Gérome had no picture in the last Salon, nor had
Beaumont, Perrault, Voillemot r A. Lefèvre, the painter
of the "Daughter f Ocean", which, a few years ago,
appeared like a new Galatea, inspiring many Pygmalions.
But Jules Lefbvre, Henner, Gustave Moreau and others,
were represented by delicate and lovely pictures.
Humbert exhibited a "Salomé," Schwertzmeyer "le Gorion,"
Merle a "Hebe", but these pictures, though remarkable as
studies, did not make up for the lack of imagination by
any delicacy or any other exceptional trait. The model,
that sunbeam of the studies, has this year been made the
subject of several good pictures.
Edward Dantan has placed a pretty little woman,
perfectly nude, in the corner of a studio, and two
dainty pink shoes stand before her and two tiny glasses
- empty, of course - on a smal table near. On the other
side of the room the young sculptor is hard at work, to
make up for the time lost over that last glass.
Mr. Barlett, an English painter, but partly Parisian -
as who is not nowadays? - has chosen the "Repose" of a
model" for his subject. There are, perhaps, too many
figures on his canvas, but what life and gaiety is in
their bustle. These students, intent upon their work,
are not of the class who pay for pink shoes. One paints
a background, another prepares his palette: they chat,
strol about , light their pipes, even read the
newspaper, while the poor naked model, alone and silent,
warms herself at the stove - a thoroughly English touch.
Bompland, a good painter, takes it more seriously. He
places a beautiful woman, carefully painted, softly
colored, alone, grave and sad, in a quaint studio full
of the charming trifles with which artists now crowd
their rooms. This apartment is all modern, but there is
a touch of the antique in this woman, taken from nature,
like the women of Heilbuth the eccentric water-colorist.
As for the great pictures, the superb "Galatea" of
Moreau, Jules Lefebvre's pure and dainty half-length,
Henner's refined and graceful figure of a young girls
lit up by the softest moonlight. It is the province of
Henner to portary with reverent hand a nude or half nude
woman. This woman is always the same, but she is none
the less charming, returning year by year to embody some
new idea. With Henner, woman's beauty is a scared ideal,
which he does not tarnish by a breath of fleshly desire;
he would not push his ideal towards the pleasnat
precipice; he would save it-to copy. For this reason, in
the future his women will have the charm of the
reverential and believing painters of the Renaissance.
One must believe in what one paints.
This year Henner's female figure personifies the
Fountain. Learning over the spring, she sees her own
white figute fading away. It is another version of
Byblis, the myth which inspired the modest Suchetez, who
received a medal for his statue. But Henneh had in the
Salon a head which far surpassed his other picture-a
sleeping girl, with moist skin and scarlet cheeks, so
life-like that one could hardly help waking her.
The half-length of a woman is an exquisite example of
J.Lefebvre. It is the swan-like creature he always
paints, the most superb of which, by-the-by, "La Femme
Couchée", belongs to Alexander Dumas - a creature fresh,
spring-like, innocent, quivering at the first warm kiss
of life. If she lies upon a lion's skin, fan in hand,
her elbow on the beast's head, she is called "Fatima".
If wandering frightened in the woods she is "La Cigale",
the least natural of his works. If standing, severe and
pure, the stiffness of one side of the figure redeemed
by the roundness, the exquisite art of the
other-lighting the world with a torch, the cancas wit
two superb Roman eyes of Lucretiua's type-this
swan-woman is called "Truth." But in whatever shape she
comes, there is always the same indefinable charm-the
solid flesh and rosy skin of a girl of sixteen.
Lefebvre's women seem always ready to take flight, like
birds, into the sky, their true home.
The "Galatea" of Gustave Moreau, full of soul, in spite
of the lovely body, is in quite another style. How is it
possible to deny to this painter the dame so willingly
accorded to the commonplace cateres to the paltry
caprices of the moment? Eyes gifted with the marvellous
power of seeing beauty cannot find the calm and
immaculate loveliness they seek in trivial reproductions
of varying and perishable types, which come and go like
clouds. He ignores-in spite of the money to be gained
thereby-the easy puerilities of art of to-day; he seeks,
in the world of legend, heroes whose vulgarity is ridden
by distance, or in boundless space, spirits without
substance, eternal symbols, ideals and dreams of beauty.
This disdain of the fashion of the day which
characterizes the work of Gustave Moreau is a sign of
artistic superiority. True genius always generalizes.
Its sympathy yearns over those treasures of the soul
which the world disregards, those eager virtues whose
feverish unrest tortures and kills so many noble
hearts-with no loving hand to cover the poor dead with
flowers. Moreau paints, in his warm style, where excess
of imagination never wrongs art, a young girl of Thrace
finding the head and lyre of Orpheus, that great
suffering soul. When his friend Chasseriau dies, in the
height of youth and strength, he paints, in sombre
lines, "Death and the Young Man." If the thirst for
beauty parches his eager lips and the love of the ideal
disturbs his dreams, he paints Galatea, a serene,
coquettish, careless, glowing, girlish beauty. He gives
way to the delicious pleasure of his creative
imagination, he adorns the chosen mystery with
multitudes of details, he surrounds it with bold and
original adjuncts; but his imagiantion is restrained by
his conscience, and in these rides on the back of
Pegasus he never loses his stirrup, he never loses sight
of the logic which should govern the most brilliant
flights of fancy. Feeling that his genius would lead him
where his unpractised hand could not yet follow, he hid
himself among the shadows of the cemetary of Pisa, still
full of those quaint figures of Giotto, with feet like
old gnarled trees. He studied Garracci's impetuous lines
lines; he learnt drawing by copying untiringly Da
Vinci's severe and earnest work; he set forth a poet, to
return a painter. His Galatea, while possessing the
softest femininity of form, is not a woman. She stands
surrounded by a capricious vegetation, which seems like
the wanderings of a poetic fancy. Moreau is accused of
being somewhat scenic in his backgournds.
True, he is fond of the brilliancy of a light all his
own, clear and silvery, glittering on the jewels of
Helen's girdle, on the white foam of his yeasty waves,
on the red tips of his coral islands and nests of pearl
shell. But he will ever be the faithful lover of
Galatea, and live as long as Henner, Doré, Laurent or
Fromentin.
The Hour, Nueva York, 31 de julio de 1880.
