, put some moist bread on the other end, and throw it up to the ceiling of the schoolroom. The bread would stick to the ceiling and there those dreadful figures must dangle until some one came with a ladder and took them down. She was punished very often, and sometimes to make her behave she was given nothing to eat but bread and water.

Although she did such things every one liked her, for she was good-hearted and kind and full of fun. But finally she did something that could not be overlooked. This is what she did. The lady who kept the school was very fond of flowers, and above all she loved the stately hollyhock. She had a beautiful bed of hollyhocks in the front yard of the school that was very much admired by all who passed.

One day when Rosa had been reading in her school history about a war, she thought it would be fine fun to arrange a great battle in the yard between the girls. They used wooden sticks for swords. Very soon Rosa’s side drove their enemies toward the hollyhock bed, where they turned and fled. Seeing the hollyhocks standing guard like soldiers, Rosa thought it would be fun to charge upon them, which she did, cutting off all their heads. Is it any wonder she was sent home in disgrace? Her father then sent her to a dressmaker to see if she could learn that trade, but Rosa did not like dressmaking, and finally went home without having learned very much. Then some friends gave her some photographs to color, and this she liked to do.

Next Rosa was asked to teach drawing to a girl who was some years younger than herself. This girl lived in a beautiful home which had a large gallery full of fine pictures. The floor of this gallery was waxed, and after Rosa had looked at the pictures the two amused themselves by sliding on the waxed floor until it was time for Rosa to go home. So her father had to give up all idea of making her a teacher. He knew that the only thing to do was to let her paint, for that she loved to do and

could do well.

Rosa was willing to walk miles in all kinds of weather, to sit hours in all kinds of uncomfortable positions, and to go without food, in order to draw a good picture of some animal. Now she began her study of animals in earnest. She went to all the country horse fairs, to the slaughter houses, and everywhere she could to study them.

Rosa never had very pretty clothes. She tells us herself that one day a parrot called after her, “Ha, ha! That hat!” Now that she was grown up she found she could not get about very easily in her long skirts. There were so many rough men in the packing houses and other places she must go to study that she got a permit to wear men’s clothing. Her hair was short anyway, and so with her blue working blouse and dark trousers she looked just like a man. Then no one noticed her as she went about, for they thought her only one of the workmen. Her pictures became famous the world over. The first she exhibited was one of some little rabbits nibbling carrots. From all over the country she received gifts of fine horses and other animals for her to paint. Buffalo Bill once sent her two fine horses from Texas. She bought a farm, and had a large barn built where she could keep her animals. How proud her father was of her!

One day as she was working hard in her studio a servant came to tell her that the Empress Eugénie had come to see her. It was a great event when this royal lady came to the artist’s studio, and there was Rosa dressed in her old blue blouse covered with paint! She did not have time to slip it off, even, before the empress came in. They had a most delightful visit, however, and as the Empress Eugénie bent over and kissed Rosa Bonheur, she pinned the Cross of the Legion of Honor on the artist’s blue blouse. Rosa did not notice it until after the empress was gone. How pleased she must have been, for she was the first woman to receive that high honor.

Plowing in Nevers by Bonheur

Le Barde Noir Gérôme

Jéan Léon Gérôme

1824-1904, France

One cannot write much more than the date of birth and death of a man who lived until three or four years of the time of writing, so we may only say that Gérôme was one of the most brilliant of modern French painters. He was born at Vesoul and his father was a goldsmith. Thus he probably had no very great difficulty in getting a start in his work. The prejudice against having an artist in the family was dying out, and as a prosperous goldsmith we may believe that his father had means enough to give his son good opportunities

Gérôme, like Millet, studied under Delaroche, but became no such characteristic painter as he. While studying with Delaroche he also was taking the course in l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

His first exhibited picture was “The Cock Fight,” and he won a third class medal by it.

Almost always this painter has chosen his subjects from ancient or classic life, and his pictures are not always decent, but he painted with much care, the details of his work are very finely done and their vivid colour is fascinating. s

The Sword Dance by

William Adolphe Bouguereau

1825-1905, France

Bouguereau’s business-like father meant his son also to be business-like, but he made the mistake of permitting him to go to a drawing school in Bordeaux and there, to his father’s chagrin, the youngster took the annual prize. After that there seemed nothing for the father to do but grin and bear it, because the son decided to be an artist and had fairly won his right to be one.

Young Bouguereau had no money, and therefore he went to live with an uncle at Saintonge, a priest, who had much sympathy with the boy’s wish to paint, and he left him free to do the best he could for himself in art. He got a chance to paint some portraits, and when he and his uncle talked the matter over it was decided that he should take the money got for them, and go to Paris. It was there that he sought Picot, his first truly helpful teacher; and there, for the first time he learned more than he already knew about art.

All Bouguereau’s opportunities in life were made by himself, by his own genius. No one gave him anything; he earned all. He longed to go to Italy, and in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts he won the Prix de Rome, which made possible a journey to the land of great artists. The French Government began to buy his work, and he began to receive commissions to decorate walls in great buildings; thus, gradually, he made for

himself fame and fortune.

When this artist undertook to paint sacred subjects, of great dignity, he was not at his best; but when he chose children and mothers and everyday folk engaged about their everyday business, he painted beautifully. Americans have bought many of his pictures and he has had more popularity in this country than anywhere outside of France. Some authorities give the birthplace of Bouguereau as La Rochelle; at any rate he died there at midnight, on the nineteenth of August, 1905. s

Song of the Lark Breton

Jules Breton

1827-1906, France

Jules Breton is the happy painter of French peasant life. He was not a peasant himself, and knew little of the hard work and dreary life of the French peasant.

He liked, however, to see these fine, strong, figures of men and women in working clothes. He liked to see them working in the fields. He liked to see them returning at evening.

He always selected the happy, the joyous, the healthy, the vigorous, for his pictures. In studying the pictures of Breton’s peasants one is led to believe that work is always a joy!

Jules was born in the country of Courrieres, France. His father’s house was set in the midst of a beautiful garden, with open fields stretching beyond. Here he and his four brothers roamed about, and played to their hearts’ content.

One day when he was a little fellow he watched a painter whitewash some Chinese figures which stood in the garden. He watched him brighten up the decorations in the house. From that day Jules declared he would be a painter.

Not long after a great painter called at their home on business. He came in, and spent some little time with the father. Jules looked on. He wanted, oh so much, to tell him that he, too, wished to be a painter.

But he dared not say a word.

Some years later an uncle happened to meet this same painter. He engaged him to paint his portrait. He thought this would bring him to the house where he might become interested in his nephew.

Sure enough he came to the house. He met Jules. He looked at his drawings. He shook his head.

By and by, however, his face brightened when he saw the boy’s out-door sketches. He consented to take him on trial for six months. The young lad was delighted. He ran to his room, threw his school books to the ceiling, and other work into the fire. He was going to have lessons in drawing!

He began studying with this well known painter. This was only the beginning of long years of serious study. Afterward he went to Paris where his training fitted him for the great artist he was to be. When he returned home, he went out into the country around his boyhood home, the country he loved best. Here were the open fields and the familiar scenes of his childhood.

Breton was a poet as well as a painter. As he strolled through the fields, he sang and whistled as he passed. He saw only the beauties of nature, the blue sky, moving clouds, lights, and shadows. He saw only the beautiful side of French peasant life—their fine stalwart figures, their strength, and hardiness. To him the harvesters were always merry, the gleaners always gay, and all the workers contented and happy.

Naturally when he began to paint these workers at their daily toil he pictured only the happiness and joy that he saw.

Immediately his pictures became popular. People liked his paintings because they pictured the bright, happy side of work. He became one of the greatest painters not only in France, but in the whole world. h

The Beggars of Burgos Doré

Paul Gustave Doré

1833-1883, France

This artist died in Paris twenty-five years ago, but there is little as yet to be told of his life history. He was educated in Paris at the Lycée Charlemagne, having gone there from Strasburg, where he was born.

He was a painter of fantastic and grotesque subjects, and as far as we know, he began his career when a boy. He made sketches before his eighth year which attracted much attention, and he earned considerable money while still at school. He was at that time engaged to illustrate for journals, at a good round sum, and before he left the Lycée he had made hundreds of drawings, somewhat after the satirical fashion of Hogarth.

He first worked for the Journal Pour Rire, but then he undertook to illustrate the work of Rabelais, the great satirist, whose text just suited Doré’s pencil. After Rabelais he illustrated Balzac, also the “Wandering Jew,” “Don Quixote,” and Dante’s “Divine Comedy.”

He undertook to do things which he could not do well, simply for the money there was in the commissions. He had but a poor idea of colour and his work was coarse, but it had such marked peculiarities that it became famous. He did a little sculpture as well, and even that showed his eccentricities of thought. y

The Railway Bridge Monet

Claude Monet

1840-1926, France

Another—Manet—was the founder of [the Impressionist School of France] among modern painters, but Monet is always considered his most conspicuous follower.

Monet’s remarkable method of putting his colours upon canvas does not mean impressionism. He is an impressionist but also Monet— an artist with a method entirely different from that of any other. He belongs to what in France is called the pointillistes. The word means nothing more nor less than an effort to accomplish the impossible. If you stand a little way from a very hot stove you may be able to see a kind of movement in the air, a quivering of particles or molecular motion, and this is what the pointillistes try to show in their paintings—Monet most of all.

The theory is that by putting little dabs of primitive colours close together upon canvas, without mixing them, just separate dabs of red, yellow, blue, etc., the effect of movement is produced…

It is written that Monet discovered that “green, seen under strong sunshine is not green, but yellow; that the shadows cast by sunlight upon snow or upon brightly lighted surfaces are not black, but blue; and that a white dress, seen under the shade of trees on a bright day, has violet or lilac tones.’’

The Water-Lily Pond by Monet

The Helping Hand Renouf

Emile Renouf

1845-1894, France

When we go fishing for a few hours or half a day we think it great fun, but a real fisherman, who earns his living that way, has to work very hard. Fishermen usually start out at four or five o’clock in the morning, and do not come home again until late at night. Sometimes they go away for several days, fishing night and day.

Very probably this little girl is not awake mornings when her father eats his breakfast and starts out. He wears a rain-proof hat and heavy coat, for one never can tell what the weather will be out on the water. He must take a good lunch with him, too, for he is sure to get hungry. The mother will see that the lunch is ready.

When the wind is blowing in the right direction he puts up the heavy pole you see in the center of the boat, lets out the sail, and tightens the rope. Then, with a good wind, how fast he can go! He knows just where each kind of fish likes to stay, and goes straight to the very best place. Here he drops his heavy iron anchor into the water. This anchor is fastened to the boat and keeps it from drifting. Sometimes the fish do not bite at all, and he has very few to carry home after his hard day’s work. Then again his great boat is filled full of shiny fish. “Fisherman’s luck,” that is called.

Very likely this little girl has never been out with her father on

one of his long trips, for it would be much too tiresome for so small a girl. It would seem, rather, as if he had finished his day’s work, and was taking his little daughter with him on some short errand. Perhaps they are on their way home, and there is something in that sack the mother needs. Just now there is no wind, or it is not in the right direction, for they do not use the sail.

Can you see the other oar? It must be in the bottom of the boat. The man must row hard with the oar he is pulling at or they will run into that great rock you see ahead.

It looks as if those little sailboats far off in the distance are standing still. Perhaps they have no oars, and are waiting for the wind to come up and blow them home. If they were anchored the sails would be rolled up and put away. A good sailor must take good care of his boat and sails. If a sail is not stretched out in the sun and allowed to dry after a heavy dew or rain, it will rot and soon fall to pieces.

The little girl looks as if she were putting all her strength into those tiny hands that cannot near go around the oar. How pleased her father seems to be to have her try to help him! He knows she is doing the best she can, and he lets her think she is helping row the boat. It must help him somewhat, just to know that she is trying so hard and wants to help.

She must slip about on that seat every time the oar moves, for her feet do not touch the bottom of the boat. She will be tired when she reaches home, and warm too, no doubt.

They will not lose their hats even if the wind does blow, for the little girl’s bonnet is tied under her chin, and her father has pulled his rubber hat tight over his head. Often, when he is out fishing on the deep sea, the spray dashes over the fisherman’s boat, and he is glad to have a rubber hat and coat to wear.

The little girl wears a large handkerchief around her neck, fastened under her arms. It must be in the summer time, or she would surely wear a coat and rubber boots.

Joan of Arc

Bastien-Lepage

Jules Bastien-Lepage

1848-1884, France

In this picture [Joan of Arc] we see the “Maid of Orleans” listening to the voices. As she sat in the shade of the great apple tree winding yard, she had suddenly heard voices, and then a vision of St. Michael, St. Margaret, and St. Catherine, the saints to whom she had prayed so often in the little church, appeared before her. She trembled, and rising, walked forward. Now, leaning against a tree, she gazes at the vision. She imagines herself clad in armor and presented with a sword by the saints, who tell her that heaven commands her to free France from the English.

With its fruit trees, flowers, and vegetables, the French garden represented in the picture was painted from nature. In the distance we see a suggestion of the great forest in which Joan used to wander in solitude and prayer. A simple peasant girl, poorly dressed, there is little about her to please or attract us until we look at the eyes. Then we begin to understand why this picture is considered a masterpiece. Those great, far-seeing, melancholy eyes seem to look far beyond us, and their ecstatic gaze inspires us with some of that same confidence in her which so possessed her soldiers.

The vision which so inspired Joan is partly visible to us amid the tangle of the trees and shrubbery. The figures of the three saints silhou-

etted against the rude peasant hut add to the confusing details of the background, and yet by them our eyes are led back to the one restful part of the picture—Joan herself. She is not beautiful, only earnest and good, and we feel a great pity for this girl who is so soon to suffer a dreadful fate for an ungrateful king and people.

The sunlight falls full upon her face and outstretched arm. The curve of this arm harmonizes with the branches of the trees above, and her upright figure with the straight tree trunks. Her firm chin tells us something of the determination and courage which carried her through to the end.

We are told that she had a deep, strong voice which was capable of great sweetness, and that her honesty and goodness compelled the respect of even the rudest soldiers. n

Jules Bastien-Lepage was born in Damvillers, France. His parents were people of means, and as his father was an artist he received his first art instructions from him. As a young man Jules held a position in the post office, and his duties there kept him busy every morning. But all his afternoons were devoted to study under an artist who lived near by.

Then during the Franco-Prussian war he joined the army in the defense of Paris. He was never very strong, and the constant exposure and hardships forced him to return home on sick leave; that was the end of his experience as a soldier. His health somewhat recovered, he began painting in earnest. He desired above all things to be a great historical painter and, if possible, to paint these pictures at the very places where the historical events occurred.

He had a very fine studio fitted up on the second floor at home, but most of his painting was done out of doors.

We cannot read much of his life without finding some mention of his grandfather, for it was the old man’s delight to work or sit beside his

At Harvest Time by

grandson while the young man was painting. The grandfather is usually described as wearing a brown skull cap and spectacles, and carrying his snuffbox and large checked handkerchief much in evidence. He took care of their garden and orchard, and one of the very first pictures Lepage painted that caused most favorable comment was a portrait of his grandfather in a corner of the garden. This picture, together with another of a young peasant girl, exhibited at the same time, marked the beginning of the artist’s popularity.

Born in the same country as Millet and like him understanding the religious enthusiasm and the superstitions of the peasants, we are not surprised that he should love to paint the French peasant and that Joan of Arc’s life and history should have appealed to him so strongly. This subject had been a favorite theme for painters for several hundred years, and most of the artists had represented Joan as a saint or as a maid of great beauty. Lepage, however, represented her as a simple peasant girl, dressed as such, and showing evidence in her face and her coarse hands of the rough farm work she had been doing. This painting of Joan of Arc is considered the artist’s masterpiece. Another noted picture by him is “The Hay Makers.” Bastien-Lepage became very popular indeed, and the people vied with each other to obtain his paintings and to get an opportunity to work in his studio. He worked very hard, and this, with the excitement of so much publicity, finally wore him out. He died at the age of thirty-six years.

School Children on July 14th

Henri-Jules-Jean Geoffroy

1853-1924, France

Mr. Jean Geoffroy is still living in this little village called Marennes, near the school of which he has painted so many pictures. He is very fond of children, and counts them among his best friends. A large number of the pictures Geoffroy has painted are of children. He does not often paint the children of wealth and fashion, preferring instead to paint the little sons and daughters of the poorer, hard-working people.

His pictures always tell a story, and tell it so plainly that they do not need titles. They have brought him great praise and many honors, but he is a modest man and we know very little about his life.

He signs his paintings “Géo.”

y

Canada d

The Death of General Wolfe West

The Death of General Wolfe

It is little wonder that the artist, Benjamin West, who overcame so many obstacles to follow his chosen calling, should admire a man like General Wolfe, who also had a great many difficulties to overcome. Each was born with an overwhelming desire—the one to be a great artist; the other to be a great soldier. Both achieved their desire through their own earnest and praiseworthy effort. Perhaps the greatest difficult James Wolfe had to contend with was his poor constitution and constant ill health. He could scarcely endure the long marches by land or voyages by sea—yet he would shirk neither. Duty to his country was always first.

He was only sixteen years old when he took part in his first campaign. Abbé H.R. Casgrain tells us: “He was then a tall but thin young man, apparently weak for the trials of war. Moreover, he was decidedly ugly, with red hair and a receding forehead and chin, which made his profile seem to be an obtuse angle, with the point at the end of his nose. His pale, transparent skin was easily flushed, and became fiery red when he was engaged in conversation or in action. Nothing about him

bespoke the soldier save a firm-set mouth and eyes of azure blue, which flashed and gleamed. With it all, though, he had about his person and his manner a sympathetic quality which attracted people to him.” Although a severe illness compelled him to give up this first campaign and return home, Wolfe was by no means discouraged, and he later on managed to distinguish himself for his courage and military skill...

But even Wolfe’s enthusiasm could not break down the strong fortification at Quebec. The city was located on a high, rocky cliff in itself almost inaccessible, and the natural strength of the position was increased by the strong defense maintained by the French soldiers and the Indians. Wolfe spent the entire summer trying to find a way to take Quebec, and probably would not have succeeded but for a combination of circumstances which left one part of the cliff unprotected.

With the aid of a telescope, General Wolfe had discovered a hidden pathway up the side of the cliff behind the city at a point which was lightly guarded. Then came a deserter from the French army who informed him that the French were expecting some provision boats that night.

Without hesitation, General Wolfe ordered thirty-six hundred of his soldiers to prepare for the assault. Under cover of night, flying a French flag and with the aid of those of his generals who spoke French, Wolfe and his soldiers managed to sail past the sentry and enter the harbor in the guise of the French provision boats. In absolute silence they sailed up the river and landed at a spot since called “Wolfe’s Cove.” The ascent up the steep hill side was difficult but soon accomplished, and the few guards killed or taken prisoners. All the British soldiers successfully gained the heights and the next morning General Wolfe lined them up for battle on a field called the “Field of Abraham” after the name of its owner.

The French commander, Montcalm, surprised at the presence of the enemy on his own shore, went to meet them hurriedly and without proper support. A fierce battle ensued in which the English were victor-

ious, and the French fled. General Wolfe was wounded three times in this battle, the last time fatally. Even then he called out to those nearest him, “Support me; let not my brave fellows see me fall. The day is ours; keep it.”

In our picture we see General Wolfe half supported on the ground, with his friends about him. At the left is the messenger who, history tells us, bore the news, “They run; see how they run!” The dying general heard the words and asked, “Who run?” Upon hearing the answer, “The enemy,” he exclaimed, “Now God be praised. I will die in peace.”

This victory not only gave Canada to England, but established the permanent supremacy of the English-speaking race in North America. Is it any wonder, then, that Benjamin West, a good American colonist, should be interested in this battle and wish to paint a picture of it?

He started it with great enthusiasm, and soon had the figures sketched in, ready to paint. West was then living in London, and Archbishop Drummond, happening in his studio at this time, was greatly shocked because West had dressed his men in costumes such as they actually wore. Strange as it seems to us now, it was the custom then to use classic models for everything, and to represent all figures as wearing Greek costumes, no matter what period they lived. If we remember Benjamin West for no other reason, we shall remember him because he was the first in England and America to change this custom. He believed we should paint people just as they are. The archbishop tried to dissuade him from this, and failing, he asked Sir Joshua Reynolds to talk to West.

Finally King George III heard of the artist’s intention and sent for him. West listened to the king with great respect, and then replied: “May it please your Majesty, the subject I have to represent is a great battle fought and won, and the same truth which gives law to the historian should rule the painter. If instead of the facts of action I introduce fictions, how shall I be understood by posterity? The classic dress is certainly picturesque, but by using it I shall lose in sentiment what I gain

Monument to General Wolfe

in external grace. I want to mark the time, the place, and the people; to do this I must abide by the truth.”

The king could not fail to be convinced by so sensible an answer, yet he would not buy the picture. When Sir Joshua Reynolds came to look at the finished picture he praised it unreservedly, and not only told the artist it would be popular but predicted that it would lead to a revolution in art. His prediction was soon fulfilled.

And yet the critics tell us that West, with all his love for truth in dress, took even a great artist’s license when he painted this picture. He represented men as standing near Wolfe (the two generals, Monckton and Barré) who were not there at all. These two men were fatally wounded in the same battle, but in another part of the field. Surgeon Adair, too, who is bending over the dying hero, was in another part of the country at the time. The Indian warrior, who intently watches the dying general to see if he is equal to the Indian in fortitude and bravery, was, it is claimed, an imaginary person.

But a far greater number of critics uphold West and consider his painting the more valuable because he has brought into prominence a number of the important men of that time, and linked their names in memory with that of Wolfe and with the cause they represented.

The interest is centered about the dying general in many different ways—the light, the position of other figures, the direction of their gaze, and his position in the picture. Our attention and interest might remain with the group in the foreground of the picture but that it is drawn, for a moment, to the figure in the middle distance running toward us and from that figure to the mass in the background which, though vaguely outlined, is still distinct enough to give us the impression of troops in action.

Settler’s Log House Krieghoff

Cornelius Krieghoff

1815-1872, Canada

Bilking the Toll by Krieghoff

Ice Cutters Cullen

Maurice Cullen 1866-1934, Canada

Breaking

Brittany Goose Girl

Gagnon

Clarence Gagnon

1881-1942, Canada

Pont de Glace à Québec by Gagnon